Red and Blue

As much fun as it might be to start a thread about the BYU football player (and returned missionary) who has been jetting into Vegas to party with a major donor and assorted women of loose morals, apparently, there are more serious things afoot.

That’s right: tomorrow is the latest chapter in the bitter, hate-filled feud that is the BYU-University of Utah rivalry in football. The Salt Lake Tribune has an interesting article about a family with divided loyalties.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/sports/56893683-77/trevor-utah-byu-drew.html.csp

Reading it, I was struck at how much genuine hatred there is among partisans of both universities.

The hatred between the two groups (a lot of partisans on either side have no real connection to the respective universities) is something I’ve heard a lot over the years, and it still puzzles me to some extent.

I grew up in Southern California, and until I arrived in Provo one fall morning in 1982, I’d never taken notice of the University of Utah, let alone had any idea they were BYU’s bitter rivals. In our home, the important rivalry was UCLA-USC, but because my dad has degrees from both universities, we cheered for USC football and UCLA basketball, unless of course they were playing BYU (my parents’ alma mater).

As nasty as that rivalry can be, nothing prepared me for the absolute hatred BYU and Utah fans have for each other. In those days, Utah’s football team was awful, so red-clad fans in the stadium would be content chanting “Fuck you, BYU!” and holding up posters informing us that church president Spencer W. Kimball was a homosexual (they used a derogatory word instead). BYU students like me mostly rolled our eyes and wondered what the big deal was.

Then, in 1988, a mediocre Ute team kicked the crap out of Sean Covey and BYU, 57-28, and suddenly it was a rivalry again, albeit briefly. The next year BYU scored 10 touchdowns against Utah. Since then it’s been back and forth, with Utah being the better team of late. I still don’t care about the stupid rivalry and personal animosity, but there are certain things I hear that I don’t quite understand.

1. BYU is arrogant: In the article I mentioned above, Trevor Reilly (returned missionary and active LDS) tells us that his wife hates BYU because of the arrogance and snobbery, presumably of the students. I’ve heard this many times from people in Utah, but I haven’t really seen that in my life. BYU is different from most universities in some ways, but the students are pretty much the same in that they go to class, study, date, have fun on weekends, and so on. Many of us worked at least part-time to make ends meet, so I guess I don’t equate the people with whom I cleaned the Wilkinson Center dining areas with arrogance.

Some people at BYU clearly came from wealthy families, and some of them did have an arrogant attitude, but then that attitude was directed at the rest of us, whether or not we attended BYU. I grew up in a wealthy community (now known principally as the hometown of the Kardashians), so we were the exception: the big Mormon family with the van. My roommate at BYU came from a much wealthier family from my hometown, but I don’t think anyone at BYU knew that. But there were people we knew who spent a lot of time talking about material things they had or wanted. Most students, however, were not wealthy. I can’t imagine things are much different at the U.

The only thing I can imagine they mean is a “holier-than-thou” attitude among BYU students. I’ve heard that from a lot of people, most of whom don’t go to BYU (just kidding). I have a good friend who attended BYU the same time I did. After his mission, he grew his hair out until it extended halfway down his back. When he was on campus, he put it in a ponytail and tucked it into a hat. He never said he thought BYU was self-righteous, but he did say he hadn’t realized how uncomfortable he was having religion in every aspect of his life, forcing him to “wear his religion on his sleeve.” Ironically, he said it was worse at the U (where he earned his MA) because he felt like he was constantly being challenged to defend his beliefs.

When I worked at the Church Office Building, they had a rivalry theme the entire work week of the game, and we were encouraged to wear our team colors–we still had to wear a tie–that Friday. On the bus to Salt Lake one rivalry week, the man sitting next to me (who also worked at the COB and with whom I’d had a lot of interesting and pleasant chats) began bitterly reciting the terrible things BYU fans were guilty of and telling me how much he hated my alma mater. What it boiled down to, I gathered, was that his wife had attended BYU her freshman year some 25 years earlier (so about 1965 or so). She was from out of state and had a more liberal perspective than most BYU students; according to the husband, she had been looked down on, berated, and pretty much shunned because she didn’t march in lockstep with the other students. Unhappy, she had transferred to Utah, where she met her husband. He was shocked to hear that I had chosen to attend BYU and that I would claim that my experience hadn’t been like that (though I was voted “ward punker” my freshman year, which tells you how well I fit in with the norm).

I’ve certainly seen a self-righteous attitude among some students and alumni, though it wasn’t pervasive, but again, maybe it’s just that other people perceive things differently than I do. I probably don’t notice as much as others, and my wife tells me I’m too willing to overlook faults. It doesn’t help that I have a mild form of Aspergers, so I miss social cues. Certainly, a lot of people believe that there’s something special and almost holy about the school because it is an extension of their religion, though the only time I hear people refer to “the Lord’s University” they are joking.

I went to BYU because of its religious affiliation in large part, mostly because I wanted to be around people who understood where I was coming from; we LDS were a tiny minority in my largely Jewish and mainstream Christian hometown, and at BYU I wasn’t an outsider anymore. Maybe that sense of solidarity translates into an attitude that BYU is sort of a gathering of the righteous; if so, I don’t think it’s conscious, as I never believed we were that. I’m sure people out there have been on the receiving end of BYU arrogance, so I doubt the perception has no foundation. I’m pretty sure there is something to the arrogance complaint, particularly if you live in Utah.

2. Evil Utah fans. A widespread perception among BYU students and alumni is that Utah students and fans are just plain nasty and, as Max Hall infamously said, have no class. When I arrived in Bolivia to begin my mission, my senior companion had Utah news clippings and a red banner tacked to the wall. If you believe some people I know from BYU, he must have been a nasty piece of work, but he was and is one of the kindest, gentlest, and humblest people I know–and he’s still active in the church, whereas I’m not really.

True, I’ve had unpleasant experiences with Utah fans. The one I remember in particular occurred as my father and I left the stadium after a BYU loss. A group of about 10 Ute fans, mostly male, went out of their way to loudly taunt my 75-year-old father as he slowly and painfully made his way down the steps to the exit (he would shortly have a hip replacement). It still boggles my mind that someone would do that.

Even so, I had worse experiences in Laramie and Logan, especially since BYU won both times I traveled there. And Wyoming fans have often brought religion into the equation. For a few years in the late 1980s, the Wyoming section in the Marriott Center made sure to begin chanting during the opening prayer (which they have at all BYU home sporting events). That’s classless and pretty nasty, if you ask me, but no one in Provo gets that worked up about Wyoming or Utah State, at least not like they do about Utah.

And of course, the big problem with this accusation is the sheer hypocrisy of it. I have seen BYU fans act in ways that have made me ashamed to be wearing the same color shirt. Vandalism has happened on both campuses during rivalry week, one year a BYU student jumped out of the stands to beat up a Utah cheerleader, and I’ve seen BYU students engage in the same kind of hateful taunting and berating that I’ve seen from Ute fans.

Apparently, things used to be worse. A good friend of mine tells me that when she was a Utah student in the 1970s, BYU fans regularly engaged in racial taunting, which is shameful. Particularly appalling is that she saw grown men teaching small children to use racial slurs. I never saw that, but then I’m younger than she is. And things tend to be uglier when your team is losing, which wasn’t the case when I was at BYU.

I’m probably giving this more attention than it deserves, but I find the whole thing rather tribal and, truth be told, kind of funny. Tomorrow night one school’s fans will be rejoicing, and the other’s will be miserable. Not me. From my perspective, these are two pretty mediocre teams this year, so not much is hanging on the outcome of the game, except maybe for bragging rights. And I’m not interested in those.

Oh, and Utah sucks! (Just kidding.)

Marriage and Societal Benefit

Yesterday I had a conversation with an old friend about same-sex marriage. He posted a link to the following page, which he had compiled:

Leftist LUNC of the Week: Equality and Civil Rights–Same-Sex Marriage–Intro

In our subsequent conversation, he made a few statements I found interesting, so I’ll quote them here:

To clarify, let me reiterate that my blog posts weren’t intended as an argument against gay marriage, but rather as an explication of the negative results of legalizing gay marriage.

Having said that, I also indicated at the bottom of the page in question: “This thought is made all the worse when realizing that for all the public and private money to be divvied out to gay marriages, there will be little if any social benefited in return.”

The point in bringing this up is to suggest that costs (social and economic), while very important, aren’t all that should be factored into the equation. It is helpful to balanced the cost against the benefits. If the benefits exceed the costs, then the costs make sense. Otherwise, they don’t.

And, if for heterosexual marriages the benefits outweigh the cost, whereas for homosexual marriages the costs outweigh the benefits, then, discriminating in favor of the one and against the other makes good social and economic sense. Treating them equally would be social and economic nonsense. Right?

And here’s part of our interaction:

Runtu wrote:
I’m not sure how giving people the same benefits that others are entitled to is a negative result.

Wade wrote:
So, if adults are entitled to drive cars, you don’t see the negative result of giving toddlers that same benefit?

Runtu wrote:

I’m not sure we can know at this point what benefits, if any, there will be, because except in a few places, the effect of legalized same-sex marriage is hypothetical.

Wade wrote:
We may not be able to establish all the benefits to an absolute certainty, but as with economic forecasts and environmental impact statements, we can offer useful, educated guesstimates.

Runtu wrote:

Hmmm. I worry about people who think freedoms and civil liberties should be dispensed by the government based on a cost-benefit analysis.

Wade wrote:
As explained previously, in this case the government isn’t dispensing freedom, per se. Rather, it is dispensing government sanctions–i.e. the states seal of approval and incentives (benefits).

And, presumably, the government doesn’t dispense its sanctions for no reason. Typically, as with other regulatory and licensing acts (like with doctors and lawyers and businesses and teachers and auto drivers), there is a rational basis (cost-benefit) for the dispensing.

For example, regarding state sanctions for driving cars, there is good reason that the government sanctions people who have lived beyond a certain age and who have demonstrated adequate driving competency. On balance, the benefits to society exceeds the costs. However, the government doesn’t dispense this sanction to toddlers because the financial and health and safety costs would far exceed the benefit to society.

The same, in principle, holds true for the state sanctioning of marriage. Governments got into the business of sanctioning traditional marriage, in part, because they rationally surmised that the social cost of illicit heterosexual relationships would be higher than the benefits of promoting licit heterosexual relationships, and so it was in the state’s interest to incentivize and regulate traditional marriage.

Inspired by Wade’s logic, I have realized the error of my ways and have decided that marriage is not a right but is a privilege granted by the state, much like a driver’s license or a concealed-weapons permit. As with these privileges, state sanction of marriage should be granted only to those who would realize a net benefit from marriage, based on cost-benefit analysis and, when necessary, scientific guesstimates.

One group that has persistently shown itself to do significant social and economic harm is the uneducated, specifically high-school dropouts. Therefore, it would be irresponsible and counterproductive to allow high-school dropouts (HSDs) to marry and perpetuate and spread these societal ills.

According to a study from Northeastern University, male HSDs are 63 times more likely to end up in jail or juvenile detention than are their peers who have high-school diplomas (less-slothful citizens, or LSCs). The situation is especially bleak among black HSDs, 25% of whom are incarcerated at any given time. On average, HSDs cost society $209,000 per person for incarceration, making them a significant burden on society.

HSDs are also likely to be chronically unemployed. The Northeastern study showed that 54% of HSDs aged 16-24 were unemployed, compared to 32% among LSCs and only 13% of those with college degrees (educationally responsible citizens, or ERCs). According to the Wall Street Journal (published by ERCs, of course, so it can’t be biased), over half of all HSDs over the age of 25 were chronically unemployed in 2010.

HSDs are also much more likely to live in poverty. According to the US Department of Education, 30.8% of HSDs age 16-24 live in poverty, compared to 24% for LSCs and 14% for ERCs. On average, incomes for all adult HSDs are more than $10,000 less per year than their LSC counterparts and $36,000 less per year than ERCs.

HSDs also contribute to the birth of children to unwed mothers, which can have catastrophic social and economic effects. According to the New York Times, “Young female dropouts were nine times more likely to have become single mothers than young women who went on to earn college degrees, the report said, citing census data for 2006 and 2007. The number of unmarried young women having children has increased sharply in some communities in part, [researchers] said, because large numbers of young men have dropped out of school and are jobless year round. As a result, young women do not view them as having the wherewithal to support a family.”

The costs, then, are staggering. According to the Northeastern University study, compared to LSCs, the average HSD costs taxpayers $292,000 in lost taxes, higher costs in cash and in-kind benefits, and incarceration costs. If society gives its seal of approval to marriages between such socially destructive individuals, things can only get worse. There is nothing fair or just about giving people an incentive to cause the net loss of nearly $600,000 per couple. Everyone loses.

Clearly, the uneducated have not demonstrated adequate competency to be entrusted with the responsibilities of marriage, and the risks associated with their “lifestyle” are significant and well-known. And, if for LSC marriages the benefits outweigh the cost, whereas for HSD marriages the costs outweigh the benefits, then, discriminating in favor of the one and against the other makes good social and economic sense. Treating them equally would be social and economic nonsense. Right?