Tragedy and Kitsch

The other day I was driving my son to school, and I noticed in front of me a pristine, baby blue Trabant, which of course was the infamous automotive product of the DDR (German Democratic Republic). The car was in beautiful condition and sported vintage East German license plates and an oval DDR sticker on the back.

I asked my son if he knew what kind of car that was, and he said he didn’t. I asked if he knew what the DDR stood for. He didn’t. To him, the Cold War seemed as distant and irrelevant as the Spanish-American War. I then told him about the day twenty years ago when the Berlin Wall “fell” and thousands of East Germans streamed across the border on foot or in a seemingly endless line of “Trabis.” These people had endured 44 years of a brutal totalitarian regime that had no respect for its citizens human rights, and suddenly they were free. Crowds of people stood on the wall and in “no-man’s land,” where just a day before they would have been shot by the border guards.

The wall came down on my 25th birthday. By the time I reached elementary school, much of the immediate fear of nuclear holocaust had receded into the background, but the uneasy knowledge that a conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union could end life on earth was always there nevertheless. I grew up during the “detente” years of Ford and Carter, and in my teenage years saw the resurgence of nuclear fear with the election of Ronald Reagan.

Reagan was seen by many in the media as a warmongering imbecile (an “amiable dunce” in the words of Clark Clifford) who might recklessly provoke the Soviets and cause nuclear confrontation. In the late 1970s, the Soviets deployed to Europe SS-20 missiles. These were first-strike weapons capable of hitting their targets within nine minutes after launch. Reagan responded by deploying Pershing II missiles in Western Europe. The deployment in turn prompted the “Nuclear Freeze” movement in the US and Europe, which opposed the Pershing deployments and called for a moratorium on further development of nuclear weapons (later, naturally, it was revealed that much of the funding for the nuclear freeze movement had come from the Soviets). There was in many circles a genuine fear that we were headed toward confrontation and catastrophe.

What no one saw coming was that in a few short years the two superpowers would sign treaties reducing nuclear arsenals and that the Soviet Union would cease to exist as a political and military rival to the West. The fall of the Iron Curtain filled a lot of people with tremendous optimism. People spoke of a New World Order based on cooperation and peace, not conflict and hostility. Politicians insisted that military spending could be cut drastically, and the peace dividend could be spent on social and development programs.

Of course, the first Gulf War and the rise of Islamo-fascism brought us back to reality somewhat. And we should also remember that 1989 was the year that the Chinese crushed the Tiananmen Square protests and thus entrenched their brand of Leninist capitalism. And in the formerly Communist countries, optimism at the new opening of society was quickly overshadowed by the reality of building a capitalist society from scratch.

Twenty years later, I’m celebrating my 45th birthday, and the Germans are celebrating reunification, as they should. But something interesting has happened: relics of the old DDR are now seen as collectible, nostalgic kitsch. At Checkpoint Charlie, in years past the main gateway between the Russian and American sectors of Berlin, one can now buy a replica passport complete with an East German entry/exit stamp. Shoe and clothing companies in Germany are now producing styles that were available during the days of Stalinist repression.

It’s interesting that nostalgia for, say, the Nazi regime is unthinkable and suggests a rather diseased mind, but it’s fine to have a soft spot for Erich Honecker and his friends. I wonder why that is. I thought about that as I admitted to my son that I was a little envious of the guy driving the Trabant.

“Why, Dad? It’s a crappy car.”

“Yeah, but it’s pretty cool.”

“It’s still a crappy car.”

Maybe it’s just that I associate that car, that image, with a watershed moment in our history. No, the fall of the Berlin Wall didn’t erase all the problems in our world. But it was a good step in the right direction. Maybe the transition of the East German state from feared dictatorship to ridiculous kitsch is a sign that we are past worrying that it will return. We see harmless fun in the relics of totalitarianism because, in the end, they are harmless.

Accountability and Persecution

The other day I heard something from a church leader (I think I walked in on a conference talk my wife was watching on BYU-TV), and the speaker was saying something about accountability and how important personal and priesthood accountability is in the church.

I thought about that for quite a while. Many may be familiar with Boyd Packer’s famous talk about the three threats to the modern church: gays, feminists, and “so-called intellectuals.” In that talk, he spoke of the need to “face the same direction.” As a Church Education administrator, he was challenged by Harold B. Lee to always face downward, meaning that he was to represent the leadership’s position to the CES staff, and not the other way around. He said that applied to the church as a whole, suggesting that to turn and champion the interests of the lay membership to the leadership was tantamount to challenging their authority. Clearly, the three aforementioned groups had turned the wrong way. “There is the need now to be united with everyone facing the same way. Then the sunlight of truth, coming over our shoulders, will mark the path ahead. If we perchance turn the wrong way, we will shade our eyes from that light and we will fail in our ministries.”

What this suggests to me is that the church leadership, confident in its belief that it represents the will of God, believes that no church member has the right to turn the wrong way and suggest any changes or point out any problems. Such people are labeled “ark steadiers,” after the man who was killed trying to prevent the ark of the covenant from touching the ground; he was killed not because of his good intentions but because he did not have the right or authority to touch the ark. Likewise, the logic goes, lay members do not have the right or authority to correct or even imply correcting the leadership. Apostle Dallin Oaks has said, “It is wrong to criticize leaders of the Church, even if the criticism is true.”

We’ve seen examples of ark steadiers disciplined and ejected from the church. One such person is Lavina Fielding Anderson, a former Ensign (that’s the church’s official magazine) writer who founded the Mormon Alliance, a group dedicated to preventing “ecclesiastical abuse.” The reason such a group is needed at all is that, because everyone is supposed to be facing the same way, there is no mechanism of redress in the church. There is no official channel to make church leaders aware of members’ needs and problems, and apparently the church prefers it that way. Not long ago, the First Presidency issued a statement to its members asking that questions and problems be addressed to the local leadership and not to the General Authorities. Hence, the leadership becomes insulated from the membership at large, and the local leaders, most of whom have no formal leadership or counseling training, are left to deal with the problems of their ward and branch members. It’s not surprising that there is great potential for ecclesiastical abuse.

Of course, Ms. Anderson was ultimately excommunicated for publicizing leadership problems (many of which are quite serious) because her actions were seen as a public and deliberate challenge to the leadership. She was facing the wrong way.

The message from the Brethren could not be clearer: accept the counsel and instruction of leaders without question, and certainly never publicly question. We have all seen this attitude in the church, from the almost fetishistic devotion to following lesson manuals “with exactness” to the unquestioning acceptance of arbitrary rules, such as the “Kimballization” of BYU in the 1950s to the current belief that the number of earrings one wears is a direct indication of one’s faith in the prophet.

Yet the leadership is accountable only to God, assuming of course that God really is directing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. History is full of men and women who claimed to speak for God, and their complete lack of accountability has led to predictable results. It’s no surprise that most powerful religious leaders end up indulging in sexual excesses; after all, if the prophet did it, it must be right.

I’d been mulling over these thoughts over the weekend, and then yesterday a friend called me to express his outrage over Dallin Oaks’s remarks comparing the backlash against Mormons after Proposition 8 to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. I don’t really need to comment on the disconnect between a Mormon claiming persecution on the level of a group that not only suffered much more as a people but whose very movement was openly disdained by LDS leaders. It’s almost too ludicrous to be outrageous.

But then it was said by an apostle, so it can’t be ludicrous. If he said it was so, it was so. My friend bet me that if Oaks’s comments become widely publicized, the church will issue an apology or at least a public retraction. I’ll take that bet. My guess is that they won’t, for two reasons. First is this notion of the leaders speaking for God; to admit that Oaks’s analogy, which he termed “a good one,” was offensive and ludicrous opens the door for questioning of the leadership. Second, Oaks’s remarks reflect the extent that a persecution narrative informs the lives of church members.

From its earliest days in upstate New York, the LDS church has been opposed and attacked, often violently, by its non-Mormon neighbors. From tarring and feathering to Haun’s Mill to the Joseph Smith’s martyrdom and Johnston’s army, the common thread is persecution, and to this day, this persecution is part of what defines people as Mormons. So, for Oaks and many other Mormons, the backlash from Proposition 8 was merely a continuation of that very persecution and is a natural outcome of the church’s standing for truth and right.

But the reaction Oaks cited really doesn’t compare to persecutions, and certainly not the kind of discrimination inflicted upon African Americans for centuries. Back when Proposition 8 was defeated, I told a Mormon friend that the vandalism and the protests would be short-lived, as they were a product of genuine hurt and anger. And my prediction has been right, I have to say. Yes, the church suffered a huge PR setback, but as far as I’ve seen, there has been no sustained persecution. But that really doesn’t matter. Oaks has publicly and officially done what the lay members had done long before in incorporating Proposition 8 into the persecution narrative of the church.

And who is to say he’s wrong? After all, no one wants to face the wrong way.

Utah Students to Hear President’s Message

In a surprise move, the Utah State Office of Education has announced that after reviewing the controversy surrounding President Barack Obama’s upcoming live address to the nation’s students, state leaders have arranged for a more acceptable alternative speaker: LDS Church President Thomas S. Monson.

“Over the last few days, we’ve received hundreds of calls and emails from parents worried that their children would be subjected to political propaganda from President Obama,” said Utah Superintendent of Public Instruction, L. Garth Groesbeck. “We didn’t want anyone to feel excluded or pressured, so we looked for someone who could serve as a positive role model for all students, regardless of political stripe.”

Groesbeck said that Monson was a “natural choice” to inspire the students. “Here is a man who has throughout his life reached out to others, especially widows, and who has consistently avoided political positions, except on crucial moral matters such as same-sex marriage rights and alcohol consumption laws. We feel strongly that by substituting President Monson for President Obama, we can give our children access to a more inclusive and inspiring speaker.”

LDS church officials indicated that the prophet would speak from the campus of Brigham Young University. “President Monson felt that, by speaking from the namesake university of one of the state’s founders, he would be able to share his message of faith and testimony without offending anyone’s political sensibilities.”

Monson’s theme will be “Strengthening Testimonies in the Latter Days.” Church spokesman Daniel Jenks explained that in these last days of trial and tribulation, “the most important knowledge one can accumulate is a testimony of our Savior. No other education can compare.”

Utah ACLU attorney Laurel Meyer said that she had been startled and outraged at first. “But then when I thought about it, I realized that all we would be seeing was a laundry list of platitudes and bad poetry. What’s the harm in that?”

Eagle Fortress president Gail Ruzkinsky applauded the state’s choice. “I have to tell you I was disgusted at the thought of our children being exposed to the virulent socialism of our so-called president, This choice leaves no doubt that, at least in Utah, we stand up for American ideals. We support God and country, not gays and socialized medicine.”

Church leaders indicated that the church would be happy to broadcast the prophet’s message to all fifty states, but so far, none of the governors contacted had accepted the offer.

A Good Day to Be American

I’m a Republican. I know some people are shocked when they hear that, but it’s true. But I think on a historic day like today it’s appropriate to recognize how far we’ve come as a country. No, our problems and divisions won’t disappear just because we have inaugurated an African-American president. But it does put to rest one barrier that has existed for a long time. So today I’m sending my best wishes to President Obama and hoping that he can help us as a nation navigate some very perilous times.

“She Killed”

That was Peggy Noonan’s assessment of Sarah Palin’s performance in last night’s debate. In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I am a registered Republican and have been for 24 years. That said, I wondered what debate Ms. Noonan was watching. It wasn’t the one I saw.

Expectations were low for Governor Palin, so much so that McCain and his surrogates tried to make an issue of Gwen Ifill’s alleged “impartiality” problem. If she had performed poorly, as she had in a few interviews recently, they could just blame it on a mean and biased moderator. Against that backdrop, my wife and I settled in to watch the debate.

My wife, I have to say, is not a partisan or ideological voter, though in the past she was a one-issue voter: if you were opposed to abortion, you had her vote. But realistically, the abortion debate was won a long time ago, and now we’re just arguing about how much it can be regulated. But on the surface, my wife is just the kind of voter Palin should be attracting.

“If she says ‘maverick’ again, I’m going to throw up,” my wife said before the debate started. “McCain must have said it fifteen times in the last debate.” We counted seven times when Ms. Palin referred herself and McCain as mavericks. “Oh, brother,” my wife said, rolling her eyes.

That was just the beginning: her attempts to be folksy and down-home fell flat with my wife. “You betcha,” “darn right,” and a couple of weird winks all elicited groans from my wife.

But she surprised both of us by staying mostly “on message” and scoring a few points against Obama and Biden. When Biden denied that Obama had ever said that he would meet with foreign dictators without preconditions, my wife asked me, “Did Obama really say that?” Yes, he did. But her responses often seemed canned, and when asked questions she was unprepared for, Palin ignored the questions and went back to the stump speech talking points.

Biden, on the other hand, was sure with his facts for the most part and rightly went after McCain instead of Palin. He effectively blasted Republican positions without coming across as “mean” or “condescending.” Toward the end of the debate, he brilliantly listed the ways in which McCain is no maverick. I suspect that’s what most voters will take away from the debate: Biden’s effective attacks on McCain’s position. My wife certainly came out of the debate with more appreciation of who Joe Biden is and what he stands for. And she liked what she saw.

There weren’t any knockouts, and Palin did better than expected (how could she not have exceeded expectations?). But in the end, Biden was far more in control. He clearly knew his stuff and came across well. I don’t think Palin’s performance did anything to change the dynamics of the campaign. If my wife is any judge, Biden won the debate. Somehow, I trust her judgment better than Peggy Noonan’s.

Last Gasp for McCain?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been really impressed by how agile the McCain campaign has been in controlling the news cycle. As I’ve mentioned before, the Sarah Palin choice, though mocked by many, has really shaken up the race and made an otherwise establishment candidacy seem almost edgy. It took weeks for the slow-footed Obama campaign to deal with Palin effectively at all, and really, it’s too late now.

Yesterday McCain pulled another trick out of his hat: the economic crisis is so bad, he told us, he was suspending his campaign to go back to Washington and help work on solving it. As political theater, it was a genius move. The man who a few months ago admitted to not knowing much about the economy suddenly had put it at the forefront of his campaign, and he all but dared Obama to follow suit and suspend his campaign. Again, brilliant, because now Obama’s “thanks but no thanks” response makes him seem less serious about the economy than McCain.

But you have to remember that this is nothing more than political theater. McCain does not sit on any of the committees that will be debating the Wall Street bailout, and his presence at the president’s contrived economic summit will be mostly as an observer. But it was pretty damn good political theater.

And then Letterman happened. Scheduled to appear on “Late Night” last night, McCain begged off at the last minute because, as Letterman put it, “the economy is exploding.” Letterman made the most of it, mocking McCain at every turn (you can see the video here). But then Letterman showed McCain getting his makeup put on for an interview with Katie Couric. I’m sure that moment will be network news fodder for a while. Ditching Letterman for Katie Couric was a dumb move.

Other than that misstep, though, McCain’s campaign has been pretty agile and smart, and Obama’s has been mostly in reactive mode, a weird stance for a campaign about youth and change. The relative skill of the campaigns would matter in any other year, I suppose. But not this year. The stars are aligned for a massive Republican defeat, and I will say here that the Bush Administration has done so much damage to the Republican party that it will not be able to recover in a long time. We are back to the days of the mid-20th century, when the Republican party was so much in the minority that it was almost irrelevant.

So, enjoy the theater while it lasts. We won’t see much more of McCain after next month.

The Improbable Story of Walter Murray Gibson

Most Mormons do not know the story of Walter Murray Gibson, one-time LDS missionary who had a major impact on the history of both the church and the government in Hawaii.

Gibson was called on a mission to the Far East, but decided to stay in Hawaii when he arrived there in 1861 and saw the large colony of Mormons there. He used his missionary authority to exercise broad control over the Saints in Hawaii, gathering them into a colony on Lanai, which he purchased using the local Saints’ funds. He organized a local First Presidency and ordained apostles and ran the colony as his personal fiefdom. For whatever reason, Brigham Young ignored these developments until word reached Salt Lake that Gibson was selling priesthood offices.

Young sent Ezra T. Benson and Lorenzo Snow to Hawaii to reassert church control, at which point Gibson (who by now held the title to half the island of Lanai) expelled all the saints who would not support him (and most chose to follow the apostles from Salt Lake). The Mormons were forced to find a new gathering place at Laie, on Oahu, where the temple and BYU-Hawaii now stand.

Gibson, now a wealthy landowner, befriended Hawaiian King Kalākaua and became an important advisor to the king, eventually being named Prime Minister. His efforts to establish a Polynesian empire earned him the wrath of pro-American businessmen, who forced him to resign. He died penniless in San Francisco in 1888. You can read more about him here.

Why it’s a race now

A few months ago, I was predicting a major win in November for Barack Obama. He may still win, but I am no longer as certain of it.

John McCain won the Republican nomination almost by default. Widely disliked among Republican party activists as too liberal, too unpredictable, and not socially conservative enough, McCain had two things going for him: his rivals. Mitt Romney showed he couldn’t carry southern states, and Mike Huckabee couldn’t win outside the South. Between the two of them, they split the religious conservative vote, essentially handing McCain the nomination.

But McCain’s campaign had been floundering for months. The tight race between Obama and Clinton made sure that McCain was excluded from the news cycle, and then even after the Democrats finished up, McCain was nearly invisible as everyone talked about Obama’s historic campaign.

Obama’s campaign strategy was simple: tie McCain to Bush, and run against Bush. That seemed a reasonable approach, as McCain has voted more than 90% of the time with the Bush Administration in the Senate. To shore up the anti-Bush element and reassure the party that he could be trusted with foreign policy, Obama made a supremely safe choice for Vice President in Joe Biden. Predictably, Biden’s nomination was greeted with a collective shrug.

The day after the Democratic convention, McCain shocked everyone by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. There are a lot of things you could say about the pick, but the net effect was to shift focus off McCain and Obama and put it on Palin. We now know just about everything there is to be known about her, and she’s proven a more formidable campaigner than most predicted (including me).

You can argue about her qualifications, her family life, her record as mayor and governor, but she does two things: First, she has shored up the conservative wing of the Republican Party, freeing McCain to campaign as a “maverick” who has often pissed off the Republican establishment. Notice that it was Palin who covered all the conservative touchstones in her acceptance speech, whereas McCain ignored the right and presented himself as reaching out to all Americans and pointedly has distanced himself from the Bush administration. Very, very shrewd.

Second, all the media attention has made Obama the invisible man since his well-received acceptance speech. Instead, we’re treated to stories about pregnant teens; beer-drinking, kid-tasering state troopers; and babies with Down’s Syndrome. About the only press Obama has gotten lately is the bogus outrage over his “lipstick on a pig” remark. But the point is that Obama is now in a position where he has to fight for press time and has to be careful about what he says. That’s very bad news for the Democrats.

Meanwhile, Palin seems to have this rock star quality that, so far, has made her impervious to attack from the media or from the Democrats. And because of all the media attention, the race almost seems to be Obama vs. Palin, and if Obama can’t engage McCain, he will lose. Inexplicably, Obama is going to be appearing on Saturday Night Live this week, not with John McCain, but with a Sarah Palin look-alike. Whoever approved that in his campaign ought to be fired. Of course, Obama should never have agreed to that.

Honestly, I never would have predicted that it would be the Obama campaign that, heading into October, seems moribund and drifting. But that’s how it looks today. Maybe once the media gets over its obsession with the Barracude, his campaign will right itself and win.

I’m not holding my breath.

The Punisher

The other day, as Hurricane Gustav was approaching the Gulf Coast of the United States, I went to pick up my daughter from work. As I waited, her employer said, out of the blue, “Looks like the gays in New Orleans have gone back to business as usual. You would think that they’d have learned their lesson after Katrina, but no, they still think they can get away with it.” Too horrified to think of any response, I helped my daughter gather up her things, and we left. In the car, my daughter simply rolled her eyes and said, “She’s nuts, Dad.”

This woman wasn’t the only one making stupid assertions about Gustav. Former Democratic National Committee chairman Don Fowler, when told that Gustav would most likely disrupt the Republican convention, said, “That just demonstrates that God is on our side.”

We’ve heard this kind of stuff before, usually from right-wing blowhards like Jerry Falwell, who said that the September 11 attacks were God’s punishment for American tolerance of abortion and homosexuality.

But it really does indicate that some people believe in a vengeful God. And why not? If you were to read only the New Testament, you might think that God is loving and benign, at least until you get to the parts where Jesus tells us he’ll be coming back with a vengeance. But the Old Testament is full of slaughter, plague, and pestilence. And the Book of Mormon helpfully clarifies that it was Jesus who destroyed the wicked cities, burning them or swallowing them up in the sea.

In Texas last week, I went to an apartment complex to pick up a futon for my son. The maintenance man, an older African American with graying hair and a mustache, set down his mop and opened the door for me. I took the futon down to my car, where I waited for my son and his friend, who was bringing a pickup truck to transport it.

While I stood there, sweating, the maintenance man came over, lit a cigarette, and we both leaned against my car while he talked. He had just started his new job that week. I asked if he was from Texas, and he shook his head, looking at the ground. He had arrived from New Orleans after Katrina. He looked up toward the trees and began telling me of his experience.

The mayor, he said, had told them to expect three to four feet of water, so he and his wife and their five children stayed put, not owning a vehicle. After they spent two days on the roof of their house, a helicopter arrived, but there was only room enough for his wife and their youngest child. The helicopter pilot promised they would return, but three days later, they decided to swim for it.

The first dead body they encountered was an elderly woman strapped into a wheelchair. He said he closed her eyes with his fingers, strapped the wheelchair to a streetlight pole, and covered her head with her wet shawl. The five of them swam from house to house, occasionally seeing more bodies floating by, until they reached dry land, where they were put on a bus for College Station, Texas.

Somehow, this man and his family seem a lot more important than some political party or someone’s indignation that gay people dare to have sex. One of the signs of maturity in life, in my opinion, is recognizing that things happen, often randomly and due to no one’s fault. Suffering coexists with joy; anger with kindness; hope with tragedy. There simply is no need to find some cosmic retribution in natural processes.

The Democrats and Republicans will continue to campaign, and gay Louisianans will probably party like it’s 1999 again. Get over it.

Satan Is the Author of Proposition 8

Most of us are familiar with Proposition 8, the upcoming ballot initiative to amend the California state constitution to specifically outlaw same-sex marriage. In the last several months, California’s court system has declared laws banning same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional, so the only recourse for “defenders” of marriage is to amend the constitution.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, or Mormons) has encouraged its members to get involved in the effort to amend the constitution. In a letter read in congregations across California, the church’s First Presidency announced that it would “participate … in seeking [the amendment's] passage.” It also pleaded with its members to “do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time to assure that marriage in California is legally defined as being between a man and a woman. Our best efforts are required to preserve the sacred institution of marriage.”

Obviously, the church is well within its rights to support what it considers a “moral” issue, but it’s not surprising that members have begun to publicly demonize both homosexuals and proponents of same-sex marriage. Take, for instance, this article in Meridian Magazine, a publication aimed at Mormon families.

Some background is probably necessary. The Bible describes a “war in heaven,” wherein “Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. … And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him” (Rev. 12:7-9).

In Mormonism, this war in heaven came about before we were born, when we lived as spirits with God the Father. Two plans were presented for the salvation of humanity: God’s plan, which involved freedom of choice, and Satan’s plan, which would have taken away our freedom to choose and would have forced all humans to be saved (see Moses 4:1-4 and Doctrine and Covenants 29:36). One-third of the spirits followed Satan and were cast out to become “the devil and his angels” (D&C 29:37). In Mormon theology, this was the great battle between God and Satan, and our being here on earth tells us that we were among the two-thirds who followed God.

The article in question, in a bit of glorious hyperbole, compares the ballot initiative in California to this great battle in heaven. The author tells us that “this war has not ended, that only the battlefield has changed. That battlefield is now [you guessed it] California[,] and the parallels between that premortal conflict and the battle over the definition of marriage are striking.”

Ironically, he reminds us that “Satan rebelled against [God], and sought to destroy the agency of man” (while he’s urging us to restrict the choice of gay Californians). “Satan,” he says, “must have used very effective arguments to turn a third of the hosts of heaven away from the Father despite pure knowledge of God’s will.” These arguments, he tells us, are being used just as effectively by the devil to trick people into supporting Proposition 8. Let’s go through them, as he sees them:

1. Equality of outcome, which “always be the beginning point for those opposed to any part of God’s plan.” And here’s the slick lie that Prop 8’s proponents are using to fool people:

Gays and lesbians are people, too. They have the same emotions as anyone else. It is only fair that they be given equal rights. They should not be second-class citizens.

Do you see any “equality of outcome” in this statement? I don’t. What I see is equality of opportunity and equal access to choice. So, point one fails rather miserably.

2. Sympathy. In heaven, Satan apparently played on our emotions in telling us, “Under the Father’s plan, some of your friends will never return.” Similarly, we are told that “emotion is evoked by specific situations, in this case having two women in their 80s be the first same-sex marriage in California.” Since when are sympathy and empathy and desire for other people’s happiness wrong? Oh, right. They’re wrong when such things oppose God.

3. Hate. He’s right that on both sides, “the opposition [is being] shamed, vilified, and demonized.” But how can people who claim that gay-rights advocates are allied with Satan object to being called “Christian extremists, anti-gay, right-wing radicals, old-fashioned, hung-up, homophobes, bigots, stupid, intolerant, mean-spirited, knuckle-draggers”? Pot, meet kettle.

4. Change. Just as Satan apparently told us that God’s “old ways” haven’t worked out, we are being told by the forces of darkness that “it’s time for a change.” This argument seems to rest on the idea that change is never good, but traditions and rules must never change. It reminds me of the argument in Britain a few years ago that hunters had the right to have dogs chase and rip to pieces foxes in the name of tradition. Not all tradition is worth perpetuating. If it’s time to change marriage, let it be done based on sound arguments, not on some bull-headed resistance to change in general.

5. Guarantee. In our premortal existence, Satan promised us all a place in heaven with no possibility of damnation. All it would cost was our freedom. In the battle for same-sex marriage, the guarantee that “same-sex marriage will not harm anyone. Heterosexual marriage will not be hurt. Nothing will change except all people will have every right that anyone else has.” Of course, rather than actually argue what it will or won’t change, the author prefers to demonize his opponents.

The article concludes with some amazing rhetoric:

The stakes are critical. If same-sex marriage advocates can dilute and hollow out the central part of the Creator’s plan, the whole structure collapses — the family, the nation, and in time civilization itself. The time has come for those of us who believe that God, not man, created marriage (fortunately still a majority) to take a stand and defend it.

He may well be right that the stakes are critical, but a serious issue deserves serious discussion, not this kind of garbage. Of course, I’m an ex-Mormon, so I’m already one of Satan’s minions. Were I still a resident of California, I would be voting against Proposition 8, but because I am not, I will do what I can and stand up against this kind of overblown hatred.