Life as a Pro-Gay Mormon: The Taste of Activism

As shown in my last post, punk rock music played an important role in showing this Mormon youth of rural Oregon the struggle of LGBT Americans.  Being an angsty teenager who had a love for aggressive music, it was only a matter of time until I formed my own band.*

Punk rock music was never lucrative, especially during my generation’s “wave.”  There were the mainstream bands that had been around forever but the new acts that were successful all took on the emo/indie gimmick — gag me.  Nonetheless, we three teenage kids soldiered on, playing shows for anyone who would listen.

As we polluted our neighborhood’s air, by routinely botching covers of the Misfits, our local school board was contemplating the opening of a Gay Straight Alliance [GSA] chapter in our high school.  Eventually, one dedicated student advisor and a handful of uncompromising teenagers stood strong in the face of ignorant prejudice and got the club started — I’ll discuss in more detail in a later post.

When taking into account the relationship between alternative music and alternative lifestyle, one could conclude that the only people who liked our music were the people interested in forming the GSA club.  The GSA won its way into the hearts of fence-sitting teenagers through putting on a benefit concert once a year — oh, and fighting like heck to show they deserved equal treatment in a public school.  Seeing as how there were only three bands in town, us being one of them, we were invited to play.

As Michael Scott would say on The Office, this was a “win-win-win.”  For us, we got to play a show that drew in numbers higher than we would usually get ourselves.  For the GSA, they would get whatever limited revenue came from the cover charge.  For the community as a whole, we were able to present a taboo topic to rural Oregon through the common medium of music — even if that music was terrible. 

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I can see the benefit of these events on the development of my personal opinion.  At this time, I was one of the fence-sitting teenagers.  I, and everyone else, knew that I “belonged” to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and my association with the GSA would be seen in a different light.  Everything I learned about homosexuality, up to this point, had come from the church; the church which preaches a violation of the law of chastity, which includes homosexual acts, is the worst sin behind murder.  By participating in these benefit concerts, I became more familiar with the motives of the LGBT movement and I began to agree.  Also, the friendships I began to form with the members of the GSA helped provide me the support needed as the LDS community strived to squash my small taste of activism.

*To fight off the claim of this post being an attempt to unload a closet full of CD’s that no one wants, I will avoid telling you the name.

Democrats Should Support the Tea Party, Roosevelt Shows Us Why

I know, I know.  This is the last thing you’d expect to come from this pro-gay, progressive tax advocating blog.  Don’t leave yet, hear me out.

The tea party movement, you know the one where working people go throw tea on the ground to protest their own tax cuts, has decided to move “from fringe to force” as Kate Zernike put it over at the New York Times.  The populist movement has claimed that the election of Scott Brown was their doing and feel they can be a dominating force in national politics. 

Sounds threatening, right?

Not really, let’s take a quick trip back into history to show what can happen in our constitutional electoral set up when an ideological third party splits from the core.

The year was 1912, America had been under the helm of Republican William Taft who was seeking re-election.  Taft’s republican rival was former-progressive president Teddy Roosevelt.  Roosevelt had served from the years 1901-1909 but foreshadowing a later Roosevelt’s reign, Teddy was seeking more than the precedent of two terms.  Roosevelt’s motivation was to get the Republican ticket back to the progressive cause.

After losing the Republican nomination, tenacious Teddy decided to split from the Republican party and formed the Progressive Party, or more commonly referred to as the Bull Moose Party.  The political infighting within the Republican party resulted in a humiliating defeat for both William Taft and Teddy Roosevelt.

In terms of principle, Teddy Roosevelt was the winner because he made his point to the Republican party that the nation still preferred his progressive cause over William Taft.  Roosevelt earned himself 88 electoral votes, whereas Taft earned a measly 8 electoral votes — that isn’t a typo, he really only earned 8.  Woodrow Wilson, then, pulled in a commanding 435 electoral votes, securing a Democrat win. 

Fast forward to 2010.  Our nation is gearing up for the mid-term season and we got ourselves an ideological third party splitting from the Republican party.  Let’s be clear, the ideologies going to war are substantially different than in 1912 but the lesson is the same.  If you are a disenfranchised Republican that splits from the party, you are securing a Democratic victory.

In other words, thank you tea party.

Learning Science at BYU-Idaho

The following screenshot came from this week’s lesson in my online science course at Brigham Young University Idaho. 

This sort of equal time policy between religion and science has always kind of annoyed me, especially when we’re already mandated to take 14 credits of religion courses.  This encroachment of religion into other fields appears to have gotten worse under Kim Clark’s Foundations program. 

Is this productive in a student’s education?  Is aiding students in reconciling faith and science worth taking time from teaching science?

More Evidence of Mormon Church’s Influence on Member’s Political Opinions

As Reed Cowan reopens the debate on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints role in California’s Proposition 8, there is proof of the church’s heavy influence in another gay rights issue; their support of the non-discrimination ordinance in Salt Lake City.  The centralized authoritarian structure of the faith causes its members to feel the influence of their leadership more directly.  The current political involvement of the church shows how strong this system of governance is and how it is helping develop the saints’ political ideals.  The Salt Lake Tribune reports,

When Salt Lake City embraced anti-discrimination ordinances for gay and transgender residents last fall — snagging a landmark endorsement by the LDS Church and widespread support from city officials — more shifted than public policy.

Public opinion — throughout Utah — jumped, too.

Support for some gay rights, short of marriage, climbed 11 percentage points across the state from a year ago, according to a new Salt Lake Tribune poll, and shot up by 10 percent among Mormons.

Two-thirds of Utahns (67 percent) favor employment protections and safeguards for same-sex couples such as hospital visitation and inheritance rights, up from 56 percent in January 2009, when pollsters asked the same question. (This year’s survey of 625 frequent Utah voters has an error margin of 4 percentage points; last year’s was 4.5 percent.)

Opposition dropped, overall, from 40 percent to 23 percent. Among LDS respondents, it plummeted from 48 percent to 28 percent.

“This isn’t a gradual change of attitudes. This is a fairly dramatic jump,” says Matthew Burbank, chairman of the University of Utah’s political science department. “Clearly, the fact that the LDS Church was officially endorsing this position had an impact on people.”

The fact that one declaration by the church can create an 11 point increase within a year is worthy of anyone’s attention.

Are BYU-I Students Brainlessly Conservative?

Provocative headline, eh?  There is growing evidence that a constituency exists at Brigham Young University Idaho which subscribe to brainless conservatism.  I know, shocking right?  For them, they feel entitled to have conservative ideology fused with their education; after all, it is a church school and Jesus was obviously a conservative.  Using the joys of www.ratemyprofessors.com, I would like expose this ignorant attitude of Mormon youth.

The following is a collection of screen shots that show this arrogant entitlement, they are found on one of the few liberal faculty member’s page.

My favorite is the comment which states “she refuses to allow others to have an opinion” and then says “for a conservative school… she makes you shake your head as to why she is there.”  There’s no room for contradictory opinions in education, ATTACK THE HEATHEN!!! 

I’d like to make it clear that this is a collection of comments, meaning I selected the ones which showed negative views towards her liberal, man-hating stance.  The majority of the student comments showed students who were able to look past her disease of left wing thinking and respected her talent as a teacher.  Nonetheless, it needs to be shown that there is a small segment of students at BYU-Idaho who feel their conservative viewpoint is the only viewpoint worth hearing.  The same people who can’t help but bash their professors anonymously when they feel their “conservative principles” are threatened.