Thrifty, Brave, Clean and Ignorant

            The Boy Scouts of America today delayed taking action on its ban on gay Scouts and leaders.  Many expected the BSA to rescind the bans on a national level but leave the decision to its individual “troops,” or local units, “consistent with each organization’s mission, principles or religious beliefs.”

That proposal only proved yet again that you just can’t please everyone every time.  Some snorted at the private organization disavowing discrimination on a national level but leaving the door open for approximately 400,000 of its approximately 400,000 troops with approximately 2.7 million Scouts to discriminate.  Others bristled at the prospect of being forced to be either tolerant or discriminatory – and in public.  It’s a lot easier to discriminate when you’re just enforcing a private organization’s policies.

            It’s even easier to discriminate when you’re just enforcing two private organizations’ policies.  Not all Scout troops are sponsored by a church, but around 70% are.  Not all churches teach that homosexuality is a sin, but some do.  Some split the proverbial baby and teach that being gay is not wrong, but engaging in same-sex sex is worse than wrong.  For example, the Mormon Church teaches that.

The Mormon Church is also the BSA’s largest sponsor, with about 420,000 Scouts in about 38,000 troops that are in turn sponsored by 38,000 “wards,” or Mormon congregations.  Mormons like Scouting’s emphasis on traditional values, quasi-military hierarchy and vernacular -- calling groups of "Scouts" "troops" and such.  Some even see Scouting as a “celestial order,” meaning that its structure and mission are . . . well, celestial, or inspired by God.

Mormonism is also religion’s version of buying a Marie Callender’s pie, taking it out of the box, taking it to the pot luck dinner and presenting it as better than Marie Callender’s.  Mormons take all kinds of things and make them their own.  God.  Jesus.  Cain.  Moses.  Abraham.  The Bible.  Utah.  Lionel Ritchie.  Underwear.

Scout troops sponsored by a Mormon ward are no different.  I was in several back in the late 70s, and the structure hasn’t changed.  Troops are divisions of Mormon Priesthood “quorums,” or groups.  The president of the particular Priesthood quorum is also the troop leader, and the quorum's chief adult adviser is the Scoutmaster.  The quorum is the dog that wags the troop tail.  Separation of church and state?  How one tax-exempt private organization allows another to appropriate it is its private tax-exempt business.

            Does the Mormon tail also wag the Boy Scouts on a national level?  Consider this.  Last week, the BSA’s Great Salt Lake Council joined 33 others representing over 500,000 Scouts in a letter to the BSA’s national board expressing concern over “the pace at which such actions are being taken.  There is no compelling reason to accelerate this decision ahead of a full analysis.”

Two days ago, the Salt Lake Council published on its website that the decision should not be made without a “completed and open discussion and deliberation with professionals, volunteers, parents, chartered partners, and all other stakeholders of the organization.” In other words, if it’s never too late to stop being discriminatory, it can also be too early to stop.  Let’s not abandon segregation too soon.  Today, the Boy Scouts tabled their plan to stop excluding gays.

            But get this.  The BSA also announced that it will put the matter to a vote of its 1,400-member National Council in May.  So, the BSA's national governing body could be seen to have simultaneously capitulated to its constituents and plopped the hot potatoe right back in their collective lap.  It’s harder to be discriminatory when the Organization that’s defined discriminiatory institutional policies for its members for so long suddenly tells them to vote on the institution's discriminatory policies.  You wanted to participate, Greater Salt Lake Council?  Careful what you wish for.

            The BSA for its part wasn't wishing to turn its annual feel-good jamboree for regional leaders into a quasi-Republican National Convention with 1,400 regional leaders in the role of delegates voting on a single-issue platform.  The two factions on either side of that one issue don’t even know exactly how it will be presented -- i.e., universally lifting the universal ban on gays or leaving it up to the rank and file.

What the two factions do know is they’ll be consolidating their votes and coalitions between now and May.  As they do, people who don’t know a sheepshank from a sheet bend will still learn a lot about several American religions.  We know they all disagree with each other about things they obviously feel are very important.  We also know the BSA feels that banning gay Scouts was important enough to defend (successfully) before the Supreme Court in 1990.  We know the decision will never be put in the hands of the disparate troops.  If that we’re going to happen, it would have happened today.

We also know that progressive Presbyterian and Methodist members of the National Council will band with members whose sponsoring troops are not affiliated with any church.  We know that their platform will be “Live and let live and lift the ban” in so many words.

What we don’t know is what alternative the more catholic coalition led by the Mormon and Catholic Council members will advance – besides tabling the vote until 2014, of course.  Both churches are known to stand on subjective principle in the face of outside opprobrium.  Both are also known to ultimately cave into that opprobrium – e.g., God’s revelation in 1978 that Black Mormon males could receive the Priesthood, the American Catholic Church not enforcing the Vatican’s policies on abortion.  Both have also recently sustained public relations black eyes over homosexuality, the Catholic Church with its epidemic of priests molesting altar boys and the Mormon Church almost single-handedly getting California’s Proposition 8 passed in 2008.

        Both churches also only very recently abandoned excluding gays from every right, privilege and place possible.  When you get right down to it, telling someone they’re perfectly welcome in your organization if they live their life without love and physical affection is pretty far from tolerant.  It’s hard enough for people to countenance something their religion teaches is a sin.  Things that are an “abomination in the eyes of the Lord” are on a totally different plane.  Asking some people to allow active gays in their private club is like asking them to pucker up and kiss the Devil.  Believe it or not.

        Believe it or not, the Mormon Church defines appropriate sex practices for married Mormon couples – yes, heterosexual couples.  Proclamations from the First Presidency are the Mormon equivalent of papal decrees.  One issued in 1982 proclaimed in part, “The First Presidency has interpreted oral sex as constituting an unnatural, impure, or unholy practice.  If a person is engaged in a practice which troubles him enough to ask about it, he should discontinue it.”
 

        With that position on oral sex among married hetero couples, the Mormon First Presidency would tell the BSA that any question about allowing gay Scouts and leaders answers itself – except it’s 2013, not 1982.  Thirty years ago, Mormon hybrid ecclesiastical Scouting leaders talked about masturbation.  All the time.  We were well-adjusted if we weren't jerking off and troubled teens if we were.  Homosexuality only came up long enough to confirm that it's the worst sin one can commit after murder.

        Because it is 2013, public suport for LGBT equality is rolling as fast as the proverbial stone and is gathering no more moss.  The Boy Scouts and the Mormon Church don't need another P.R. pratfall, let alone over an issue where mainstream mores are departing from more traditional approaches every minute.  Change happens fast when enough people decide other people are equal after all.

        Look for the Boy Scout National Council to ratify a policy that welcomes Scouts and leaders of either orientation who are "morally straight," as they vow under the Scout Oath.  The strict constructionsists at the Convention will insist that "morally straight" means heterosexual, but they'll lose out to pragmatists who see that making it all about chastity instead of orientation is the highest ground on which to make camp.  Disciplining Scouts of either persuasion who are not chaste will fall to the local troops.  Hot potatoe, hot potatoe.

        It's the best of all worlds, and it will totally please nobody -- but it's either that or change the Scout Law to "Thrifty, Brave, Clean and Ignorant."

Utah Sheriffs -- Tea Party Spouts

        You know Joe Arpaio -- Maricopa (Arizona) County sheriff, older than dirt, makes the news by making inmates wear pink jumpsuits and claiming President Obama's certificate is forged.  Yeah.  That guy.  And you know Jan Brewer -- Arizona governor, wags her finger in the President's face, rails against his health care plan for months before supporting it.  Yeah.  That . . . woman.

        Last week the Utah Sheriffs' Association tipped its hat to both Brewer and Arpaio in an open letter to President Obama.  The Sheriffs "pray that the Almighty will inspire the People's Representatives collectively" as they "grapple with the complex issue of firearms regulation.  For that reason, it is imperative this discussion be had in Congress, not silenced by executive orders.  [P]lease remember the founders of this great nation created the Constitution, and its accompanying Bill of Rights, to protect its citizens from all forms of tyrannical subjugation."

       Typical Tea Party finger food so far -- but a tea party isn't a real tea party without empty threats backed up by empty threats of force.  Neither is Obama baiting, which is always the entertainment portion of any real tea party anyway.  The Utah Sheriffs touch all those bases in the next and concluding paragraph of their letter:

        "We respect the Office of the President of the United States of America.  But, make no mistake, as the duly-elected sheriffs of our respective counties, we will enforce the right of the citizens guaranteed by the Constitution.  No federal official will be permitted to descend upon our constituents what the Bill of Rights -- in particular Amendment II -- has given them.  We, like you, swore a solemn oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States and we are prepared to trade our lives for the preservation of its traditional interpretation."

        Joe Arpaio and Jan Brewer would be proud.

        So would Brigham Young, who led the Mormon Immigration (Utah was Mexican territory when the Mormons arrived in 1847) to Utah.  The whole point was to get away from the United States, its Government, and their courts that applied man's law instead of God's -- then set up the "Kingdom of God," a Mormon theocracy.  Young christened his first settlement "Great Salt Lake City, Great Basin, North America." The Utah Sheriffs Association would be proud.

        Young either was appointed the first governor of the Utah Territory or so appointed himself by decree to Congress in 1849.  It's complicated.  So was Young's tenure as governor, throughout which he moonlighted as Prophet, Seer and Revelator to Mormons.  Young had no identity crisis when it came to balancing church and state. "We must have the Kingdom of God, or nothing.  We are not to be overthrown," he decreed.

        Things got really tense in 1857, when Young got word that President Buchanan was sending a new governor out to replace him -- along with 1,500 troops to ensure a smooth transition.  The Government was taking over Utah, Kingdom of God and all.

        Young imposed martial law and sealed the borders.  He also forbade "in the name of the People of the United States in the Territory of Utah, all armed forces, of every description, from coming into this Territory under any pretence whatever." He directed "that all forces in said Territory hold themselves in readiness to march, at a moment’s notice, to repel any and all such threatened invasion."

        Summit County Sheriff David Edmunds would be proud.  Summit County has about 30,000 residents.  Its largest city is Park City -- home of the 2002 Winter Olympics, the Sundance Film Festival and a tourism economy that would seem reticent to get involved in gun politics.  Its biggest law enforcement issues are drunk driving, search and rescue, and soccer moms parking in the red zone in front of the Post Office -- which is a lousy federal building, anyway.

        Edmunds finds time to serve as the Utah Sheriffs' Association's president and be the catalyst behind its letter to the President.  He isn't saying that any of the President Obama's executive orders to date addressing guns and ammo are unconstitutional or even tyrannical. "We acknowledge that that hasn't happened yet, but all that we're hearing from the Obama Administration and their surrogates, we believe that they are trying to make a grab at guns," Edmunds claims.

        "We are prepared to trade our lives in defense of the constitution of the United States.  We would never want violence to be the alternative.  We would always hope we could talk this out but it's important to make this very significant stand as it relates to these issues because they are very fundamental to the freedoms we enjoy in this country."

        So the letter is a stand -- and a "very significant one," at that.  The Utah Sheriffs don't really want to tee it up with guys who shoot Osama bin Laden through the eye.  They just say they're down -- if there's no alternative.

        Still, everybody knows it'll never come to another Waco.  The Sheriffs can invoke solemn oaths to God all they like, but they're infidels next to David Koresh.  They're also eminently rational by comparison, all things being relative.  They talk the extremist talk, but they'll never walk the extremist walk because they're not as extreme as they profess.  They also know that Barack Hussein Obama isn't going to "grab their guns" -- thanks to vigilant patriots like themselves.

        So, at the end of the day the Utah Sheriffs are just spouting off -- and they know it.  This makes them like Joe Arpaio, Jan Brewer and any of many keepers of the Tea Party torch that always keeps the kettle simmering.  They blow off steam by wagging fingers at the President and sending him finger-wagging letters.  Again, it's entertainment for the Party.  It's also craven pandering to the basest of political bases.

        Still, sheriffs enforce the laws that the "People's Representatives" who are elected to make law make.  The Utah Sheriffs coyly but clearly try to slide themselves into legislative status, tossing out rhetorical smoke bombs like being "duly-elected" officials looking out for their "constituents." But when the smoke clears, the y're openly declaring that they will not enforce laws they consider unconstitutional -- even those passed by the actual legislators that the Sheriffs' consistutents actually elected, presumably.

        Though the Utah Sheriffs express particular concern for the Second Amendment, their letter also leaves them room to not enforce any other laws they deem unconstitutional.  You have to ask with which other laws they disagree.  And what about their deputies?  Do they decide individually which laws are constitutional, or do they just agree with the intepretations of the County Sheriff who's their boss?  Will the Sheriffs give their deputies a chance to defect to America if "talking it out" doesn't work, or is taking a bullet for the Utah Sheriffs' Association now part of being a deputy sheriff in Utah?  How will the Sheriffs inform their "constituents" which specific laws will not be enforced?  How will Utah residents keep track of which laws are constitutional in which Utah county?

        Speaking of Utah residents, did their duly-elected sheriffs broach their views about law enforcement's role as lawmakers while they were campaigning?  Did the Sheriffs' "constituents" have any idea that they'd write an open letter to the President under the auspices of their offices and oaths?

        The Utah Sheriffs' letter is a call to arms for a police state written by police.  They play Democratic Process Dress-Up, but they still contemplate all power being consolidated in the police.  They also apparently contemplate repelling the Government's troops or agents with the Government's own body armor and guns.  It's like Rick Perry hating the Government yet wanting to be President.

        "Talk it out"?  We are talking about gun control.  Utah's Sheriffs have standing to participate in that discussion -- as private citizens.  Contrary to their letter's central premise, they have no standing as legislators to "talk it out" with the President.

        Besides, what's there to "talk out" anyway?  It's hard enough to have a dialogue with someone who started the dialgoue with ultimatums.  It's even harder when the same person insists they're just being patriots, not issuing ultimatums.  Besides, the Sheriffs have already told us that they won't enforce any laws they deem unconstitutional, and they'll trade their lives to protect their "traditional interpretations" of the Bill of Rights.

        Since there's nothing to talk out, we can only wait for the Revolution and see if the United States once again keeps Utah in the United States.  I'll be the one cheering loudest when a smart bomb takes out the rebel leader Dave Edmunds and the Utah Sheriffs' Association's command post -- assuming that "talking it out" doesn't persuade the Government to just leave Utah to the Kingdom of God's Sheriffs.

        Until then, I'll take comfort that I live in Salt Lake County -- whose sheriff, Jim Winder, is the only one in Utah who did not sign off on the letter to President Obama.  And until then, Utah's 28 other county sheriffs are nothing more or less than Tea Party spouts.

You Can't Take the Mormon Out of Manti

        Manti Te'o's phantom girlfriend and her (un)timely death from leukemia evoke the scene in Fargo in which Marge Gunderson meets her old high school classmate Mike Yamagita for lunch.  Mike tells Marge that he married their mutual classmate, Linda Cooksey, who died of leukemia.  Their meeting is awkward in many aspects, but even more so in retrospect when Marge learns that Linda is alive, was never sick and was never married to Mike Yamagita.  Quite to the contrary, he'd been stalking Linda for years.

        Manti Te'o's phantom girlfriend also evokes Elder Paul H. Dunn -- if you grew up Mormon in the 80s, anyway.  Since you probably didn't, Elder Dunn was in the Top 100 of the Mormon hierarchy (that's the "Elder" part) and particularly popular among Mormon youth and their parents, who bought stacks of his faith-promoting cassettes and books.

        Elder Dunn was so popular because he had so many entertaining faith-promoting stories.  Anyone older than 40 who grew up Mormon remembers him playing for the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series -- but his miraculous survival at the Battle of Guadalcanal was most kids' favorite.  The Japanese had Elder Dunn's platoon pinned down.  It was either a hundred-yard dash through crossfire or death.  Elder Dunn's canteen, ammo belt and right boot were shot off.  A bullet cleaved his helmet in half but did not knock it off his head. Everyone else in the platoon was killed. "Dunn, you are so gosh-darned lucky," Elder Dunn's sergeant was said to have said.

        Elder Dunn turned out to be a gosh-darned liar.  In 1991, reporters who didn't even have the Internet ascertained that he never played major league baseball.  He did play Rookie League, a step below "A" ball.  He also fought on Okinawa, but none of the survivors from Dunn's units remembered being stationed on Guadalcanal.  Or Iwo Jima.  Nobody corroborated Dunn's desperate sprint through Japanese machine-gun fire.  Elder Dunn's best friend did not die in his arms or make him vow to teach patriotism to the Church's youth before he gave up the proverbial ghost.

        Elder Dunn admitted that not all his homespun homilies featuring himself as the protagonist were completely accurate -- but they were intended to be faith-promoting allegories, like Jesus's parables.  They didn't have to be factually "accurate" to be faith-promoting.  He had a point there, but Mormon consumers spoke with their proverbial wallets.  Elder Dunn's career as a Mormon motivational speaker was done.  The Church kicked him sideways or downstairs to emeritus status in its hierarchy.

        I'm not sure which I did first Wednesday night -- compare Manti Te'o to Mike Yamagita and Elder Paul H. Dunn or conclude that he was complicit at some level and point in the hoax.  It all happened in seconds.  If you're reading this piece you're following the Manti Te'o story.  My bases for deciding he perpetuated the hoax at some level and point are the same as those of other people who similarly conclude.

        Beyond that, I decided right away that Manti Te'o perpetuated the hoax at some point and level because he is a devout Mormon.  I admit it.  I don't know Te'o, but I know he's devout.  He says he is.  He's not only from Hawai'i, which has a vibrant Mormon community with a particularly Polynesian flavor.  He's from Laie, which is also home to Brigham Young University-Hawai'i, which is not to be confused with BYU-Provo or BYU-Idaho (Rexburg).  It's like being from Provo, Hawai'i.

        Te'o's parents are devout Mormons, too.  "Manti" is a city in the Book of Mormon.  Giving your child a Book of Mormon name is the Mormon equivalent of giving your child a Biblical name.  If you're from Utah, you associate Manti Te'o with Manti, Utah, a real town about 20 miles south of Moroni.  Like Manti Te'o, it's named after a make-believe city populated by make-believe people of a make-believe race featured in a make-believe book.

        If you're a Non-Mormon in Utah, you can't miss the connection to Manti Teo's make-believe girlfriend.  You also can't miss Mormonism's contribution to the saga.  This is true whether Te'o was a stooge, a co-conspirator, or anything in between.

        Mormons are more trusting than most people.  They share a religious mythology as unique and robust as any other.  It's not just Joseph Smith's accounts of visits from God and Jesus or the Book of Mormon's provenance.  There's the Three Nephites, Book of Mormon prophets who were so righteous that God has allowed them to remain on Earth.  Though they would now be around 2,500 years old, the Three Nephites can assume any form, like the Agents in The Matrix.  They're three Mormon super-heroes -- rescuing children from irrigation canals, fixing flat tires, and performing all kinds of other good deeds that total strangers sometimes perform.  They work solo, as a duo or a trio -- but they always vanish without a trace.  In fact, that's how you know for sure they were the Three Nephites.

        People who believe in the Three Nephites and all kinds of other people that never existed and history that never happened are more likely to believe they're in love with a woman they've never met.  That covers how Teo's strong Mormon background contributed to him being a victim, if that's what he is.

        Now for how Mormonism would be more likely to produce a person who concocts or complies with a conspiracy to mislead people about a girlfriend dying of leaukemia.  Mormon mythology doesn't just make Mormons more susceptible to cons of any inspirational stripe.  It compromises their ability to distinguish reality from alternative reality.  Some seem to lose interest in making the distinction, period.  Empiricism is usually pedestrian and rarely faith-promoting.  Explanations, proof and accountability can always come later.  They will.  So don't worry.

        For now, anything that promotes your faith or was even intended to must be positive.  Kill the messenger?  Are you kidding?  They're already lionized, elevated to several pedestals above reproach.  That's what makes their message faith-promoting in the first place.  It becomes no less so just because it also sells the messenger's books, saves them from tremendous embarrassment or puts them on a path to join the Gipper and Four Horsemen in the pantheon of Notre Dame football immortals.

        The message doesn't even have to be accurate to be faith-promoting, as we know from Elder Dunn on down.  Even if it isn't, nobody's admitting that anybody lied.  If some details got lost in translation, they're not central to the faith-promoting story.  Besides, nobody got hurt.  To the contrary, their faith was promoted.  Elder Dunn still inspired a lot of young people to believe in the Church and patriotism.  Manti Te'o still inspired a lot of people to feel good about the Church and Notre Dame football.
       
        You can't take Manti out of Mormon -- and you can't take the Mormon out of Manti.