George Orwell back in 1946 wrote this observation about political discourse. It was true then; it seems utterly prophetic today in the 2012 presidential campaign.
“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
“ ‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’
“ The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find -- this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify -- that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.”
— George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” (1946)
In 2012, there is no such thing as keeping out of politics. Political speech and writing are still mostly the defense of the indefensible. Things like
● the Colombia Armed Conflict, the Mexico Drug War, the Syria Civil Uprising, and various African wars in and around Sudan,
● the continuance of Israeli domination of Palestine
● Russian purges and corruption
● the use of drones in Afghanistan
can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of our political parties.
Mitt Romney says in his campaign for the Presidency of the United States that Americans must expand the American military both in men and in funding. He advocates this even though The Federal Government he wants to lead sits up to its dome in various varieties of debt. Whether the Federal Government can even manage said debt in the short term remains to be seen.
The United States of America had a population in 2010 no less than 310 million people. That represents at most 4.5 percent of the world’s population.
My experience in the Local Census Office 3147 in Provo Utah in 2010 taught me that counting people is more complicated than it looks. The best census still has the element of guestimate in it.
Currently, various organizations in the know estimate the world population at 7 billion people plus or minus a few hundred million. Humans do not know for exactly the Earth’s resource limitation. Even so, humans continue to push their population right into the red zone of resource reserves.
China probably has (give or take) 1.4 billion citizens. That is almost 20 percent of the world’s population.
India probably has (give or take) 1.3 billion citizens. That is about 17 percent of the world’s population.
QUESTION FOR MR. ROMNEY TO ANSWER
AND FOR AMERICAN VOTERS TO PONDER
Based on comparing labor and resources – 4.5 percent vs. a little less than 40 percent – the United States cannot win a war against China and / or India. So how money should The United State spend on the illusion of military security? This money will be, in the main, borrowed.
The United State does have several thousand nuclear weapons and we could use them on our enemies. How many people who do not live in the United States can the United States kill to insure a USA victory? Given we represent 4.5 percent of the world and China represents nearly 20 percent: How many dead Chinese can we consider ethical in our defense?
100 million dead
200 million dead
300 million dead
400 million dead
500 million dead
600 million dead
700 million dead
800 million dead?
Monday, April 30, 2012
Sunday, April 15, 2012
TUNED IN BUT NOT LISTENING: CONTEMPLATING TITANIC DISASTER AT 100
To review the basic facts involved in the Titanic Disaster which occurred 100 years ago today:
Titanic did not have enough lifeboats for everyone on board. The British Board of Trade lifeboat regulations worked off a fantastically outdated and complicated mathematical equation that actually involved the size of the ship, not the number of people it held. The Board of Trade required 16 lifeboats. The shipbuilders thought that 64 boats would be ideal and recommended 32 to the owners.
The leaders of White Star Line, the owners of Titanic, believed that if the ship ever did sink, it would not sink fast. The lifeboats, they believed, could be used as shuttles taking passengers to nearby rescue ships and then returning to pick up more. Therefore, they ordered 20 lifeboats.
The designers of the ship built the watertight compartment bulkheads to stop flooding in the worst sort of accident they could comprehend. That calculation involved four water tight compartments at most. They did not comprehend an iceberg compromising the ship’s hull and bottom for the length of six plus compartments. This sort of accident happened a hundred years ago tonight. The resulting flood sank the ship in just under three hours.
Hindsight is always 20/20. It is easy today to fault everyone involved for overconfidence and the cutting of the proverbial corners. Building technology, then and now, is a compromise between safety, politics, and cost.
About eight problems manifested themselves on the Titanic after it hit an iceberg, and they all conspired to sink the ship and kill 1500 people. If any one of these eight problems had not occurred, the incident might have turned out less tragically. Despite the truth of that statement, we should not overlooked the one proximate cause of the disaster – overconfident bridge officers.
TITANIC RADIO
The Marconi Company privately owned the radio system as a convenience to the passengers; its operators did relay weather and other safety messages to the officers, though passenger communication to the shore was its main concern. Titanic’s wireless had a transmission range of about a 1000 miles. Its massive antennae stretched between the masts. Titanic was out of direct contact with Europe and North America for about half of the voyage, but it not out of contact with other ships in the lanes.
For a couple of days, as Titanic sailed west across the Atlantic, its wireless operators received warnings from east-bound ships that their sailors had seen ice problems southeast of Newfoundland in and around the shipping lane to New York.
TUNED IN BUT NOT LISTENING
Edward Smith, captain of Titanic, knew of ice warnings to the west. He traveled at top speed right into the problem. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, when the largest vessels were half the size and weight and about half as fast as Titanic and its sister ship Olympic, their captains regularly sailed through ice infested waters at full speed. However, a ship weighing in at over 46,000 tons and traveling at 22 knots an hour has increased its vulnerability by some quantum factor. It cannot quickly stop for an iceberg or quickly port around an iceberg as did smaller vessels.
The day of the disaster, Titanic’s wireless operators sent messages to its officers that warned of ice problems in the shipping lane ahead of them to the west. The captain shifted his course south -- a little -- but continued to increase his speed.
According to an entry in the Encyclopedia Titanica, (reported also in Walter Lord’s landmark book A Night to Remember):
“The single-funnel liner Mesaba was among the vessels that sent ice warnings to the Titanic. On 14 April, at 7.50 p.m. Mesaba time, the wireless operator Stanley Adams sent the following message:
To Titanic
In Lat. 42 N. to 41.25 Lond 49 W to Long - 50.30 W saw much heavy pack ice and great number large icebergs also field ice. Weather good, clear”
Adams should have sent the message directly to Captain Smith. Titanic radio operator Jack Philips received the message, as it was, at 9.40 p.m. On Sunday evening,, Titanic's radio transmitter receiver was in range of the Marconi station at Cape Race in Newfoundland. Philips, alone at the Morris-code key, sent a pile of messages to the this Marconi station,Titanic time, while second operator Harold Bride slept in bed, Perhaps it was for these reason that neither one of them relayed this message to the bridge.
One way or another, the Marconi operators should have taken that message immediately to the bridge for the officers’ attention. The officers would have discovered from this message that a big ice problem lay right ahead of the ship. And in the middle of a moonless night -- yet. The officers might have shifted the course south again. They might have slowed down. They might have remained overconfident and continued barging into danger at top speed. They would not, however, have remained in the dark about the situation to the west.
As if one undelivered message is not enough in the Titanic list of incompetence leading to catastrophe, the Marconi officer heard another wireless message about icebergs around 11 p.m. Titanic time. A ship radio operator rather close by barged in with some loud message about icebergs. He did not use the proper hailing phrases. Philips, frazzled by all the work ahead of him, cut off the warning and continued sending his messages to Newfoundland.
This was the crucial mistake before the disaster.
Had Philips listened, he would have found out from Cyril Evans, radio operator aboard the Californian, that it was stopped for the night because its officers could see nothing but pack ice and icebergs on the western horizon. He would have found out that the message was loud because the Californian was close, which meant the Titanic was also close to the same horizon of pack ice and icebergs.
SPECULATION
One can only speculate what might have happened if the officers that night had received not one but two messages about the mess of ice Titanic approached at full speed ahead. Some officer might have ordered the ship on a more southern route, or slow down, or even stop until dawn’s light illuminated the scene. Titanic might have continued in to New York.
GOOD FROM BAD
The Titanic disaster resulted in 1913 in stricter international laws: lifeboats required for everyone on board, twenty-four hour wireless communications, and an international iceberg patrol. If none of these laws had come into effect, big ships would have continued to carry few if any lifeboats because the owners and builders would have considered the liners unsinkable. The ship builders and owners would have continued building massive unsafe passenger liners with minimalist safety features. Sloppy incomplete international laws would have overseen passenger liner safety – until some other unfortunately Atlantic liner might have wound up as [in the immortal words of Eastern Onion] "the biggest metaphor of the twentieth century. "
UNFORTUNATELY, SHIPPING HAS GROWN OVER CONFIDENT AGAIN
Robert Ballard, the explorer who rediscovered the Titanic wreck in September 1985, is on the record stating that Titanic was actually better built the a lot of modern ships. Contemplate, for example, a catastrophic accident happening to the world's largest passenger liner – Allure of the Seas, an aircraft- carrier-sized cruise ship that can hold 6000 people. How would its crew get everyone off in less than an hour, especially if it were listing at some crazy angle in rough seas or if well-trained, well-armed, sea-going terrorists attacked it en masse.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
TIL WE MEET AGAIN ELDER ARCHULETA
For the next 8 weeks, professional singer David Archuleta becomes one of the guys going through his Mormon Rite of Passage in one of the South American Missionary Training Centers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
At one point, I thought his decision might produce bad consequences on his career trajectory and on his singing voice. Not necessarily. Remember -- Elvis Presley at the height of his young-heart throb period got drafted into the US Army, did a tour of duty in Germany, and came back to a bigger more lucrative career in the 1960s.
I do hope the Church’s Public Relations / Missionary Department will stifle their unholy urges to
harness his fame and heart throb potential as an advertising medium. I can almost picture his face, complete with white shirt, tie, and badge looking out over Times Square with the label “and I’m a Mormon.” Mormon.org
This sort of elder will require a South American mission president out of the ordinary. Most elders are just guys with varying degree of potential and promises. Archuleta has proven himself in The Forcing House of Showbiznia and turned himself into one of the hotter musical commodities on The American Scene. No LDS Mission would want to be branded forever as The Mission that Ruined the Archuleta Brand.
David’s serving a mission anonymous of his fame will be problematic if even possible. I do wonder and worry about David’s fitting into LDS Mission Kulchur, though. Despite Raising the Bar and Preach My Gospel, a mission is still classic guy stuff, which accounts for one reason why elders outnumber sisters by some quantum factor. It is a guy atmosphere of junior companions, senior companions, trainers, district leaders, zone leaders, assistants to the president. Highly stratified, competitive, sometimes with a hazing atmosphere. Rituals. Traditions. In the mission where my friend served 15 years ago, the guys burned an article of clothing at the end of each quarter.
One of the reasons I did not serve a mission in the mid 1970s was the reputation that proceeded missions: Two Years of Gym Class. Just how the regular guys in David’s mission will react to A Real Artist is anyone’s guess. The chemistry might get compounded by jealousy at David’s stature as A Real Artist who has already made more money than 75 percent of the rest of them will ever make in their whole wasted lifetimes.
I wonder if David in his heart of hearts worries that The Companions / Elders / The Guys will hate him as a singing star, not whether he is or is not any good as a missionary? I wonder if David worries that the sister missionaries will want to associate with him as a highly valuable potential catch – not as a person? How will his mission president ever know if the people Archuleta baptizes truly converted to The Gospel and not to the cultivated charisma of Our Boy Wonder?
We wish David well on his mission, but we should hold few if any illusions about the difficulty of the whole enterprise.
Here is an article that appeared in the 28 March Deseret News
David Archuleta tells fans on YouTube about leaving for his Mormon mission
Preserved from the Deseret News
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765563815/David-Archuleta-tells-fans-on-YouTube-about-leaving-for-his-Mormon-mission.html
Preserved from The Official Archuleta YouTube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N5b7LFX5JI&list=UU75d1FNP1qR0lCY1usRKQEw&index=1&feature=plcp
Published: Wednesday, March 28 2012 1:09 p.m. MDT
David Archuleta is about to leave on his two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and on Wednesday posted the following statement along with a 7-minute video on his YouTube channel:
"Just one more vlog from home for a while before I leave on my mission. It has been an emotional week with family and friends. Just wanted to thank all of you for the support you have giving me for the last 4 years. Will see you all in 2 years."
Read ksl.com's report from Josh Furlong: David Archuleta begins 2-year missionary service
Related: David Archuleta announces haircut, spends time with family pre-mission
At one point, I thought his decision might produce bad consequences on his career trajectory and on his singing voice. Not necessarily. Remember -- Elvis Presley at the height of his young-heart throb period got drafted into the US Army, did a tour of duty in Germany, and came back to a bigger more lucrative career in the 1960s.
I do hope the Church’s Public Relations / Missionary Department will stifle their unholy urges to
harness his fame and heart throb potential as an advertising medium. I can almost picture his face, complete with white shirt, tie, and badge looking out over Times Square with the label “and I’m a Mormon.” Mormon.org
This sort of elder will require a South American mission president out of the ordinary. Most elders are just guys with varying degree of potential and promises. Archuleta has proven himself in The Forcing House of Showbiznia and turned himself into one of the hotter musical commodities on The American Scene. No LDS Mission would want to be branded forever as The Mission that Ruined the Archuleta Brand.
David’s serving a mission anonymous of his fame will be problematic if even possible. I do wonder and worry about David’s fitting into LDS Mission Kulchur, though. Despite Raising the Bar and Preach My Gospel, a mission is still classic guy stuff, which accounts for one reason why elders outnumber sisters by some quantum factor. It is a guy atmosphere of junior companions, senior companions, trainers, district leaders, zone leaders, assistants to the president. Highly stratified, competitive, sometimes with a hazing atmosphere. Rituals. Traditions. In the mission where my friend served 15 years ago, the guys burned an article of clothing at the end of each quarter.
One of the reasons I did not serve a mission in the mid 1970s was the reputation that proceeded missions: Two Years of Gym Class. Just how the regular guys in David’s mission will react to A Real Artist is anyone’s guess. The chemistry might get compounded by jealousy at David’s stature as A Real Artist who has already made more money than 75 percent of the rest of them will ever make in their whole wasted lifetimes.
I wonder if David in his heart of hearts worries that The Companions / Elders / The Guys will hate him as a singing star, not whether he is or is not any good as a missionary? I wonder if David worries that the sister missionaries will want to associate with him as a highly valuable potential catch – not as a person? How will his mission president ever know if the people Archuleta baptizes truly converted to The Gospel and not to the cultivated charisma of Our Boy Wonder?
We wish David well on his mission, but we should hold few if any illusions about the difficulty of the whole enterprise.
Here is an article that appeared in the 28 March Deseret News
David Archuleta tells fans on YouTube about leaving for his Mormon mission
Preserved from the Deseret News
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765563815/David-Archuleta-tells-fans-on-YouTube-about-leaving-for-his-Mormon-mission.html
Preserved from The Official Archuleta YouTube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N5b7LFX5JI&list=UU75d1FNP1qR0lCY1usRKQEw&index=1&feature=plcp
Published: Wednesday, March 28 2012 1:09 p.m. MDT
David Archuleta is about to leave on his two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and on Wednesday posted the following statement along with a 7-minute video on his YouTube channel:
"Just one more vlog from home for a while before I leave on my mission. It has been an emotional week with family and friends. Just wanted to thank all of you for the support you have giving me for the last 4 years. Will see you all in 2 years."
Read ksl.com's report from Josh Furlong: David Archuleta begins 2-year missionary service
Related: David Archuleta announces haircut, spends time with family pre-mission
Friday, March 16, 2012
SUBJECT A: UTAH SEX EDUCATION PROMPTS AN EDITORIAL
Friday evening, 16 March 2012 10:00 p.m.
News reports indicate that Governor Gary Herbert of Utah vetoed HB 363, a controversial bill dealing with Utah’s sexual education law.
Whenever one assesses the possibilities of sexual activity with another person, one should always gauge that person’s attitude about sexuality in general. Does that person think it is good, that it is necessary, that it is necessary but disgusting, that it is just disgusting. One gets the impression, listening to Utah’s Republican legislators and to the Republican presidential candidates that they prefer that the unwashed masses of people should not engage in Subject A.
PART ONE
Dr. Andrew Weil in his landmark book on natural health entitled Natural Health Natural Medicine observed in his chapter on sexual addictions that despite its central place in human culture and our obsessing about it, sex remains fairly mysterious. Science still knows remarkably little about its psychological workings. Whether our sexual advisors are married or not, single or coupled, the chances are high that most information we get about sex is misguided or wrong.
A major problem in public school sexual education results from teaching the subject like health. Instruct students how to be healthy, teachers think, and they will act in healthy ways. We know how misguided that attitude can be among the foibles of the human animals. Teaching health that way does not work well; teaching Subject A in such a way does not seem any much wiser.
I find it grimly amusing many Utah conservatives will have teachers instruct their kids how to use guns without contemplating or worrying that the kids will go out and kill. Yet, they will not teach kids about sexual methods and birth control technology for fear that they will become sexual active and use them. One way or another, most of our kids will eventually become sexually active -- whether we want them to or not.
I have monitored my politically active neighbor-friends for 40 years: I sometimes wonder how many parents actually know enough about sex to teach the subject to their progeny.
THE CALLS TO ACTION:
The kids deserve to at least hear about technological advancements to prevent unmarried unwanted pregnancy and to prevent sexual transmitted diseases.
Abstinence-only sex education might work if we accompanied it with a thorough regime of medications to remove the teenage male sex drive from the teenage males.
PART TWO
An article in the Salt Lake Tribune quoted Senator Reid of Ogden:
“To replace the parent in the school setting, among people who we have no idea what their morals are, we have no ideas what their values are, yet we turn our children over to them to instruct them in the most sensitive sexual activities in their lives, I think is wrongheaded.”
This assumes that parents know what they are talking about on Subject A.
Some legislator could have said:
It is also wrongheaded for the legislature to replace the school setting with parents – people whom the legislature has no clue about their values and knowledge. Yet the legislature gives our children over to parents for instruction about health and the most sensitive sexual activities in their lives.
Legislators should understand that the above point is just as valid.
The Tribune quoted Dalane England, Utah Eagle Forum vice president of issues as saying,
“I think that our children are so important and we cannot afford to tell them anything but the truth…and the truth is the only way to protect yourself physically and emotionally is to abstain from sex until you are married and to be faithful in a relationship. When you have the truth and the whole truth, you don’t need anything else.”
KUER Radio news also quoted Senator Dayton as saying something along the same lines.
Ms England is quite wrong on this particular point. Abstinence and fidelity might be the best way. [though I have my doubts] – drs. It is certainly not the only way.
It would also be interesting to know the exact number of marriages that were ruined by introducing sex into the institution.
Obviously, teenage kids should not be having sex, though in 19th and 20th century Utah, kids as young as 14 and 16 could have sex if they were legally married.
Teenage kids should not be having sex. However, I have monitored my parent - neighbors for 40 years, especially the political activist neighbors: I sometimes wonder if they know enough about sex to teach it to their kids.
Teenage kids should be beaten by their parents or anyone else.
Teenage kids should not drink alcohol – not even a little, not to excess. {Neither should the parents for that matter.}
Teenage kids should not smoke cigarettes. [Neither should their parents for that matter.]
Teenage kids should not smoke marijuana. [Neither should their parents for that matter.]
Teenage kids should not get addicted to cocaine or crack or meth. [Unfortunately, I once lived across the street from drug-addicted parents. They were not exactly the best teachers on that subject.]
We know just what parents can and will do and their levels of hypocrisy.
Parents should teach their kids, but they can use all the reenforcement assistance they can get. The schools have their place in teaching about health and tools.
The truth on this subject appeared in a Salt Lake Tribune letter the other day. Since we are all adults about this, I reprint it for you in full:
Sex also awesome
Preserved from the Salt Lake Tribune
Letter to the editor
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/53615080-82/sex-marriage-awesome-front.html.csp
Published: March 4, 2012 11:25PM
Updated: March 4, 2012 11:25PM
Of sex education in Utah, Rep. Bill Wright, R-Holden, recently said: “Why don’t we just be honest with them up front that sex outside marriage is devastating?”
Well, if we’re going to be totally up front, Bill, we’ll have to tell kids that sex outside marriage is also sometimes awesome. If I were a teacher, and had to “just be honest,” I would have to tell kids that sex outside marriage — for me — has been fun, moving, steamy, spiritual and completely disease-free (also child-free!). I’d also have to tell kids that sometimes it’s been boring, a blow to my ego and less good than masturbating.
I’m flummoxed by Wright’s sense of “honest” and “up front.” Clearly, his understanding of those words doesn’t include the experiences of his constituents. Sex inside of marriage can also be devastating. It depends how you’re doing it. A few married people I know are currently devastated by their sex lives, and a few are overwhelmed by the results of sex without a condom.
Sex with multiple partners can be dangerous, yes. Herpes? Never awesome. Or so I hear. I never got it, which I owe, in part, to my eighth-grade sex education class.
Matthew Ivan Bennett
Midvale
© 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune
IN CONCLUSION –
Leaders give people what the people need. Politicians give people what the people want. This may account for why on any given election year the number of politicians to leaders is about 10 politicians to 1 leader – on a good day.
Yes, parents should not leave education to the professionals. However, professionals with knowledge can be useful, especially with technological knowledge on the subjects of health, sex, and sexual health.
News reports indicate that Governor Gary Herbert of Utah vetoed HB 363, a controversial bill dealing with Utah’s sexual education law.
Whenever one assesses the possibilities of sexual activity with another person, one should always gauge that person’s attitude about sexuality in general. Does that person think it is good, that it is necessary, that it is necessary but disgusting, that it is just disgusting. One gets the impression, listening to Utah’s Republican legislators and to the Republican presidential candidates that they prefer that the unwashed masses of people should not engage in Subject A.
PART ONE
Dr. Andrew Weil in his landmark book on natural health entitled Natural Health Natural Medicine observed in his chapter on sexual addictions that despite its central place in human culture and our obsessing about it, sex remains fairly mysterious. Science still knows remarkably little about its psychological workings. Whether our sexual advisors are married or not, single or coupled, the chances are high that most information we get about sex is misguided or wrong.
A major problem in public school sexual education results from teaching the subject like health. Instruct students how to be healthy, teachers think, and they will act in healthy ways. We know how misguided that attitude can be among the foibles of the human animals. Teaching health that way does not work well; teaching Subject A in such a way does not seem any much wiser.
I find it grimly amusing many Utah conservatives will have teachers instruct their kids how to use guns without contemplating or worrying that the kids will go out and kill. Yet, they will not teach kids about sexual methods and birth control technology for fear that they will become sexual active and use them. One way or another, most of our kids will eventually become sexually active -- whether we want them to or not.
I have monitored my politically active neighbor-friends for 40 years: I sometimes wonder how many parents actually know enough about sex to teach the subject to their progeny.
THE CALLS TO ACTION:
The kids deserve to at least hear about technological advancements to prevent unmarried unwanted pregnancy and to prevent sexual transmitted diseases.
Abstinence-only sex education might work if we accompanied it with a thorough regime of medications to remove the teenage male sex drive from the teenage males.
PART TWO
An article in the Salt Lake Tribune quoted Senator Reid of Ogden:
“To replace the parent in the school setting, among people who we have no idea what their morals are, we have no ideas what their values are, yet we turn our children over to them to instruct them in the most sensitive sexual activities in their lives, I think is wrongheaded.”
This assumes that parents know what they are talking about on Subject A.
Some legislator could have said:
It is also wrongheaded for the legislature to replace the school setting with parents – people whom the legislature has no clue about their values and knowledge. Yet the legislature gives our children over to parents for instruction about health and the most sensitive sexual activities in their lives.
Legislators should understand that the above point is just as valid.
The Tribune quoted Dalane England, Utah Eagle Forum vice president of issues as saying,
“I think that our children are so important and we cannot afford to tell them anything but the truth…and the truth is the only way to protect yourself physically and emotionally is to abstain from sex until you are married and to be faithful in a relationship. When you have the truth and the whole truth, you don’t need anything else.”
KUER Radio news also quoted Senator Dayton as saying something along the same lines.
Ms England is quite wrong on this particular point. Abstinence and fidelity might be the best way. [though I have my doubts] – drs. It is certainly not the only way.
It would also be interesting to know the exact number of marriages that were ruined by introducing sex into the institution.
Obviously, teenage kids should not be having sex, though in 19th and 20th century Utah, kids as young as 14 and 16 could have sex if they were legally married.
Teenage kids should not be having sex. However, I have monitored my parent - neighbors for 40 years, especially the political activist neighbors: I sometimes wonder if they know enough about sex to teach it to their kids.
Teenage kids should be beaten by their parents or anyone else.
Teenage kids should not drink alcohol – not even a little, not to excess. {Neither should the parents for that matter.}
Teenage kids should not smoke cigarettes. [Neither should their parents for that matter.]
Teenage kids should not smoke marijuana. [Neither should their parents for that matter.]
Teenage kids should not get addicted to cocaine or crack or meth. [Unfortunately, I once lived across the street from drug-addicted parents. They were not exactly the best teachers on that subject.]
We know just what parents can and will do and their levels of hypocrisy.
Parents should teach their kids, but they can use all the reenforcement assistance they can get. The schools have their place in teaching about health and tools.
The truth on this subject appeared in a Salt Lake Tribune letter the other day. Since we are all adults about this, I reprint it for you in full:
Sex also awesome
Preserved from the Salt Lake Tribune
Letter to the editor
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/53615080-82/sex-marriage-awesome-front.html.csp
Published: March 4, 2012 11:25PM
Updated: March 4, 2012 11:25PM
Of sex education in Utah, Rep. Bill Wright, R-Holden, recently said: “Why don’t we just be honest with them up front that sex outside marriage is devastating?”
Well, if we’re going to be totally up front, Bill, we’ll have to tell kids that sex outside marriage is also sometimes awesome. If I were a teacher, and had to “just be honest,” I would have to tell kids that sex outside marriage — for me — has been fun, moving, steamy, spiritual and completely disease-free (also child-free!). I’d also have to tell kids that sometimes it’s been boring, a blow to my ego and less good than masturbating.
I’m flummoxed by Wright’s sense of “honest” and “up front.” Clearly, his understanding of those words doesn’t include the experiences of his constituents. Sex inside of marriage can also be devastating. It depends how you’re doing it. A few married people I know are currently devastated by their sex lives, and a few are overwhelmed by the results of sex without a condom.
Sex with multiple partners can be dangerous, yes. Herpes? Never awesome. Or so I hear. I never got it, which I owe, in part, to my eighth-grade sex education class.
Matthew Ivan Bennett
Midvale
© 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune
IN CONCLUSION –
Leaders give people what the people need. Politicians give people what the people want. This may account for why on any given election year the number of politicians to leaders is about 10 politicians to 1 leader – on a good day.
Yes, parents should not leave education to the professionals. However, professionals with knowledge can be useful, especially with technological knowledge on the subjects of health, sex, and sexual health.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
DON'T BELIEVE IT
The other day I wrote on Facebook something to the effect that a person who does not believe in God is likely not to believe in just about anything.
I based my epigram – sort of – on a line Oscar Wilde once wrote: a woman who will tell you her correct age is liable to tell you anything.
Both witticisms are perfectly true as far as they go. Both are expressed well-enough for everyday conversation, particularly on Facebook.
The philosophical reverse is also true as far as it goes: a religious person who does not believe in the secular institutions is also likely not to believe in just about anything.
Once a person starts to disbelieve – seriously disbelieve, disbelief can carry a person in any number of faithless, negative directions.
Many people fancy they act based on their principles and in what they believe. In other words, they believe they act for positive reasons. Some do, and huzzah for them. However, many if not most people act based on what they do not believe.
Often, we read obituaries listing things that The Dearly Departed believed. I would find it interesting to read the list of things which the Departed did not believe.
For example, my obituary [some day far off] might note that I do not believe in California or Vermont or Delaware or the Dakotas and did not live in or support outdated internal boundaries. I did not believe in alcohol or tobacco. I did not believe in the Vampire Diaries. I did not believe in Martians, Kris Kringle, or Star Wars.
The concept of Belief in politics evolved not from a swamp but into The Swamp. Voters have always found a candidate’s belief in God and belief in specific brands of God a hot issue in American politics. This has become especially true in the Republican brand in the last 25 years where a good candidate can get a lot in both money and power by capitalizing on a conservative siege mentality.
Only a few certain places in America will voters elect a professing atheist to office. Only in certain places in America will voters elect a Mormon to office. Hardly anywhere in America will elect a Muslim into office. Furthermore, as we have seen in Winter 2012, primary elections in The South demonstrate certain hypocrisies among the evangelical voting set. Some of them prefer a serial adulterer to a monogamist Latter-day Saint.
We should not regard Politics as a world of its own. It reflects native culture. In American culture, if a person wants to generate a very angry discussion very quick, he or she should start discussion on the subject whether we believe in God or believe in Atheism.
Atheism has a lot more to it than just the non existence of God. My experience over the years suggests when a typical person becomes a typical atheist and loses faith in God, the lack of faith usually starts as losing faith in one of God’s commandments or doctrines, not necessary in God itself. Usually, the person tires with a religious regulation that has to do with either sex, control, or money. The professed Atheism become the excuse or diversion from abandoning one practice and taking up another practice. Form, in less fulsome words, follow function.
My experience over the years also indicates that when a typical person becomes a typically orthodox believer in God, that person’s belief usually starts as a reaction to some sort to experience or to a belief in a doctrine or commandment. Again form follows function.
Someone once said that it is easy to get what you don’t want. It is also easy to shapes our lives and characters by we disbelieve. No amount of compounded negatives can achieve positive.
I based my epigram – sort of – on a line Oscar Wilde once wrote: a woman who will tell you her correct age is liable to tell you anything.
Both witticisms are perfectly true as far as they go. Both are expressed well-enough for everyday conversation, particularly on Facebook.
The philosophical reverse is also true as far as it goes: a religious person who does not believe in the secular institutions is also likely not to believe in just about anything.
Once a person starts to disbelieve – seriously disbelieve, disbelief can carry a person in any number of faithless, negative directions.
Many people fancy they act based on their principles and in what they believe. In other words, they believe they act for positive reasons. Some do, and huzzah for them. However, many if not most people act based on what they do not believe.
Often, we read obituaries listing things that The Dearly Departed believed. I would find it interesting to read the list of things which the Departed did not believe.
For example, my obituary [some day far off] might note that I do not believe in California or Vermont or Delaware or the Dakotas and did not live in or support outdated internal boundaries. I did not believe in alcohol or tobacco. I did not believe in the Vampire Diaries. I did not believe in Martians, Kris Kringle, or Star Wars.
The concept of Belief in politics evolved not from a swamp but into The Swamp. Voters have always found a candidate’s belief in God and belief in specific brands of God a hot issue in American politics. This has become especially true in the Republican brand in the last 25 years where a good candidate can get a lot in both money and power by capitalizing on a conservative siege mentality.
Only a few certain places in America will voters elect a professing atheist to office. Only in certain places in America will voters elect a Mormon to office. Hardly anywhere in America will elect a Muslim into office. Furthermore, as we have seen in Winter 2012, primary elections in The South demonstrate certain hypocrisies among the evangelical voting set. Some of them prefer a serial adulterer to a monogamist Latter-day Saint.
We should not regard Politics as a world of its own. It reflects native culture. In American culture, if a person wants to generate a very angry discussion very quick, he or she should start discussion on the subject whether we believe in God or believe in Atheism.
Atheism has a lot more to it than just the non existence of God. My experience over the years suggests when a typical person becomes a typical atheist and loses faith in God, the lack of faith usually starts as losing faith in one of God’s commandments or doctrines, not necessary in God itself. Usually, the person tires with a religious regulation that has to do with either sex, control, or money. The professed Atheism become the excuse or diversion from abandoning one practice and taking up another practice. Form, in less fulsome words, follow function.
My experience over the years also indicates that when a typical person becomes a typically orthodox believer in God, that person’s belief usually starts as a reaction to some sort to experience or to a belief in a doctrine or commandment. Again form follows function.
Someone once said that it is easy to get what you don’t want. It is also easy to shapes our lives and characters by we disbelieve. No amount of compounded negatives can achieve positive.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
MITT IN THE SOUTH: A POLITICAL OPERA IN TWO NASTY ACTS
Primary and Caucus dates and election results
Bachman Gingrich Huntsman Paul Perry Romney Santorum
Date location type delegates candidate and percentage of the vote
B G H Pl Pr R S Others
January
3 Iowa caucus 28 5% 13 1 21 10 24.6 24.5 0.1
10 New Hampshire primary 12 0.1% 9.4 17 23 0.7 39 9.4 0.7
100 years ago, the presidential candidates had names like Beauchamp, Eugene, William Howard Taft, Judson, Oscar, Robert, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas, Woodrow Wilson.
This year’s presidential candidates insist on going by nicknames like Newt, Ron, and two! Ricks. It sounds like a company softball team roster. Mitt Romney’s name really is Mitt Romney. Willard Mitt Romney. I assume his middle name is a family name – or George had an obsession with baseball in that period. Does Mitt have a brother named Batt? It would be darned interesting to find out why Romney became “Mitt Romney” instead of “Will Romney.”
THE INSULT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
Romney won the Iowa caucus barely. Then he won the New Hampshire primary by a 15 percent minority. He is the first Republican candidate to do so.
Romney lives in New Hampshire (and in California). The result means 61 percent of the voters voted for someone other than Romney. That is really insulting considering he and his family campaigned in New Hampshire for five years. What do the New Hampshirites want – free coupons?
HUNTSMAN VS ROMNEY
I will admit the only Republican presidential candidate that I can stand is Jon Huntsman. Here in Utah, the highly orthodox iron rod Republicans regard him as a hippie. He played in a rock band when he was a teenager. Today his beliefs remain in basic ways consistently conservative.
Romney is good looking in that really good looking sort of way. He went through well-known moderate to liberal political periods, and if he has done it once, he can do it again. Romney’s father ran for the presidency back in 1968. Despite his reputation for political indecisiveness, George Romney would have made a better president than Nixon, Romney, at least, was not nuts.
Mitt Romney impresses me as a reasonably articulate, beautiful, well-groomed buccaneer. “Buccaneer” may be too positive a noun. Pirate. He impresses me as the type of CEO who – if he had acquired any corporation for whom I worked – would have fired me.
GEE THANKS MITT. NOW THE SAINTS GET TO FIND OUT
Now we find out if Romney will attract faithful followers in The South and how many.
What will the racial bigots Borns Agains, and Southern Born Again Racial Bigots do? Will they vote for a Mormon to defeat a black president? What do they dislike least? Black Obama or Mormon Romney?
The Mormons living in the South now get the opportunity to find out what their neighbors and friends REALLY think of their religion. This will be an interesting season of frankness, discussion, and learning.
LOVE ME BECAUSE I AM RICH
“Pirate” may be a strong sort of noun to describe Romney’s record in business. Newt Gingich, who fancies himself the 21st Century Winston Churchill in exile, called Romney’s depiction of his business record “pious baloney,” which is certainly not very gracious, but essentially correct. However, after the New Hampshire primary, Romney's spokespersons started getting defensive about the public image of his record. His PR decried the following points:
1 Newt Gingrich's criticism of Romney's business methods, which Romney’s people characterized as “Fomenting resentment at success.”
Meaning: We in general and Republicans in particular must admire people who make money, because they are successful and made money. We cannot second guess the ethics of how people went about becoming successful and making money. This is what the Republican Party is – a vehicle to protect the making of lots of money with few strings and regulations and taxes attached.
2 They also said the Republicans must have a candidate who “supports free enterprise and does not condemn it like President Obama” does.
Meaning: when a man has made money, we have to admire the man and like it, no matter what. To make a huge fortune, typically a man has to make his compromises, and sometimes to break laws and break ethical standards. Then the man spends the rest of his life living with the consequences of those decisions and rationalizing and justifying the methods that made his money. A man does not need some poor whiners complaining about his methods no matter how egregious. Besides, America is bankrupt and has to downsize, so we need someone who has experience in taking an organizational wreckage and reaping profits from it.
IN CONCLUSION
Romney has a lot of gall to say that when his political opponents complain about his business practices that equal criticism and assaults on the free enterprise system and by extension Americanism. This is nothing of the sort. We have the right to judge Romney and free enterprise on a case by case basis.
Bachman Gingrich Huntsman Paul Perry Romney Santorum
Date location type delegates candidate and percentage of the vote
B G H Pl Pr R S Others
January
3 Iowa caucus 28 5% 13 1 21 10 24.6 24.5 0.1
10 New Hampshire primary 12 0.1% 9.4 17 23 0.7 39 9.4 0.7
100 years ago, the presidential candidates had names like Beauchamp, Eugene, William Howard Taft, Judson, Oscar, Robert, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas, Woodrow Wilson.
This year’s presidential candidates insist on going by nicknames like Newt, Ron, and two! Ricks. It sounds like a company softball team roster. Mitt Romney’s name really is Mitt Romney. Willard Mitt Romney. I assume his middle name is a family name – or George had an obsession with baseball in that period. Does Mitt have a brother named Batt? It would be darned interesting to find out why Romney became “Mitt Romney” instead of “Will Romney.”
THE INSULT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
Romney won the Iowa caucus barely. Then he won the New Hampshire primary by a 15 percent minority. He is the first Republican candidate to do so.
Romney lives in New Hampshire (and in California). The result means 61 percent of the voters voted for someone other than Romney. That is really insulting considering he and his family campaigned in New Hampshire for five years. What do the New Hampshirites want – free coupons?
HUNTSMAN VS ROMNEY
I will admit the only Republican presidential candidate that I can stand is Jon Huntsman. Here in Utah, the highly orthodox iron rod Republicans regard him as a hippie. He played in a rock band when he was a teenager. Today his beliefs remain in basic ways consistently conservative.
Romney is good looking in that really good looking sort of way. He went through well-known moderate to liberal political periods, and if he has done it once, he can do it again. Romney’s father ran for the presidency back in 1968. Despite his reputation for political indecisiveness, George Romney would have made a better president than Nixon, Romney, at least, was not nuts.
Mitt Romney impresses me as a reasonably articulate, beautiful, well-groomed buccaneer. “Buccaneer” may be too positive a noun. Pirate. He impresses me as the type of CEO who – if he had acquired any corporation for whom I worked – would have fired me.
GEE THANKS MITT. NOW THE SAINTS GET TO FIND OUT
Now we find out if Romney will attract faithful followers in The South and how many.
What will the racial bigots Borns Agains, and Southern Born Again Racial Bigots do? Will they vote for a Mormon to defeat a black president? What do they dislike least? Black Obama or Mormon Romney?
The Mormons living in the South now get the opportunity to find out what their neighbors and friends REALLY think of their religion. This will be an interesting season of frankness, discussion, and learning.
LOVE ME BECAUSE I AM RICH
“Pirate” may be a strong sort of noun to describe Romney’s record in business. Newt Gingich, who fancies himself the 21st Century Winston Churchill in exile, called Romney’s depiction of his business record “pious baloney,” which is certainly not very gracious, but essentially correct. However, after the New Hampshire primary, Romney's spokespersons started getting defensive about the public image of his record. His PR decried the following points:
1 Newt Gingrich's criticism of Romney's business methods, which Romney’s people characterized as “Fomenting resentment at success.”
Meaning: We in general and Republicans in particular must admire people who make money, because they are successful and made money. We cannot second guess the ethics of how people went about becoming successful and making money. This is what the Republican Party is – a vehicle to protect the making of lots of money with few strings and regulations and taxes attached.
2 They also said the Republicans must have a candidate who “supports free enterprise and does not condemn it like President Obama” does.
Meaning: when a man has made money, we have to admire the man and like it, no matter what. To make a huge fortune, typically a man has to make his compromises, and sometimes to break laws and break ethical standards. Then the man spends the rest of his life living with the consequences of those decisions and rationalizing and justifying the methods that made his money. A man does not need some poor whiners complaining about his methods no matter how egregious. Besides, America is bankrupt and has to downsize, so we need someone who has experience in taking an organizational wreckage and reaping profits from it.
IN CONCLUSION
Romney has a lot of gall to say that when his political opponents complain about his business practices that equal criticism and assaults on the free enterprise system and by extension Americanism. This is nothing of the sort. We have the right to judge Romney and free enterprise on a case by case basis.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
THE BYU WILCOX FIRING: A REMINDER ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF MONITORING OFFICIAL WORK FILES
Here’s an article from the Salt Lake Tribune that serves as the beginning of 5 points about work place records.
1 For as long as we work at our various institutions, we should insist on seeing and reading and reviewing our official file.
2 We should insist on reviewing and photocopying every bit in it every six months.
3 If we find something questionable or just plain wrong headed in our official file, we discuss it point blank with our file leaders and get it amended.
4 If and when our leaders dismiss us, we demand to review and photocopy the complete file.
5 Federal law requires that certain types of documents stay in an organization for a year, or a few years, or forever. If the leadership has deliberately removed or suppressed documents in the official file, you can and should take legal action. Do not go gentle into that good night without your own set of documentation.
As to the details of why BYU fired Kendall Wilcox – it doesn’t take much of a sense of prophecy to know what has happened here. These sorts of firings turn into cases of he says/he says – and both parties then accuse the other of presenting only a certain percentage of the real truth. However, the issue in these sorts of cases is the difference between what official excuses the institution presents to the public and what its real reason actually turns out to be.
And now, the article.
Openly gay BYU producer, filmmaker fired
Response » School insists sexual identity wasn’t a factor, saying employee failed to show up for work or talk to supervisor
Preserved from the Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52947893-78/wilcox-byu-jenkins-church.html.csp
By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune
Published: November 18, 2011 03:35PM
Updated: November 18, 2011 03:43PM
LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University has fired Kendall Wilcox, an executive producer in the school’s broadcasting department who, on his own time, is making an independent documentary about being gay and Mormon.
Wilcox announced the move Friday morning on his Facebook page, saying he was terminated the previous week by his BYU supervisors who “cited certain tasks and communications that I had not performed to their liking.”
The Emmy-winning filmmaker, who did not immediately return phone calls and emails Friday, defended himself in his post. He said he faced “an increasingly hostile work environment over the last several months with which I refused to continue to engage.”
BYU spokeswoman Carrie Jenkins said emphatically that Wilcox wasn’t let go for being gay or for his work on the documentary.
She mentioned Wilcox’s August interview about his life and work with Radio West’s Doug Fabrizio, in which he told the radio host that his BYU supervisors “were very respectful and loving” when he told them about his homosexuality and documentary project.
“They kept reminding me over and over about our friendship,” Wilcox told Fabrizio. “and since then all of our interactions have been full of love and respect and open-heartedness.”
According to Jenkins, however, Wilcox has not stepped into BYU Broadcasting offices for two months.
“Kendall was terminated for two basic reasons,” Jenkins said Friday. “He refused to come to work and he refused to communicate with his supervisor.”
Jenkins said the school was surprised by Wilcox’s claim about “a hostile work environment.”
That was something “he had said in a text message to his supervisors,” she said, “but this claim did not go through human resources or through [BYU’s} equal opportunity office.”
Wilcox did not return calls, but he did caution Facebook readers not to see his firing “as one more example of institutionalized homophobia on the part of BYU or the [LDS] Church.”
He is still optimistic that the Mormon community “is at a time in our history when we are proactively putting the destructive polemics behind us and treating each other with genuine love, respect and empathy.”
To that end, Wilcox is continuing to work on Far Between, a film that will document his journey to find a place in a faith that gives him no option but a life of celibacy and in a culture that pushes him to reject his religion. He is interviewing current and former Mormons, activists and defenders, those in mixed-orientation marriages, gays with longtime partners, writers, scholars, therapists, mothers, spouses and children to see how they manage that tension. The film’s tone will be respectful of all positions and experiences, he told The Salt Lake Tribune in July, letting the narrative take him in diverse directions.
He also created a nonprofit organization, Empathy First Initiative, to help improve conversations about homosexuality and other issues.
“No one is perfect at this, least of all me,” Wilcox wrote on Facebook. “But I do believe we’ve reached a tipping point at which — while keeping an eye to the sad events of the past regarding the [LDS] Church and homosexuality — we can all support one another in seeking truth, forgiveness and reconciliation.”
Together , he said, “we are making it better.”
© 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune
1 For as long as we work at our various institutions, we should insist on seeing and reading and reviewing our official file.
2 We should insist on reviewing and photocopying every bit in it every six months.
3 If we find something questionable or just plain wrong headed in our official file, we discuss it point blank with our file leaders and get it amended.
4 If and when our leaders dismiss us, we demand to review and photocopy the complete file.
5 Federal law requires that certain types of documents stay in an organization for a year, or a few years, or forever. If the leadership has deliberately removed or suppressed documents in the official file, you can and should take legal action. Do not go gentle into that good night without your own set of documentation.
As to the details of why BYU fired Kendall Wilcox – it doesn’t take much of a sense of prophecy to know what has happened here. These sorts of firings turn into cases of he says/he says – and both parties then accuse the other of presenting only a certain percentage of the real truth. However, the issue in these sorts of cases is the difference between what official excuses the institution presents to the public and what its real reason actually turns out to be.
And now, the article.
Openly gay BYU producer, filmmaker fired
Response » School insists sexual identity wasn’t a factor, saying employee failed to show up for work or talk to supervisor
Preserved from the Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52947893-78/wilcox-byu-jenkins-church.html.csp
By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune
Published: November 18, 2011 03:35PM
Updated: November 18, 2011 03:43PM
LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University has fired Kendall Wilcox, an executive producer in the school’s broadcasting department who, on his own time, is making an independent documentary about being gay and Mormon.
Wilcox announced the move Friday morning on his Facebook page, saying he was terminated the previous week by his BYU supervisors who “cited certain tasks and communications that I had not performed to their liking.”
The Emmy-winning filmmaker, who did not immediately return phone calls and emails Friday, defended himself in his post. He said he faced “an increasingly hostile work environment over the last several months with which I refused to continue to engage.”
BYU spokeswoman Carrie Jenkins said emphatically that Wilcox wasn’t let go for being gay or for his work on the documentary.
She mentioned Wilcox’s August interview about his life and work with Radio West’s Doug Fabrizio, in which he told the radio host that his BYU supervisors “were very respectful and loving” when he told them about his homosexuality and documentary project.
“They kept reminding me over and over about our friendship,” Wilcox told Fabrizio. “and since then all of our interactions have been full of love and respect and open-heartedness.”
According to Jenkins, however, Wilcox has not stepped into BYU Broadcasting offices for two months.
“Kendall was terminated for two basic reasons,” Jenkins said Friday. “He refused to come to work and he refused to communicate with his supervisor.”
Jenkins said the school was surprised by Wilcox’s claim about “a hostile work environment.”
That was something “he had said in a text message to his supervisors,” she said, “but this claim did not go through human resources or through [BYU’s} equal opportunity office.”
Wilcox did not return calls, but he did caution Facebook readers not to see his firing “as one more example of institutionalized homophobia on the part of BYU or the [LDS] Church.”
He is still optimistic that the Mormon community “is at a time in our history when we are proactively putting the destructive polemics behind us and treating each other with genuine love, respect and empathy.”
To that end, Wilcox is continuing to work on Far Between, a film that will document his journey to find a place in a faith that gives him no option but a life of celibacy and in a culture that pushes him to reject his religion. He is interviewing current and former Mormons, activists and defenders, those in mixed-orientation marriages, gays with longtime partners, writers, scholars, therapists, mothers, spouses and children to see how they manage that tension. The film’s tone will be respectful of all positions and experiences, he told The Salt Lake Tribune in July, letting the narrative take him in diverse directions.
He also created a nonprofit organization, Empathy First Initiative, to help improve conversations about homosexuality and other issues.
“No one is perfect at this, least of all me,” Wilcox wrote on Facebook. “But I do believe we’ve reached a tipping point at which — while keeping an eye to the sad events of the past regarding the [LDS] Church and homosexuality — we can all support one another in seeking truth, forgiveness and reconciliation.”
Together , he said, “we are making it better.”
© 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune
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