The big debate ends. Marriage can be defined as a legal agreement between two people of any gender combination. Amid all the rhetoric, hostility, defensiveness, and sentimentality exhibited in the public debate of recent years, certain basic definitions got thoroughly lost in the legalistic and persuasive smoke and mirrors.
A BASIC DEFINITION
Marriage is not a domestic agreement between two people – maybe of two genders.
Marriage is a covenant between at least four entities
1 the man
2 the woman
3a the culture in which they live
and / or
3b God
4 children, who have a vested right to a solid stable extended family.
The two entities in the third part of the definition have for ages tried to ignore the interests of the other. Fact is – God cannot ignore the legal requirements of civil governments in the marriage contract. Fact is – civil governments cannot just dismiss God as an outside observer. If God did not invent the institution, then he is the key custodian.
DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE
The desperation of people who want to defend marriage as exclusively heterosexual became palpable in recent months. For example, some started to talk again about how marriage supports children. It was laughable. For decades I heard people of the highest rank carefully parse the definition of marriage and the reproduction and needs of children. Children, for years, were the lost element of marriage. Even in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint , an institution which sometimes acts as if it invented the family, I remember major conference addresses from apostles that noted that the man and the woman were the most important part of a marriage, not whether or not it produced children.
If Martians landed on Earth tomorrow and started studying human sexual habits, would they see any distinction or difference between same-gender sexual attraction and opposite-gender sexual attraction?
Interesting that around here in Utah when heterosexuals corrupted the concept of marriage, they called it "progressive," and when the homosexuals corrupted the concept, heterosexuals called it .sin. Changing the gender ratio in marriage may be a corruption of marriage, but marriage is a corruption institution and has been for ages. This is only just the latest step in the devolution of marriage as a legal definition.
Marriage as political alliance.
Child marriages.
Bride prices.
Dowries.
Legalized and acceptable cruelty in relationships.
Women treated as property with no rights.
Polygamy.
Polyandry.
"La casa grande -- la casa bonita."
Mistresses having legal rights along with the wives.
No-fault quickie divorces.
Female genital mutilation.
These practices are not the fault of homosexuals. Heterosexuals over time have done the most damage to the concept of marriage. They have certainly done a lot of damage to marriage since 1960.
Civil governments in general have done a lousy job in protecting and preserving marriage. However, churches have not been entirely effective, either. In fairness, though, neither the Old Testament or the New Testament are really clear on the subject of when God considers a couple “married.” The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has sections that do a more convincing job of defining that point.
Marriage was a lot simpler when romantic love was not considered essential to the mix. Marriage should not be first and foremost about companionship. Marriage should not be confused with companionship. Marriage is about a stable legal framework to raise children. Eventually most – if not all – marriages get in-laws, friends, ecclesiastical leaders, accountants, lawyers attached to them – and children. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
Marriage is not a 24-hour service station. One spouse cannot expect the other spouse to fix everything for him/her. Some things the individual will have to fix on his/her own. Both spouses need friends for companionship and backup.
Still – If a married couple is not careful, a marriage is a great way to insure that you get what you do not want.
THE CALL TO ACTION
It would be nice to think that marriage is evolving upward like the human race is evolving upward. We can only hope that is true. However -- marriage does need Defense of Marriage Acts, but they need to be on a variety of marriage practice reforms and on an International level of action.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
An editorial on the War on ISIS
In August 1917, a few months after the United States declared war on the Axis, and several months before the first American soldiers actually arrived to fight in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson formed a large committee – no fewer than 125 academics and politicians – to set up the framework of the Post-War New World Order of the Ages. It included an academic committee that wrote proposals for the New Middle East. Remember, at the time, the Ottoman Empire still existed. Not one committee member actually was a modern Middle East expert. Most of the time, they scurried around libraries to get basic information. The committee chairman was an academic expert of the Crusades.
The committee’s work had one notable short coming: no one seemed much interested in the region’s oil. European Nations noticed the oil and what it meant to modern warfare. Britain and France managed to carve up what had been The Ottoman Empire into states dividing the tribes. Therefore, Europe – not the locals -- dominated the region and the oil.
I do not know who advises The Obama Administration this week, but they remind me of Wilson’s committee.
I have no tolerance for or connections to ISIS. ISIS can hardly be considered loveable at this stage of The Great Game. However, they are not worse than the leaders of the Ottoman Empire or the colonial managers who ruled the place for England, France, and [eventually] the USA. Rules of cause and effect determine why the Obama Administration reaps whirlwinds sewn nearly100 years ago. I seriously doubt ISIS can do sustained damage major or minor to the USA.
To review:
THE USA made a war with troops in 1991 in Kuwait. We got the oil back, but the war did not solve the overall problem in the region. The USA mad a war with troops in Iraq in 2002 and for ten plus years thereafter. It did not solve the problem and in fact made the problem more complicated. War made it worse. Insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result. How can the Obama administration think that they can take down this organization and make a difference with air strikes and drones alone? Air strikes and drones will generate more hate in the Iraqis against us ? If and when we put thousands of troops into this war, they cannot win it. They have not won so far.
Insanity is sometimes defined and doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.
You cannot find anyone in the military or intelligence who believes that bombing more innocent civilians in Iraq and Syria is going to generate positive results
No strategy is probably better than doing dumb things just because the administration must look active and engaged and people are generally anxious and fearful.
The problems with Obama’s announcement on 10 September should be obvious: 1) It will require a lot of American soldiers in Iraq and Syria. 2) Once our soldiers are in Iraq and Syria, they are in there for good. 3) The USA cannot win the war.
Let’s look at what Middle Eastern needs and goals for the 21st century. What the people need is clear.
1) Fewer nations should evolve as opposed to more of them.
2) Ideally, there should be a large pan-Arabic-Palestinan-Muslim-Jewish state with equal rights and fair play for all.
3) If the locals cannot get that, then 3 or 4 states – tops -- with equal rights and fair play for all..
4) Modern Iraq should not be one of them. Iraq’s boundaries were drawn up after World War I to divide the locals and keep the resources in European control.
5) The resources under the ground are controlled by the locals above the ground.
I read that Cheney and the hawks want the administration to do “a more muscled response” in Iraq. Meaning put soldiers in harms way in a cause that we cannot win. Cheney’s view seems to be that the USA should now be actively engaged in War That Will Not End.
ISIS would not exist if Cheney and company had not involved the USA in that whole Iraq military mistake. The anniversary of World War I should remind Cheney that muscular responses take on an uncontrollable life of their own.
THE CALL TO INACTION.
Congress should not reinstate conscription.
Congress should not fund any Middle Eastern Adventures which will not work or which we will not win.
Congress should insist on its Constitutional right to declare war – and not declare war.
The committee’s work had one notable short coming: no one seemed much interested in the region’s oil. European Nations noticed the oil and what it meant to modern warfare. Britain and France managed to carve up what had been The Ottoman Empire into states dividing the tribes. Therefore, Europe – not the locals -- dominated the region and the oil.
I do not know who advises The Obama Administration this week, but they remind me of Wilson’s committee.
I have no tolerance for or connections to ISIS. ISIS can hardly be considered loveable at this stage of The Great Game. However, they are not worse than the leaders of the Ottoman Empire or the colonial managers who ruled the place for England, France, and [eventually] the USA. Rules of cause and effect determine why the Obama Administration reaps whirlwinds sewn nearly100 years ago. I seriously doubt ISIS can do sustained damage major or minor to the USA.
To review:
THE USA made a war with troops in 1991 in Kuwait. We got the oil back, but the war did not solve the overall problem in the region. The USA mad a war with troops in Iraq in 2002 and for ten plus years thereafter. It did not solve the problem and in fact made the problem more complicated. War made it worse. Insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result. How can the Obama administration think that they can take down this organization and make a difference with air strikes and drones alone? Air strikes and drones will generate more hate in the Iraqis against us ? If and when we put thousands of troops into this war, they cannot win it. They have not won so far.
Insanity is sometimes defined and doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.
You cannot find anyone in the military or intelligence who believes that bombing more innocent civilians in Iraq and Syria is going to generate positive results
No strategy is probably better than doing dumb things just because the administration must look active and engaged and people are generally anxious and fearful.
The problems with Obama’s announcement on 10 September should be obvious: 1) It will require a lot of American soldiers in Iraq and Syria. 2) Once our soldiers are in Iraq and Syria, they are in there for good. 3) The USA cannot win the war.
Let’s look at what Middle Eastern needs and goals for the 21st century. What the people need is clear.
1) Fewer nations should evolve as opposed to more of them.
2) Ideally, there should be a large pan-Arabic-Palestinan-Muslim-Jewish state with equal rights and fair play for all.
3) If the locals cannot get that, then 3 or 4 states – tops -- with equal rights and fair play for all..
4) Modern Iraq should not be one of them. Iraq’s boundaries were drawn up after World War I to divide the locals and keep the resources in European control.
5) The resources under the ground are controlled by the locals above the ground.
I read that Cheney and the hawks want the administration to do “a more muscled response” in Iraq. Meaning put soldiers in harms way in a cause that we cannot win. Cheney’s view seems to be that the USA should now be actively engaged in War That Will Not End.
ISIS would not exist if Cheney and company had not involved the USA in that whole Iraq military mistake. The anniversary of World War I should remind Cheney that muscular responses take on an uncontrollable life of their own.
THE CALL TO INACTION.
Congress should not reinstate conscription.
Congress should not fund any Middle Eastern Adventures which will not work or which we will not win.
Congress should insist on its Constitutional right to declare war – and not declare war.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
90 Years Later: REMEMBERING THE NATIONAL DEFENSE TEST DAY BROADCAST AND ITS LESSONS
September 2014 marks the 90th anniversary of a landmark radio broadcast done by the U S Military. Western Electric recorded the broadcast from the telephone lines, which is now one of the oldest existing original radio broadcast recordings in history. I write “original” because a number of famous radio recordings that come from an earlier date (the KDKA 1920 presidential election returns comes to mind) actually were re-creations from a later date. The KDKA 1920 election return recordings was recreated in 1936 and 1950.
On 12 September 1924, the US military mobilized for a National Defense Test Day. The entire concept alarmed the nations and militaries of Europe, but the military mobilized mostly as a publicity gimmick and a male bonding ritual in honor of General of the Army John Pershing, who retired from the Army the next day.
The culminating event of the Test Day was a live coast-to-coast radio broadcast, starting at 8:00 EST. One old time radio history website described the broadcast and the surviving recording this way:
“9/12/24-- National Defense Test Day Broadcast. WEAF-WCAP network of eighteen stations. Linecheck recorded by Western Electric. A ninety-minute program aired to demonstrate how radio could respond to national emergencies thru the interconnection of stations in various cities. Speeches by Secretary of War Weeks, General Pershing, General Saltzman of the Signal Corps, and General J. F. Carty of AT&T. This broadcast marked the first major demonstration of multiple remote cut-ins on a single program, with engineers in fourteen cities responding on cue, followed by two-way conversations between General Pershing and generals representing each of the Army Corps areas. Most of the program was recorded and pressings of the discs were presented to General Pershing. Sets of the discs are also held by the Library Of Congress and the National Archives. Audio quality of the recording is excellent, but two of the sides recorded were damaged during processing and do not survive.”
Let me clarify some points made in this summary. The broadcast originated from the radio station in Washington D.C. The military selected the other radio stations in this ad hoc network for maximum nation-wide radio coverage. Their selection of stations performed successfully, though the whole intermountain west had limited coverage from one station in Denver – two if you count the station in Omaha. California’s coverage was limited to one station in Oakland. The military could have improved Coverage in The West by adding KSL and KNX, but apparently the generals did not consider The West important. They provided thorough coverage in The East though.
THE BROADCAST
The recording features numerous joys for old radio enthusiasts. For starters, at the very beginning someone taps on the microphone (a big ancient canister models from the sound of the reverb) like it was amateur night in Weehawken. The voices sound as if they were recorded in a long metal tunnel, which was typical of old radio’s sound. The announcer lists every last radio station in the network, something that soon became impractical to do when NBC and CBS eventually created their national networks in 1926 and 1928. This is the first radio recording of multiple remote cut-ins on a single program; it was the first public coast-to-coast multiple radio station broadcast with remote cut-ins. It featured a roll call of radio broadcast telephone operators starting in Washington and sounding off in a line that stretched in less than a minute to Oakland. This is the first radio recording that featured a participant in Salt Lake City – and villages in Wyoming and Nevada for that matter.
Today only experienced and sophisticated listeners with patience can sit through the whole recording. It has no commercials, being a federal broadcast. It has no orchestra or band music. It features a cabinet secretary and a bunch of generals speaking about military strategy and radio technological details – neither of which will leave the audience laughing. However, in 1924 the broadcast must have been revelation to small town and rural radio owners.
General Pershing’s address still feels like revelation, considering how frank he is about his experience in World War I and coordinating the American mobilization in 1917-1918 for the Great War in Europe. He admitted publicly that the military made mistakes in the mobilization. It is true: the American mobilization made many mistakes and missteps, took too much time, too much money, crowded too many boys in too few training camps. It will be darned interesting to see if any modern general will someday make the same sorts of admissions in public about shortcomings in Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
Pershing also talked live over the radio with four generals who oversaw Defense Test Day activities in various regions. He talked first with a general headquartered in New York, then a general in Chicago, then a general in Omaha, and then a general in Oakland. The peasants sat before their radios listening in enraptured silence.
Pershing’s talk with his general in New York is one of the few humorous highlights of the broadcast. The New York general seems to have a few too many martinis to celebrate Test Day’s conclusion or to steady his nerves for the nation-wide radio hook up. At one point, he sings (off key yet) a few lines of an old barracks song, much to Pershing’s horror.
The broadcast also gave the rural radio audience a sense of the scale of America. Pershing in Washington, which was in nighttime, asked the general in Oakland about the sunset, which had just occurred and was then lingering in golden twilight.
The generals’ main broadcast goal consisted in teaching citizens how the government could use radio to instantaneously broadcast information to the entire nation during a crisis using a radio network, ideally a radio network with telephone lines and/or shortwave. It was also clear that the military could use radio for its instantaneous private communications as well. That night saw an altogether prophetic broadcast, maybe THE most prophetic radio broadcast ever done.
QUICK COMMUNICATION
Consider the old days.
It took days for telegraph reporters to get the news of the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to the rest of the northeast USA, even longer out to the west coast.
In contrast, 17 years after the Test Day broadcast, the Japanese Air Force followed a commercial radio station frequency into the Island of Oahu and bombed the US military installations on the island. Within minutes, the commercial radio stations of Oahu were broadcasted information, warning and instructions to the residents. Interestingly enough, the radio news networks did not get wind of the situation for more than two hours. The attack started at noon, eastern time, but John Daly did not read the first live CBS radio report until 2:30 p.m. ET. If KNX in Los Angeles or KCBS in San Francisco had received reports from Honolulu earlier than that, the whole CBS network could have reported the attack considerably sooner.
In contrast, 19 years after the test day broadcast, the allied command in England signaled NBC Radio a warning about the impending D-Day Invasion (a Morris code V repeated three times), NBC warned its executives and radio stations to activate (a special four note NBC chimes), and within minutes, the entire continental USA got the news that the invasion had started.
When President Lincoln was assassinated it took several hours, sometimes a couple of days for the telegraphs and newspapers to disseminate the bad news.
In contrast, consider when President Roosevelt died 20 year after the test day broadcast. Roosevelt died at 3:45 p.m. Central Time in Warm Springs Georgia. Roosevelt’s administration did not release the new for nearly an hour. The first newscaster to broadcast a news bulletin was John Daly on CBS, who interrupted a program at 5:40 p.m. ET (4:40 p.m. CT) with the first report. Never the less the whole nation knew about the death in less than an hour after it occurred, though the nation could have learned quicker if the administration had been willing.
President Kennedy was assassinated nearly 40 years after the Test Day broadcast. Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy at 12:30 p.m. CT, and within 4-10 minutes, radio and TV news reporters broadcast bulletins locally in Dallas and then nation-wide. Walter Cronkite of CBS TV News broadcast its first TV network bulletin ten minutes after the shooting; Alan Jackson of CBS Radio News broadcast its first radio network bulletin shortly thereafter. In the first hour, as evidenced by a recording made by the White House, both an Air Force jet-liner transporting half of the President’s cabinet to Japan and the officials in the White House situation room used the private news services to gather their information. The administration made the official announcement of the death of the president 35 minutes after he died in the Parkland Hospital emergency room.
In October 1958, NBC broadcast live to the entire nation the ceremonies surrounding the grand opening of its new broadcast facilities in Washington D.C. It broadcasted part of that ceremony in color on live TV; the videotape record of that broadcast is the oldest surviving color videotape still in existence. President Eisenhower attended the broadcast and spoke – it was the first time he appeared on a color TV broadcast from Washington. He said that government should attach itself to the very best communications available to keep the citizens alert and informed. Eisenhower’s remarks seem remarkably candid today, considering how many political leaders do not want to keep the citizens in any sort of loop.
On 11 September 2001, at 8:42 ET, an airliner crashed into the almost top floors of the north World Trade Center Tower. The various networks started reporting the news within 1 - 4 minutes. All of them reported and showed the second airliner crashing into the south World Trade Center on live TV. This event broadcast illustrated graphically that TV viewers not only could get instantaneous information all over the world, but that it was also possible from them to get mass induced instantaneous stress disorders from watching disaster. In the 21st Century, one does not have to live through disaster to feel as if one has lived through disaster.
President Bush the Second was visiting a school in Florida at the time of the attacks. The military and the secret service quickly evacuated him and his entourage to Air Force One. The military decided not to fly it directly back to Washington. Instead it took the better part of the day to lolly-gag its way back via Louisiana and Omaha. This was done out of fear that the Washington air space was not secure of lurking terrorists. The president did not make any sort of information speech to the nation until later in the evening, but he could have given the public up to the minute information if he wanted to. He did not.
Thus, the National Defense Test Day broadcast was indeed prophetic about how quickly governments could get important information to the citizens in times of crisis. When it wanted to.
INSTANT MISCOMMUNICATION
What the September 1924 Test Day broadcast did not tell us was how much hatred, propaganda, lying, and out right miscommunication radio and TV networks can broadcast quickly.
For example:
In October 1938, Orson Welles and his "Mercury Theater On The Air" broadcast a live dramatic adaption of H G Wells’ old science fiction novel “The World of The Worlds.” Welles and his writers gussied up the old book by setting it in modern times and presenting the narrative as if it were a series of radio news bulletins and live news broadcasts. The Mercury Theater did not have a big audience that night (it was opposite Edgar Bergen’s megahit Sunday night comedy-variety program), but a considerable percentage of those who listened to the broadcast thought it was really describing a real invasion of Earth by Martians.
The day before D-Day’s Normandy Invasion in June 1944, news broadcaster Robert Trout at CBS was involved in a miscommunication that resulted in a bulletin announcing that the Normandy Invasion had started when it was in the preparation stage.
I once heard as part of an Old Time Radio program recording, a news bulletin that announced that the USA had dropped an atomic bomb on a Japanese city other than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In September 1945, the day before the Japanese surrendered, a couple of networks did bulletins announcing the surrender of Japan – prematurely.
On 8 July 1947, radio stations in New Mexico and some network news broadcasts reported that an unidentified flying object had crashed in the plains near Roswell, New Mexico.
When Kennedy was shot, some reported that a secret service agent had also been killed in the shooting. I suspect they got the details of the Officer Tippetts shooting confused. The networks all reported early on accounts of gun fire coming from the grassy knoll as well.
In 1992, when President Bush the First vomited on the prime minister of Japan at an official state dinner, CNN a few hours later got a report and came very close to announcing on live TV that President Bush had died.
THE LEARNING CURVE
The Defense Test Day radio broadcast demonstrated the future of broadcasting to its listeners that night, and made a number of prophecies that came true very quickly. The generals failed to tell us one important thing about radio and television networks – the technology is morality neutral. It is good or bad depending on the morality of those who control the cameras and microphones.
On 12 September 1924, the US military mobilized for a National Defense Test Day. The entire concept alarmed the nations and militaries of Europe, but the military mobilized mostly as a publicity gimmick and a male bonding ritual in honor of General of the Army John Pershing, who retired from the Army the next day.
The culminating event of the Test Day was a live coast-to-coast radio broadcast, starting at 8:00 EST. One old time radio history website described the broadcast and the surviving recording this way:
“9/12/24-- National Defense Test Day Broadcast. WEAF-WCAP network of eighteen stations. Linecheck recorded by Western Electric. A ninety-minute program aired to demonstrate how radio could respond to national emergencies thru the interconnection of stations in various cities. Speeches by Secretary of War Weeks, General Pershing, General Saltzman of the Signal Corps, and General J. F. Carty of AT&T. This broadcast marked the first major demonstration of multiple remote cut-ins on a single program, with engineers in fourteen cities responding on cue, followed by two-way conversations between General Pershing and generals representing each of the Army Corps areas. Most of the program was recorded and pressings of the discs were presented to General Pershing. Sets of the discs are also held by the Library Of Congress and the National Archives. Audio quality of the recording is excellent, but two of the sides recorded were damaged during processing and do not survive.”
Let me clarify some points made in this summary. The broadcast originated from the radio station in Washington D.C. The military selected the other radio stations in this ad hoc network for maximum nation-wide radio coverage. Their selection of stations performed successfully, though the whole intermountain west had limited coverage from one station in Denver – two if you count the station in Omaha. California’s coverage was limited to one station in Oakland. The military could have improved Coverage in The West by adding KSL and KNX, but apparently the generals did not consider The West important. They provided thorough coverage in The East though.
THE BROADCAST
The recording features numerous joys for old radio enthusiasts. For starters, at the very beginning someone taps on the microphone (a big ancient canister models from the sound of the reverb) like it was amateur night in Weehawken. The voices sound as if they were recorded in a long metal tunnel, which was typical of old radio’s sound. The announcer lists every last radio station in the network, something that soon became impractical to do when NBC and CBS eventually created their national networks in 1926 and 1928. This is the first radio recording of multiple remote cut-ins on a single program; it was the first public coast-to-coast multiple radio station broadcast with remote cut-ins. It featured a roll call of radio broadcast telephone operators starting in Washington and sounding off in a line that stretched in less than a minute to Oakland. This is the first radio recording that featured a participant in Salt Lake City – and villages in Wyoming and Nevada for that matter.
Today only experienced and sophisticated listeners with patience can sit through the whole recording. It has no commercials, being a federal broadcast. It has no orchestra or band music. It features a cabinet secretary and a bunch of generals speaking about military strategy and radio technological details – neither of which will leave the audience laughing. However, in 1924 the broadcast must have been revelation to small town and rural radio owners.
General Pershing’s address still feels like revelation, considering how frank he is about his experience in World War I and coordinating the American mobilization in 1917-1918 for the Great War in Europe. He admitted publicly that the military made mistakes in the mobilization. It is true: the American mobilization made many mistakes and missteps, took too much time, too much money, crowded too many boys in too few training camps. It will be darned interesting to see if any modern general will someday make the same sorts of admissions in public about shortcomings in Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
Pershing also talked live over the radio with four generals who oversaw Defense Test Day activities in various regions. He talked first with a general headquartered in New York, then a general in Chicago, then a general in Omaha, and then a general in Oakland. The peasants sat before their radios listening in enraptured silence.
Pershing’s talk with his general in New York is one of the few humorous highlights of the broadcast. The New York general seems to have a few too many martinis to celebrate Test Day’s conclusion or to steady his nerves for the nation-wide radio hook up. At one point, he sings (off key yet) a few lines of an old barracks song, much to Pershing’s horror.
The broadcast also gave the rural radio audience a sense of the scale of America. Pershing in Washington, which was in nighttime, asked the general in Oakland about the sunset, which had just occurred and was then lingering in golden twilight.
The generals’ main broadcast goal consisted in teaching citizens how the government could use radio to instantaneously broadcast information to the entire nation during a crisis using a radio network, ideally a radio network with telephone lines and/or shortwave. It was also clear that the military could use radio for its instantaneous private communications as well. That night saw an altogether prophetic broadcast, maybe THE most prophetic radio broadcast ever done.
QUICK COMMUNICATION
Consider the old days.
It took days for telegraph reporters to get the news of the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to the rest of the northeast USA, even longer out to the west coast.
In contrast, 17 years after the Test Day broadcast, the Japanese Air Force followed a commercial radio station frequency into the Island of Oahu and bombed the US military installations on the island. Within minutes, the commercial radio stations of Oahu were broadcasted information, warning and instructions to the residents. Interestingly enough, the radio news networks did not get wind of the situation for more than two hours. The attack started at noon, eastern time, but John Daly did not read the first live CBS radio report until 2:30 p.m. ET. If KNX in Los Angeles or KCBS in San Francisco had received reports from Honolulu earlier than that, the whole CBS network could have reported the attack considerably sooner.
In contrast, 19 years after the test day broadcast, the allied command in England signaled NBC Radio a warning about the impending D-Day Invasion (a Morris code V repeated three times), NBC warned its executives and radio stations to activate (a special four note NBC chimes), and within minutes, the entire continental USA got the news that the invasion had started.
When President Lincoln was assassinated it took several hours, sometimes a couple of days for the telegraphs and newspapers to disseminate the bad news.
In contrast, consider when President Roosevelt died 20 year after the test day broadcast. Roosevelt died at 3:45 p.m. Central Time in Warm Springs Georgia. Roosevelt’s administration did not release the new for nearly an hour. The first newscaster to broadcast a news bulletin was John Daly on CBS, who interrupted a program at 5:40 p.m. ET (4:40 p.m. CT) with the first report. Never the less the whole nation knew about the death in less than an hour after it occurred, though the nation could have learned quicker if the administration had been willing.
President Kennedy was assassinated nearly 40 years after the Test Day broadcast. Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy at 12:30 p.m. CT, and within 4-10 minutes, radio and TV news reporters broadcast bulletins locally in Dallas and then nation-wide. Walter Cronkite of CBS TV News broadcast its first TV network bulletin ten minutes after the shooting; Alan Jackson of CBS Radio News broadcast its first radio network bulletin shortly thereafter. In the first hour, as evidenced by a recording made by the White House, both an Air Force jet-liner transporting half of the President’s cabinet to Japan and the officials in the White House situation room used the private news services to gather their information. The administration made the official announcement of the death of the president 35 minutes after he died in the Parkland Hospital emergency room.
In October 1958, NBC broadcast live to the entire nation the ceremonies surrounding the grand opening of its new broadcast facilities in Washington D.C. It broadcasted part of that ceremony in color on live TV; the videotape record of that broadcast is the oldest surviving color videotape still in existence. President Eisenhower attended the broadcast and spoke – it was the first time he appeared on a color TV broadcast from Washington. He said that government should attach itself to the very best communications available to keep the citizens alert and informed. Eisenhower’s remarks seem remarkably candid today, considering how many political leaders do not want to keep the citizens in any sort of loop.
On 11 September 2001, at 8:42 ET, an airliner crashed into the almost top floors of the north World Trade Center Tower. The various networks started reporting the news within 1 - 4 minutes. All of them reported and showed the second airliner crashing into the south World Trade Center on live TV. This event broadcast illustrated graphically that TV viewers not only could get instantaneous information all over the world, but that it was also possible from them to get mass induced instantaneous stress disorders from watching disaster. In the 21st Century, one does not have to live through disaster to feel as if one has lived through disaster.
President Bush the Second was visiting a school in Florida at the time of the attacks. The military and the secret service quickly evacuated him and his entourage to Air Force One. The military decided not to fly it directly back to Washington. Instead it took the better part of the day to lolly-gag its way back via Louisiana and Omaha. This was done out of fear that the Washington air space was not secure of lurking terrorists. The president did not make any sort of information speech to the nation until later in the evening, but he could have given the public up to the minute information if he wanted to. He did not.
Thus, the National Defense Test Day broadcast was indeed prophetic about how quickly governments could get important information to the citizens in times of crisis. When it wanted to.
INSTANT MISCOMMUNICATION
What the September 1924 Test Day broadcast did not tell us was how much hatred, propaganda, lying, and out right miscommunication radio and TV networks can broadcast quickly.
For example:
In October 1938, Orson Welles and his "Mercury Theater On The Air" broadcast a live dramatic adaption of H G Wells’ old science fiction novel “The World of The Worlds.” Welles and his writers gussied up the old book by setting it in modern times and presenting the narrative as if it were a series of radio news bulletins and live news broadcasts. The Mercury Theater did not have a big audience that night (it was opposite Edgar Bergen’s megahit Sunday night comedy-variety program), but a considerable percentage of those who listened to the broadcast thought it was really describing a real invasion of Earth by Martians.
The day before D-Day’s Normandy Invasion in June 1944, news broadcaster Robert Trout at CBS was involved in a miscommunication that resulted in a bulletin announcing that the Normandy Invasion had started when it was in the preparation stage.
I once heard as part of an Old Time Radio program recording, a news bulletin that announced that the USA had dropped an atomic bomb on a Japanese city other than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In September 1945, the day before the Japanese surrendered, a couple of networks did bulletins announcing the surrender of Japan – prematurely.
On 8 July 1947, radio stations in New Mexico and some network news broadcasts reported that an unidentified flying object had crashed in the plains near Roswell, New Mexico.
When Kennedy was shot, some reported that a secret service agent had also been killed in the shooting. I suspect they got the details of the Officer Tippetts shooting confused. The networks all reported early on accounts of gun fire coming from the grassy knoll as well.
In 1992, when President Bush the First vomited on the prime minister of Japan at an official state dinner, CNN a few hours later got a report and came very close to announcing on live TV that President Bush had died.
THE LEARNING CURVE
The Defense Test Day radio broadcast demonstrated the future of broadcasting to its listeners that night, and made a number of prophecies that came true very quickly. The generals failed to tell us one important thing about radio and television networks – the technology is morality neutral. It is good or bad depending on the morality of those who control the cameras and microphones.
Sunday, August 3, 2014
BEYOND THE DEATH OF A DOG
I read reports in the Salt Lake Tribune that an official investigative board cleared and justified the Salt Lake City police officer who killed a dog while doing a search in the dog’s back yard.
Of course the board did that – especially since it could not get testimony from the dog.
It feels like we now find ourselves in a dystopian police-state novel with a plot that has spun off its axis. This becomes apparent when we consider what should have happened in this troubling incident.
.
People and their elected leaders must insist on the Constitutional Right that police must get warrants. That should be obvious. In this case, It is bad enough that law enforcement just searched a backyard for whatever reason, aside from the issue of an officer shooting and killing a homeowner's dog.
Officers should be equipped with bear pepper spray – a non-lethal solution -- in case a home-owner's dog is [understandably] angry or charging officers who have crossed its territory.
There is a bigger issue here for us to consider. What does it say about government law enforcement, about the advertising pressure we get from weapons manufacturers, and human nature itself that it is socially acceptable to carry and use lethal weapons when we could develop, manufacture, carry and use when necessary non-lethal weaponry.
Guns are not a tool. Guns are a symbol. Symbol of power.
Friday, July 25, 2014
ASKS SOME QUESTIONS
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Office of the First Presidency published an open letter on June 28, 2014. Newrightasecension reprints the letter with some comments.
In God's plan for the happiness and eternal progression of His children, the blessings of His priesthood are equally available to men and women. [who have men available] Only men are ordained to serve in priesthood offices [currently – for revelation goes on and on].
All service in the Church has equal merit in the eyes of God.
[A nice sentiment. It reads well and sounds appreciative and inclusive . . . but really? Will either we or God put the service of J Reuben Clark and Harold B. Lee and the service of the laziest female teacher in primary in equal merit?]
We express profound gratitude for the millions of Latter-day Saint women and men who willingly and effectively serve God and His children. Because of their faith and service, they have discovered that the Church is a place of spiritual nourishment and growth.
We understand that from time to time Church members will have questions about Church doctrine, history, or practice. Members are always free to ask such questions and earnestly seek greater understanding. We feel special concern, however, for members who distance themselves from Church doctrine or practice and, by advocacy, encourage others to follow them.
[Therefore, Ordain Women does not particularly impress newrightascension. It has yet to take serious action to get what it wants.]
Simply asking questions has never constituted apostasy. [Beware: if you ask upity questions, it will not win you friends among your ward or your stake leadership either. ]
Apostasy is repeatedly acting in clear, open, and deliberate public opposition to the Church or its faithful leaders, or persisting, after receiving counsel, in teaching false doctrine.
[The placement of “faithful” in the sentence is illuminating, to say the least. If an “unfaithful” church leader has generated public opposition for his sins, the wording makes clear that it is obviously his own neck.]
The Council of
The First Presidency and
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Official Web site of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
© 2014 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All Rights Reserved
“Simply asking questions has never constituted apostasy.” Given that opening, rightascension has some questions.
1. What percentage of the church membership is adult male? Is adult female?
2. What percentage of the active church membership is adult male? Is adult female? I admit that this question is interesting to ask but unanswerable because of ambiguous definitions.
3. If – for the sake of an example number – say, 53 percent of the active adult membership is female, should 53 percent of the ward-level, stake-level, and general membership decision-making leadership be female?
4 From a organizational function analysis point of view, if half of an organization’s membership cannot achieve the highest leadership roles from the beginning, does this make the organization more or less strong and secure?
5 What is the real difference between being consulted in a decision and in making the decision?
6. If God will discuss church leadership only with males, what does that tell us about God?
7. Should we expect an answer?
This editorial does not make recommendations.
In God's plan for the happiness and eternal progression of His children, the blessings of His priesthood are equally available to men and women. [who have men available] Only men are ordained to serve in priesthood offices [currently – for revelation goes on and on].
All service in the Church has equal merit in the eyes of God.
[A nice sentiment. It reads well and sounds appreciative and inclusive . . . but really? Will either we or God put the service of J Reuben Clark and Harold B. Lee and the service of the laziest female teacher in primary in equal merit?]
We express profound gratitude for the millions of Latter-day Saint women and men who willingly and effectively serve God and His children. Because of their faith and service, they have discovered that the Church is a place of spiritual nourishment and growth.
We understand that from time to time Church members will have questions about Church doctrine, history, or practice. Members are always free to ask such questions and earnestly seek greater understanding. We feel special concern, however, for members who distance themselves from Church doctrine or practice and, by advocacy, encourage others to follow them.
[Therefore, Ordain Women does not particularly impress newrightascension. It has yet to take serious action to get what it wants.]
Simply asking questions has never constituted apostasy. [Beware: if you ask upity questions, it will not win you friends among your ward or your stake leadership either. ]
Apostasy is repeatedly acting in clear, open, and deliberate public opposition to the Church or its faithful leaders, or persisting, after receiving counsel, in teaching false doctrine.
[The placement of “faithful” in the sentence is illuminating, to say the least. If an “unfaithful” church leader has generated public opposition for his sins, the wording makes clear that it is obviously his own neck.]
The Council of
The First Presidency and
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Official Web site of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
© 2014 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All Rights Reserved
“Simply asking questions has never constituted apostasy.” Given that opening, rightascension has some questions.
1. What percentage of the church membership is adult male? Is adult female?
2. What percentage of the active church membership is adult male? Is adult female? I admit that this question is interesting to ask but unanswerable because of ambiguous definitions.
3. If – for the sake of an example number – say, 53 percent of the active adult membership is female, should 53 percent of the ward-level, stake-level, and general membership decision-making leadership be female?
4 From a organizational function analysis point of view, if half of an organization’s membership cannot achieve the highest leadership roles from the beginning, does this make the organization more or less strong and secure?
5 What is the real difference between being consulted in a decision and in making the decision?
6. If God will discuss church leadership only with males, what does that tell us about God?
7. Should we expect an answer?
This editorial does not make recommendations.
Friday, June 6, 2014
REMEMBERING HOWARD W HUNTER 20 YEARS LATER . . .
Howard W Hunter was born in 1907 in Idaho and raised in that state. As an adult, he lived in Los Angeles County, a ranch in Arcadia to be exact. He studied law at Southwestern University and plied the profession of a corporate attorney. Among his many clients, his most interesting assignment was as the legal counsel to a trust that control the minerals rights of a huge and ancient Spanish land grant that found itself above oil in 20th Century Long Beach / South Los Angeles area.
In the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he served as a bishop and a stake president. He chaired a regional Welfare Department Committee and also chaired a local committee that helped construct the Los Angeles Temple. In the one responsibility, he came to the attention of President J Reuben Clark. In the other he came to the attention of President Stephen L Richards. Both of them had careers in the law.
Therefore, when President Richards died unexpectedly in 1959, and President David O McKay had to select a new first counselor and a new second counselor from members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, those in the know were not completely surprised that he selected Howard W Hunter as a new apostle. McKay must have undoubtedly heard a lot of good things about him from his counselors. In this period, new apostles typically came from direct Utah backgrounds or were already in responsible church positions in the Salt Lake City. Thus Elder Hunter was something of a new apostolic entity, having roots in Idaho and in California.
Elder Hunter came to the Quorum of the Twelve just a few months after airlines started using jet liners. He and Gordon B. Hinckley, the next new apostle, became the first jet-age apostles. Hunter’s notes on airlines, airports and jets became the basis of the quorum’s knowledge and procedures in dealing with jet age airports and airlines. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, those knowledgeable about the workings of the Institutional Church and those who worked in it knew that one went to four particular apostles when one needed to get something done or changed or activated in the Church / the bureaucracy / or BYU: Elders Hinckley, McConkie, Packer – and Hunter.
When Ezra Taft Benson became president of the Church, the next senior apostle was Marion G. Romney, but age and health problems prevented him from taking up full duties as President of the Quorum of the Twelve. Therefore, Hunter became acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve in 1985 and president in 1988, but he had done some defacto leadership of the Quorum earlier when Quorum President Ezra Taft Benson had health problems in the 1980s. Starting late 1970s / early 1980s both Hunter and his first wife, Clara Jeffs Hunter, suffered major health problems. She died in 1983. As an old man with health problems, he married a second time in 1990. Her name was Inis Egan His health issues compounded in this period.
In May 1994, President Ezra Taft Benson died. His presidency covered November 1985 to May 1994, but his health and strength lasted only such that he functioned in the First Presidency to late 1988 / early 1989. Most of the Benson presidency was an extension of the Gordon B. Hinckley Administrative Years 1983-1985, 1989-1994, 1995-2008. Hunter had poor health and had a frail condition when the apostles sustained him and ordain him the new president of the LDS Church in June 1994.
It would be interesting to find out how much Howard Hunter knew in June 1994 of the facts of his frail physical condition and the advanced prostate cancer that took his life 9 months later in early March 1995. It would also be even interesting to know what he told the apostles, if anything, before the ordination.
Back in January 1970, President Joseph Fielding Smith (age 93), replaced the late David O McKay as Church president Both of them had been frail and vague for years. The apostles accepted a proposal to ordain Smith president and ordain the senior apostle and the next Church president Harold B. Lee as Smith’s first counselor. Smith then delegated his duties broadly to his counselors Lee and Nathan Eldon Tanner. I suspect they and the apostles assumed that Smith would not last long and Lee would last long, so it was an acceptable short-term arrangement. Had they know that Smith would last two and a half years and that Lee would not live to see 1974, the apostles might been of a mind to take a different course. Obviously, this sort of speculation is useless, because the apostles of 1970 did not have information that specific in their possession. They set the precedent, none the less, definitely in 1970 Still, it seems cruel to have forced a dying old man to spent his last months in an arduous job.
President Kimball experienced incapacitating health problem from late 1981 to 1985; President Benson experience incapacitation from 1989 to 1994. President Hunter, yet another Church President in poor health, posed something of a public image problem for the Church in 1994. Early in the Hunter presidency someone at the Ensign magazine found an obscure quotation from an early apostle along the lines of Orson Hyde who got quoted as saying that a prophet cannot lead the Mormon people unless he knows their problems and their sicknesses. After President Hunter died, President Hinckley – a man who was basically as strong as a horse even with his various health problems in his 90s – was ordained the new president. That particular quote never surfaced again.
A few days after Hunter assumed the presidency, he called Elder Jeffrey R Holland to serve in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It was generally assumed . . . maybe it would be more accurate to say – your writer assumed early on Holland would someday become an apostle, but Hunter brought him to the quorum rather more early than I expected. Holland had served for 9 years as BYU president and had worked closely with Hunter, a senior apostle and an attorney, in the creation of The Jerusalem Center Building. It was, thanks in part to The Hunter Style, a major diplomatic coup amid the late 1980s Israel situation.
When Elder Holland described his day of ordination, went to some length to show that Hunter was vital and in command, that Hunter was up and functioning at 7:00 a.m. to lead the meeting, to do the ordination, to give Holland his charge. Holland to this day remains the most important of Hunter’s few appointments to church leadership. Elder Cecil Samuelsen, who eventually became BYU’s president, was called to the Seventy in the Hunter administration, as was Elder Andrew Wayne Peterson, who eventually suffered paralysis in a much-discussed controversial motorcycle accident; Hinckley released him a few years later. As to Holland, he may eventually wind up being more important than any of Benson’s apostles.
In his six month active administration, Hunter encouraged and emphasized Christ-like living and temple attendance. He dedicated two temples, the Orlando Florida Temple and the Bountiful Utah Temple. His appearance in Bountiful was among his last if not his last public appearance.
The LDS Church never has a minor president or minor prophet in its current terms. President Hunter’s administration lasted a record-setting 6 month active service, 9 months all totaled. It is the shortest administration in LDS history. LDS public communications became somewhat sensitive about his lasting contribution and purpose. Leaders later insisted that he was involved in if not central to the creation of the much touted The Proclamation on the Family. His name does not appear on the document; the Church officially released it the October after his death. Leaders also insisted that Hunter was crucial to the evolution of the Regional Representatives leadership group of the Church (created in 1967 – dissolved in 1995) into the Area Authorities. President Hinckley announced them officially a month after Hunter’s death. They eventually evolved into Area Seventies.
Hunter's real days of presiding influence were as a senior apostle. As Church president his health and his short tenure length limited his influence.
At Brigham Young University, Hunter’s minor status got immortalized in brick and mortar when the Law Library got expanded and named in honor of President Hunter. The library was a wing of the law building, which was named for J Reuben Clark. Clark served as first and second counselor to the First Presidency from 1933 to 1961; he became influential in the 1940s and 1950s as a de facto president of the Church during those periods when Presidents Grant and Smith were in frail condition. Thus the building named for a Church President is an adjunct to a building named for a First Presidency Counselor.
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE:
There is nothing wrong, there is no shame in being a minor President of the Church. We Mormons are all the better for our association with Howard W Hunter, who served as an apostle in the LDS Church from 1959 to 1995.
In the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he served as a bishop and a stake president. He chaired a regional Welfare Department Committee and also chaired a local committee that helped construct the Los Angeles Temple. In the one responsibility, he came to the attention of President J Reuben Clark. In the other he came to the attention of President Stephen L Richards. Both of them had careers in the law.
Therefore, when President Richards died unexpectedly in 1959, and President David O McKay had to select a new first counselor and a new second counselor from members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, those in the know were not completely surprised that he selected Howard W Hunter as a new apostle. McKay must have undoubtedly heard a lot of good things about him from his counselors. In this period, new apostles typically came from direct Utah backgrounds or were already in responsible church positions in the Salt Lake City. Thus Elder Hunter was something of a new apostolic entity, having roots in Idaho and in California.
Elder Hunter came to the Quorum of the Twelve just a few months after airlines started using jet liners. He and Gordon B. Hinckley, the next new apostle, became the first jet-age apostles. Hunter’s notes on airlines, airports and jets became the basis of the quorum’s knowledge and procedures in dealing with jet age airports and airlines. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, those knowledgeable about the workings of the Institutional Church and those who worked in it knew that one went to four particular apostles when one needed to get something done or changed or activated in the Church / the bureaucracy / or BYU: Elders Hinckley, McConkie, Packer – and Hunter.
When Ezra Taft Benson became president of the Church, the next senior apostle was Marion G. Romney, but age and health problems prevented him from taking up full duties as President of the Quorum of the Twelve. Therefore, Hunter became acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve in 1985 and president in 1988, but he had done some defacto leadership of the Quorum earlier when Quorum President Ezra Taft Benson had health problems in the 1980s. Starting late 1970s / early 1980s both Hunter and his first wife, Clara Jeffs Hunter, suffered major health problems. She died in 1983. As an old man with health problems, he married a second time in 1990. Her name was Inis Egan His health issues compounded in this period.
In May 1994, President Ezra Taft Benson died. His presidency covered November 1985 to May 1994, but his health and strength lasted only such that he functioned in the First Presidency to late 1988 / early 1989. Most of the Benson presidency was an extension of the Gordon B. Hinckley Administrative Years 1983-1985, 1989-1994, 1995-2008. Hunter had poor health and had a frail condition when the apostles sustained him and ordain him the new president of the LDS Church in June 1994.
It would be interesting to find out how much Howard Hunter knew in June 1994 of the facts of his frail physical condition and the advanced prostate cancer that took his life 9 months later in early March 1995. It would also be even interesting to know what he told the apostles, if anything, before the ordination.
Back in January 1970, President Joseph Fielding Smith (age 93), replaced the late David O McKay as Church president Both of them had been frail and vague for years. The apostles accepted a proposal to ordain Smith president and ordain the senior apostle and the next Church president Harold B. Lee as Smith’s first counselor. Smith then delegated his duties broadly to his counselors Lee and Nathan Eldon Tanner. I suspect they and the apostles assumed that Smith would not last long and Lee would last long, so it was an acceptable short-term arrangement. Had they know that Smith would last two and a half years and that Lee would not live to see 1974, the apostles might been of a mind to take a different course. Obviously, this sort of speculation is useless, because the apostles of 1970 did not have information that specific in their possession. They set the precedent, none the less, definitely in 1970 Still, it seems cruel to have forced a dying old man to spent his last months in an arduous job.
President Kimball experienced incapacitating health problem from late 1981 to 1985; President Benson experience incapacitation from 1989 to 1994. President Hunter, yet another Church President in poor health, posed something of a public image problem for the Church in 1994. Early in the Hunter presidency someone at the Ensign magazine found an obscure quotation from an early apostle along the lines of Orson Hyde who got quoted as saying that a prophet cannot lead the Mormon people unless he knows their problems and their sicknesses. After President Hunter died, President Hinckley – a man who was basically as strong as a horse even with his various health problems in his 90s – was ordained the new president. That particular quote never surfaced again.
A few days after Hunter assumed the presidency, he called Elder Jeffrey R Holland to serve in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It was generally assumed . . . maybe it would be more accurate to say – your writer assumed early on Holland would someday become an apostle, but Hunter brought him to the quorum rather more early than I expected. Holland had served for 9 years as BYU president and had worked closely with Hunter, a senior apostle and an attorney, in the creation of The Jerusalem Center Building. It was, thanks in part to The Hunter Style, a major diplomatic coup amid the late 1980s Israel situation.
When Elder Holland described his day of ordination, went to some length to show that Hunter was vital and in command, that Hunter was up and functioning at 7:00 a.m. to lead the meeting, to do the ordination, to give Holland his charge. Holland to this day remains the most important of Hunter’s few appointments to church leadership. Elder Cecil Samuelsen, who eventually became BYU’s president, was called to the Seventy in the Hunter administration, as was Elder Andrew Wayne Peterson, who eventually suffered paralysis in a much-discussed controversial motorcycle accident; Hinckley released him a few years later. As to Holland, he may eventually wind up being more important than any of Benson’s apostles.
In his six month active administration, Hunter encouraged and emphasized Christ-like living and temple attendance. He dedicated two temples, the Orlando Florida Temple and the Bountiful Utah Temple. His appearance in Bountiful was among his last if not his last public appearance.
The LDS Church never has a minor president or minor prophet in its current terms. President Hunter’s administration lasted a record-setting 6 month active service, 9 months all totaled. It is the shortest administration in LDS history. LDS public communications became somewhat sensitive about his lasting contribution and purpose. Leaders later insisted that he was involved in if not central to the creation of the much touted The Proclamation on the Family. His name does not appear on the document; the Church officially released it the October after his death. Leaders also insisted that Hunter was crucial to the evolution of the Regional Representatives leadership group of the Church (created in 1967 – dissolved in 1995) into the Area Authorities. President Hinckley announced them officially a month after Hunter’s death. They eventually evolved into Area Seventies.
Hunter's real days of presiding influence were as a senior apostle. As Church president his health and his short tenure length limited his influence.
At Brigham Young University, Hunter’s minor status got immortalized in brick and mortar when the Law Library got expanded and named in honor of President Hunter. The library was a wing of the law building, which was named for J Reuben Clark. Clark served as first and second counselor to the First Presidency from 1933 to 1961; he became influential in the 1940s and 1950s as a de facto president of the Church during those periods when Presidents Grant and Smith were in frail condition. Thus the building named for a Church President is an adjunct to a building named for a First Presidency Counselor.
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE:
There is nothing wrong, there is no shame in being a minor President of the Church. We Mormons are all the better for our association with Howard W Hunter, who served as an apostle in the LDS Church from 1959 to 1995.
Friday, February 28, 2014
SAUCE FOR THE RUSSIAN GOOSE, SAUCE FOR THE AMERICAN GANDER: Comments on USA involvement in the Crimea Ukraine Crisis
As I listened to President Obama’s remarks about The Crimea Ukraine Crisis, and as I read the remarks on-line, it occurs to me that Our President is the biggest hypocrite on this particular subject.
The United States of America has for centuries “influenced”, interfered with, and meddled with small nations bordering it and surrounding it. It has military bases all over the planet, including Guantanamo on the east shore of Cuba. It has intervened in all sorts of small close-by countries for all kinds of dubious reasons. Those dubious reason rarely actually helped the natives in the long view.
The USA has recently invaded countries that were technically closer to the Russian sphere of influence than the American sphere – Iran, Afghanistan. The results of that adventure on the local natives has not yet been completely positive.
If the USA can intervene in small close-at-hand nations, then Russia obviously has the right to intervene in small bordering nations.
THE CALL TO ACTION IN EUROPE
If the European Union wants Ukraine under its positive influence instead of the negative Putin Russia influence, the European Union will have to distribute more than just its weight in words.
Monday, February 24, 2014
To Light the Fire Within – a study of the Sochi Olympics Medal Winners statistics
The government of the Russian Federation spent 51 billion dollars, a considerable chunk of it on graft, bribery, corruption, and pay backs, to build and host a Winter Olympics in a semi-tropical Black Seaside resort. Some day it would be nice if Russia hosted a Winter Olympic games in an actual wintertime mountain community in or near the Ural Mountains. Anyway, for its 51 billion dollar investment, the Russian athletes won the most medals of all the competitors.
This next list shows a comparison contrast of the top three nation winners of the last five Winter Olympic Games. Certain countries keep turning up.
Medal totals past 5 Winter Olympics
1998 Nagano
Germany 29
Norway 25
Russia 18
Japan 10
2002 Salt Lake City
Germany 36
USA 34
Norway 25
2006 Turin
Germany 29
USA 25
Austria 23 1
Italy 11
2010 Vancouver
USA 37
Germany 30 4
Canada 26 1
2014 Sochi
Russia 33 2
USA 28 4
Norway 26 3
The good news from the Sochi Olympics is that the big countries with all the money and lots of athletes did not entirely over-dominate the games, they hardly dominated at all. This has been the case at the Winter Olympics since 1998.
Note the totals in the following lists for comparison contrast.
Medal winners from Countries with populations over 80 million
1 Russian Federation 33
2 United States of America 28
6 Germany 19
11 People's Republic of China 9
15 Japan 8
total 97
Medal winners from the small countries in population
3 Norway 26
4 Canada 25
5 Netherlands 24
7 Austria 17
8 France 15
9 Sweden 15
10 Switzerland 11
12 Republic of Korea 8
13 Czech Republic 8
14 Slovenia 8
16 Italy 8 most medals won, none gold
17 Belarus 6
18 Poland 6
19 Finland 5
20 Great Britain 4
21 Latvia 4
22 Australia 3
23 Ukraine 2
24 Slovakia 1
25 Croatia 1
26 Kazakhstan 1
grand total 198
The European Union eclipsed the Chinese empire, the Russian Empire, and the American Empire with enough and to spare. E U athletes won 141 medals.
Medal winners by continent
Europe 214
Asia 59
North America 53
Australia 3
I keep hoping that someday athletes from India, Indonesia, Africa, South America, or Caribbean or Pacific Isles will win Winter Olympic medals. That may happen someday, but it did not happen this year.
The Olympics remains a rich person’s sport and a rich country’s sport. Medal winners from the 12 wealthiest countries defined by the United Nations list in Wikipedia
1 Russian Federation 33
2 United States of America 28
4 Canada 25
6 Germany 19
8 France 15
11 People's Republic of China 9
12 Republic of Korea 8
15 Japan 8
16 Italy 8
20 Great Britain 4
22 Australia 3
garnered a total of no fewer than 160 medals.
The money angle still remains the biggest road block to getting talented athletes from all corners of the world to an Olympic games. The Olympics has the best athletes money can buy, but that does not mean it has the best athletes there are.
Stronger. Faster. Higher. Richer.
This next list shows a comparison contrast of the top three nation winners of the last five Winter Olympic Games. Certain countries keep turning up.
Medal totals past 5 Winter Olympics
1998 Nagano
Germany 29
Norway 25
Russia 18
Japan 10
2002 Salt Lake City
Germany 36
USA 34
Norway 25
2006 Turin
Germany 29
USA 25
Austria 23 1
Italy 11
2010 Vancouver
USA 37
Germany 30 4
Canada 26 1
2014 Sochi
Russia 33 2
USA 28 4
Norway 26 3
The good news from the Sochi Olympics is that the big countries with all the money and lots of athletes did not entirely over-dominate the games, they hardly dominated at all. This has been the case at the Winter Olympics since 1998.
Note the totals in the following lists for comparison contrast.
Medal winners from Countries with populations over 80 million
1 Russian Federation 33
2 United States of America 28
6 Germany 19
11 People's Republic of China 9
15 Japan 8
total 97
Medal winners from the small countries in population
3 Norway 26
4 Canada 25
5 Netherlands 24
7 Austria 17
8 France 15
9 Sweden 15
10 Switzerland 11
12 Republic of Korea 8
13 Czech Republic 8
14 Slovenia 8
16 Italy 8 most medals won, none gold
17 Belarus 6
18 Poland 6
19 Finland 5
20 Great Britain 4
21 Latvia 4
22 Australia 3
23 Ukraine 2
24 Slovakia 1
25 Croatia 1
26 Kazakhstan 1
grand total 198
The European Union eclipsed the Chinese empire, the Russian Empire, and the American Empire with enough and to spare. E U athletes won 141 medals.
Medal winners by continent
Europe 214
Asia 59
North America 53
Australia 3
I keep hoping that someday athletes from India, Indonesia, Africa, South America, or Caribbean or Pacific Isles will win Winter Olympic medals. That may happen someday, but it did not happen this year.
The Olympics remains a rich person’s sport and a rich country’s sport. Medal winners from the 12 wealthiest countries defined by the United Nations list in Wikipedia
1 Russian Federation 33
2 United States of America 28
4 Canada 25
6 Germany 19
8 France 15
11 People's Republic of China 9
12 Republic of Korea 8
15 Japan 8
16 Italy 8
20 Great Britain 4
22 Australia 3
garnered a total of no fewer than 160 medals.
The money angle still remains the biggest road block to getting talented athletes from all corners of the world to an Olympic games. The Olympics has the best athletes money can buy, but that does not mean it has the best athletes there are.
Stronger. Faster. Higher. Richer.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
IN MEMORIAM -- SHIRLEY TEMPLE: a study of 4 of her 1940s films
Shirley Temple, born in 1928 and died in February 2014, had a life story that frankly reads like fiction – except it really did happen.
In the early 1930s she made educational movies for tikes. In the early 1930s, William Fox signed her to a contract. Fox Studio and Twentieth Century Fox Studio turned her into a child superstar. Her movies were heavy on optimism amid hard times and sometimes had musical elements. She made a huge fortune for Twentieth Century Fox.
In the 1950s, she became an early participant in television. Her second marriage lasted a long time by any standards.
In the 1960s and 1970s she had a diplomatic career, serving in two countries as an ambassador and eventually as the chief of protocol. Very few stars – John Gavin and Sidney Poitier come to mind – served as ambassadors, though at least three – Irene Dunne [who was also a Knight of Malta], Danny Kaye, and Audrey Hepburn – served either as ambassadors or delegates associated with the United Nations.
When she died, she was the senior living recipient of an Academy Award, an honorary award for the film work she did 80 years ago this year. She was 6 when AMPAS bestowed it.
Of the movies she made as a child, my personal favorite happens to be Walter Lang’s The Blue Bird (20th Century Fox 1940), one of her few three-strip Technicolor films, Fox’s answer to Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz (MGM 1939). It contains a vision of pre-mortal heaven that features boy spirits dressed in short blue togas and girl spirits dressed in shorter pink togas being sent to Earth in a spiritual galleon. No kidding. The Blue Bird is delightfully berserk, an eye-popping film fantasy based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s play. It was Shirley’s biggest flop of a child star vehicle: unlike Oz, it has not make grundles of money in re-release.
Little credible evidence suggests Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer really did try to borrow her for the role of “Dorothy” in Oz. Producer Mervyn LeRoy and studio head Louis B Mayer were, practically from the beginning, sold on casting Judy Garland as Dorothy.
Her father squandered the money she made at Fox, though her mother seems stable enough.
This bring me to Shirley’s career in the 1940s when she was a teenager / young adult. She was not quite as big a superstar in this period, but she made four fascinating pictures. They illustrate a number of points about film making in the 1940s and America in general.
When Shirley left 20th Century Fox, MGM signed her to a contract, but could not decide what to do with a larger more-mature Shirley Temple. David O Selznick signed her to a personal contract as well, and also found her problematic to cast. He loaned her to a number of films, made only one movie with her, and eventually told her she should move to Europe and change her name for professional purposes. Fortunately, she had the sense not to do that.
In 1943, David O Selznick cast Shirley in his production of Since You Went Away, directed by John Cromwell. The movie proposes to show the year 1943 as lived by an average American family trying to make due somewhere in Ohio during World War II while the father of house is conscripted to the United States military. This average family consisted of Claudette Colbert as the mother, Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple as the teenage daughters, Monty Wooley as a boarder, Joseph Cotten as mother’s boyfriend, and Hattie McDaniel as the housekeeper. If there were many average families like that in Ohio or anywhere else in 1943 USA, I would be darned surprised. The oldest daughter falls in love with a soldier portrayed by Robert Walker, which only compounds the idealization – and Selznick fell in love with Jones which complicated his home life.
In 1947, Dore Shary cast Shirley in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, one of the most berserk comedies made in that period. Try to top this as a story. Cary Grant, very fit and very charming, portrays a bachelor artist who visits a high school to lecture and winds up attracting the attention of high-school student Shirley who develops a yen for him. He somehow does something in relation to that student that winds him up before a municipal judge, who happens to be said girl student’s big sister. Myrna Loy portrayed Big Sister.
At this point the plot gets sort of farfetched. Loy was old enough to be Temple’s mother and was older than Grant. If big sister was indeed a female municipal judge [ very rare in 1947 ], how did someone supposedly that young credibly land such a position? Well, never mind. Chalk it up to willing suspension of disbelief. Maybe we can overlook that. Judge Big Sister sentences artist to community service involving little sister, which seems just too weird — even if Big Sister hopes that little sister will tire of him. Who would tire of Cary Grant? Not me – and not Big Sister who develops a yen for him, too. The plot thickened like concrete.
Sidney Sheldon, of all people, helped write this elaborate piffle. He was in his Hollywood days before he created and wrote I Dream of Jeannie for NBC-TV in 1965 and before he started churning out huge sexy romance novels that became megahits in book stores. AMPAS even awarded him an Oscar for best writing that year.
Also In 1947, Shirley starred in That Hagen Girl, which was her first film role as a young women – not a kid. Ronald Reagan portrayed her first adult boyfriend. It is a fascinating combination given their later histories. During World War II, Reagan did his military service in Hollywood making war education films and propaganda films. No actors came out of The War with as complete an understanding of Hollywood’s political power structure as he did. Only Robert Montgomery came close, and he eventually became the media consultant to President Eisenhower. In this period, Reagan became the president of the Screen Actors Guild. Reagan eventually became a governor and President of the United States. Temple eventually had a diplomatic career. Reagan was a natural choice to be Our Shirley’s first adult beau: as one critic said of him at the time, “He has a cheery way of looking at dames.”
In 1948, John Ford and Merian C. Cooper cast Shirley in Ford’s big Monument Valley western Fort Apache. Ford directed Shirley as a tike in the 1930s; but in the 1940s, given his eccentric personality, he seems an iffy choice to direct her. Actually she did well by him; she turns out one of the memorable performances in that memorable film. She never worked with Ford again – though and she could have if either he or Shirley had wanted.
John Wayne co-stars in this film with Henry Fonda, who portrays just about the most disreputable, unlikable villain of a United States army officer Ford ever created in a movie. He comes Out West to a fort with injun troubles and starts running it into the ground. Shirley portrays his almost-grown daughter who accompanies him. He is a widower, or something. One way or another, he has no wife. He named this daughter “Philadelphia” which congers up all sorts of images of what type of person this man is. Meanwhile, daughter gets herself in trouble with an enlisted soldier whose enlisted father and civilian-mother happen to live and work in this fort. The Colonel is incensed that she would start a relationship with an enlisted man instead of a commissioned officer or someone associated with a commissioned officer. The boy’s father is unhappy with the situation too; being a good Army sergeant, he knows his place.
Philadelphia soon disappears from the film. Her father leads troops on a mission that turns into something along the lines of Custer’s Last Stand. It is his fault, and he dies with everyone else. The movie ends with John Wayne spinning a yarn about him for the benefit of an Eastern newspaper reporter. Ford’s view is factual evidence is not history; the story, not the facts, counts in recounting America’s greatness. It is one of the most unsettling ends to a Ford movie, but it says a lot about the sort of history we get in school. It remains one of the most Fordian of Ford’s films.
Shirley had an incredible career as a kid, but she found a way to improve with age. Not every kid star can say that. Will Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton ever become ambassadors? Shirley Temple's 1940s films illustrate many points still useful to know even today.
In the early 1930s she made educational movies for tikes. In the early 1930s, William Fox signed her to a contract. Fox Studio and Twentieth Century Fox Studio turned her into a child superstar. Her movies were heavy on optimism amid hard times and sometimes had musical elements. She made a huge fortune for Twentieth Century Fox.
In the 1950s, she became an early participant in television. Her second marriage lasted a long time by any standards.
In the 1960s and 1970s she had a diplomatic career, serving in two countries as an ambassador and eventually as the chief of protocol. Very few stars – John Gavin and Sidney Poitier come to mind – served as ambassadors, though at least three – Irene Dunne [who was also a Knight of Malta], Danny Kaye, and Audrey Hepburn – served either as ambassadors or delegates associated with the United Nations.
When she died, she was the senior living recipient of an Academy Award, an honorary award for the film work she did 80 years ago this year. She was 6 when AMPAS bestowed it.
Of the movies she made as a child, my personal favorite happens to be Walter Lang’s The Blue Bird (20th Century Fox 1940), one of her few three-strip Technicolor films, Fox’s answer to Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz (MGM 1939). It contains a vision of pre-mortal heaven that features boy spirits dressed in short blue togas and girl spirits dressed in shorter pink togas being sent to Earth in a spiritual galleon. No kidding. The Blue Bird is delightfully berserk, an eye-popping film fantasy based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s play. It was Shirley’s biggest flop of a child star vehicle: unlike Oz, it has not make grundles of money in re-release.
Little credible evidence suggests Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer really did try to borrow her for the role of “Dorothy” in Oz. Producer Mervyn LeRoy and studio head Louis B Mayer were, practically from the beginning, sold on casting Judy Garland as Dorothy.
Her father squandered the money she made at Fox, though her mother seems stable enough.
This bring me to Shirley’s career in the 1940s when she was a teenager / young adult. She was not quite as big a superstar in this period, but she made four fascinating pictures. They illustrate a number of points about film making in the 1940s and America in general.
When Shirley left 20th Century Fox, MGM signed her to a contract, but could not decide what to do with a larger more-mature Shirley Temple. David O Selznick signed her to a personal contract as well, and also found her problematic to cast. He loaned her to a number of films, made only one movie with her, and eventually told her she should move to Europe and change her name for professional purposes. Fortunately, she had the sense not to do that.
In 1943, David O Selznick cast Shirley in his production of Since You Went Away, directed by John Cromwell. The movie proposes to show the year 1943 as lived by an average American family trying to make due somewhere in Ohio during World War II while the father of house is conscripted to the United States military. This average family consisted of Claudette Colbert as the mother, Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple as the teenage daughters, Monty Wooley as a boarder, Joseph Cotten as mother’s boyfriend, and Hattie McDaniel as the housekeeper. If there were many average families like that in Ohio or anywhere else in 1943 USA, I would be darned surprised. The oldest daughter falls in love with a soldier portrayed by Robert Walker, which only compounds the idealization – and Selznick fell in love with Jones which complicated his home life.
In 1947, Dore Shary cast Shirley in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, one of the most berserk comedies made in that period. Try to top this as a story. Cary Grant, very fit and very charming, portrays a bachelor artist who visits a high school to lecture and winds up attracting the attention of high-school student Shirley who develops a yen for him. He somehow does something in relation to that student that winds him up before a municipal judge, who happens to be said girl student’s big sister. Myrna Loy portrayed Big Sister.
At this point the plot gets sort of farfetched. Loy was old enough to be Temple’s mother and was older than Grant. If big sister was indeed a female municipal judge [ very rare in 1947 ], how did someone supposedly that young credibly land such a position? Well, never mind. Chalk it up to willing suspension of disbelief. Maybe we can overlook that. Judge Big Sister sentences artist to community service involving little sister, which seems just too weird — even if Big Sister hopes that little sister will tire of him. Who would tire of Cary Grant? Not me – and not Big Sister who develops a yen for him, too. The plot thickened like concrete.
Sidney Sheldon, of all people, helped write this elaborate piffle. He was in his Hollywood days before he created and wrote I Dream of Jeannie for NBC-TV in 1965 and before he started churning out huge sexy romance novels that became megahits in book stores. AMPAS even awarded him an Oscar for best writing that year.
Also In 1947, Shirley starred in That Hagen Girl, which was her first film role as a young women – not a kid. Ronald Reagan portrayed her first adult boyfriend. It is a fascinating combination given their later histories. During World War II, Reagan did his military service in Hollywood making war education films and propaganda films. No actors came out of The War with as complete an understanding of Hollywood’s political power structure as he did. Only Robert Montgomery came close, and he eventually became the media consultant to President Eisenhower. In this period, Reagan became the president of the Screen Actors Guild. Reagan eventually became a governor and President of the United States. Temple eventually had a diplomatic career. Reagan was a natural choice to be Our Shirley’s first adult beau: as one critic said of him at the time, “He has a cheery way of looking at dames.”
In 1948, John Ford and Merian C. Cooper cast Shirley in Ford’s big Monument Valley western Fort Apache. Ford directed Shirley as a tike in the 1930s; but in the 1940s, given his eccentric personality, he seems an iffy choice to direct her. Actually she did well by him; she turns out one of the memorable performances in that memorable film. She never worked with Ford again – though and she could have if either he or Shirley had wanted.
John Wayne co-stars in this film with Henry Fonda, who portrays just about the most disreputable, unlikable villain of a United States army officer Ford ever created in a movie. He comes Out West to a fort with injun troubles and starts running it into the ground. Shirley portrays his almost-grown daughter who accompanies him. He is a widower, or something. One way or another, he has no wife. He named this daughter “Philadelphia” which congers up all sorts of images of what type of person this man is. Meanwhile, daughter gets herself in trouble with an enlisted soldier whose enlisted father and civilian-mother happen to live and work in this fort. The Colonel is incensed that she would start a relationship with an enlisted man instead of a commissioned officer or someone associated with a commissioned officer. The boy’s father is unhappy with the situation too; being a good Army sergeant, he knows his place.
Philadelphia soon disappears from the film. Her father leads troops on a mission that turns into something along the lines of Custer’s Last Stand. It is his fault, and he dies with everyone else. The movie ends with John Wayne spinning a yarn about him for the benefit of an Eastern newspaper reporter. Ford’s view is factual evidence is not history; the story, not the facts, counts in recounting America’s greatness. It is one of the most unsettling ends to a Ford movie, but it says a lot about the sort of history we get in school. It remains one of the most Fordian of Ford’s films.
Shirley had an incredible career as a kid, but she found a way to improve with age. Not every kid star can say that. Will Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton ever become ambassadors? Shirley Temple's 1940s films illustrate many points still useful to know even today.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui: what we should learn from a known felon disaster waiting to happen.
Reading this morning in the news:
Suspect in Utah County officer shooting has died
Thursday attacks » Police say they may never know the motive.
By Nate Carlisle, BROOKE Adams and Jessica Miller | The Salt Lake Tribune
First Published Jan 31 2014 11:12 am
Spanish Fork • The suspect in the shooting death of one Utah County Sheriff’s officer and the wounding of another died Friday as law enforcement provided more detail on four shootings that stretched through two counties.
Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui, 27, succumbed to his injuries at 2:20 p.m. Friday at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. He was shot in Juab County on Thursday after police say he shot and killed Sgt. Cory Wride, 44, and wounded Deputy Greg Sherwood, 38.
Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui.
What to say? He illustrates four things that we do not want to talk about in culture, but we need to discuss.
1. He had a long criminal record. He had bolted from his parole officer and was a wanted felon. Why do Utah parole officers have so many cases? More parole officers needed.
2. Garcia-Jauregui had killed a person by stabbing said person multiple times with a screw driver and then running the person over with a car. In jail he earned contraband citations and got into a violent confrontation. The parole board released him in less than 5 years. Five years. The legislature needs to hold hearings and do some rules adjusting. The legislature needs to understand that funding prison programs will not come cheap.
3. His is yet another story of the Second Amendment in action. Someone was perfectly willing to either give or sell this man a weapon. Or he stole a weapon from somebody whom did not keep a weapon secure. I am tired of hearing Second Amendment Supporters talk about these sorts of incidents as if they cannot be helped and that the victims are unfortunate but collateral damage.
4. His sort of anger and violence management problems also illustrate that mental health always needs more funding for research and treatment.
THE CALL TO ACTION
Incidents like Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui do not happen by accident. The particular indicate the legislature needs to hold hearings and adjust certain regulations with weapons and prisoners.
The U S Constitution needs an amendment guaranteeing self defense. The Second Amendment is not it.
Suspect in Utah County officer shooting has died
Thursday attacks » Police say they may never know the motive.
By Nate Carlisle, BROOKE Adams and Jessica Miller | The Salt Lake Tribune
First Published Jan 31 2014 11:12 am
Spanish Fork • The suspect in the shooting death of one Utah County Sheriff’s officer and the wounding of another died Friday as law enforcement provided more detail on four shootings that stretched through two counties.
Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui, 27, succumbed to his injuries at 2:20 p.m. Friday at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. He was shot in Juab County on Thursday after police say he shot and killed Sgt. Cory Wride, 44, and wounded Deputy Greg Sherwood, 38.
Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui.
What to say? He illustrates four things that we do not want to talk about in culture, but we need to discuss.
1. He had a long criminal record. He had bolted from his parole officer and was a wanted felon. Why do Utah parole officers have so many cases? More parole officers needed.
2. Garcia-Jauregui had killed a person by stabbing said person multiple times with a screw driver and then running the person over with a car. In jail he earned contraband citations and got into a violent confrontation. The parole board released him in less than 5 years. Five years. The legislature needs to hold hearings and do some rules adjusting. The legislature needs to understand that funding prison programs will not come cheap.
3. His is yet another story of the Second Amendment in action. Someone was perfectly willing to either give or sell this man a weapon. Or he stole a weapon from somebody whom did not keep a weapon secure. I am tired of hearing Second Amendment Supporters talk about these sorts of incidents as if they cannot be helped and that the victims are unfortunate but collateral damage.
4. His sort of anger and violence management problems also illustrate that mental health always needs more funding for research and treatment.
THE CALL TO ACTION
Incidents like Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui do not happen by accident. The particular indicate the legislature needs to hold hearings and adjust certain regulations with weapons and prisoners.
The U S Constitution needs an amendment guaranteeing self defense. The Second Amendment is not it.
Monday, January 27, 2014
THE RELIC OF BARBARISM -- legislatures must preserve one man one spouse
MISPLACED OBSESSIVENESS
Many Utahns obsess and fume over a federal judge’s recent ruling about same gender marriage in Utah, as if the judge wanted to redefine marriage so everyone had to marry someone after their own gender. In fact, heterosexuals have through the ages corrupted marriage so thoroughly that amending the genders of matrimony hardly seems that major a deal.
However, a few weeks before the Marriage Equality ruling, another federal judge made a ruling about Utah’s anti-polygamy laws that really does threaten cultural stability and the institution of marriage.
Sinister and unAmerican forces currently work toward a goal of invalidating Utah’s anti-polygamy statutes to reintroduce plural marriage into the American scene. This must not happen. Sound reasons required the end of Mormon polygamy in 1890, 1896, and 1904.
DEMOGRAPHIC FACTUALNESS
Recently, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on-line posted a study guide about polygamy. It is, in some basic ways, inadequate but one of the notes features some usual information about polygamy in culture.
This is the reference:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on-line
http://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-and-families-in-early-utah?lang=eng&query=plural
16 December 2013
And the note:
“Recent calculations using a 3 percent growth rate and an average five-year age interval between husbands and wives at first marriage (reasonable estimates for the 19th-century Mormon population) indicate that the upper limit of sustainable polygamy in a stable society is 16 percent of husbands and 28 percent of wives. Davis Bitton and others, “Probing the High Prevalence of Polygyny in St. George, 1861–1880,” BYU Studies Quarterly 51, no. 4 (2012): 11–15.”
I admit I am frankly suspicious about the numbers. However the concept, it seems to me, is strong.
1 Polygamy works only with the right percentage of women to men.
2 Polygamy works only in certain economic conditions.
Depending on the ratio of men married and unmarried to women married and unmarried, Same gender marriage probably will make polygamy more difficult, not less.
Encyclopedias of Culture report that most cultures are polyandrist or polygamist. None the less, the United States Constitution’s Amendment 14 would suggest that all men should have equal access to a monogamous marriage.
THE CALL TO ACTION
Utah’s delegation in the U S Congress to work for A federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as monogamous and protected by the 14th Amendment.
Utah’s anti - plural marriage laws need to be reworked to guarantee the rights of all men to one spouse.
Many Utahns obsess and fume over a federal judge’s recent ruling about same gender marriage in Utah, as if the judge wanted to redefine marriage so everyone had to marry someone after their own gender. In fact, heterosexuals have through the ages corrupted marriage so thoroughly that amending the genders of matrimony hardly seems that major a deal.
However, a few weeks before the Marriage Equality ruling, another federal judge made a ruling about Utah’s anti-polygamy laws that really does threaten cultural stability and the institution of marriage.
Sinister and unAmerican forces currently work toward a goal of invalidating Utah’s anti-polygamy statutes to reintroduce plural marriage into the American scene. This must not happen. Sound reasons required the end of Mormon polygamy in 1890, 1896, and 1904.
DEMOGRAPHIC FACTUALNESS
Recently, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on-line posted a study guide about polygamy. It is, in some basic ways, inadequate but one of the notes features some usual information about polygamy in culture.
This is the reference:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on-line
http://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-and-families-in-early-utah?lang=eng&query=plural
16 December 2013
And the note:
“Recent calculations using a 3 percent growth rate and an average five-year age interval between husbands and wives at first marriage (reasonable estimates for the 19th-century Mormon population) indicate that the upper limit of sustainable polygamy in a stable society is 16 percent of husbands and 28 percent of wives. Davis Bitton and others, “Probing the High Prevalence of Polygyny in St. George, 1861–1880,” BYU Studies Quarterly 51, no. 4 (2012): 11–15.”
I admit I am frankly suspicious about the numbers. However the concept, it seems to me, is strong.
1 Polygamy works only with the right percentage of women to men.
2 Polygamy works only in certain economic conditions.
Depending on the ratio of men married and unmarried to women married and unmarried, Same gender marriage probably will make polygamy more difficult, not less.
Encyclopedias of Culture report that most cultures are polyandrist or polygamist. None the less, the United States Constitution’s Amendment 14 would suggest that all men should have equal access to a monogamous marriage.
THE CALL TO ACTION
Utah’s delegation in the U S Congress to work for A federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as monogamous and protected by the 14th Amendment.
Utah’s anti - plural marriage laws need to be reworked to guarantee the rights of all men to one spouse.
Monday, January 20, 2014
THE OTHER END OF THE STICK: the History of Secular Marriage and what it means for Marriage Equality
Some Utahns criticize and condemn the federal judge’s laying aside Utah’s definition of marriage approved by 65% of 59% of Utah voters.
I, however, decry that Utahns would just ignore the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution, "Full Faith and Credit Clause", which addresses the duties that states within the United States have to respect the "public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state."
I chastise, in the strongest terms, those in Utah who will just ignore the needs of 5 to 10 percent of Utah’s population because there are few of them and because they do not fit into their exalted definitions of acknowledged humans with rights.
SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE
Utah governor Gary Herbert is on the record as saying that marriage is between a man and a woman. In a sense the governor is like a father figure to Utah culture. Therefore, what father among us having two sons will say to his heterosexual son, “be thou clothed in robes with your beloved and sit over here”
and then say to his homosexual son, “Be thou clothed in rags all alone and sit over there”
and then say to himself, “I am just.”
How can that father say to one son, “You get what you want by way a domestic arrangement because it is with a woman” and then to the other son say, “You cannot get what you want by a domestic arrangement because it is a with a man” Can that man actually delude himself into thinking that he is objective or fair-minded? Many fathers find themselves dealing with this situation in reality --- not in the symbolic abstract.
God created man to evolve. Man’s institutions have evolved --- particularly marriage. This essay looks at that evolution and what government must do to promote that evolution.
DEFINITIONS
Someone wrote recently this in the Deseret News to illustrate the evolution of marriage:
“The purpose of marriage isn’t to unite children with the man and woman who made them for several reasons. First, marriage should and most frequently does occur before children become involved, if at all. Second, the purpose of marriage isn’t procreation nor is the sexual act debased to the bearing of children. It serves a much higher and noble purpose. The expression of love and an intimate bond between two people who have joined together. An expression that is only a small part of that bond. It isn’t the substance nor end of that relationship. It’s the human need to have someone. One doesn’t sit at home singly thinking "I want children to spend my life with" instead they long for that someone to spend life with. Third, legal marriage recognizes the legal commitment of two people by a contract. Children/dogs/houses are a result of that intimate relationship and not party to it.”
I have heard this sentiments and variations on it for years as a standard assumption in definitions of marriage for as long as I can remember.
Personally, I reject that view of marriage pretty much out of hand. Companionship is not marriage.
For years, I put myself on the written official record as defining marriage as a covenant between four entities –
1 a man
2 a woman
3a God
3b the society in which they live
4 and children, who have a right to parents of both gender in a legal protective framework.
This is what marriage should be. However, modern marriage is yet another example of something in culture we practice that does not deliver the promise.
Recently, those against same gender marriage have tried to claim that procreation is the point of marriage. That strategy is too little too late. Lawyers for the State of Utah can argue that Utah believes same-sex couples — married or not — should not be allowed to raise children. The problem here is too many quotable studies — for and against same gender marriage and / or opposite gender marriage — do not stand up as scholarly factual evidence.
However, human rights and civil rights suggest that a person should be able to marry the one person that person loves. How does Utah balance this right with a child’s right to parents of both genders?
AN ASIDE -- Personally, I believe that people in general do not have an inherent right to reproduce. Only people with monetary means to raise children have that right. Only people with healthy genetics should reproduce. People with healthy genetics and monetary means, whether homosexual or heterosexual, have the right to reproduce.
CIVIL RIGHTS -- HUMAN RIGHTS
The proponents of various styles of marriage can take their stands as they want. That is their right. However, individuals do not have a government’s obligation to balance the competing interests in a society.
A famous observation from an early interracial marriage couple comes to mind:
“I have lived long enough to see big changes now. But some people. . . . Well. Alabama did not get around to repealing its “Racial Integrity Act” until 2000. 2000. All we ever wanted was to get married because we loved each other. And if we hurt some people’s feelings, well — that was just too bad. It is their problem, not mine. I married the only man I ever love and am glad I married the man I loved. It meant a lot to me to marry the person I found most precious, despite the fact that some thought he was the wrong kind of person for me to marry. I am proud of our name on a court case about love and commitment and family in the face of such prejudice. Government has no business forcing some people’s religious beliefs over others. I support the right to marry for all – white or black, gay or straight. That is what loving is all about."
Mildred and Richard Loving
Interracial couple of white man and black woman
Supreme Court decision Loving vs Virginia 1967 decriminalized interracial marriage
EVOLUTION OF TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE
Recently I read a local editorial that noted that No one, whether gay or heterosexual, has a "fundamental right" to a legal status that is entirely discretionary with the state Legislature. (Quoted by Elise Amendola, Associated Press)
Marriage is a human institution and thus it has its advantages, disadvantages, and flaws. For ages the heterosexuals tacked all sorts of baggage and corruption onto the marriage institution:
History also indicates that marriage laws clearly follow what the public wants in marriage. Look at all the features of marriage that started as ideas among the general public and became law:
● Treating married women as husband's property
then granting married women rights in the marriage
● Institutionalizing violence in marriage
● then some places rescinding the husband's right to violence
● Accepting or disallowing young marriage ages.
● Polyandry
● Polygamy
● Rich powerful men collecting trophy wives by the dozen leaving other men with none
● Older men marrying young teenagers.
● Regarding a relationship that really is a civil union as a legitimate marriage
● Married men routinely having mistresses in certain cultures, including the American one, with mistresses receiving certain rights and benefits.
● La casa grande – la casa bonita as they say down south.
● Using marriage to validate one’s worth and position as first consideration
● Using marriage to gain wealth as first consideration
● Using marriage to make political alliances as first consideration
● Legalizing quick divorce
● Legalizing no-fault divorce
In light of all this — The particular issue of gender in marriage hardly seems much of a change one way or another in the inevitable evolution of marriage. Utah cannot just wink at and accept the heterosexual changes / corruptions to marriage and ignore changes that would benefit the homosexual population.
THE CALL TO ACTION
When governmental law picked up one end of the stick – legalizing young marriage ages, marriage as human validation, marriage as companionship first, recognizing civil unions as real marriages, giving benefits to mistresses, granting no fault divorce, quickie divorce — then it has to pick up the other end of the stick. Same gender marriage.
This development is not an opening for bestiality marriage. All these development have precedent among humans only.
Utah should not stand in the way of the inevitable evolution of marriage.
Same gender marriage will be of interest to somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of the population. This means that in the United States, we are talking of marriage for 16 to 32 million Americans. In contrast, Utah has 2.9 million residents. It is incredibly unlikely that it will be of interest to heterosexually oriented men.
Marriage, like everything else in The World, is a definition that government has the right to define for the sake of good order. Utah should not charge for licenses a fee above bare minimum and with that in mind, Utah should study the license fee to determine how much it should cut.
I for one do not want Utah remembered as the Mississippi of Marriage Equality, alluding to Mississippi’s history in the civil rights movement back in the 1950s and 1960s. Nor do I want the Utah governor, my friend, remembered as the Ross Barnett of the Marriage Equality movement.
I, however, decry that Utahns would just ignore the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution, "Full Faith and Credit Clause", which addresses the duties that states within the United States have to respect the "public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state."
I chastise, in the strongest terms, those in Utah who will just ignore the needs of 5 to 10 percent of Utah’s population because there are few of them and because they do not fit into their exalted definitions of acknowledged humans with rights.
SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE
Utah governor Gary Herbert is on the record as saying that marriage is between a man and a woman. In a sense the governor is like a father figure to Utah culture. Therefore, what father among us having two sons will say to his heterosexual son, “be thou clothed in robes with your beloved and sit over here”
and then say to his homosexual son, “Be thou clothed in rags all alone and sit over there”
and then say to himself, “I am just.”
How can that father say to one son, “You get what you want by way a domestic arrangement because it is with a woman” and then to the other son say, “You cannot get what you want by a domestic arrangement because it is a with a man” Can that man actually delude himself into thinking that he is objective or fair-minded? Many fathers find themselves dealing with this situation in reality --- not in the symbolic abstract.
God created man to evolve. Man’s institutions have evolved --- particularly marriage. This essay looks at that evolution and what government must do to promote that evolution.
DEFINITIONS
Someone wrote recently this in the Deseret News to illustrate the evolution of marriage:
“The purpose of marriage isn’t to unite children with the man and woman who made them for several reasons. First, marriage should and most frequently does occur before children become involved, if at all. Second, the purpose of marriage isn’t procreation nor is the sexual act debased to the bearing of children. It serves a much higher and noble purpose. The expression of love and an intimate bond between two people who have joined together. An expression that is only a small part of that bond. It isn’t the substance nor end of that relationship. It’s the human need to have someone. One doesn’t sit at home singly thinking "I want children to spend my life with" instead they long for that someone to spend life with. Third, legal marriage recognizes the legal commitment of two people by a contract. Children/dogs/houses are a result of that intimate relationship and not party to it.”
I have heard this sentiments and variations on it for years as a standard assumption in definitions of marriage for as long as I can remember.
Personally, I reject that view of marriage pretty much out of hand. Companionship is not marriage.
For years, I put myself on the written official record as defining marriage as a covenant between four entities –
1 a man
2 a woman
3a God
3b the society in which they live
4 and children, who have a right to parents of both gender in a legal protective framework.
This is what marriage should be. However, modern marriage is yet another example of something in culture we practice that does not deliver the promise.
Recently, those against same gender marriage have tried to claim that procreation is the point of marriage. That strategy is too little too late. Lawyers for the State of Utah can argue that Utah believes same-sex couples — married or not — should not be allowed to raise children. The problem here is too many quotable studies — for and against same gender marriage and / or opposite gender marriage — do not stand up as scholarly factual evidence.
However, human rights and civil rights suggest that a person should be able to marry the one person that person loves. How does Utah balance this right with a child’s right to parents of both genders?
AN ASIDE -- Personally, I believe that people in general do not have an inherent right to reproduce. Only people with monetary means to raise children have that right. Only people with healthy genetics should reproduce. People with healthy genetics and monetary means, whether homosexual or heterosexual, have the right to reproduce.
CIVIL RIGHTS -- HUMAN RIGHTS
The proponents of various styles of marriage can take their stands as they want. That is their right. However, individuals do not have a government’s obligation to balance the competing interests in a society.
A famous observation from an early interracial marriage couple comes to mind:
“I have lived long enough to see big changes now. But some people. . . . Well. Alabama did not get around to repealing its “Racial Integrity Act” until 2000. 2000. All we ever wanted was to get married because we loved each other. And if we hurt some people’s feelings, well — that was just too bad. It is their problem, not mine. I married the only man I ever love and am glad I married the man I loved. It meant a lot to me to marry the person I found most precious, despite the fact that some thought he was the wrong kind of person for me to marry. I am proud of our name on a court case about love and commitment and family in the face of such prejudice. Government has no business forcing some people’s religious beliefs over others. I support the right to marry for all – white or black, gay or straight. That is what loving is all about."
Mildred and Richard Loving
Interracial couple of white man and black woman
Supreme Court decision Loving vs Virginia 1967 decriminalized interracial marriage
EVOLUTION OF TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE
Recently I read a local editorial that noted that No one, whether gay or heterosexual, has a "fundamental right" to a legal status that is entirely discretionary with the state Legislature. (Quoted by Elise Amendola, Associated Press)
Marriage is a human institution and thus it has its advantages, disadvantages, and flaws. For ages the heterosexuals tacked all sorts of baggage and corruption onto the marriage institution:
History also indicates that marriage laws clearly follow what the public wants in marriage. Look at all the features of marriage that started as ideas among the general public and became law:
● Treating married women as husband's property
then granting married women rights in the marriage
● Institutionalizing violence in marriage
● then some places rescinding the husband's right to violence
● Accepting or disallowing young marriage ages.
● Polyandry
● Polygamy
● Rich powerful men collecting trophy wives by the dozen leaving other men with none
● Older men marrying young teenagers.
● Regarding a relationship that really is a civil union as a legitimate marriage
● Married men routinely having mistresses in certain cultures, including the American one, with mistresses receiving certain rights and benefits.
● La casa grande – la casa bonita as they say down south.
● Using marriage to validate one’s worth and position as first consideration
● Using marriage to gain wealth as first consideration
● Using marriage to make political alliances as first consideration
● Legalizing quick divorce
● Legalizing no-fault divorce
In light of all this — The particular issue of gender in marriage hardly seems much of a change one way or another in the inevitable evolution of marriage. Utah cannot just wink at and accept the heterosexual changes / corruptions to marriage and ignore changes that would benefit the homosexual population.
THE CALL TO ACTION
When governmental law picked up one end of the stick – legalizing young marriage ages, marriage as human validation, marriage as companionship first, recognizing civil unions as real marriages, giving benefits to mistresses, granting no fault divorce, quickie divorce — then it has to pick up the other end of the stick. Same gender marriage.
This development is not an opening for bestiality marriage. All these development have precedent among humans only.
Utah should not stand in the way of the inevitable evolution of marriage.
Same gender marriage will be of interest to somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of the population. This means that in the United States, we are talking of marriage for 16 to 32 million Americans. In contrast, Utah has 2.9 million residents. It is incredibly unlikely that it will be of interest to heterosexually oriented men.
Marriage, like everything else in The World, is a definition that government has the right to define for the sake of good order. Utah should not charge for licenses a fee above bare minimum and with that in mind, Utah should study the license fee to determine how much it should cut.
I for one do not want Utah remembered as the Mississippi of Marriage Equality, alluding to Mississippi’s history in the civil rights movement back in the 1950s and 1960s. Nor do I want the Utah governor, my friend, remembered as the Ross Barnett of the Marriage Equality movement.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
IN MEMORIAM: ELDER RICHARD R LYMAN . Last early ph.D apostle, last polygamist apostle? last excommunicated apostle
Richard R. Lyman, Joseph F Merrill, James E Talmadge, and John A Widstoe served as 20th century apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They were not officially titled “Elders” as other apostles were but were officially titled as “Doctors” because they all held ph.Ds in various sciences. They illustrated for the church’s public image that its leaders were respectable educated intellectuals -- not Rocky Mountain Yahoos. They stood out in contrast to certain apostles, notably Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, who was the most fundamental creationist apostle of that period.
Fifty years ago last week, the last of these ph.D “Doctor apostles” died. Richard R Lyman died on 31 December 1963. LDS Church president Joseph F. Smith had ordained him an apostle in 1918, a year after his apostle father — President of the Quorum of the Twelve Francis Lyman – died. His grandfather, Elder Amasa Lyman, had also served as an apostle in the 19th century.
BACKGROUND.
Both of these apostle ancestors practiced plural marriage – multiple wives at one time. Joseph Smith, the founder of the LDS Church, received revelations about polygamy in the 1830s and probably married his first plural wife in that decade. He certainly taught the principle in the 1840s and married multiple women in the period of 1841 - 1844 before his assassination. The First Presidency continued to preach The Principle and allowed many men to marry multiple wives from 1844 to 1890. In 1890, as a result of intense cultural problems and federal government threats, President Wilford Woodruff advised Church members to avoid marriages unlawful in the United States. The First Presidency stopped authorizing plural marriages in April 1904.
NOW THE STORY.
With this background in mind, we noted that when Richard R. Lyman died, he was the last apostle of two other situations. One – he was the last LDS apostle who cohabited with two women in different households. Two – he is currently the last LDS apostle excommunicated from the Church.
Lyman’s legal wife was Amy Brown Lyman, a professional social worker who served in the Church’s women’s organization, the Relief Society. She served in various leadership positions and callings from 1909 to 1945. In 1940, President Heber J Grant called her to serve as the society’s president. She probably would have served longer if it had not been for the conjunction of the next woman.
Anna S. Jacobsen Hegsted was Lyman’s second woman companion – a woman who had been involved in post-manifesto plural marriage, divorced, excommunicasted from the LDS Church, then restored to membership. Lyman received the assignment to oversee her restoration.
Four issues came into conjunction in Lyman’s life. Researchers Gary Bergera and Dennis Michael Quinn studied these in detail in various books and articles. It is hard to tell if any of these claims really are true, but here they are for this article and discussion.
CLAIM 1. Amy Brown Lyman stopped having sexual relations with Richard R Lyman after the birth of their last child and concentrated on her career. Witnesses of the Lyman household report separate bedrooms, not just separate beds.
CLAIM 2. Lyman sealed Anna to himself in 1925, an unusual sort of plural marriage act that had precedent in 19th century LDS Church history.
or CLAIM 3. Lyman and Anna vowed that when one of them died, the other would perform a proxy sealing for themselves for eternity in a temple.
CLAIM 4. Lyman admitted to becoming intimate with Anna as early as 1938. Whether he really involved himself with her earlier is, of course, subject of some speculation and discussion.
FURTHER BACKGROUND.
In 1933, some of the LDS Church’s members with authorized plural wives and members who had unauthorized plural wives started organizing a polygamist Mormon-type Church in opposition to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church. First Presidency Counselor J. Reuben Clark founded a surveillance spy network to gather information on them and to excommunicate them from the main church.
BACK TO THE STORY.
In early November 1943, one of Clark’s spies discovered a veritable bombshell of a secret information – apostle Lyman was keeping company with a woman not his wife. Clark, by then defacto acting Church president for Heber J Grant in fragile declining health, took two apostles – Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B Lee – into his confidence about this situation and assigned them to track Lyman at night. Shortly thereafter, Clark advised Quorum of the Twelve President George Albert Smith of the alleged details; Smith prepared for a disciplinary council. Joseph Fielding Smith and Lee discovered conclusive facts about Lyman and Jacobsen Hegsted: Clark convinced the Salt Lake police to raid the two of them in Jacobsen Hegsted’s house at night. The police caught them inflagrato delecti. President Smith convened a disciplinary council of apostles who excommunicated both Lyman and (eventually) Jacobsen from the LDS Church. They were both in their 70s in age. This ended Richard Lyman’s ministry as an apostle, where apostles ended their ministries at death.
When President George Albert Smith wrote an excommunication announcement, printed in the Salt Lake City Deseret News newspaper, he described the reason for Lyman’s excommunication this way: for a violation of the Christian Law of Chastity. This was technically true. The Church never regarded officially Lyman’s act as technically plural marriage cohabitation after 1904.
SPECULATING
What about Amy Lyman?
Then as now, those in the know about the situation must have viewed her in one of two ways –
Either
She knew about the relationship from 1925 to 1943 and therefore enabled her husband’s sin
or
She did not know about the relationship from 1925 to 1943 and thus was so utterly unobservant that it put her intellectual capacity and leadership ability into question. Even if Lyman started the illicit part of the relationship in 1938, the questions about Amy remain the same.
Church leadership did not excommunicate Amy Lyman. Apparently it preferred to regard her as clueless, not an enabler. However, within a year and a half, the First Presidency released her as Relief Society general president. The previous president had served for years; the next president served nearly 30 years. Her husband’s situation, though, ruined Amy’s reputation sufficiently that it made it impossible for her to go on as Relief Society general president.
What about Richard Lyman?
Eventually the Church authorized his rebaptism and his return to church membership in 1954. But one aspect about his marriage adventure remains mystifying.
Salt Lake City, then as now, is a small city. Church headquarters culture is a village almost as tight and gossipy as The Vatican. How did Lyman do this relationship from 1925 to 1943 without someone noticing before November 1943?
These are interesting questions, but useless to ask. Many questions of history simply go unanswered, sometimes unacknowledged.
Two things to consider from all this –
LDS Culture might have been influenced positively if Richard Lyman had insisted on a right as an apostle to divorce a wife that no longer fit his life needs. LDS leadership culture might have been influenced positively if The First Presidency had implemented another of his ideas. Two years before his excommunication when the Church leadership contemplated added extra apostles or assistants to the apostles to the official leadership, he advocated retirement for older apostles.
The Lord may have tolerated polygamy; the Old Testament certainly leaves that impression. The Lord may have tolerated modern Mormon polygamy for a while, and then he ordered it stopped when it could not work anymore. LDS polygamy may have been a mistake all the way around. If the 2013 scripture edition’s ambiguous preface to “Official Document 1" indicates anything, it indicates the current First Presidency wants to ignore or deny that history and get on with life. "History," Henry Makow once wrote," is propaganda IE a cover up." The human mind may abhor ambiguity, but ambiguity there is in all history in general and LDS history in particular. The ambiguity of Plural marriage left a long shadow over LDS Culture, over the LDS Church, and the official LDS leadership
Fifty years ago last week, the last of these ph.D “Doctor apostles” died. Richard R Lyman died on 31 December 1963. LDS Church president Joseph F. Smith had ordained him an apostle in 1918, a year after his apostle father — President of the Quorum of the Twelve Francis Lyman – died. His grandfather, Elder Amasa Lyman, had also served as an apostle in the 19th century.
BACKGROUND.
Both of these apostle ancestors practiced plural marriage – multiple wives at one time. Joseph Smith, the founder of the LDS Church, received revelations about polygamy in the 1830s and probably married his first plural wife in that decade. He certainly taught the principle in the 1840s and married multiple women in the period of 1841 - 1844 before his assassination. The First Presidency continued to preach The Principle and allowed many men to marry multiple wives from 1844 to 1890. In 1890, as a result of intense cultural problems and federal government threats, President Wilford Woodruff advised Church members to avoid marriages unlawful in the United States. The First Presidency stopped authorizing plural marriages in April 1904.
NOW THE STORY.
With this background in mind, we noted that when Richard R. Lyman died, he was the last apostle of two other situations. One – he was the last LDS apostle who cohabited with two women in different households. Two – he is currently the last LDS apostle excommunicated from the Church.
Lyman’s legal wife was Amy Brown Lyman, a professional social worker who served in the Church’s women’s organization, the Relief Society. She served in various leadership positions and callings from 1909 to 1945. In 1940, President Heber J Grant called her to serve as the society’s president. She probably would have served longer if it had not been for the conjunction of the next woman.
Anna S. Jacobsen Hegsted was Lyman’s second woman companion – a woman who had been involved in post-manifesto plural marriage, divorced, excommunicasted from the LDS Church, then restored to membership. Lyman received the assignment to oversee her restoration.
Four issues came into conjunction in Lyman’s life. Researchers Gary Bergera and Dennis Michael Quinn studied these in detail in various books and articles. It is hard to tell if any of these claims really are true, but here they are for this article and discussion.
CLAIM 1. Amy Brown Lyman stopped having sexual relations with Richard R Lyman after the birth of their last child and concentrated on her career. Witnesses of the Lyman household report separate bedrooms, not just separate beds.
CLAIM 2. Lyman sealed Anna to himself in 1925, an unusual sort of plural marriage act that had precedent in 19th century LDS Church history.
or CLAIM 3. Lyman and Anna vowed that when one of them died, the other would perform a proxy sealing for themselves for eternity in a temple.
CLAIM 4. Lyman admitted to becoming intimate with Anna as early as 1938. Whether he really involved himself with her earlier is, of course, subject of some speculation and discussion.
FURTHER BACKGROUND.
In 1933, some of the LDS Church’s members with authorized plural wives and members who had unauthorized plural wives started organizing a polygamist Mormon-type Church in opposition to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church. First Presidency Counselor J. Reuben Clark founded a surveillance spy network to gather information on them and to excommunicate them from the main church.
BACK TO THE STORY.
In early November 1943, one of Clark’s spies discovered a veritable bombshell of a secret information – apostle Lyman was keeping company with a woman not his wife. Clark, by then defacto acting Church president for Heber J Grant in fragile declining health, took two apostles – Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B Lee – into his confidence about this situation and assigned them to track Lyman at night. Shortly thereafter, Clark advised Quorum of the Twelve President George Albert Smith of the alleged details; Smith prepared for a disciplinary council. Joseph Fielding Smith and Lee discovered conclusive facts about Lyman and Jacobsen Hegsted: Clark convinced the Salt Lake police to raid the two of them in Jacobsen Hegsted’s house at night. The police caught them inflagrato delecti. President Smith convened a disciplinary council of apostles who excommunicated both Lyman and (eventually) Jacobsen from the LDS Church. They were both in their 70s in age. This ended Richard Lyman’s ministry as an apostle, where apostles ended their ministries at death.
When President George Albert Smith wrote an excommunication announcement, printed in the Salt Lake City Deseret News newspaper, he described the reason for Lyman’s excommunication this way: for a violation of the Christian Law of Chastity. This was technically true. The Church never regarded officially Lyman’s act as technically plural marriage cohabitation after 1904.
SPECULATING
What about Amy Lyman?
Then as now, those in the know about the situation must have viewed her in one of two ways –
Either
She knew about the relationship from 1925 to 1943 and therefore enabled her husband’s sin
or
She did not know about the relationship from 1925 to 1943 and thus was so utterly unobservant that it put her intellectual capacity and leadership ability into question. Even if Lyman started the illicit part of the relationship in 1938, the questions about Amy remain the same.
Church leadership did not excommunicate Amy Lyman. Apparently it preferred to regard her as clueless, not an enabler. However, within a year and a half, the First Presidency released her as Relief Society general president. The previous president had served for years; the next president served nearly 30 years. Her husband’s situation, though, ruined Amy’s reputation sufficiently that it made it impossible for her to go on as Relief Society general president.
What about Richard Lyman?
Eventually the Church authorized his rebaptism and his return to church membership in 1954. But one aspect about his marriage adventure remains mystifying.
Salt Lake City, then as now, is a small city. Church headquarters culture is a village almost as tight and gossipy as The Vatican. How did Lyman do this relationship from 1925 to 1943 without someone noticing before November 1943?
These are interesting questions, but useless to ask. Many questions of history simply go unanswered, sometimes unacknowledged.
Two things to consider from all this –
LDS Culture might have been influenced positively if Richard Lyman had insisted on a right as an apostle to divorce a wife that no longer fit his life needs. LDS leadership culture might have been influenced positively if The First Presidency had implemented another of his ideas. Two years before his excommunication when the Church leadership contemplated added extra apostles or assistants to the apostles to the official leadership, he advocated retirement for older apostles.
The Lord may have tolerated polygamy; the Old Testament certainly leaves that impression. The Lord may have tolerated modern Mormon polygamy for a while, and then he ordered it stopped when it could not work anymore. LDS polygamy may have been a mistake all the way around. If the 2013 scripture edition’s ambiguous preface to “Official Document 1" indicates anything, it indicates the current First Presidency wants to ignore or deny that history and get on with life. "History," Henry Makow once wrote," is propaganda IE a cover up." The human mind may abhor ambiguity, but ambiguity there is in all history in general and LDS history in particular. The ambiguity of Plural marriage left a long shadow over LDS Culture, over the LDS Church, and the official LDS leadership
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