Bigelow's Rameumptom

My Latest Author Bio

2012-01-25T15:29:00.003-07:00

Here's an author bio I wrote for an upcoming humor book I'm involved in:

Born and raised in an ancient Nephite sorcerer's underground lair in an undisclosed location in the Great Salt Lake Desert, Christopher Kimball Bigelow considers himself a modern-day Gadianton robber of the written word. After working for seven years at the Ensign magazine, he began to fear he would be translated, so he quit and helped start a secret combination called The Sugar Beet. His publishing projects have also included cofounding Irreantum, a Mormon literary magazine whose name no one ever mispronounces; coauthoring Mormonism For Dummies, which the LDS Church has selected as the priesthood and Relief Society curriculum manual for 2014; a novel titled Kindred Spirits that recently hit triple digits in sales; and four or five boring nonfiction LDS reference books that funded several fun vacations. Forthcoming works include an exhibitionistic memoir titled Mormon Punk: From LSD to LDS and a post-apocalyptic, likely prophetic Mormon horror novel titled Master Mahan Avenged, which includes the gays taking over the LDS Church's City Creek Center in downtown Salt Lake City. Bigelow has a wife, five kids, a dog, and a cat who all want nothing more in life than to support his writing by providing him with unlimited, uninterrupted quiet time at his laptop.

Upon Hearing of an Old Roommate's Gay Marriage

2011-11-18T15:21:00.004-07:00

Yesterday, a long-ago roommate's name popped up as a recommended connection on a social network, and I invited him to connect. He accepted but wrote back to warn me that he's now gay-married and that maybe I will want to delete him for political/personal reasons. So here's how I explained my stance:

I think I saw something about your same-sex marriage on Facebook, but then I must have been wiped out in a friend cleanse you did, because I don't think we're FB friends anymore. (Feel free to add me again, sometime.)

I'm against the gay movement on theological grounds and am opposed to gay activism in any form, but I'm not necessarily against individuals who have decided to privately live in a same-sex partnership--I don't presume to judge an individual's situation. My personal policy is to socialize with gays and gay couples as occasion naturally arises, but I don't allow gay couples around my minor-aged kids, because I want to protect them against examples of alternative lifestyles. (I realize they will get the examples from elsewhere, but not with my implied endorsement.)

So my wife and I go out to dinner with my wife's gay cousin and his partner and even recently flew down to L.A. to see his one-man play about leaving Mormonism and embracing gayness, but when he comes over to our house he doesn't bring his partner, at least not as long as we have minor-aged children living at home. (If one of my own boys decided he was going to live gay, these same standards would apply to him as well.)

I'm afraid I feel the same way about church. I would not welcome a known gay couple to attend church together because of the confusion it causes for children, whose sexual orientations can be quite fluid through young adulthood, easily affected by many different kinds of outside influences.

Anyway, good luck with your path, which I'm sure must yield you much happiness or you wouldn't go out on such a limb as a believing Mormon. I hope that homosexual happiness lasts as long as possible for you and extends in some form into the afterlife, although I'm quite dubious about that last part.

One Decade, One House

2011-07-05T17:25:00.000-06:00

Occasionally I like to indulge myself in longish personal journal entries, like this one.

In June, we hit the 10-year mark in our current home in Provo, Utah. This is the longest, by far, that I have ever lived in one house continuously. My parents have lived in their current Bountiful house for 33 years now, but I lived there for only six years continuously with them, although if you count my pre-mission (1986), post-mission (1988), post-Boston (1992), and post-divorce (1997-98) times with them, the total is closer to eight years.

First I must admit that I’ve always actively disliked Provo/Utah County, so it’s ironic that I’ve lived here the longest of anywhere in my life (followed by Southern California, which was also about ten years total, but in three different houses). The reason I still mostly dislike Utah County is basically that it’s too culturally Mormon for my tastes. As a kid, I thought my Bigelow relatives from Happy Valley were a tad conservative and otherworldly, especially compared to the worldly, sophisticated, somewhat black-sheepish leg of the family up in Federal Heights. After 10 years, Utah County doesn’t seem as bad, I have to admit, although I’d still much rather live on one of the coasts, if I only had the career and salary and mojo to do so (and the wifely approbation).

What I like about this house:

It’s almost paid off. We did a 15-year mortgage and refinanced it once, so we still have nearly seven years left, but that should go pretty quick. (Very scary to think I’ll be 50 years old by then…)
It has plenty of room. Right at this moment, we have 13 people staying under this roof (three Chinese students plus my wife’s sister and her family from California), but the house absorbs them well. I love having the large family room on the other side of the house for the kids, plus another smaller family room in the basement. The yard is also plenty big, and there is plenty of storage space in the home.
We live right across the street from my mother-in-law, and that has been nice. We often share meals, and she has pinch-hit for us numerous times by watching kids for a little while, etc. We sometimes help her move things or solve computer problems, but she overall probably does more for us.
We have terrific views of Rock Canyon right above us and Mount Timpanogos to the north.
The neighborhood and local schools are pretty good. It’s one of those LDS wards with only two or three nonmember or inactive houses within the entire boundaries, so there’s lots of social cohesion and people helping each other out, etc.
We’re only a couple blocks north of BYU, which is overall good except when we get caught in football traffic. We make pretty good use of campus, going over for plays, sports, concerts, museum exhibits, etc. I despise some things about BYU (mainly cultural bone-headedness), but I also like some things. I believe being this close to BYU also makes it better to sell and rent houses, if we ever need to do either of those.
We’re pretty close to decent shopping and restaurants, and we’re also quite close to Provo Canyon, Sundance, and Park City.

What I don’t like:

Even with a 40-year-old house, we’ve chosen to spend our extra money more on traveling than on remodeling. We did a major remodel of half the basement, stripping down to concrete and studs and adding new walls to create an extra bedroom and storage room, but otherwise we haven’t done much, mainly just some painting inside and out. As a result, we still have popcorn ceiling with sparkles in it; awful wallpaper in a few places; acres and acres of green-moss carpet that’s high in quality but very dated (and deteriorating progressively faster now); some hideous old light fixtures; ugly linoleum that is wearing out; yucky old lace curtains; and dark faux-wood paneling in the family room. Part of me would like to remodel, but another part would rather continue to spend extra money on other things. I think putting in much new stuff would just make me anxious, because I hate it when new stuff gets beat up and dirty; a big part of me would rather not have new stuff to begin with, because it’s just depressing when it starts falling apart. We’ll probably do some more things eventually, but in recent years we’ve mainly been replacing tons of appliances (within the past five years, practically everything except the air conditioner and clothes washer), and we need to do a new roof within the next year or two, which will be a huge expense.
The yard is nice in some ways but also much higher maintenance than I’d like. The old lady who used to live here made her adult children come and do the yard, and sometimes they even won city awards for it. We still get lots of exotic tulips in the spring, and there are tons of trees and shrubs and hedges, plus plenty of lawn to mow and many flowerbeds to manage. We end up spending several hundred dollars per year to have all this stuff trimmed and pruned, and we still look pretty shaggy most of the time. There’s a nice wooden fence that we don’t maintain, as well as a big wooden patio that’s starting to buckle from tree roots, as well as a slanting deck with a ridiculously wide flight of stairs down into the yard. All this wood will have to be renewed or replaced sometime, and we’ve already had to remove three smaller trees and will probably have to remove a couple of gigantic trees at some point. Overall, I’d much rather live in a condo without any yard concerns at all, which I consider a big stress and waste of time and money. I worry and fret over the lawn the whole summer long, because large patches are always dying from grubs or heat or something. The yard is my single biggest reason why summer is my least favorite season. The kids get some good use out of the yard, I admit, but I’d much rather just live near a park or common area that I don’t have to personally maintain.
The master bedroom is a problem in this house. Part of this is our own fault, because we keep the main family computer and the best TV in here, so people are constantly in here. We also keep our desk in here, and it’s not a very big room to begin with. There’s a spare bedroom right next door that used to be a baby nursery, and we really need to turn it into a study and move the desk/computer in there, but right now that room is pretty full of Ann’s stuff. I would like to replace our old queen mattress with a king, scrape off the sparkle-popcorn and wallpaper, get rid of the awful drapes, redo the adjoining bathroom with its smelly old shower, recarpet, etc. If and when we ever do get serious about more remodeling, I think the master bedroom should be our first target.
The house is a long way from the freeway; it takes us about 20 minutes to get down there.
While I feel safe and secure in this ward/neighborhood, it’s also too retirement-aged, conservative, homogenous, and Zionish for my personal taste. There are many Mormons in our ward who are so conformist that they almost seem like Stepfordian robots to me. However, there are also a handful of creative, independent-minded individuals, and the balance is gradually shifting toward younger families with less rigid attitudes about some things (although some of the young ones can seem pretty Stepfordian too). And let’s face it, I’ve never been one for meeting my social needs much via ward or neighbors; rather, I get plenty of social interaction through workmates and my extended families.

I have to admit, our new elders quorum presidency is a hoot. The president has long hair and a beard like Jesus and wears blue shirts and red University of Utah ties, and one of his counselors has a full head of wild curly locks that go down well past his shoulders. These two guys are almost comically out of place in our ward, as far as appearance, and I’m really glad they didn’t start conforming to the Utah Mormon look after they were called into the presidency. As for me, I enjoy wearing a beard, colored shirts, and sandals (in summer) to church. I think the Utah Mormon male dress code is ridiculous and refuse to uphold it, even as part of Elder Packer’s dreaded so-called “unwritten order of things” that stake leaders have been mentioning lately. I refuse to own even a single missionary-style business suit or white shirt, and if someone ever asks me to shave for any reason, I will tell them, in effect, to mind their own business.

Overall, I must say I feel blessed by our house. It’s overall comfortable and peaceful, a haven that I enjoy more often than not. Even though settling permanently in Utah County is pretty much the exact opposite of what I’d hoped and dreamed for myself, I can’t really complain. Besides, now that I’m middle aged and on the gradual downward slope to retirement, I don’t feel like I have the vision or drive to drastically change anything. But who knows what the future holds?

Giving Up Soda

2011-05-18T21:11:00.001-06:00

So, I've now been off soda for about a month.

I'm not sure when I developed a daily Coke habit, but by the time I was working at the Ensign magazine in the mid-to-late 1990s, I was getting a 32-ounce Coke every morning and then another one at lunch on some days, plus a refill of that one. By the time I was working at Unicity in the early 2000s, I was drinking as many as 100 ounces of Coke a day. Well, subtract for the space taken up by the ice, which I usually filled to the halfway mark of the cup, partly because I love extremely cold drinks and I love chewing ice, and partly because I told myself that putting more ice in was healthier because it meant I was drinking less soda, which I suppose is true. (I can also drink Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and at one point Dr. Pepper, but Coke was my main drink.)

Then one day I attended a health fair at work, and a few days later the nurse tracked me down with some urgency to inform me that my triglycerides were about 400, about double the maximum they should be. I did some googling, and I learned that triglycerides are fat in the blood that comes from your diet. One source is sugar, which your liver turns into fat if you eat too much. I eat out a lot and eat too many rich foods, so that's probably where most of my triglycerides come from, but I also felt certain that Coke was playing a role too.

I didn't make any immediate changes to my Coke habit, but within a few years later my doctor had put me on a couple of medications that I still take (Tricor and Niaspan), and my triglycerides soon got back down to normal. However, I have a minor case of osteopenia, which is a precursor to osteoporosis, and I'm pretty sure the main reason is all the Coke I've drunk. My understanding is that something in cola leeches minerals from the bones.

In more recent years, I've made some other gradual changes. I used to keep canned Coke at home to drink on the weekends, but then my kids started drinking it all the time, so I stopped keeping it at home. Besides, I don't really like the taste of canned Coke--I really only like fountain Coke. So on the weekends, I'd always get a Coke at some point on Saturdays, and on Sundays I'd drink it if we visited anyone with canned Coke on hand (especially my family's house in Bountiful).

At another point, I decided to finally cut my daily consumption of Coke. I don't remember what triggered this decision, but I started limiting myself to one 22-ounce Coke a day, nearly always at lunchtime. I did pretty well with this for the past year or two, only occasionally slipping and having more.

Another thing I started doing was eating fruit every day, or nearly so. This has taken a lot of discipline, and it took several months to really get in the habit, but now I'm quite good about it. The real battle is making sure that fruit is available and that I remember to eat it. My workmates tease me because I have computer alerts set to ping me with "Eat fruit" every day at 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Every Monday or so, I drive over to Wal-Mart and load up on apples and oranges, enough to have one of each every day. (I'd do bananas too, but I hate the taste and texture of bananas.) And then of course you have to wash the apples, because the pesticide accumulates in your body over your lifetime. Fortunately, one of my coworkers lets me stow my fruit in his fridge, so it's reasonable convenient. The oranges are a pain in the butt to peel, but oh well.

I've done this fruit thing long enough now that I actually look forward to my morning and afternoon fruit. It seems to satisfy my sweet tooth and keep me from eating candy and crap, at least most of the time. Also, my wife always has fruit available at home, and she cuts some up with nearly every dinner she cooks. At home, I especially like mangos when they're perfectly ripe, and we also eat a lot of melons and berries. I honestly believe that eating fruit every day has made it so I don't like processed sugar as much. When I eat a candy bar now, it usually tastes way too sweet and chemical-ish. But I've continued to drink soda until a month ago.

So what made me quit soda altogether? Deep down, I've always sort of expected some doctor or someone to tell me I had to, but I didn't really plan on it anytime soon. But the other morning, I got a Coke on the way to work when I stopped for gas, and when I took a mouthful, it tasted bad to me, all artificial and chemical-y. Then after I arrived at work that morning, I read this article about how much excessive refined sugar messes with various body systems and disorders, including cancer.

So I just said, "I'm stopping." However, I didn't necessarily think it was permanent. Despite my longtime habit, it was easy to stop. I've never been one to feel the effects of caffeine much, and I didn't feel any trace of withdrawal. Sure, there are times when a Coke sounds good, but it's been surprisingly easy just to get water at restaurants, and then fruit wipes out any lingering sweet craving I may be feeling. I also drink more fruit juice now, which has a lot of sugar but not as much or as refined as the corn syrup in soda.

I've toyed with the idea of allowing myself some soda, such as on odd days of the month or something. But why restart when I don't really need it anymore? The time when I crave it most is on the way to a restaurant where the Coke goes well with the food, but once I start eating I find that water is just fine with it too. I think trying to have soda in my life would be like having Angry Birds on my phone, which I had to totally stop playing because I just wanted to play it all the time. If I started up on soda again, it would probably gradually creep back into an unhealthy habit. I hope soda is just something that I've finally grown out of.

I wonder if I will notice any long-term benefits of stopping soda. With the combination of reducing soda and eating daily fruit, I'm pretty sure I'm feeling healthier overall now than I did five years ago. I'm still 20-30 pounds overweight and have a swollen-looking belly, but I consistently do the treadmill 90 minutes a week and I've been trying to take a brisk outside walk for an hour or two every weekend, and I also do fifteen minutes of crunches and light weights three mornings a week, which helps too.

I'm quite certain I couldn't have stopped soda if I didn't develop a daily fruit habit first, so if you're thinking about doing the same, maybe try that. Typing about soda right now makes me kind of want a Coke, so I'm going to go get an O'Doul's now instead, or maybe a little glass of grape juice...

Updating My Reading Shelf

2011-02-12T20:20:00.001-07:00

For several months (or years?), my shelf in our bedroom where I keep the books I want to read next has been mostly full of LDS last-days stuff, which I intended to read as research for a novel project. Tonight, I decided to put all those books down in my basement and bring up a fresh crop of books, which I'd like to think I could read my way through within the next year.

Below is the new list on my reading shelf, in no particular order. In choosing these, I admit I stayed over on the west side of my basement library, where I have been stockpiling more recently purchased books; I did not venture over to the large eastern shelf, where much guilt is shelved along with hundreds of books (on average, I tend to read only one out of every ten or twenty books I purchase).

The Widows of Eastwick, John Updike
Goodbye, I Love You, Carol Lynn Pearson
LaVell Meldrum Bigelow (my grandfather's personal history)
The Bad Girl, Mario Vargas Llosa
It Sucked and Then I Cried, Heather Armstrong
Summer of the Apocalypse, James Van Pelt
Earth Abides, George Stewart
Deliverance, James Dickey
Underworld, Don DeLillo
The Overton Window, Glenn Beck
The Hangman's Daughter, Oliver Potzsch (wow, five consonants in a row)
Room, Emma Donoghue
Kings of the Earth, Jon Clinch
The Keys of the Kingdom (Book 4, Standing in Holy Places), Chad Daybell
Heroes of the Fallen, David West

Realistically, I'm afraid this is more like two years' worth of reading than one, especially now that I've also got a Kindle stocked with a few books. I find that I tend to get through books more slowly on the Kindle because there's not a physical book sitting next to my bed, importuning to be read.

Any comments on any of these titles?

Status Report on Zarahemla Books

2010-12-17T17:27:00.003-07:00

Someone asked me for some thoughts on Zarahemla Books and Mormon publishing, and I ended up typing more details and personal thoughts than he probably needed, so I'm posting it here as a personal blog/journal entry.

My little Mormon-themed publishing company Zarahemla Books published three titles in 2010. Angela Hallstrom's story anthology Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction has sold nearly 300 copies, Stephen Carter's personal-essay collection What of the Night about 50, and Darin Cozzens's story collection Light of the New Day about 60 copies. I knew none of these titles were particularly commercial, especially the latter two, and they have performed exactly how I expected.

For 2011, right now I am editing a huge Mormon play anthology put together by Mahonri Stewart. I don't have much mojo for Zarahemla work anymore, so it's taking me a long time, and I don't know exactly when it will be done but hopefully this next year. In 2011 we will probably also put out a new Doug Thayer story collection, if he gets it done and still wants us to, and volume two of the best of The Sugar Beet (satirical Mormon news), if the compiler and designer get it done.

If we do three titles in 2011, I will still have four ISBN numbers left with Zarahemla, and I would like to see these ISBNs well used (of course, if needed I can always buy an additional block of 10 ISBNs for about $250). However, I'm a little burned out and don't see myself personally doing much else with Zarahemla beyond 2011, except perhaps publishing another one of my own novels if I ever finish one and can't sell it elsewhere. This is par for the course for me on volunteer things: I tend to last five solid years and then feel ready to move on (I did Irreantum and The Sugar Beet each for about five years). I started Zarahemla in about August 2006, so I'm coming up on five years.

That said, there's no reason to ever shutter Zarahemla. I would like to keep it open for qualified editors with book projects that they have already perfected with the authors and that sound like they would be good to publish. When the text is ready for publication, then I don't mind using the Zarahemla pipeline to get it out: page layout, proofreading, cover design, printing, distribution through Ingram, and notifying some potential book reviewers. But it has to be an editor whose editorial taste and skill I know and trust. This has actually already happened several times in the past, and it's probably the only way much is going to get done with Zarahemla in the future. The problem is, I have to like it too, of course.

Personally, I just don't have that much time and energy to review manuscripts and do developmental editing with authors. I mean, I would if the books sold better and I got some personal payment from it, but it's all just essentially volunteer work, and I have my own family and creative projects and TV shows to keep up with. At the same time, if the right manuscript came my way that was highly recommended and sounded interesting and, most importantly, gripped me enough that I couldn't stop reading, then I could get excited about it, perhaps even to the degree of doing developmental editing with the author, as needed. But I would have to be really into it, enough to set aside my own pleasures and pursuits.

What it boils down to is that, for the last seven or eight years or so, I have been too workaholic, doing a full-time corporate day job, writing and publishing my own seven books with five different publishers, teaching a night freshman-composition class at Utah Valley University every fall and spring semester (and now two online sections every fall and spring too), and launching and running Zarahemla Books, which has put out 13 titles so far. I'm 44, and this is not the way I want to live my life anymore. I am now turning away even paid nonfiction book projects and otherwising trying to reduce and simplify my life. Seriously, I am finally starting to watch some TV shows I've been wanting to watch for years.

As far as the state of Mormon publishing, I don't really see any significant progress. Frankly, I don't really care at all what Deseret and Covenant are doing with fiction, because I know their fiction will always be too sanitized and contrived for my taste. I think it's cool that so many Mormons are breaking into national young-adult books, from Twilight on down in terms of sales impact, but I'm not personally interested in reading any of them. I still think it's lame that believing, practicing Mormons can't produce nationally engaging adult work because they are too timid and squeamish and uptight about presenting real life, but even if they did I think national publishers and critics would be prejudiced against any adult novel that portrayed Mormonism as being at all reasonable or worthwhile. I think book publishing in general has gotten harder just in the four-plus years I've been doing Zarahemla, and I don't see any indications that the Mormon culture will ever really become open to alternative Mormon literature. For me, the decline of AML-List has detached me quite a bit from the Mormon literary world (or from whatever community the AML-List allowed me to imagine existed).

Despite this lack of belief in a real Mormon book market that interests me personally, I am still working occasionally on my own supernatural postapocalyptic horror novel based on Mormon scripture and folk beliefs, tentatively titled Master Mahan Avenged. I'm about 30,000 words into what I consider a solid draft, and I would like to finish by the end of 2011, although I'm not going to stress over it. I will try to sell it nationally, but even if it turns out good enough to publish (and that's a big if), it will probably be too Mormon, so I'll have to run it through Zarahemla for glorified self-publishing, bypassing the so-called Mormon publishing world because there's really no place in it for fiction like mine.

15 Songs on Shuffle

2010-12-16T19:40:00.002-07:00

A little sampling of 15 songs my iTunes just randomly played from my 8,000-song library, with some commentary:

"The Bike Song (feat. Kyle Falconer with Spankrock)," Mark Ronson & The Business: I have no idea what this song is and don't even remember listening to it.

"The Trooper," Iron Maiden: I have deleted most Iron Maiden from my iTunes because the singer is often quite bad and out of tune.

"Just You 'n' Me," Chicago: A somewhat guilty pleasure from my childhood (my mom was a big fan).

"Away," The Toadies: I really dig the Toadies, with their propulsive music and dark, twisted vibe. I have all their albums.

"Liberate," Disturbed: I'm pretty tired of Disturbed and don't buy new albums, but I still have some songs.

"Alive," P.O.D.: Eh, this is a CD I once bought that has survived in my iTunes. My favorite song of theirs is "Satellite," but the rest is pretty forgettable for me.

"Roll The Bones," Rush: For me, the best Rush is Permanent Waves and earlier. Moving Pictures and Signals are OK even though they're starting to get too synthesizer heavy, but then there's a stretch of New Wave–flavored albums that are so bad I've simply deleted them. However, I don't mind some of the more recent albums with more guitar, such as the album this song comes from. (My favorite relatively recent Rush album is Counterparts.)

"Senses Working Overtime," XTC: This must be a song from some compilation. Not a fan, but I don't dislike it enough to delete.

"You And Me," Neil Young: This is from my wife's CD, and I keep it around as a mellow flavor.

"Indefinitely," Travis: Don't mind this rather mellow album, but I don't like it enough to pursue more Travis.

"Scared Money," Saul Williams: This was some freebie I picked up. It's somehow connected to Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame.

"Colder World," EchoBrain: I really like EchoBrain and wish they had continued beyond two albums.

"My Friend of Misery," Metallica: I love the black album, and my next-favorite Metallica album is actually the cover songs collected in Garage, Inc.

"Rock 'n' Roll Doctor," Black Sabbath: I love me some Ozzy-era Sabbath, although I wouldn't say this particular song is one of my favorites. For one thing, the song title sounds too much like something Kiss would do. I like Sabbath's deeper stuff, like "After Forever" and "Symptom of the Universe."

"All Secrets Known," Alice in Chains: When it comes to grunge, the groups I still listen to most are Alice in Chains and Soundgarden. Pearl Jam is OK, and I like the Nirvana mystique but don't actually enjoy listening to their music very much. This song is from Alice in Chain's recent comeback album, which I think is quite strong.

(Bonus points to anyone who can identify the connection between Metallica and another band in this list.)

Thoughts Provoked by a Gay-Mormon Play

2010-10-12T10:05:00.002-06:00

This essay will hopefully finish off my latest spate of posting (mostly on Facebook) about the gay issue. This issue pushes so many buttons for me that I tend to get sucked into too much writing about it, when I have lots of other things I need to be doing. I'm sure something will trigger me to write about it again in the near future, but I'd like to take a few months off.

I spent a recent weekend seeing a one-man play called Becoming Norman at a little nonprofit theater in the North Hollywood section of Los Angeles. This intimate, honest, heartfelt, engaging play is the dramatized memoir of a guy who grew up Mormon in Orem, Utah, served a mission and attended BYU, but ultimately chose to leave Mormonism and pursue a gay lifestyle and gay romantic/sexual relationships. It was written and performed by my wife's cousin and good friend Norman Dixon, who I too enjoy and value as a person.

The play is basically a very entertaining personal history and explanation of why and how Dixon has become who he is today. While sexual orientation is a major theme, another major theme is the struggle to realize one’s talents and share them with others. While the career theme really interests me, as he and I share some shortcomings and disappointments along these lines, the sexual orientation theme is what I will write about now. I think the gay issue will, more than any other, become society's organizing principle between the secular/agnostic and the religious, and it's a situation that deeply troubles me because I think homosexuality will be to the Mormons in the twenty-first century what polygamy was in the nineteenth, in terms of affecting our place in society. For me, Dixon's play is an opportunity to reassess my attitudes about homosexuality and my personal beliefs about if and how Mormonism--which I firmly hold as my theology and worldview--could better accommodate homosexuality.

As a believing Mormon, it's been clear to me so far that I cannot accept any choice to participate in gay relationships as being pleasing and acceptable to God. However, part of me is open to the possibility that someone may find a way to somehow harmonize homosexuality with Mormonism and give me reason to accept that choosing to pursue one's homosexual desires is a morally, theologically, eternally valid and worthwhile choice. In that spirit, I actually said a little prayer to myself while waiting for Dixon's play to start, asking that I would be able to learn anything I'm missing so far on this perplexing issue and, if necessary, adjust my attitude and opinion regarding gayness.

In processing Dixon's play, I find myself thinking about the two most interesting earlier attempts I've heard to harmonize homosexuality with Mormonism. I will first revisit those two attempts and then give some thoughts on Dixon’s play and whether or not it has changed my personal position on the gay issue.

1) One person I know speculated that perhaps some children of God really are eternally gay and can be fully saved in that identity, perhaps in the middle kingdom of the celestial kingdom in some kind of eternal partnership with their same-gender loved one. We know that fully exalted heterosexually married couples go to the celestial kingdom's highest level, but it's less clear who goes in the middle and lower celestial levels, and perhaps a place in God's presence is reserved for moral, ethical gay people to continue being homosexual throughout the eternities.

Here’s why I reject this one: There is no evidence or logical reason to believe that God would procreate some children in a state that would never allow them to attain full exaltation. There is no such thing as a special class of God's children for whom the plan of salvation does not fully apply, including its gender and heterosexual aspects. All those who are born on the earth have the potential for full exaltation by overcoming their weaknesses through the Savior's atonement, including people who are same-sex attracted in this life. Of course, full exaltation means an eternal heterosexual union that can produce spirit offspring, like God.

Now, I'm open to the possibility that gayness may, in some cases, have some connection to premortality, just like many other aspects of the human condition may. Some of our mortal proclivities and weaknesses no doubt first started to develop in the premortal spirit world through our own choices and behaviors, some of which may have been aberrant or disobedient. After all, a third of God's children developed such negative, rebellious characters and personality flaws during premortality that they disqualified themselves from earth life altogether. But regardless of what happened or didn't happen in premortality, anyone born to this earth has just as much opportunity as anyone else to be fully exalted through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, if they so choose. There is no special place set aside in the celestial kingdom for exceptions like gayness or any other ungodlike trait or identity.

2) Someone sent me a personal essay from a 1995 Sunstone magazine that threw me for a loop, as far as reconciling gayness with Mormon theology ("'My God, My God, Why Has Thou Forsaken Me?'" by Oliver Alden, which a little googling leads me to suspect is a pseudonym related to The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel, a nineteenth-century book that apparently has some homosexual themes). The following passage is the part that I remember as the most troubling to me:

After sustaining minor injuries in an automobile accident, I had requested a priesthood blessing from this man--a humble man of profound charity, but one who had gently but firmly made clear from the outset his fundamental opposition to the course I had adopted. When this leader laid his hands on my head, however, he blessed me not only that my injuries would heal properly (they did), but that I would one day meet the man who was to be my "companion in this life." It was the only time in my many years in the Church that I have stood after a blessing to see its giver manifestly shocked and horrified. That leader remained shocked and horrified for a very long time, but eventually--a year after the blessing, perhaps--walked up to me after sacrament meeting one Sunday and quietly told me that he hoped I would find my companion.

One reason this passage rattles me is that I received a similar blessing given by a person who did not want me to be with a certain girlfriend, but then to his surprise he blessed me that I could be an instrument for saving this girl. He too was shocked and perhaps a little horrified, and of course the blessing had a big impact on me, although it ultimately ended up not working out between that girl and me due to my own foibles. But the point is that I'm quite open to the idea of a priesthood holder receiving inspiration to say something in a blessing contrary to his own opinion or desire.

My mind keeps returning to this passage whenever I try to work out the gay-Mormon puzzle, and I’ve pretty much decided that it could be true only if we're talking about a nonsexual companion, because God does not look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, and to me he would cease to be God if he endorsed any form of homosexual physical relations. Another alternative is that the essayist is either mistakenly or purposefully misrepresenting this blessing. The bottom line is, I simply cannot interpret this blessing as a release from God for this person to enter into a sexual union with someone of his own sex; otherwise, the whole structure of Mormon theology breaks down for me and I may as well stop paying tithing and go enjoy some real beer.

3) And now, Dixon's play. The story begins with young preschool-age Norman dressing up in girl's dresses and playing with dolls. A major dramatic theme revolves around his parents' decision to buy him a dolly of his own when he was four years old. His mother wanted to buy it, but his father and teenaged brother opposed it. In the end, the mother won out, and the play program features a photo of young Norman tightly hugging his new doll at the base of the Christmas tree, surrounded by other toys that don't seem as precious to him as the doll.

Personally, I believe buying him the doll was unwise, although I'm sure it was done out of pure love and innocence, because it set a pattern of indulgence for Dixon's life. I acknowledge that gender roles can be restrictive, but today's alternative of ever-increasing gender-neutral chaos is worse, in my opinion. One useful thing about gender roles is that they help people with inborn gender confusion to follow a useful template and exercise some gender self-discipline. Yes, there are some cultural limitations on how we understand gender here in mortality, but our essential tendency toward gender differentiation is God-given, I believe. I'm willing to admit that my own life is somewhat gender neutral, as many people's are in this modern civilization, and that this is not necessarily all bad. But I think most of modern society's tearing down of gender roles is evidence of how society is moving away from God, who clearly created his children in male and female identities and roles.

Especially after having seen Dixon's play, I would tell my own boys no if they wanted to have their own girl doll. I wouldn't freak out if they played with someone else’s girl stuff on occasion, but I would want to guide them in the right gender path. I admit, I'm fearful of contributing to any gender ambiguity or potential for same-sex attraction my boys may hold, because in today's world there are few if any taboos left to help them stay on track. I don't think people are either gay or not gay; I believe in the Kinsey scale that shows a range of orientation, including Kinsey's finding that one’s place on this scale can change during a lifetime, depending on circumstances, environment, and behavioral choices. With the gay movement so prominent today, I think it's playing with fire to indulge gender confusion, especially with boys, because personally I think homosexuality is a bigger temptation and trap for boys than it is for girls. With all that's happened in the recent past regarding the battles between secular and god-fearing people over homosexuality, I'm to the point now where I don't even like it when my boys wear pink shirts. Twenty or even ten years ago, this stuff wouldn't have bothered me, but we live in a different world now, and we are practically in an open war over this issue, with clashes promising to worsen in the near future.

As Dixon's story progresses, self-indulgence continues to emerge as a theme in his journey. He describes attending BYU preschool, where, when the other kids were out at recess, he snuck back inside to put on the pretty dresses from the dress-up box. He says he knew deep down that he shouldn't let other people catch him doing this because they would not approve, but I would also say his conscience was telling him that this wasn't a good self-indulgence for his own gender identity. Later, Dixon graduates to Barbies, playing with them obsessively even though his mother disapproves. When he reaches the puberty years and sex enters the picture, he discovers masturbation early and makes it a daily habit, which he admits continues to this day. Not only does the thought of such daily exercise sound tiring, but isn't that just a little bit self-indulgent? Dixon doesn’t seem to acknowledge any value in the concepts of disciplining oneself and trying to resist impulses. I assume that he fully indulged all his same-sex fantasies as well, reinforcing them more deeply with every masturbatory act. As a Mormon, I know there's value in abstinence from a wide variety of potentially addictive things, including sexual. Dixon doesn't give me any reason to think his approach is superior, although worldly philosophies surely back up his attitude of "do whatever feels good."

One of the most remarkable things about the play is Dixon's lack of bitterness or anger regarding Mormonism. In fact, he recounts an amazing sequence from his mission when, feeling terribly lonely and displaced with his first companion, he knelt in desperate prayer and received a spiritual manifestation of love and concern that he says kept him going for the entire remainder of his mission. Dramatizing this extremely Mormon-sounding spiritual experience reflects Dixon's integrity and honesty, all the more so because this experience negates the validity of his post-mission sexual choices. In this mission experience, we find a microcosm of how God expects Dixon and all of us to live our lives, and yet Dixon does not make that connection or try to keep applying the principles he learned. I'm sure he prayed after his mission in dealing with his same-sex attraction, but for some reason he did not stick with it enough to get the spiritual help and support he needed to stay on the Mormon track during his adult life, despite the loneliness and displacement caused by his same-sex attraction.

Let me clarify that I don't doubt Dixon's degree of same-sex orientation and gender confusion. For whatever reason, he naturally felt feminine impulses and intense homosexual attraction from an early age, with crushes on boys and other aspects. I would not claim that this was his choice, especially considering the teasing and abuse he got from other kids, although on the other hand this teasing didn't sound any worse than most people get for a wide variety of reasons. While Dixon had girls who were friends, he didn't ever make a real romantic/sexual connection with one in his formative years, and I don't know if he could have accomplished such a connection even if he was really trying, including abstaining from gay fantasies and masturbation. Perhaps if he'd tried harder, he could have actually made an authentic-enough heterosexual connection, even if his homo attractions never went fully away. Observing people like Dixon, I feel sympathy for gays who really believe that their homosexuality is an integral, essential, positive part of who they are, no more needful of resistance than eating or breathing. But I'm afraid such self-rationalization is a deception.

To the best of my memory, the turning point for Dixon appears to have been when a BYU therapist gave him advice that didn't make sense to him: start fooling around a little with girls so he could get himself sexually interested in them and stop desiring boys. I can see where this was weird advice, but it's not an excuse to give up. Soon after that, Dixon allowed himself to undergo a seduction by an older man. From this point onward, Dixon seems to forget all about the spiritual experience on his mission and about Jesus Christ, and he starts to fulfill his spiritual needs through various trendy New Age techniques. Rather than looking to Jesus Christ as his example and savior, he discovers a new mentor to worship: k.d. lang. From a Mormon perspective, that's a rather ridiculous tradeoff, but judging by how Dixon has chosen to depict himself in his play, he often does not seem to have much concept of purposefully redirecting his own thoughts and impulses in the most productive, sensible ways. He seems to be a guy who can only believe in what’s in front of him and who interprets almost any impulse he feels as worthy of pursuing.

As Dixon grows older, he starts to look to homosexual relationships themselves as a way to save himself and become happy. Eventually, he reaches the stage where he wants a monogamous lifelong partnership with a fellow man. He tells about one major failed relationship with a guy I remember meeting at a family picnic some years ago, and then he tells about a newer relationship with Raul, his current partner who, in fact, produced Becoming Norman. The problem is, even if he manages to find a lifelong partner to solace and console him for the rest of his life in this lone and dreary world, gay sexual/romantic relationships cannot survive death in any Mormon concept of an afterlife.

The real issue underlying the gay debate is: do we serve God or do we serve ourselves? Are we secular/agnostic/atheistic, or do we believe in a higher power and strive to connect with it and serve it to the best of our ability? In Dixon's case, nothing about his play suggests that his journey is taking him closer to God; rather, his journey is downright narcissistic in looking to himself as the ultimate authority, as is true for so many people today. At one point in the play, he even says something to the effect that God and the self are actually the same thing.

This quote from John Gardner reminds me of Dixon's persona as presented in his play, as well as so many others in today's world:

Leo Tolstoy knew about the universe of despair and endured . . . a crisis certainly profound and all-transforming. He came out of it not with a theory that every man should make up his own rules, asserting value for all men for all time, but with a theory of submission, a theory which equally emphasized freedom but argued that what a man ought to do with his freedom is be quiet, look and listen, try to feel out in his heart and bones what God requires of him--as Levin does in Anna Karenina, or Pierre in War and Peace.

Judging by Dixon's play, we don’t see much evidence of this kind of introspection and effort, at least in terms of his sexual orientation, which he now accepts as a morally neutral trait, like being left-handed. Yeah, it may be morally neutral if you don't act on it, but it's immoral to act on it because it goes against God. This is a problem that more and more people today are trying to address by turning themselves into God, so they can make whatever rules they want. Talk about pride!

It's been said that, as mortals, we are all drowning in our own dilemmas and in need of a savior, but we cannot pull ourselves out by our own hair. Judging by his play, Dixon is looking for the ultimate perfect gay relationship to save him, but I don’t think it's going to happen that way--especially not in the next life, even if he does manage to find a fellow gay to grow old with in this life. After watching Dixon's play, I'm left feeling more confident than ever that nothing can really save any of us except repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ. Not even a heterosexual relationship can save us, although once we're saved by Christ, such a relationship is necessary to reach full exaltation. It's a terribly difficult thing to expect gay-attracted people to either be celibate or find a way to have an honest, committed heterosexual marriage, but there are certainly many worse trials in life than wrestling with lifelong gay feelings. Gays are not some kind of special exception who are justified in pursuing ungodly ways, even if they really, really, REALLY want to.

While I have no way of knowing everything about how personally accountable Dixon is for his own situation and choices in life, his play does give some clues as to the human foibles that can exacerbate a challenge like homosexuality, and I think people in Dixon's situation may possibly be eligible and due for some self-discipline and repentance. I do know that, while it's not right to judge individuals or treat them poorly, it is right to resist the gay movement and gay marriage in general. I can and do certainly enjoy Norman and Raul as people and respect their right to pursue happiness as they see fit, but I can't endorse their choices, and while I can very much enjoy going out with them for an adult brunch, I don't want them to model a happy-seeming, normal-seeming homosexual relationship in front of my young boys. We need to protect kids, as much as reasonably possible, from risky ideas that can be planted like seeds and grow into something that will interfere with their ultimate happiness. And we all need to continually humble ourselves and repent, or the Lord will humble us instead, either as individuals or, as I believe will eventually become the case, as a society.

So no, Dixon's play didn’t crack my Mormon nut, as far as the homosexual dilemma goes. But I sure feel for him more now after seeing his play, and I can't really blame or judge him personally, although I can give my own strong response to how he presented himself in his courageous, publicly performed play. I wish Dixon the best, and perhaps he has a better chance at happiness through homosexuality than my Mormon beliefs say he does.

Letter to President Packer

2010-10-06T21:05:00.003-06:00

Here is my letter in response to the following invitation: "Please support President Packer in standing for truth and righteousness, sounding a clear and much-needed warning voice, and exercising his constitutionally protected freedoms despite intense intimidation. You can send an email to the Church’s Public Affairs office at owentl@ldschurch.org (we are told your email will be forwarded to Pres. Packer) or send a note or postcard to President Boyd K. Packer, 50 East North Temple, Salt Lake City, UT, 84150."

Dear President Packer:

I felt so relieved to hear your talk on homosexuality and gay marriage (although I don't think you even mentioned those two terms). I'm online a lot, and I get so frustrated by the high level of confusion and worldliness AMONG LATTER-DAY SAINTS on this issue. I've even sometimes wondered if the LDS Church was starting to soften and go politically correct, such as when Church PR announced support for Salt Lake City's gay anti-discrimination ordinance or when Elder Marlin K. Jensen seemed to apologize for the Church's involvement in Prop 8 recently in California, or at least made it sound as if we're not already bending over backwards to be as compassionate as we can without changing our doctrine and surrending our standards.

Personally, I believe that the twin assaults of pornography and homosexuality are the main keystones of Satan's final attempt to bring down the world. Abortion and drugs are bad too, of course, but porn and gayness are infiltrating and confusing even many Latter-day Saints to an unprecedented degree. He has been carefully planning and developing these two campaigns for millennia, and in the 1960s he was finally ready to say, "Release the hounds," and 40 years later they are still ripping and tearing our civilization and getting closer and closer to vital flesh and organs.

I believe he didn't tempt the Book of Mormon civilizations much with homosexuality because he didn't want it to get into the scriptures, so that he could save this abomination for his great last-days effort. If the Book of Mormon civilizations had faced this issue, they would have written about it and made it extremely clear, but the silence in latter-day scripture allows for more division and confusion among the LDS. It is so astounding how, with the gay movement and pornography, Satan has cleverly mixed together things like the black civil rights movement (which was mostly good) with the sexual revolution (which was nearly all bad), along with new technologies that can be both good and bad and can foster so much grassroots mobilization, not to mention act as a delivery mechanism for evil.

Again, thanks so much for standing up for sanity, and I feel bad about all the contention swirling around you. However, I fear that the gay issue, more than any other, will be the factor that really divides the god-fearing from the growing ranks of the secular/agnostic/atheistic in today's society, and I fear that before too long, the Mormons will be the only significant group left standing on God's side of the issue, which will bring back a nineteenth-century level of persecution on our heads.

In the nineteenth century, Mormons espoused a principle that the civilization could not abide, and the civilization eventually pressured us to abandon earthly polygamy, although we continue to hold polygamy as an eternal principle. The twentieth century was the eye of the storm, during which we grew strong and found favor and success in the world. In the twenty-first century, our host civilization is espousing a principle that Mormonism cannot abide, and I expect that the civilization will pressure us to accept gay marriage with every bit as much force as they employed to make us abandon polygamy. But I think we’re going to hold firm this time, simply because our doctrine won’t allow us to do otherwise.

Thoughts on "The Passage"

2010-09-01T21:22:00.002-06:00

The Passage is one of those books that I just had to read. Not only is it a post-apocalyptic novel with lots in common with the novel I'm occasionally working on, but several trusted people recommended it to me, and I couldn't resist all the buzz.

So I just finished reading it. It's nearly 800 pages, so it took me about a month. There were many sentences that I really liked. There were several stretches of pages that I really liked. Overall, however, it was only a second-base hit for me.

What I liked:

The writing style. Very readable and well-paced, at the sentence and paragraph level. Lots of good description, but no bogging down. (Although I have to add, there were some cliches and several editing errors, mainly words left out and using "wretch" several times when he meant "retch.")

Lots of inventive story elements. While the story does have a lot of familiar virus, vampire, and apocalypse elements, it has equally as much stuff that feels fresh and original.

Lots of tension, in spots. The book definitely keeps you reading to find out what happens. And a few times when the monsters were going to get the people, I couldn't put the book down until I found out what happened.

What I didn't like:

The length. The book is too long by at least 200 pages, and I got antsy during the second half, frequently checking how many pages I had left and feeling a little stuck. The part set 100 years after the virus in the California compound became somewhat tedious to me, until some refugees finally left. In general, I don't mind huge books; right before reading The Passage, I read the expanded version of Stephen King's The Stand, which is over 1,000 pages, and despite some of King's foibles and excesses as an author, I didn't want that one to end. (I think The Passage draws a lot of inspiration from The Stand, by the way, and Stephen King is one of the book's big proponents, although I don't agree it's quite as good as he claims it is.)

The characters. I don't think the characters are generally very strong. Some are better than others, but very often in this book I found myself getting confused between characters who are too similar or undifferentiated. Especially in the aforementioned compound section, I found characters confusing to keep track of because several of them are quite similar to each other, although later in the book some of the refugees become more developed characters.

Lack of plausibility. The book features a virus that turns people into vampires, but I think it's asking a bit much of a virus to have such a big effect on their bodies in such a short time. Some aspects of these "virals" are quite interesting, but on other levels they're just like any number of other monsters you can fairly easily imagine. And then the book has virus survivors using a lot of 100-year-old food and fuel and clothing and vehicles and equipment as if they're still fine, and lots of dead bodies are still lying around intact after 100 years.

The central figure. The book revolves around a little girl who receives a perfected form of the virus that makes her stay young, so she's still bouncing around the vampire-infested landscape 100 years after the military lost control of the virus and destroyed the world. The book starts with her sad story of living with a prostitute mom before the virus, and while this section is well written, I found it somewhat emotionally manipulative. And then she has this excessively sentimental relationship with an FBI agent who lost his own daughter and so makes this little girl his new daughter, emotionally. This all came across to me largely as formulaic stuff to help the book become a best-seller by playing on people's emotions, and there are some examples of this later in the book, too.

When the girl (finally) comes back on the scene later in the book, her powers and her role remain unclear to me, and the narrative sort of forgets her but then remembers her again as the refugees go forth. There's a lot of hype in the book about how important she is and central to humanity's long-term survival, but the book doesn't really show why, to my satisfaction. She's involved with a lot of telepathy and other powers, but it's not clear to me how or why she has these powers. Granted, this is the first book in a trilogy, and I assume the author will explain more in later books, but I didn't like how this girl was handled; I didn't feel like the author had full control over his story, in book one. (Even though book one wasn't a home run for me, I'm definitely interested enough to read the next two, by the way.)

The ending: I didn't like how the book wrapped up. One of the virals was given all these weird telepathic powers to affect people's dreams and stuff, and it seemed to be building up to some big climactic conflict with him, but then he and his mob of virals ("the Many") are killed way too easily. The virals are very dumb and are just like animals, by the way, with some observable instinctive behaviors but no real intelligence or communication possible, except with this one Babcock viral with the telepathic powers. There's a lot of mumbo-jumbo in this book that doesn't hold together very well.

The title: All during the book, I kept wondering what "The Passage" referred to. Near the end, the author makes an attempt to explain it, but it's just a few sentences that aren't very convincing, and the concept is never really developed.

I don't know, maybe I'm just getting harder to please as I get older, or maybe I'm becoming a less empathetic reader or something, but this book only half-worked for me. He has quite a few things that I also have in my book, but I thought of them on my own or was inspired by earlier stories, not this one. Anyway, if you like post-apocalyptic thrillers, you should definintely definitely check this out, and I think most people will like it better than I do.

Trying to Listen to "The Exorcist"

2010-08-31T18:38:00.001-06:00

Recently, I've been listening to "The Exorcist" as an audiobook. The main reason I got it was because I'm working on a novel that has demon possession in it, and I wanted to see how this mother of all demon-possession stories plays out.

I remember seeing the movie as a kid, but I don't remember being that scared by it. Of course, I saw it before I became spiritually awake to the reality of the devil, so I guess it didn't have as much punch for me then. Or maybe I'm just not remembering my feelings. I remember I felt more scared about getting caught by my parents watching an R-rated movie than I did about the subject matter of the movie itself. (In fact, it may have been the first R-rated movie I ever watched, when video players had just come out and my neighbors across the street became movie fanatics.)

But now, the story just freaks me out. I listen to audiobooks three mornings a week while doing the treadmill, and even the night before I've found myself dreading my next "Exorcist" session. Sometimes I've even awakened in the night and not been able to get back asleep because I know in a few hours I'll be waking up and facing my fear.

The book is actually pretty good, and it's narrated by the author, who has a great voice for it. While listening, I turn on the lights full blast and keep looking over my shoulders. I'm just to the part where the mom actually sees the girl's bed shaking with her in it, and that gave me the chills really bad. Even right now, I'm feeling uneasy and looking over my shoulders just typing about it.

So I've pretty much decided to give up on it. Yeah, I'd like to finish it, but it just disturbs my peace too much. Maybe I'll listen to it sometime on impulse and when I'm around people, such as on a road trip. But I can't handle these planned early-morning encounters with such a scary story. Or maybe I'll just pick up the book and try it old school, although books can be too scary too.

Lake Tahoe So Far

2010-07-26T18:38:00.001-06:00

Good things so far:

We left with things in good shape both at work and home, so no unfinished business is hanging over our heads, and we will be going home to a clean house and yard, unless some disaster hits while we're gone.
No one has thrown up or otherwise gotten sick or injured, except Ann bit her lip when she hit herself with a paddle.
The resort is very beautiful and clean and high class, with lots of amenities, plenty of handy stores around, and excellent concierge and valet service.
Ann has been providing good, cheap food. She got these delicious meals made at a place called Dream Dinners, and she brought enough for the whole Tahoe portion of our trip. This is good because taking our crew of seven even to a lousy restaurant can easily approach $100. We have a full-sized kitchen and have divvied up the dish-duty days among four people, so no one feels too much pain. Plus, as we usually do while on vacation with the kids, Ann and I are sneaking away for a fine-dining experience, just the two of us.
Our resort accesses a private lake beach that is great. We got an inflatable raft, and the kids are having a great time. Believe it or not, I'll even go out in the little raft.
We just got back from renting bikes and taking a terrific 90-minute ride along the lake and up into the woods. I would like to do that again while we're here.
Last night just Ann and I went on a sunset walk, and there were a lot of clouds so it was spectacular over the lake. We strolled past a casino where Elton John was playing in an outdoor venue right on the Nevada/California state line, and we stood outside for a while with tons of drunk, smoking people freeloading on the great sound. I'm not a huge fan, but he does have some excellent songs, I admit. Having Elton's voice and keyboard float through the whole area really cast a spell on this little town last night.
Ann and I have our own private, enclosed room, and I've been sleeping great. This has been a clock-free vacation for me, so I have no idea what time it is when I wake up, we eat when we want, and sometimes in the afternoon I honestly don't know if it's 3:00 or 5:00 or 7:00. I like this timeless feeling.
I have been reading a ton, which is bliss. I'm almost done with the 1,100-page The Stand. Last night I dreamed that the LDS Church was having Sunday School classes read The Stand as a way of studying the last days, and I was pissed off because I've had several bad experiences of getting censored in Mormon culture, and yet the church was tolerating all King's profanity and vulgarity.
It's been a little rainy off and on, but that has served to cool things off and slow down our pace a little at times, which I welcome.
I love having Ann be our tour guide. I just drive, go where I'm told, and do what I'm told. If it were left just to me, we'd probably rarely make it out of the hotel!

Complaints so far:

I don't know if other people's kids are this way, but our kids are so often demanding and irritating and stressful. I would like to have lots more stretches of time without people constantly interrupting me and asking me to do stuff, whether go to the pool, load the dishwasher, play chess, etc. And I know Ann deflects some of that stuff away from me, so it could be a lot worse!
It's not a two-bedroom villa like we often get in Park City, but rather a one-bedroom. So the five kids are all out in the lounge room. There are two pull-out queens, so they can all sleep comfortably, but that room is always a wreck and Hannah Montana is always playing on the TV, so I hardly even go in there (we have our own TV and DVD player in our bedroom, but I haven't even really watched a movie yet, since I'm so into reading The Stand). And with two beefy teens, let's just say the place often needs airing out.
One bathroom. 'Nuff said.
With our vacation club, we get no maid service unless we want to pay extra, which we don't. So we're constantly running out of towels and stealing extras from the maid carts or the pool. The carpets really need to be vacuumed every day, but we have no vacuum handy (I suppose we could request one), and we have to gather up all our own trash and throw it out into the hall. Plus, I'm pretty tired of seven people's wet bathing suits and beach toys all over everywhere, sand on the tile floors, etc.
Everything costs so much. I'm glad we're not eating out much, but we're spending almost $200 to ride a gondola up into the mountains, $500 to rent our own powerboat for half a day, etc. I agree with Ann that it's silly to come all this way and not take full advantage, but then again it's difficult to see all my hard-earned book money disappear so fast, especially when we could save it or spend it on making some household improvements, paying off this low-interest loan we have, or replacing our beat-up purple minivan, which is coming up on 200,000 miles. Ann and I went to Europe two years ago, China last year, and now this full-family two-weeker, so I'm already pushing for taking a year or two off from expensive traveling. In 2011, I hope all we do vacation-wise is spend our week up in Park City, and I think Ann's in agreement.
I've really been wanting to work on my own novel as part of vacation, but I can't seem to find fifteen continuous minutes to really concentrate, let alone the minimum of two hours I usually need for a productive session. And even when I do have a little time, I waste it doing stuff online or typing things like this. Although I love typing this current novel, I hate having it hang over my head and feeling guilty when I don't work on it as much as I think I should, which is a dumb way to feel about a hobby.
Although beautiful, the lake is too cold for me to even consider swimming in. The resort pool is also too cold for me, although the resort has some great hot tubs with plenty of heat. I'm a real wimp when it comes to water and simply won't get in unless it's quite warm.
I'm a little nervous about the powerboat, because I think Ann thinks that she's going to water ski and that I'm going to do a competent job piloting the boat. From when I water-skied as a kid, I remember it as a fairly complex, dangerous thing to do (both my mom and I were injured while water skiing).

Bottom line: I like Lake Tahoe a lot, and if you're a member of the Marriott Vacation Club, I recommend trading your week to spend some time here. And I like that after our full week here, we get to have a second vacation visiting our brothers in Vacaville and Danville.

Mormon Cult Analysis

2010-07-20T17:17:00.009-06:00

The word “cult” is quite loaded. I don’t think the Mormon church is really a cult anymore, although it certainly was in the beginning, just as Christianity itself began as a cult of Judaism. However, people still like to use the word “cult” to describe the Mormon church, and I think that’s because the church and its culture still display quite a few cult-like traits, not all of which are bad.

The following is a list of cult attributes that I picked up from somewhere, and I’ve responded to each one by analyzing how much I think Mormonism displays that trait and whether I personally feel that’s good or bad.

Leadership

Is the leader charismatic? Cults are often created and maintained by the force of the founder’s personality.

No, not anymore. I don’t think any of today’s General Authorities have enough charisma for a cult to form around their personality. They are all more like corporate board members, with no single individual doing or saying much that is unique, provocative, or attracts attention. For me, Mormonism has become too corporate in this area.

Is the leader always right?

Pretty much, but the leader is unlikely to say anything to rock the boat. Plus Mormonism generally requires unanimity among the fifteen apostles to make any real declarative statement, but when all fifteen speak together, they are always right (such as with the Proclamation on the Family). And I can accept that.

I have to admit, I found it quite off-putting when President Hinckley said he didn’t like extra earrings and mainstream, orthodox Mormons turned that into practically a commandment. I don’t think a religion has the right or the need to dictate personal dress and grooming choices on that level, but Mormons are so quick to jump on things like this.

Does the leader not tolerate or receive criticism, while criticizing everyone else? Does the leader discourage negative feedback about the group?

I do not think Mormon leaders at any level generally welcome or listen much to criticism, but I also don’t think they criticize others much. Mormonism is an almost ridiculously positive, conformist culture, in which frankness, candor, analysis, critiquing, and other forms of social and political honesty are not generally welcome.

Is the leader treated like royalty or considered with reverential awe?

Yes, Mormonism is somewhat nauseatingly overboard in this respect. Unlike the early LDS, today’s LDS definitely put the prophet up on a pedestal. Mormons SAY that the prophet is an imperfect man but BEHAVE as if he’s perfect and infallible, whereas the Catholics are the direct opposite regarding their pope.

Is the leader coercive? Does the leader try to compel members by force, intimidation, or authority against the member’s individual will?

My experience with and observation of today’s church leaders, both local and general, has been that they are generally quite benign and inoffensive in this area. (However, Mormon social pressure makes up a lot of the difference.)

Is the leader self absorbed? Cult leaders are often preoccupied with how people perceive them and seek to aggrandize themselves.

There may be a little of this among today’s General Authorities, but not much. I think the current prophet is a little more mindful of these things than some past prophets, or at least he was before he became prophet. (So far as prophet, he’s actually been quite humble and low key, in my opinion, but I remember when I worked at the LDS Church magazine he would complain if the skin tone was off on his photo.)

Does the leader seek sexual gratification from the members?

Ha, not anymore, in the slightest. I’ve never even seen it on a local level, although I guess it happens from time to time.

Is the group organized in an authoritarian, hierarchical power structure?

Absolutely, and proudly so. Not my first choice for how to structure an organization, personally.

Does the leader claim divinity or special knowledge and authority from God?

Yes, but not very much anymore. Personally, I wish we heard more along these lines——as long as it’s true, of course, and not just something the person is saying to increase his or her power.

Is disagreeing with the leader considered the same as disagreeing with God?

You do still hear too much of this kind of talk in the LDS Church. It particularly bugs me when it’s implied that a local bishop’s decision to issue a calling comes directly from the Lord and that saying no to that calling is the same as saying no to the Lord. I don’t accept that.

On the other hand, I personally feel that disagreeing with the fifteen apostles on an issue like same-sex marriage is the same as disagreeing with God and is a very spiritually dangerous thing to do.

Does the leader expect unquestioning obedience?

To a degree. I think at the general level, they do expect that. But at the local level, I think most leaders are willing to talk through things with members, including general-level things the member might be having trouble with. So questioning is OK to a degree, as part of the process of ultimately yielding to obey.

Does the leader hold out the promise of salvation, power within the group, enlightenment, or other ultimate rewards in return for membership and obedience?

Salvation, certainly. And I think it’s just human nature to bestow higher leadership responsibility to those who obey and conform and serve more. And obeying Mormon standards makes one pure enough to receive more inspiration, in the Mormon view. None of this particularly bugs me.

Is the leader not held accountable for his actions or the actions of his authority structure?

I think Mormon leaders are generally held accountable as needed.

Does the leader ask for money as a sign of loyalty, to be in good standing, or to go to the next level?

Yes, obviously, in the form of tithing. However, this money doesn’t enrich or support any individuals, beyond a set living allowance for full-time general leaders. This area does not bug me.

Recruiting

Does the group provide an instant community by love bombing a newcomer or presenting itself as a happy family?

Yeah, but that’s just good sales and marketing.

Do the members always appear happy and enthusiastic for newcomers? Or have they been encouraged to appear that way?

Ideally, they’re supposed to. Again, sales and marketing. Plus Mormons really do want others to join, both to validate themselves and for the new convert’s benefit.

Are members unable to tell the truth about the group? Members will often lie or evade the truth about the group in order to present a more palatable vision to newcomers. However, this issue goes much deeper, because members are often unable to acknowledge the truth to each other.

Yeah, there’s some of this in Mormonism, which can be quite disingenuous at times. Individuals are under a great deal of pressure to present themselves to fellow members and to the world at large as being righteous and pure and spiritual and wonderful, and I think a lot of Mormons put on phony masks, at least part of the time. Also, a lot of the history is too whitewashed.

Personally, I’d like to see much more frankness in the Mormon church and culture at all levels, less focus on PR and more focus on just being who and what we really are.

Does the group withhold the full truth about its ideas and practices from newcomers? Cults often refrain from divulging the complete picture until newcomers have gotten themselves in deep.

Yes, regarding the temple, and also regarding the hiding of difficult aspects of early Mormon history. I think that’s fine with the temple, since it’s structured as something to work toward, but I think it’s bad to hide the hard history, because in today’s Internet age lots of people will eventually come across it and then feel deceived and betrayed.

Do group members keep near constant contact with interested newcomers? This prevents the newcomer from having time to rethink their involvement and to think with a cooler head away from the love bombing.

I don’t think Mormonism overdoes this, generally.

Does the group isolate newcomers from family and friends? Cults will try through various means to cut off contact between newcomers and outsiders to prevent the truth about the group from coming to light and to replace familial bonds with bonds to the cult.

No, I don’t think the Mormon church does this, but I’ve seen the reverse several times, with family and friends cutting off a new Mormon convert because they disagree with the choice, feel threatened by the religion, etc.

Do new members estrange themselves from family and friends? Even if group members don’t actively try to cut off newcomers from outside influences, newcomers may start to distance themselves from others who don’t share their new outlook and seem to misunderstand or be overly critical.

Well, if someone keeps insulting something you value, I think it’s natural to draw away from that offender. And while I think it’s important to try to understand other people’s outlook, there are times when it sucks too much time and energy and you need to retreat from it, at least for a season. This happens to me all the time with my debates on the gay issue; I often just have to drop the topic for months at a time, otherwise the debate becomes too consuming.

Does the group emphasize the unimportance or worthlessness of the new member while hyping membership in the group? A cult will seek to break down an individual’s self worth in order to foster dependence on the group. A weakened individual becomes pliable to coercion.

No, I don’t think Mormonism does this. If anything, it pumps up an individual’s self-worth with the whole “child of God” thing. But it does foster dependence on the group in order to receive the proper ordinances, etc.

Does the group solicit confessions of guilt, weakness, or fear? Cults seek to break down normal personal boundaries in order to foster a new identity centered around the group.

Perhaps confession to the bishop of serious sins falls into this category somewhat. But on the other hand, Mormon culture doesn’t want to hear about personal weaknesses and fears, beyond a certain superficial point to establish one’s all-important humility within the group.

Does the group demand that new members take some action to affirm their loyalty? These demands may start out small and get progressively bigger. This primes the newcomer to follow directions given by group members. It also causes newcomers to unconsciously justify their actions. For example, “I gave money to this group. I’m a smart person who wouldn’t get cheated. This group must be good.”

Yes, I’d say Mormonism does this quite a bit. For example, the full-time mission required of young men fits this pattern, as well as future demands the church may make on a person’s time and energy. In my own case, I’m at a point now where I’m prepared to say no to something I don’t want to do, though.

Do newcomers need to be trained to think correctly (i.e. according to the group’s ideas)?

Sure, but don’t nearly all human organizations do this, to some degree? Mormonism does it quite a bit, I admit.

Does the group encourage new members to renounce former values or beliefs?

Sure, to the degree that they’re not in harmony with the gospel. I think doing some of this is good, but Mormonism may go a little overboard at times.

Does the group test members before completely accepting them?

It’s easy to get baptized but less easy to gain entry to the temple. I think this is a good thing, giving people a chance to be challenged and grow.

Dissolution of Individual Identity and Independence

Do members use a language that no one else can understand?

Mormons have their share of lingo and acronyms, but not to an excessive or unusual degree, I don’t think. Rather, I think Mormons take some pains to help others understand them.

Do the members have special ways of dressing or other special behaviors that mark them as members? Having a common lingo and similar modes of dress fosters a sense of group cohesion and identity. It also serves to further separate members from the wider society.

Of course. And personally, I have a huge problem with the “uniform of the priesthood,” which is the same as a conservative corporate suit and tie. I don’t think this is necessary or good, and it’s something I just refuse to go along with. I’ll put on a tie but do not own a suit and do not ever intend to buy one. Perhaps this is my own passive-aggressive response against what I see as an excessively conformist, cult-like expectation of Mormon men.

Other than that, Mormons don’t do much along these lines, certainly far less than many other religious groups. I suppose temple garments might fall into this category, but garments are not visible to others, so they're more of a personal reminder. Even other members generally don't know if you're wearing your garments or not.

Do the members have solidarity within the group with little or no outside allegiance? Cults will try to become the entity that members are ultimately loyal to instead of more natural loyalties like family or friends.

Yeah, the church expects loyalty when one’s family is at odds with the church, but certainly whole families and groups of friends can find solidarity together within the church. And at least in the United States, the church and most members are almost fanatically patriotic, which is one way the church lifts itself out of cult status and joins with the larger civilization.

Personally, I’m not very patriotic. I think America has played a key role in the world and that the early events were inspired like Mormonism says they were, but I think America peaked with World War II and has been on the wrong track since then in nearly every way, except perhaps in the development of technology, although even technology has a big downside. I would really like to become an American expatriate for a period of time, if I could find the right situation for my family in Europe or Asia somewhere.

Does the group use guilt to motivate obedience?

Yes, definitely. If you break the rules, you fear loss of blessings and protection.

Is there a system of punishment and reward? Such a system infantilizes the member, creating a relationship that resembles that between parent and child.

Not really in an outward sense. Most of this is left to one’s own spiritual relationship with God, I think. Although with serious sins, there is punishment, so I guess that does make the church like one’s parents in some ways, who will excommunicate you if you screw up too badly.

Do members feel a sense of powerlessness, dependency, covert fear, or guilt?

Somewhat, in all areas. I don’t think an individual member like me feels any power to really influence or change things in the church. To me, Mormonism feels like being a worker bee in a hive——unfortunately, I don't like honey. And Mormonism does make you feel dependent on it for eternal blessings, and I must say that one reason I like being in the church is that I expect to be helped materially if my personal situation falls apart, which is somewhat of a sense of dependency. As far as fear, Mormonism’s teachings that we all need to go through personal trials and that these are the last days and terrible things will happen do cause some fear, although the faith also provides ways to maintain hope that all will come out right in the end.

Does the group demand complete loyalty or trust in the group and its beliefs? Is the expression of doubt suppressed through guilt or character assassination?

Yeah, I would say it does. Certainly you can’t successfully blend Mormonism with other faiths and still really be a Mormon. And I do think Mormons are VERY effective at freezing out people who express doubt or otherwise rock the boat. That’s not character assassination, though. On the other hand, I think anyone who leaves the church is automatically assumed to have some secret sin or flaw that made them want to leave, and I admit that I personally think that is indeed the case, even if the flaw is simply pride.

Do members feel dependent on the leader? Would they feel lost without the leader’s direction and presence?

To a degree, yes. But any leader can be readily replaced in Mormonism, so it's about the role, not the personality.

Do members allow the leader to make decisions for them?

Not really. Leaders invite and ask members to do or think certain things, but members still have to make their own decisions. When I've sought counseling on certain issues, my leaders have usually made it clear that they cannot and will not decide things for me.

Do members lose the ability to make choices contrary to the group’s beliefs? Nearly all decisions are weighed against how the group would look at the choice.

To some degree, yes. The area that comes to mind is again the full-time mission thing. Far fewer people would go or would last the whole mission without the intense Mormon social pressure. The same could be said for marrying outside the church and other things. Then again, there’s plenty of room in Mormonism for people to make plenty of choices against the grain, as long as they don’t cross certain moral lines, and even then there’s good opportunity for repentance.

Does the group deprive members of the sense of time by removing clocks and watches?

Perhaps in the temple? Which is why the endowment session always feels like about four hours to me... But they don’t make you take off your watch, do they?

Does the group encourage child-like or uninhibited behavior? Disinhibition fosters child-like dependence and further opens members to coercion.

Not in the slightest. On the contrary, Mormonism fosters all kinds of inhibitions, cultural and moral and otherwise. Some are good, and some are unhealthy, especially the cultural ones.

Does the group demand public identification with the group or expressions of solidarity with the group? The more often a member publicly identifies with the group, the more membership in the group dominates individual identity.

I think it’s fairly possible to be a Mormon and fly under the radar, unless someone happens to notice that you don’t drink alcohol or something like that.

I think in the near future, as persecution increases due to Mormonism’s resistance to gay marriage and other issues, this will become a much more significant issue where it might be tempting to deny one’s affiliation with Mormonism.

Does the group have rules that govern every aspect of life? Members get in the habit of following rules and the cult comes to dominate their thoughts throughout the day.

Not every aspect, but certainly enough aspects to be a daily concern. But most of these rules are good for you, helping you avoid addictions and vices and other unhealthy things, as well as increase spirituality. Personally, I’m pretty good at avoiding the evils but quite poor at doing the positives. I pray most mornings, but other than that I don’t regularly read scriptures or do a lot of the other regular spiritual disciplines, except I do attend church more often than not.

Do members endure verbal abuse or character assassination?

Yes, absolutely, and I think we’ll have to endure a lot more of it as civilization and Mormonism increasingly part ways.

Are the members malnourished or sleep deprived? Members who are physically weak are less able to resist mental coercion.

No, not for any reason directly related to the religion, although the religion does promote parenthood, which leads to sleep deprivation. On the contrary, I think more Mormons are too well fed than otherwise (including myself).

Personally, I never wake up early for church meetings, such as 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. priesthood meetings. I don’t get enough sleep during the week, and it’s important to me to get plenty of sleep on the weekends.

I wonder if fasting can be considered malnourishment? I don't think so, since 24 hours is hardly enough to cause nutritional harm, and experts say fasting like that is actually physically beneficial. And no one tries to mentally coerce you when you're fasting, although you're encouraged to focus on spiritual things in your own mind. Anyway, I'm not a very good faster, only doing it about once a quarter rather than monthly.

Does the group employ peer pressure and the desire to belong to change member’s behavior?

Big time. Mormons are way excessive in trying to look good so others will think well of them and so the world will think well of Mormonism, but so much of it comes across as not genuine or believable.

Are members punished and rewarded for similar behaviors? This confuses the members and keeps them off balance.

Can’t think of any real examples. Of course, sex is rewarded within marriage and punished outside of it, but it’s still the same activity, so maybe that counts. And I think that does confuse a lot of young people, when suddenly marriage flips the sex switch from bad to good.

Do members report each other’s misbehavior to the leader?

Yeah, I think this happens a lot in Mormonism, especially at BYU, which is like Mormonism on steroids.

Does the group keep members so busy with activities and meetings that they don’t have time and energy to think about their involvement or to spend time with non-members?

Yes, I think Mormonism definitely does this. Personally, I have no interest in spending as much time on church things as I see a lot of people do, and I blow off a lot of it. I even think the three-hour Sunday meeting block is too long. Because I teach night school during the week, I have a personal policy of refusing any callings that require weeknight time, even if the calling would take place on a night that I don’t teach. I need SOME time during the week for my family and myself, after all.

Are the members’ personal boundaries and privacy violated?

Some would say that the temple-recommend interview questions do that and the requirement that sexual sins be confessed to the bishop. Personally, I think this is OK as a way to help members keep their lives more on track, if they want to stay in good standing.

Suspension of Rational Thought

Is the member blamed for all failures or disappointments? (E.g. you aren’t recruiting because your heart is full of sin.) This allows the cult to shift blame for its own failings to the member while simultaneously breaking down their self worth.

This definitely happens to full-time missionaries, and I personally really dislike the full-time missionary program and think it’s just chock full of psychologically harmful nonsense. The missionary program IS a cult in so many ways, and I personally really hated it. But I don’t think these kinds of things happen much to regular church members.

Does the group use hypnosis (sometimes presented as meditation or relaxation)? The difference between legitimate use of these techniques and how cults employ them is that the cult uses them to suppress rational thought in order to make the member more pliable.

No, I think Mormonism is known to be, if anything, too slim on things like meditation. I suppose prayer could be considered a form of self-hypnosis and meditation.

Does the group tell members what they should read or watch? Leaders want members to avoid opposing points of view so the spell the cult has woven over its members won’t be broken.

Mormonism does this a lot, but not to cult-like extremes, I don’t think. I’m a member in good standing, but I watch and read whatever I personally want, although I do not indulge in outright pornography. In addition, I freely read anti-Mormon stuff on occasion, as well as difficult, honest history. I take that kind of stuff with a grain of salt.

Does the group employ thought-stopping language, clichés, or slogans? These sayings are presented as self-evidently true, but their true purpose is to shortcut logic and critical thinking.

Yeah, Mormonism does a fair bit of this, especially in bearing testimony. For me, I don’t say “I know”; rather, I say “I believe.” But most Mormons say “I know” when they really don’t know but rather just strongly believe or hope. And there are others as well, such as “Follow the prophet.”

Do members repeatedly chant or sing mind-narrowing phrases? These techniques make an end-run around rational thought and implant ideas through sheer repetition.

Yeah, we have our share of hymns like this, and the temple is full of this kind of thing. I don’t think it’s bad, but I think it’s really very boring.

Does the group discourage members from asking questions?

Somewhat, beyond a superficial level. Mormons are often reminded to stick to the "plain and precious" things, the vanilla. Another problem is that the church isn’t always good at answering questions, because it doesn’t acknowledge a lot of realities or want to admit error or ambiguity.

Do they encourage the experiential instead of the logical? For cults seeking to hide the truth or foster dependence, it is simpler to manipulate emotions than to provide a reasonable chain of logic.

I think Mormonism has a good mix of both. My own belief is based more on the logic of Mormon theology, which I think is superb, but I also have a number of experiential things. I think you need both to have a strong belief.

Does the group present incomprehensible doctrine that confuses members and discourages the use of logic? Members may try to reconcile contradictions in doctrine, but their efforts prove ultimately fruitless. At this point, cults can insinuate that logic is impotent and discourage its use.

Mormonism has its share of fuzzy doctrines and unanswered questions, but like I said before, the theology really appeals to my overall sense of logic of why the world exists, why we’re here, the nature of the earthly test, etc.

Do members neglect to verify information they receive from the group? Do the accept something as the truth simply because it came from the group?

Yes, I think Mormons tend to do too much of this. As for me, I’ve come to rather dislike some of what I hear from the church’s PR department regarding the issues of gay rights, and I think errors have been made. (As an aside, since President Monson took over, I sometimes get the feeling that the church is being run more by PR than by prophecy.)

Do members avoid thinking in ways that are contrary to the group’s beliefs? Members may have a strong mental aversion to merely entertaining an opposing point of view.

Yeah, I think most Mormons feel some of this pressure, and I do think there are some real risks of being deceived when one goes off the Mormon track. I have several friends who I feel are deeply deceived when it comes to the gay issue, for instance, people who are living gay and people who sympathize with them to the degree that they think gay sexual relationships should be embraced.

There are some areas within Mormonism that don’t have a clear answer, though, and it’s possible to find members with opposite opinions, such as about polygamy. Personally, I think polygamy is the eternal order of things and, when authorized by God, can be a superior family structure here on earth, but a lot of Mormons think it’s practically evil or, at a minimum, a lesser form of family life that won't necessarily be part of exaltation.

Attitudes about the Group

Does the group have all the answers to the important questions in life?

Yes, nearly so. And I think that’s a good thing. I see too much agnosticism in the world, the idea that it’s impossible to know so much. What a limiting, illogical world view.

Does the group claim to be the only or the best source of truth?

Yeah, but what’s wrong with that? Mormonism doesn’t claim to be the only source, but it does claim to be the best, and I agree with that, otherwise why be in it? I don’t think it’s reasonable to say all religions are equally true, when their doctrines and authority claims are different.

Do members consider themselves to be the elite or the chosen?

Yes, and in Mormonism’s case, if you can embrace its truths and abide by its disciplines, I think you have some valid claim to that, although there’s no use in becoming prideful about it. I see this earthly test as survival of the spiritually fittest, and I think someone who fully lives Mormonism (which I don’t personally claim to do) is indeed at the top rank of spiritually fittest.

Do members consider themselves the only ones who will be saved or earn the ultimate reward?

Yes, but Mormons also make it plenty easy for everyone in the world to hear about Mormonism and accept it. It certainly isn’t an exclusionary religion in that sense; quite the opposite.

Does the group see its role as preparing for the imminent end of the world?

Yes, a source of both considerable angst and fascination for me personally.

Attitudes Toward Outsiders

Outsiders are dangerous to the cult——unless they feel an interest in joining——because they threaten to disrupt the spell of the cult over its members.

Yeah, there’s definitely truth to this. On the one hand, Mormons are supposed to reach out to outsiders, but on the other hand, there’s a very real danger of being tempted or corrupted by them. I know lots of people, Mormon and otherwise, who aren’t a good influence on me, and I also know some non-Mormons who I think are better Christians that I am and a lot of Mormons are. So you have to judge on an individual basis.

Do members avoid association with non-members?

Yes, this happens, especially in Utah. Personally, I don’t do this, but it’s more because I get bored with Mormons than because of any higher-minded reason.

Are virtually all of a member’s close associates also members?

This happens a lot with Utah Mormons. I think many Mormons tend to be somewhat guarded with non-Mormons, at least on some level, even perhaps subconsciously. Mormons are supposed to be best friends with the Lord and their own spouse, so I don’t think we make as many intense friendships as those without a religion might. At least, I remember that my friendships were a lot more important to me during my two irreligious years than at anytime after I got converted; when you’re irreligious, you’ve got no savior except your friends.

Do the members live together, sequestered from non-members?

I do not like this tendency in Utah. I experienced it growing up in Bountiful from age 10 to 17, and I’m experiencing it now in Provo, much to my dismay. But I’m too old and lacking in ambition to do anything about it now, and besides, my mortgage only has about seven more years, so I’m staying put! Anyway, I do have plenty of non-Mormon and former-Mormon friends at work and online.

Do members attack the character of critics or those who are not in the group?

Of critics, yes, because they really ARE lacking in character——or spiritual integrity, or SOMETHING——if they think Mormonism is something to fight. I don’t think Mormons typically attack the characters of people simply because they’re not Mormon, though.

Do members devalue the opinions of outsiders?

To a degree, perhaps. But I think most Mormons can find value in any outside opinion that contains truth and wisdom.

Are non-members considered less enlightened?

About God’s true, authorized religion, yes. But not necessarily about other important subjects. I think most Mormons could acknowledge that many non-Mormons have more enlightenment than Mormons, in many areas.

Does the group encourage thinking in us-versus-them terms?

To a degree, but Mormonism also encourages the building of common bridges, if often with the ulterior motive of converting people. I think some “us versus them” is necessary and unavoidable, especially as civilization falls further away from God.

Do members avoid listening to the perspectives of non-members?

I see it happen regularly, yes. And I perhaps do it myself. I personally don’t really care to hear much about the beliefs of other religions, to tell you the truth, simply because I feel confident my religion is more true than any other religion and religion is just not a topic that interests me much.

These days, I think I see this problem more related to politics than religion, with Democrats and Republicans unable to really consider each other’s perspectives because they’re too worried about defending their own party lines. I really don’t have much respect for politics or interest in it; I think it’s all just a big clusterf*ck.

Leaving

Is it difficult to leave?

I know it is for some people. I don’t think it would be for me, because I would likely leave simply out of boredom, not out of anger or offense or collapse of faith, although you never know. Some people go from hot to cold and suffer some resulting shock to their system, but I’m more just lukewarm. I suppose I would feel some pressure from family, but not much, and I’m not a guy who is terribly subject to social pressure, although certainly not completely immune to it.

I don’t think I’d ever completely leave Mormonism unless my wife wanted to as well, and even then I’m sure I’d continue to believe deep down, while enjoying not having to deal with the religion anymore, which is really almost completely a source of good-for-you tedium to me, much like doing the treadmill. I guess eventually I’d come crawling back with an empty soul or whatever, so I guess I would never really fully leave the religion, so in that sense I suppose it is difficult to ever really leave! (I could pretty easily check out any time I like, but I could never leave.)

If members try to leave, are they considered rebellious against the will of a higher power or of the leader?

I would say more rebellious against the Lord than anyone else. I would also say that most people who leave are rebelling against the culture and the members in general more than against any particular leader, although I’m sure there are many cases of rebellion against a leader too.

Are people who leave considered deserters, weak, or evil by members?

Yes, I would say so, and I personally agree. Weak, at a minimum. Oftentimes simply hedonistic. Also sometimes just confused.

Do members avoid association with onetime members that have left the group?

Many do, yes. I personally enjoy former Mormons in some ways better than Mormons, because they’ve thrown off many of the cultural inhibitions that make Mormons boring. But I don’t really want to be like them, because I believe in the eternal rewards of living Mormonism, and I think without Mormonism I might be in trouble by now with addictions and other worldly problems.

This was a fun analytical exercise. So yes, Mormonism does still have some features of cultism, even if not overall enough to be labeled an actual cult, if only because the church is now too large and long-lived for that status.

No Way Around It: Bad Guys Say F-Words

2010-06-12T10:48:00.005-06:00

Here's a post I wrote for Dawning of a Brighter Day, the blog of the Association for Mormon Letters:

So, I'm working on a Mormon-themed novel with some bad guys in it, one bad guy in particular. I know this isn't a totally new discussion, but right now I'm in the thick of the issue of realistic language. I'm at the point where sometimes I delete the F-words and sometimes I add them back in or substitute "softer" crudities. But the bottom line is that my bad guys say F-words; they just do. And at least one of these guys is a very important point-of-view character who I just don't feel I can sanitize, and plus his use of profanity helps differentiate him from the other main POV character, who is of the same age, gender, and similar background.

In editing manuscripts for Zarahemla Books, this issue has come up numerous times. I can think of at least three books that originally had F-words in them, but I believe that the authors and I agreed to pull all of these out, by the time the final version was struck (correct me if I'm wrong and anyone remembers reading an F-word in a Zarahemla title). It has been interesting to see authors originally feel that as part of their artistic truth, they had to reflect the way people talk, but as the publication date drew nearer, they sort of wimped out and pulled the F-words.

I'm one of those authors--in my novel Kindred Spirits, my conflicted Mormon female protagonist originally said some F-words when she was really mad (with good reason), but then I changed them to "effing," which struck me as a funny reflection of her Mormon core that was true to her character: even when extremely angry, "effing" was as far as she could go. At the same time, I was aware that any readers of my novel would likely have fairly Mormon sensibilities, and in that case I didn't think the artistic integrity outweighed the costs of potentially alienating readers. I believe the other authors who purged the F-words felt largely the same way.

The problem is, there are just so many Mormons--many of my own family members included, perhaps even my wife--who believe that a Mormon NEVER has ANY reason or justification to include a bad word like the F-word, perhaps especially in print that could potentially reach multiple people. But I don't agree with this, of course: Just because a character in my book says the F-word does not mean that I advocate the use of the F-word or intend to start using it routinely in my own actual life. The reason I use it is because that's how people like that character really talk, and to have them avoid profanity or use substitutes seriously undermines the story's credibility, especially when you're writing from the POV. (I'm fine with a pure POV reporting on what the bad guys are saying without quoting them directly, but some stories need an evil POV in them as well, and you just can't whitewash that.)

Here's, perhaps, some hypocrisy: While I can see having bad characters use the F-word in a story I write, I personally never allow taking of the name of God in vain, because to me that's a clear violation of a commandment, whereas the F-word seems more just like this weird cultural taboo. But I can see where that's a little arbitrary and a person could make an argument that the F-word's connection to the sacred sex act, even though it is more often used simply as a generic intensifier, makes it nearly as offensive as casual or profane use of deific names. At the same time, I don't think readers would sense a lack of realism if bad guys don't take the name of deity in vain, as long as they're using other real bad words instead. I'd MUCH rather have the F-word in my stories than profane use of the G-word or the JC-word.

One test you hear applied in Mormonism a lot is: "Would you give this to the Savior to read?" or some variation of that. Even with F-words, I honestly think I would, although of course it's impossible to know what I'd really do if I really could personally hand something I wrote to the Savior to read. The reason I imagine I could is because I honestly believe I'm portraying the bad within an overall morally worthwhile story, and making the bad seem real can make the good seem more real, too. However, I wouldn't want my kids to read it until they are mature adults. That's another fallacy I see in Mormonism: depictions or imaginations of R-rated human reality that are not good for kids to read would also not be good for the Savior to read, as if he's some kind of child who can't handle full-bodied reality.

When I was editor of Irreantum, one time I let through an F-word in some story or essay. A woman wrote and complained that this hard little nugget of reality had "interrupted my rejoicing." For one thing, that's more of a pentecostal or born again thing to say, isn't it? Probably some odd phrase out of the New Testament. And much more importantly, is that the only reason or even the main reason we read literature, to "rejoice"? I think there's quite a bit more to it than that--I think literature helps us face fears and dangers and actual or potential realities and evil itself, perhaps even psychically preparing us to better face such things in our own lives.

Realistically, here's what I predict will happen: When the manuscript is done, I'll probably send it out to some national agents with the F-words (and other graphic elements) intact. If none of them bite or even if one does but gives up after two years of trying to sell it (hey, it's happened to me before), then I'll have to decide if I want to try marketing it directly to national and regional (non-LDS) publishers myself. If I manage to publish it nationally or non-LDS regionally, my wife will warn her sweet, pure Mormon family members not to read it but will probably still allow me into our bed. If that kind of publication doesn't take place, I don't see any LDS-market options for it even with the F-words taken out, because the LDS market tolerates only such a shallow little zone of actual or imagined reality, and my story probably goes way too far in many areas beyond language. The only option left would be Zarahemla Books, and if I reach that bottom rung on the totem pole, I suppose I'll do a Zarahemla edit and take out many or all of the F-words, and perhaps I can sell 100 copies. But hey, at least that's something!

Overstock Sale at Zarahemla Books

2010-06-08T13:44:00.004-06:00

Would you like to help Zarahemla Books generate some cash flow to publish the next four books in our pipeline?

We’re overstocked on the following titles, so we're offering some deep discounts. Now would be a great time to stock up for your summer reading, future gift-giving occasions, book club, copies to donate to your local library, etc.

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HELP SPREAD THE WORD: Please share this post with anyone else who might be interested.

More Thoughts on Dutcher

2010-05-30T18:35:00.007-06:00

I've been thinking more about the two recent Dutcher films I saw, "Falling" and "Evil Angel. (I mistakenly called it "Fallen" in earlier posts--sorry about that; I guess I was focused on the idea of Dutcher as a "fallen angel" from Mormonism.) Although I didn't get much online response to my earlier review and subsequent discussion, I did receive several private e-mails of support from people who, for some reason, did not want to speak out negatively or unsupportively about Dutcher. So I'd like to do a little more typing on this topic, with the acknowledgment that my expressions may not be 100% free of judgmentality, hypocrisy, and other flaws. WARNING: My following discussion has plot spoilers for both films.

First, here's why I liked "Falling." Hearing about it in advance, I thought it was going to be a melodramatic drag. But when I watched the movie, I found myself thoroughly absorbed in the story, the acting, and even the way it was shot, with the lighting and the sense of the gritty side of L.A. (I don't remember ever seeing L.A. caught on film as realistically as Dutcher does it, in both "Falling" and "States of Grace.) While I hear complaints about Dutcher's acting, I'm one who by and large enjoys him on the screen, particularly in "Falling," which I think is his best performance ever. I think complaining about his acting is a little like complaining about the quality of someone's self-published book; in essence, Dutcher self-publishes his own acting, which for many is cause for undue skepticism.

Anyway, here's how I read "Falling," which is probably not how Dutcher intended it. You have these people who've decided to give themselves over to worldly Hollywood and do things they know are ethically and morally suspect, in the form of filming violent crimes and accidents instead of helping the victims and in the form of doing nudity in a film. It was very clear to me in the way these things are presented that the storyteller knows they are wrong and so do the characters, and I found this tension exquisite. The movie then ends in total tragedy, which I read as the natural consequences of the characters' decisions. God appeared to have abandoned them, but from my Mormon standpoint, that was obviously because they had first abandoned God. I found the very bloody ending a little over the top--Dutcher does veer into melodrama fairly often in his films--but overall I found the movie very engaging, thought-provoking, and satisfying, even though the screening I attended was plagued with distracting technical troubles.

Then you have "Evil Angel," in which Dutcher does NOT show any signs of understanding anything deep or real or important. In "Falling," you had a character giving up her body to Hollywood, and you feel bad for her and hateful toward the people who are using her. Then in "Evil Angel," you have Dutcher doing exactly what the sleazy Hollywood guys did in "Falling": exploiting women and their bodies and showing tons of flesh purely for sensationalistic reasons. In "Falling," a character cradles his dead wife and yells out "F--- you" to the heavens. You really feel for him, although you know that his lack of wise choices got him where he is. By making "Evil Angel," Dutcher is pretty much doing the same thing as the "Falling" character did: giving a big F-U to God. But we don't know why. For me, observing Dutcher's public career and life is like watching any other drama, and there's a big plot point missing as to why he turned into this "Evil Angel" director.

In "Evil Angel," evil is all powerful, and religion is weak, with no sign of protection or anything from God. Lilith is able to run rampant and do whatever the hell she wants--even if you manage to kill the body she's in, she just hops to another body and continues her rampage. There's no sense of anyone opposing her, beyond a few pitiful human attempts. There are some "good," supposedly sympathetic characters in the movie, but they are very weak. One ends up with his head in a pot of tomato soup, and the other escapes Lilith's wrath for reasons I'm not entirely clear about, but he isn't really a very strong character, more of an observer to whom women seem to happen. I really don't know why Lilith spares him.

(I have to admit, I'm not that great at following the plots of movies and plays, and I'm getting worse as I grow older, so if I'm missing logical connections that would explain some of this, let me know. I hate getting lost in movies, though. I even got lost in the recent "Iron Man 2"--I had little or no idea what Samuel Jackson was doing in the movie or what his organization was about or how/why Tony Stark was apparently on some kind of house arrest at some point. Someone told me, "Oh, they're just setting up 'Avengers'," but for me it was a real botch in story development, not making that more clear. I hate it when movies don't have great stories, and so many movies today don't, possibly because filmmakers want you to view the movies over and over again to figure them out. But to me, if I can't fully appreciate and enjoy and understand a movie on the first viewing, I'm not going to spend more time on it when there are so many other movies I want to see.)

In "Evil Angel," Lilith is pretty much omniscient and omnipotent, as far as I remember. In a plot development I didn't fully understand, the main protagonist, an EMT, falls in love with a woman who he first meets, I think, when she is almost dead. I do not remember if this woman is possessed by Lilith or what--I was confused. Somehow he forms this mystical bond with her that I really don't get--for me, this is one of the weakest logical links in this whole story. Then later on Lilith somehow knows all about this, and after the protagonist's bad wife dies, Lilith possesses the wife's body but pretends that her spirit belongs to that girl who the protagonist loves. How the heck did Lilith know and do all this? Did she somehow trick the EMT into falling in love with her back when she was in the first girl's body, and if so how and why? Again, no one can or does really oppose Lilith.

For these reasons and others, the film's first 10-15 minutes were rather hard to follow and sort out, at least for me. The opening credits linger for several minutes on a woman writhing and undressing herself in a rather explicit way, but this turns out to have no connection to the movie that I can remember, except for a cheap scare at the end, and then we're thrown into an action scene in which a guy keeps seeing Lilith's demonic face on several different women, which doesn't really make sense when you later learn that Lilith possesses only one person at a time. (Come to think of it, this film is pretty misogynistic too, with all women having the potential to transform into Lilith-bitches. I admit for a day or two after the movie, I worried that women around me might suddenly start sporting Lilith's horrible face, so I guess the movie was somewhat effective on that level.)

I agree with one of my friends who observed that one big missed opportunity is the character that Dutcher plays himself. He plays this former-EMT crackpot who keeps guard dogs and is paranoid about everything, and he apparently has techniques for dealing with supernatural threats. In reality, this character is a total mockery of religion, because his ideas don't even work--he's just a laughable goofball. Dutcher could have used this character to show some real opposition to Lilith, to give some insight into those who use godly means to oppose evil. But Dutcher doesn't allow any room for God or true religion in his film, except a weak priest whose only role I can remember is to provide info on the Lilith legend. For a film this cynical and irreverent and unfaithful to come from a guy who used to know how to explore a realistic spiritual dilemma is just so disappointing. I'm not at all opposed to an R-rated horror film based on the Lilith legend, but jeez, why does it have to be so one-sided toward evil and so irredeemably pandering and sensationalistic? Now we're getting into the realm of personal preference, but I would have liked to have seen this film be taken a lot more seriously, something more in the mode of "The Exorcist" or "Poltergeist." This horror-humor thing doesn't usually work for me personally, except maybe with zombies (I loved "Shawn of the Dead," didn't like "Zombieland" as much).

Rather than being some remote, unknowable Oz ensconced in the emerald city of Hollywood, Dutcher is a real, down-to-earth person who walks among us here in Podunk, Utah, and makes his human dilemmas and disappointments publicly known, with frankness and integrity that I often admire. You can spot him at the local malls, and he gives small workshops at places like Sunstone. So having seen a fair bit of Dutcher the real guy without becoming personally acquainted with him, it's tempting to psychoanalyze this public character and try to figure out what his big beef is. He's talked about his troubled upbringing, so maybe he's still carrying a lot of baggage from that and feels pissed off that God allows so much evil and suffering in this world, as if Dutcher never understood or has forgotten that God allows both good and evil during mortality in order to test us. Just because evil often gets the upper hand in this world doesn't mean good and God aren't still part of the equation, and of course we know that God will eventually shut down this testing situation and put evil in its place. In the meantime, it's up to God's children to try to keep good in the dominant position rather than let evil grow stronger in any form. Mormons know that in these last days evil will grow so strong that it would completely overwhelm and destroy the world, were it not for the Second Coming. With "Evil Angel," Dutcher is definitely feeding the evil side of the equation with mindless, graphic, carnal entertainment that is not edifying in the slightest. It's just another foul entertainment that is preparing and conditioning people to increase this era's growing degradation, which will eventually help lead to the fall of our civilization.

If you judge by Dutcher's departure from the LDS Church followed by "Evil Angel," he apparently now has this idea that evil is the only supernatural power there is and God is absent and people are just on their own--or more likely, he's now agnostic/atheist about supernatural things altogether and therefore sees no harm in glorifying the evil side. Yeah, "Evil Angel" was supposedly done all in good fun, but in my opinion you simply can't believe in God/religion and still make a movie like that. I really don't get what went wrong with Dutcher. From the time he emerged into the Mormon consciousness in about 2000, apparently the only thing that hasn't gone well for him is that his post-"God's Army" movies haven't been embraced by Mormons. (There was that fire at his office, but judging by the new office, I think he may have come out ahead on that one.) To me, he seems like he leads a charmed life. He apparently has a wonderful wife and kids, and I haven't heard anything about any of his immediate family members getting cancer or undergoing some other great trial. Judging by his Facebook updates, he gets to travel the world to go to film festivals. I've been to his new office, a beautiful historic house in Provo equipped with the latest film-editing technology. I heard he has a nice house in Mapleton, and he obviously eats and drinks well.

So with such an apparently blessed life, what made him turn away from God and do this big celebration of evil called "Evil Angel"? He's like the opposite of Job. I can only guess that it's artistic pride, the idea that he should be rich and famous for his work. Since the Mormons didn't give that to him, he's now giving the bird to the whole religion/God thing and turning back to Hollywood like a dog to its vomit, and Hollywood may indeed give him fame and riches in return for making a degraded movie like "Evil Angel," although I don't think the film is quite good enough to find any real mainstream success. Dutcher is apparently simply caught up in today's secularism, atheism/agnosticism, carnality, etc. I don't know how much of that is true, if any, but that's how it comes across to me, from what I know based on Dutcher's public persona and story over the past decade.

If there's some better explanation, I'd like to hear Dutcher defend his pathway and his choices sometime. Yeah, he left Mormonism and Mormon filmmaking, but for what? The fact that "Evil Angel" was his first film out of the chute post-Mormonism tells me everything I need to know, as far as I can see at this point. Is this rock-bottom for him and he climbs back out of the pit from here, or is this the new Dutcher? Perhaps my opinion will change as his story and his career take different turns in the future and more worthwhile movies come along, but for now, talk about a cautionary tale!

My Wife Has Joined a Cult

2010-05-29T17:27:00.007-06:00

So, my wife and I haven’t had any squabbles in several years. Seriously, we get along that well.

Unfortunately, we have now declared the fridge a battle zone. Yes, I said the fridge.

Why? Because my wife has joined this weird fruit-and-vegetable cult.

Saturday is their Sabbath. Every week, she disappears early in the morning to go participate in the cult’s pagan rites. I don’t know exactly what they do—and I don’t think I want to know—but she comes home with some of the weirdest-assed stuff. I’m talking great big bulbous vegetable types of things with hairy-looking roots at the bottom and stalks busting out everywhere.

Half the time, I don’t think she even knows what it is or where it came from. But she loves to fondle this stuff under running water, lovingly dice or chop it up, and call her fellow cult members to talk about what it might be and how to cook it.

So how does the fridge come into this? Well, she brings home a whole laundry basket full of stuff, and most of it is not bagged or anything, just flopping around free in the wind like my nudist friend’s junk must. And then she crams all this stuff into our fridge.

Then along comes me, just looking for a nice little O’Doul’s or pudding or whatever, and I open the door to see this total jungle. Seriously, green-leafed stuff is jammed all along the tops of the milk and into every nook and cranny. If I want to get something out, there’s no way I can find it unless I unload the whole fridge so I can actually see what's in it. It’s a major half-hour project just to extract a jar of mayo. Occasionally, when I try to just wedge and wiggle my hand inside the fridge to pull something out, the whole avalanche comes piling down on top of me.

So I’ve been carping about this a little, and the other day my wife got sick of it and started pulling stuff that I like out of the fridge and telling Austin to go throw it away. It was a lot of fun and games! You should have seen the look on Austin’s face.

Now, I admit I like a lot of this green stuff, but I think the time has come to get a new fridge and move this old fridge down into the garage, where my wife can turn it into a permanent upright altar to hold all this weird produce she now worships. I don't even know for sure if she's still Mormon anymore.

Debate on Dutcher

2010-05-25T18:36:00.004-06:00

Here's an e-mail I sent out on the nearly defunct AML-List. The parts in angle brackets were responses to my original review by D. Michael Martindale, followed by my new responses:

> Dutcher's Mormonness or lack thereof is not an issue in critiquing the
> film. Many former Dutcher fans now retroactively criticize even
> Dutcher's Mormon films, films many of them once liked, because Dutcher
> "betrayed" them. As if it's any person's responsibility to subjugate his
> spiritual life to the desires of other people.

Well, it's a valid issue for my personal critique, if I want it to be. But I don't like the idea of people revising their views of his earlier films because of subsequent events.

> It's extremely offensive to call anyone a "fallen angel" simply because
> they stopped believing in a religion that was taught them in their
> youth. In spite of the rather haughty attitude of many Mormons toward
> the alleged proof of the exclusive rightness of their religion, there
> are lots of reasons to question the validity of Mormonism. It doesn't
> require sin or a loss of the spirit or Satanic deception to stop
> believing in it. It takes nothing more than a heavy dose of objective
> thinking to see the holes.

Yeah, that's all fine to say from your perspective. But from my basically believing Mormon perspective, he's still definitely a fallen angel. In my opinion, your term "objective thinking" can also mean "over-reliance on human intellect" and "lacking the humility to exercise faith."

> All of this is extreme hyperbole. "Very hard R" is simply not true.
> Adding "in a most gratuitous, worthless way" only adds insult to injury.
> Neither of these phrases come close to accuracy.

I stand by my "very hard R" statement as an objective observation based on the movies I've seen, but no doubt I've been missing some films that reflect the hardest possible R's in today's society, perhaps such as the "Saw" and "Hostel" movies. And I'm a guy who really likes Tarentino and Coen brothers movies, etc. But my statement "in a most gratuitous, worthless way" is certainly more subjective, I acknowledge, not something I would claim to be "accurate" by any standards except Mormon.

> More than anything, "Evil Angel" was a typical horror film with a new
> twist added--the Lilith myth. Chris Bigelow speaks as if there are lots
> of horror films that have substance to them. I'm at a loss to think of many.

I admit, I don't see much horror, mainly because I don't enjoy being scared. "The Ring" really freaked me out, for instance. But it was certainly a satisfying story, whereas the Lilith aspect of Dutcher's movie, as well as several other aspects, were simply not as satisfying to me on the story level. Some aspects of the story were too obvious or contrived, and others just didn't connect the dots enough. I don't always have to have deep substance in a movie, but to be satisfied I need really compelling internal logic and consistency and unity in the story, which the Dutcher film lacked (as so many films do).

> Which pretty much says it all about Chris' objection to the film. It
> isn't the film--it's that old "Evil Hollywood" bugaboo. It's that great
> (contrived) battle between good and evil that Mormons and other
> Christians love to congratulate themselves on. "Perverse" and
> "pandering" reveal what I think is the true motive behind the critique.
> These are negative, emotionally charged words more appropriate to
> demagoguery than a serious artistic critique. The description above
> could just as easily apply to most every other horror film made.

Well, I certainly do believe that many, probably most, aspects of Hollywood are influenced by real evil powers more than godly powers. I enjoy a lot of what Hollywood puts out, but I'm not proud of doing so, from the perspective of preparing for post-mortal life and eternity. I think Hollywood has clearly shown signs of decline that mirror the civilization's decline. Anyway, mine is not really a "serious artistic critique" so much as a "personal response from a Mormon perspective."

> It can't be that Chris dislikes "Evil Angel." It has to be that Chris
> doesn't like horror films. Which he's welcome to dislike. But don't
> blame Dutcher's film on Mormon apostasy when it was only conforming to
> the tropes of the genre.

I'm sure Dutcher's film is fine as horror, but yeah, I don't really like horror films of this type. In my Mormon critique, though, it's obvious to me that one main motivation for Dutcher ditching Mormonism is so he could get behind this movie, which I don't respect. Again, my commentary is a personal response from a Mormon perspective and from the perspective of Dutcher's earlier career as a Mormon filmmaker.

> Which brings me to the real problem with post-Mormon Dutcher. One film
> is a rather tiny sampling to say anything definitive, and Dutcher
> admitted from the beginning that "Evil Angel" was a departure from his
> usual approach to film--it was purely for the fun of it. But Dutcher
> always stood out as a filmmaker precisely because he was Mormon.

Yes, he hasn't tried to hoodwink anyone, I agree. But when someone leaves Mormonism, they lose interest to me because what really interests me in a Mormon-connected artist is the conflict between Mormonism and the world and trying to create something new in the midst of that conflict. I no longer view Dutcher as someone who can adequately accommodate the Mormon side of that conflict, so based on the fact that he left Mormonism and made "Evil Angels," now he's really just another director who doesn't have anything distinctive to offer me, unless and until he can address both Mormonism and the world again in a way that engages me, or unless he becomes as good a director as a Tarantino or a Coen brother.

> Knowing what I know about Chris, I can understand why he's disappointed
> in Dutcher and LaBute. I imagine these two artists reflected Chris' own
> self-proclaimed lifelong effort to consolidate his belief in Mormon
> doctrine with his detestation of Mormon culture. It's a struggle I'm
> familiar with--reconciling doctrine with my observation of reality.
> After years of effort, these two artists reached their verdict: it can't
> be consolidated. Not in a way that allows them to both live with
> integrity AND remain in good standing with the judgmental community of
> Mormons who figure because you're a member, they own you. It's pure sour
> grapes to start calling them fallen angels because of that. They simply
> explored the issue and made their decision. As they have every right to
> do. Even if it does disappoint fans who thought they owned them.

From the Mormon perspective, the one I still hold, they are fallen angels who have followed a similar trajectory as the original fallen angel, on a smaller scale. Mormonism requires a great deal of conformity as a spiritual discipline, and while I personally chafe against it a lot on many levels, I have to begrudgingly tolerate it because I believe in the underlying principles and theology, including the definition of Zion as being those who are one in heart and mind, with God. So yeah, mainstream Mormons do a lot of judging of things that threaten that goal, and they miss out on a lot of worldly fun, but maybe they're right in the end, mostly. Personally, I do wish I could either commit to worldliness or Mormonism, and part of me respects people like Dutcher for taking a strong stand, even if I know it's the wrong one. (Yes, I do KNOW it is, absolutely; same with yours that you've been public about, D. Mike. None of you guys ever replace it with anything worthwhile except becoming laws and religions and cultures unto yourselves, mingled with worldly attitudes and philosophies. Good luck with that.)

> I imagine this is very disappointing to Chris, who may have been hoping
> Dutcher and LaBute would show him the way for his own consolidation. But
> that hardly means these two artists sold their souls for their art. As
> someone who's in a similar position to them, I see it as saving my soul
> instead of capitulating to the intrusive demands of a community that I
> can no longer in good conscience agree with. I see it as an act of
> integrity, not falling.

I see it as being unable to recognize and live a higher law and to perceive and deal with spiritual reality; instead, it's falling into mere worldliness, following one's own impulses and the baser impulses of the civilization rather than really trying to find out what God wants one to do. There is no way anyone could ever convince me that God wants people to jettison Mormonism and go their own way, because NOT ONCE HAVE I EVER SEEN A FORMER MORMON COME UP WITH A GOOD REASON AND RATIONALE FOR WHY THEY'RE ON THIS EARTH, WHAT THEY SHOULD BE DOING, AND WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS. And by putting out a very carnal, worldly, ungodly movie like "Evil Angel," now Dutcher has shown me very clearly that he's got nuthin'.

> But that's up to him. His only obligation is to his own artistic
> integrity. I don't own him.

Sure, he's got his free agency, like we all do. But God and the Lord don't own him either, anymore, and my knowledge is that Satan is real and owns those who aren't owned by God, at least on some levels. Humans may have the illusion that they own themselves, but in a lot of ways they really don't. Sorry, but from my own perspective, I see any person who puts out something like "Evil Angel" as simply responding to or being driven by mostly evil impulses counter to God's priorities and purposes. The movie is its own evidence of that, and it's sobering to see someone who should know better stoop so low--I like to see Mormons experiment artistically, and I can enjoy all kinds of worldly elements in juxtaposition to story elements with real eternal value and significance, but I know non-worthwhile crap when I see it. Didn't "Girl Crazy" teach Dutcher anything? This is "Girl Crazy" x 10, as far as tastelessness and lack of redeeming qualities of any kind. This is Dutcher throwing some kind of tantrum or something over not getting his way with Mormon film (which I think he should have gotten, by the way).

Come on, this is all just shooting fish in a barrel from a Mormon perspective, and if you don't have a Mormon perspective, then there's not really much conversation to be had, is there? We speak a different language. It all boils down to worldview: Are humans meant to be the ultimate authority in their own lives and do whatever the fookin' hell they want, or are they meant to seek out God as their authority and do what he wants? From this movie, it's obvious that Dutcher now believes the former, as well as anyone else who leaves Mormonism, in my opinion.

It was good to see you at the screening, D. Mike! We should have had dinner beforehand.

Review of Richard Dutcher's "Evil Angel"

2010-05-25T09:00:00.003-06:00

Personally, I found Dutcher's newest movie difficult to process. Partly it's because I just recently saw "Fallen," which has so much more substance and nuance to it. Yes, I know, "Evil Angel" is a horror genre film, so it's not fair to compare... But I enjoyed "Fallen" much more than expected and "Evil Angel" much less.

Now, it's going to be extremely easy for Mormons to call Dutcher a fallen angel because of this movie. And personally, I think he is one. While the movie is somewhat entertaining on the horror level, it really has no redeeming qualities. I see my share of R-rated movies and feel that there is a place in stories for gore and nudity and profanity, but I found "Evil Angel" to be a very hard R in a mostly gratuitous, worthless way. Dutcher follows the Hollywood trend of mixing violence/gore with sex and/or humor in a way that personally makes me quite queasy.

While I admit I was engaged with the movie at times and sometimes jumped or laughed, overall the story is not very well developed or satisfying. The potentially interesting Lilith legend is just a throwaway background element to justify a thoroughly evil bitch who wants to murder everyone. The movie is mostly just a blatantly superficial, perverse gore and nudity fest, pandering to the modern-day audience of today's declining American civilization.

I lose interest in these auteurs who jettison their Mormonism. LaBute holds absolutely no interest for me now, and I've pretty much written off Dutcher now too, although I would see future movies of his if reviews made them sound interesting enough. I wouldn't see another one in a mode anything like "Evil Angel," though.

Overall, leaving the theater I felt bad for and about Dutcher. I avoided him in the lobby. I know nothing about his wife or kids or their status in the Church or anything, but I can't imagine this film is something they can be totally proud of, although Dutcher's wife was listed in the credits as a crew chief or something like that. She's got quite the mid-life crisis on her hands here to ride out.

When Dutcher left Mormonism, I thought it might be for something better, or at least something that he thought was better. But there's obviously no sign of anything like that in "Evil Angel." What "Evil Angel" shows is that Dutcher has shed all traces of Mormon moral or spiritual discipline and has gone full monty into worldliness. Hopefully he'll make a little money from "Evil Angel" that he can use to make movies as good as "States of Grace" or "Fallen" again, but I really think he's sold his soul in some ways with "Evil Angel."

Review of John Harmer’s "Ere His Floods of Anger Flow"

2010-03-03T14:27:00.002-07:00

I admit that Harmer's apocalypse novel took hold of my mind and kept me reading. The story is about the near future, when pornography and drugs have become even more prevalent and powerful in the world. In the course of just a week or two, a perfect storm of problems arises to humble and punish the entire world, including a deadly e. coli plague, revelation of financial fraud and resultant economic collapse, acts of terrorism against the electricity supply, famine caused by genetically modified crops going bad, solar flares destroying satellites, deadly storms of hail, and I may have forgotten two or three.

Some of these plot tracks are less plausible than others, while a few of them are actually quite compelling in a must-find-out-what-happens way. The author has done some homework on things like germs, international finance, and the weather. However, the novel is definitely overstuffed with characters and subplots. While I didn't find all the subplots and their interplay with each other entirely believable, at least I didn't get too confused, and like I said, overall the novel keeps you reading.

What's lacking is writing style. In this novel, Harmer employs a fairly wordy, at times stuffy bureaucratic style, with lots of prepositional-phrase pileups, including within dialogue, for which he has a fairly wooden ear. The style reminds me of the style of General Conference talks; it sounds like my stake president writing a book. At the level of actual error, there are lots of misplaced modifiers and punctuation mistakes. I can't quite tell if the novel was self-published, but Harmer definitely could have used a better editor. Also, the novel is extremely light on concrete, sensory details; it's mostly in the mode of telling, rather than showing. Some big emotional moments come across as fairly flat, while others are better executed. At times, the point of view is a bit wobbly.

Overall, I'd say it's a must-read if you like last-days, apocalypse-oriented stories like I do. By the way, I love that the author wove in a mention of the Savior getting sealed to three women during his earthly life, and there's an appearance by one of the Three Nephites. I think a lot of people in the Church would like to weed out these distinctive beliefs and homogenize the Church into mere Christianity, so I applaud Harmer for keepin' it real.

Xmas Trees, Mood, and Scouting

2009-12-23T16:18:00.003-07:00

Some random thoughts from comments I've recently made on other people's blogs:

I cannot abide our Christmas tree unless its lights are turned on. It is so dark and depressing without the lights on, and so very appealing when they are on. I'm usually the guy who goes around the house flipping off lights to save energy, but it's the opposite with the Xmas tree.

+++

As far as energy and feeling good, I get some exercise but eat out too much and don't always get enough sleep, so I usually feel like I have adequate to good energy, but I often have dozy periods during the day (I'm notorious for sleeping in meetings and lectures of any kind). My main complaint would be in the area of mood rather than physical health/energy; about a third of the time, I'm in a fairly negative/bad mood about life. Fortunately, it usually goes away after a day or two and I have two or three neutral and/or happy days before it comes back again.

+++

I've pretty much crashed and burned with Scouts twice. First time, I was called as Scoutmaster in a mostly retired ward with few youth, and someone dropped off a briefcase full of Scouting CRAP, and I didn't look at it or meet with the Scouts EVEN ONCE, and then a few weeks later I came down with Hodgkin's disease and promptly handed back the briefcase, even managing to joke that maybe cancer was a reasonable out (I WAS JOKING).

The second time I was called into Cubs to help a guy with a den, and he tried to get me to take every other den meeting, but I refused and basically said "I'm just here to make sure you don't molest anyone." And so that's what I did for several months, just sit and watch den meetings every week, maybe helping out a little if given a very specific task. Finally I was released and felt so relieved.

I have three young boys and will likely be asked again at some point, and I am prepared just to politely decline, despite all the brainwashing we hear about what a slap in the face it is to the Lord if we decline any calling, all of which are extended by REVELATION, folks, REVELATION. Why make myself miserable and do the Scouts a disservice?

Literary Balm for the Gay Dilemma

2009-12-15T14:18:00.004-07:00

The Association for Mormon Letters has a new blog, and I've been asked to contribute monthly. Here's my first post:

This is an essay about how I’ve personally grappled with the modern-day gay dilemma and how I’ve looked to literary self-expression as a form of soothing balm for what I believe is one of the most dangerous issues of our generation, with the potential of dividing our society as catastrophically as the slavery issue did back in the nineteenth century, if not more so. Fortunately, with the recent heartening victories against gay marriage in California, New York, and Maine, it doesn’t look like that will happen anytime soon, but the fight is far from over, obviously.

I acknowledge the reality of same-sex attraction and the difficulty of the dilemma it poses. However, I don’t think it’s the world’s hardest challenge or even necessarily harder than some challenges that can arise within heterosexual marriages, even if some people make it sound like living a life of celibacy or living in a hetero marriage when one’s stronger romantic desire is oriented toward the same sex is absolutely unreasonable and undoable. Nonetheless, I acknowledge that the same-gender dilemma is certainly right up there with some of life’s more difficult trials, and it’s no doubt harder for some individuals than for others.

When I was an editor at the Ensign magazine in the mid-1990s, I pulled the first same-sex personal essay out of the files and published it in the magazine. This came soon after Elder Dallin H. Oaks opened the door with the first Ensign article on the topic. I tell you this to demonstrate that I think open discussion of this dilemma is valuable and necessary in the LDS Church, and in fact I think we need to take it deeper and younger to better inoculate children against misinterpreting and mishandling the same-gender attractions some will feel during youth and, certainly, to inoculate them against society’s growing encouragement and even pressure to pursue one’s gay impulses, if one feels so inclined to any degree.

While I feel compassion for people who experience same-sex attraction, especially when it seems to crowd out all heterosexual potential and comprise 100 percent of their orientation, I think today’s gay identity is a huge deception, and it sets off many of my last-days alarm bells. If I weren’t a believing Mormon, I don’t think I’d have any trouble with the gay movement, because without the Mormon worldview I’m the kind of guy who just thinks people should take whatever pleasure and satisfaction they can get out of life. But from a Mormon viewpoint, the emergence of the gay movement is clearly a sign of the times; after all, it’s already becoming one of the main wedges between the secular/agnostic and the religious in our fast-polarizing society, including within the church. There’s no way I can see that Mormonism could do anything to endorse the misdirection of romantic/procreative emotions and spirituality into gay relationships, let alone endorse actual acts of gay sex, and still remain Mormonism, and I expect that at some point we Mormons will have to withdraw from society when society becomes wicked enough to try to shove homosexuality down our throats, which I’m sure will eventually happen with even more gusto than when society pressured us to end polygamy.

So I am very leery of anything that I sense plays into the gay-rights agenda. I even thought the recent LDS Church public-relations endorsement of Salt Lake’s ordinances spelling out special protections for those who’ve chosen to pursue their gay inclinations was a step in the wrong direction, one that counters what some apostles have said and that I seriously doubt was based on revelation. What pushes my buttons most is when so-called fellow Mormons try to normalize and romanticize gay relationships. In fact, I’ve gotten myself banned from some Mormon blogs for being outspoken against such an outlook, and I’ve weakened my ties with many post-Mormons and liberal Mormons, such as the Sunstone crowd. But I don’t even care, because the gay issue alarms me so much.

So with that background, along comes a novel manuscript by Jonathan Langford about a teen who feels he’s gay yet wants to stay in the church. While my zeal for devoting time and resources to my Zarahemla Books enterprise has been gradually waning, Jonathan was able to get several qualified readers to vouch for his manuscript and attract my interest, and I agreed to publish it. I would have liked more sensory detail in the novel, but other than that I feel it’s a wonderfully realistic account of what it might be like for someone caught in this dilemma. I feel Jonathan is fair to his characters and fair to both sides of the issue, and I felt it would be good karma for me to publish it, to show that I really am open to understanding the complex human realities surrounding this issue. Literature can be an excellent tool for increasing understanding and even for some healing of rifts and dissensions, in my opinion.

So far, however, my experience in working with Jonathan on publishing the novel has shown me what I’ve long suspected: I’m a man without a real community. I’m too culturally liberal for conservative Mormons, and I’m too doctrinally conservative for liberal Mormons. The mainstream orthodox Mormons have blocked out the novel just as efficiently as we suspected they would, even though we took out all the f-words. In fact, one very conservative Mormon anti-gay group, Standard of Liberty, called us modern-day Korihors for publishing the novel and said we were trying to lure readers into accepting the gay agenda. This is so far from the truth that it still makes me laugh out loud, but it illustrates how some Mormons just can’t handle realistic culture; for them, everything must reflect and promote the ideal, and any portrayal of the realistic or the ambiguous threatens them. Ironically, I happen to agree with almost everything Standard of Liberty says on its website, so it was quite shocking to have the group turn on me so vociferously regarding this novel.

We are finding a smattering of “radical middle” readers who love the book, but of course the liberal side—the side that wrong-headedly, in my opinion, equates the church’s past history regarding blacks with how these liberals expect things will unfold regarding gays, with the church finally coming around to accept gay relationships and sexual acts as okay within “marriage”—do not find the book to be pleasing, and Jonathan has been attacked by some of them in unexpected ways, such as trying to discredit him by aggressively psychoanalyzing him personally through the novel.

The bottom line is, I’m glad I’m involved with Jonathan’s book. The book has a great spirit about it, and yet it doesn’t provide easy answers. It’s a book that engenders compassion without looking upon sin with the least degree of allowance, and publishing it assuages my social conscience to some degree for being so hard line against the gay movement. It’s a book that helps us understand what our youth are facing in today’s society and hopefully motivates us to take more steps to help them get through the maturing of their sexual identities without succumbing to gay temptations.

Deep down, I’m actually glad for this gay dilemma, for while it has upset me and sucked up a lot of my time and energy reading and writing about it, it has also strengthened my ties to the Church and my faith. At the same time, I’m glad to be able to play a small role in helping some realistic same-sex accounts come to light within the culture. I’m grateful that literature can help humanize things for us, and I hope to see future literary expressions cast more light on the gay dilemma. I just wish more Mormons were more open to literature that challenges us and promotes real dialogic thinking and discussion, like Jonathan’s novel does.

On Mormon Humor

2009-12-09T15:40:00.006-07:00

The Salt Lake Tribune recently did an article on Mormon humor, in which I was quoted several times. Here's the complete e-mail Q&A I originally did with the journalist:

Do you think there's any unique Mormon humor or is it just general religious humor, with specific Mormon settings and language?

I think real adult Mormon humor has a fair amount of passive-aggressivity to it. The culture and the belief system are so rigid and so resistant to any kind of disruption of the smooth, conformist functioning of the hive. But sometimes a worker bee has just got to assert his individuality and signal that some aspects of Mormon culture seem fairly absurd to him, and humor can be a veiled, indirect way of doing that. I don't think most other religions create as much of a cultural pressure cooker as Mormonism does.

Why do you think Mormons favor the kids-say-the-darndest-things approach, rather than a more witty or ironic wit?

Mormon what-kids-say humor is much safer and more innocent than adult-level humor, with less chance of being impure or offending the Holy Spirit. Also, Mormons often tend to live vicariously through their children. And after all, Jesus said, "Become as a little child."

Is this generation of Mormons, raised on Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, more inclined to be edgy in their humor?

Yes, to a degree. But even in the younger generation, I don't think active Mormons with a worldly humor sensibility outnumber Mormons who maintain a more sweet, earnest, safe sense of humor. Mormons who cotton to edgy humor are probably the same kinds of "gray sheep" who drink decaf and watch R-rated movies.

How do Mormon humorists know where the line is between sweetly irreverent ala J. Golden Kimball and disrespectful?

That line is different for everyone. Working on the Sugar Beet, I thought we reined in stuff enough to keep it from being too irreverent, but lots of people didn't think we reined it in enough. Whew, good thing they didn't see the raw stuff we didn't publish! I don't know that many Mormon humorists are even pushing this line, tell you the truth. Mormons are just too efficient at freezing out things that challenge the culture too much, so why bother.

What has happened to the Sugar Beet? How did your Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer do?

The Sugar Beet lives on as a regular feature in Sunstone magazine. I don't think the Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer sold as many copies as our non-Mormon publisher hoped it would, but I suspected all along that that kind of satire was too edgy to go mainstream among Mormons. I had people tell me they didn't mind surreptitiously enjoying our brand of boundary-pushing humor for free online, but to actually support it by paying for it and keeping a physical copy in their home seemed to cross a line of conscience for them. It's a similar rationalization dynamic that probably happens with porn.

On Amazon, the top pairing for Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer is No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith by Fawn M. Brodie, if that tells you anything. Still, Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer sold over 2,000 copies regionally, so we're currently working on volume two for release later in 2010, probably with alternative Mormon publisher Zarahemla Books this time.

Do you think there's a market for Mormon humor? If so, how do you reach it? If not, does that make you depressed?

I don't really think there's much of a market for Mormon humor, just like there's nearly no market for realistic or edgy Mormon literature in general. Mormons who like a risker adult sense of humor don't trust mainstream Mormon outlets to provide it, and Mormons who like safe humor--or don't see much of a need for humor at all--certainly don't seek out the edgy stuff that's available. And yes, that does make me personally depressed, because humor is an important outlet for me, and I think it helps certain kinds of personalities stay more connected with the culture, if we can gently mock it a little. I'd love to see the culture loosen up a little and not be so safe and conformist.

Lots of Buzz for NO GOING BACK

2009-12-02T11:02:00.003-07:00

Jonathan Langford's novel NO GOING BACK, which I published through my Zarahemla Books enterprise, is getting lots of good coverage. Here are some recent highlights:

Doug Gibson at the Ogden [Utah] Standard-Examiner gives NO GOING BACK a great review. "The new Zarahemla Books offering has a premise that many haven’t contemplated before," Gibson writes. "It allows the reader to get inside the head of an active-in-the-church gay teenager who desperately wants to live the gospel and the law of chastity." Gibson concludes, "I wish this book was on the shelves at Deseret Book. A lot of us could benefit by reading it."

Read the full review here:
http://blogs.standard.net/2009/11/novel-puts-readers-into-the-shoes-of-a-gay-mormon-teen-who-wants-to-stay-worthy/

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Coming Down the Mountain continues its series of interviews with NO GOING BACK author Jonathan Langford.

Jonathan discusses the novel itself here:
http://karenjonesgowen.blogspot.com/2009/11/interview-with-jonathan-langford-novel.html

And he discusses his experience with Zarahemla Books here:
http://karenjonesgowen.blogspot.com/2009/11/publisher-zarahemla-books.html

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At North Star, "a place of community for Latter-day Saints dealing with issues surrounding homosexual attraction who desire to live in harmony with the teachings of Jesus Christ and the doctrines and values of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," Jonathan wrote a personal article about NO GOING BACK:
http://northstarlds.org/voices_full_2009-11.php

And North Star director Ty Mansfield said of the novel:

LDS writer Jonathan Langford has authored a masterful fictional narrative in
No Going Back. “Fiction has tools for getting inside the minds of characters,” he
explained, “showing them in a more complete context while exploring the
variations and possibilities of human experience.” The novel gives readers a
window into the inner workings of the heart and mind of an LDS teen who struggles
to reconcile his faith and his sexual feelings in a modern culture that’s
vastly different than the one most of us grew up in. As I wrote in an endorsement
of the book, it “brings to life through narrative what I imagine will be the
struggle of many youth growing up in today’s evolving culture around gay issues.
Parents, friends, priesthood leaders, and peers are all a critical part of how we
negotiate our sense of self-identity and life choices, and this story is
masterful in how it brings to life all the tensions associated with
that process.”

While the book doesn't always paint a picture around this issue as we hope
it would be, as an ideal, the story resonated with me as a markedly realistic and
candid portrayal of the potential conflicts our next generation of LDS youth will
face, particularly those growing up in communities where Latter-day Saints or
other conservative faith groups are a minority—a rapidly growing proportion of
Church membership. The more we as a community fully acknowledge that potential
reality, the better we'll be equipped to meet our youth where they are and offer
them the resource we hope might help them along a gospel-centered path.

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Here's an AML-List review of NO GOING BACK by Vickie Cleverley Speek:

I remember playing tag and other games with the neighborhood kids when I was growing up. We would call each other "faggots" and "fairies" not knowing what the words meant. We just knew the words were an insult and meant something we didn't want to be.

As a teenager, a gay student was intimidated into leaving school. Charles wore cowboy boots and a pin on his shirt pocket that said "Davy Crockett." He carried a briefcase to carry his books to class. Boys would kick the briefcase down the hall, then trip Charles as he scrambled to get it. Girls would snicker behind their hands and turn away. "Fag!" they whispered as he walked by. Charles ate lunch alone. He walked to class alone. He had no friends.

Charles was in my seminary class. One day he wasn't there. "I hope you guys are proud of yourselves," our seminary teacher said, "You drove Charles out of school. He won't be back. Of all the people in this school, you, as members of the Church, should have known better."

"By the way," he added. "That pin he wore — Davy Crockett is Charles' real name. He is a direct descendent of Davy Crockett and very proud of it." I was devastated. Although I had never personally done anything to hurt Charles, I never did anything to stop it, either. Forty years later, I am still ashamed.

And now, I know how Charles felt. Jonathan Langford, in his book "No Going Back," has basically recreated the experience I had at Idaho Falls High School. The setting has been modernized to western Oregon in 2003, but the conflict is the same — a gay teenager attempting to walk the narrow conduit between his sexuality and his religious desires.

Paul Ficklin, the main character, is well liked at school, plays soccer and video games, enjoys camping with the Boy Scouts and is active in his ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At fifteen-years old, the age of sexual awakening, Paul has a secret he fears to tell anyone — he's gay. Eventually, Paul works up the courage to tell his best friend, Chad Mortenson. At first repelled by Paul's revelation, Chad realizes his friend is the same person he has always been. Paul also finds support with his mother and the bishop of his ward, Chad's father.

Without revealing himself as homosexual, Paul becomes involved at school with a Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) group, where he finds friends and acceptance. But all that changes when an anti-gay-marriage amendment is proposed for the state's constitution and Paul finds himself torn between his sexual identity and his religion. When asked by GSA members to fight against the amendment, Paul declines, revealing that he supports his church, that he feels homosexuality is wrong, and that he intends to live his life not acting on his sexual feelings.

Accidently outed by a vindictive acquaintance, Paul's world becomes unbearable as friends suddenly become enemies, and his name becomes associated with the word "faggot." He nearly suffers a mental collapse when an award, long worked for and desired, is denied because of his homosexuality.

The characters in this book are very real, with human frailties and characteristics — some good, some bad. Not all the members of the ward are supportive. As a matter of fact, while some of the ward youth are understanding, others become his worst tormenters. Chad Mortenson, Paul's best friend, is my hero. I wish I had his kind of courage when I was 16 years old.

If there is a flaw in this book, it's Langford's use of given names from a generation older than the one he is writing about. Paul, Chad, Dale and Janice went to school with me in the 1960s, not with my son in 2003. The book would have been better had he used more modern names like Matt, Michael, Heather and Melissa.

"No Going Back" is an important story. The conflict between Paul's sexuality and his religious desires cannot easily be solved. Chances are he will not be able to cross the bridge successfully between the secular and religious worlds. Will he fall, or jump off the slippery slopes into the deep dark water of despair, as have so many gay LDS men and women?

I highly recommend this book.

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Finally, on his own blog, Jonathan questions "What Keeps Readers Away." Here's the link to an interesting, frank author expression about the struggles of reaching an audience:
http://www.langfordwriter.com/blog/?p=55

More info about NO GOING BACK:
http://www.zarahemlabooks.com/product.sc?productId=26&categoryId=1
http://www.amazon.com/No-Going-Back-Jonathan-Langford/dp/0978797191

To Someone Who Lost His Faith

2009-11-21T15:28:00.008-07:00

Someone I know recently asked me to respond to an e-mail from someone he knows who has lost his Mormon faith. Following is the exchange; if anyone has any better rebuttals, I'd be interested to hear them and may even pass them on. And if you're one of my many nonbeliever friends, feel free to argue your side too.

I do not believe in the Bible since it too has many issues that I am not comfortable with. For example, I believe that the world is older than 10,000 years old and that man evolved as Darwin and others have discovered.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that Mormons necessarily believe like mainstream fundamentalist Christians. Many Mormons believe the world was created in six PERIODS, not DAYS. Each period could have lasted hundreds of millions of current earth years. Also, Mormons allow room for evolution as a creative tool of God. One of the most fascinating books I've ever read covers many of these topics: Earth: In the Beginning by Eric N. Skousen.

I do not believe that Moses parted the Red Sea or that Jonah was swallowed by a whale or that God flooded the world and Noah built an arc and saved two of every species. None of the above is logical nor can it be explained by contemporary scientific knowledge.

First of all, "contemporary scientific knowledge" still has many blind spots and lack of understanding. Second of all, one does not have to believe these Old Testament stories to still believe in the overall Mormon gospel. Many people are agnostic about some details while still having an overall testimony. They are willing to defer judgment on these Bible stories until finding out the whole story, perhaps in the afterlife.

I also do not believe that God cares about what land Jewish people inherit or whether or not men were/are circumcised, etc. Plus, there is so much war, hatred, incest, rape, fear, etc. throughout the Bible and all of which is apparently condoned by God so this is very hard for me to make sense of or justify.

God allows these things to happen, but he doesn't condone it. Earth life is a test with two conditions: 1) both good and evil can entice people, 2) people are free to do whatever they want. So many bad things happen, but it's all part of the testing conditions and will be sorted out later. From an eternal perspective, earth life is the blink of an eye.

From my perspective, it looks like religion broadly and the Bible specifically was a creation of man's imagination. I do believe that religion has done a lot of good for the world but I also believe it has done just as much evil, if not even more. Think of all of the war and suffering caused in the name of religion. Again, much of this was actually condoned by god so I really struggle with this.

Don't lump Mormonism in with religion in general. The true, pure gospel has been relatively rare on the earth, and most religions are a mix of truth and man's imagination, as you say, including his propensity to misuse power and mistreat others. Even within Mormonism you get some individuals and groups who do that, but overall Mormonism is the pure gospel that does no evil in the world, only good.

So in short, no, I do not believe in God and Jesus as they are portrayed in the scriptures. However, I am hopeful that there is a higher power but I do not "know" if there is or not. This might be hard to hear or even understand but again, it is something that I am at peace with and definitely something that I have spent a tremendous amount of time thinking about and continue to think about.
If you are aware of all of the holes, have you found reasonable answers for them? If not, how have you been able to make sense of it?

You are taking an approach that is too intellectual, not spiritual enough. Read Alma 32 carefully. First of all, you have to WANT to believe. If you don't want to believe, then all the seeming inconsistencies and holes will give you plenty of reason not to. But if you want to believe and put some effort into developing faith, then the spirit will lead you through undeniable experiences that make it so you can be patient with the earthly flaws and the seeming holes. People who believe don't expect to understand everything all at once, but they understand everything enough to give God the benefit of the doubt that troubling things will eventually be explained to our complete satisfaction.

What jumps out at me the most is [Elder Holland's] claim that the Book of Mormon has stood up to, if even conquered any opposing claims that have been brought forward in question of its veracity. The fact of the matter is that Holland could not be more wrong about this. There are still countless claims that Book of Mormon scholars have yet to answer in a way that satisfies the scientific community or even contemporary wisdom. Ironically, one of the most damning works against the Book of Mormon was a book written about 80 years ago by Elder B.H. Roberts called "Studies of the Book of Mormon." I encourage you to read it. B.H. Roberts did a significant amount of research on several claims that challenge the veracity of the BoM to provide to the Quorum of the 12 with the hope that they could provide answers, which they did not. His final opinion is that there was an extremely high probability that Joseph Smith could have, and very likely did write the Book of Mormon (he gives several examples that are quite damning). Roberts never gave up his testimony but he definitely poked a lot of holes in the book and it is very interesting to read. To this day, most of his concerns still remain unanswered and unexplained and they are of the type that should have answers. Holland knows of this book and he also knows of all of the problems that the BoM has, so I find it disturbing that he would stand before the members of the church and claim that the BoM can stand up to modern day critics; those who don't bother to see for themselves will believe him, the rest of us who have seen and know otherwise will find fault with him.

Further, there are absolutely NO modern-day non-LDS scientific experts that believe there is any evidence that supports the Book of Mormon. In fact, if you
study some of the issues yourself, you will see that the BoM has several inaccurate historical claims, e.g. there were not any horses (or any domesticated animals for that matter) in North America during the time of the BoM, most of the food items that are mentioned are inaccurate, the tools and weapons that are mentioned in the BoM were not found or even invented at the time of the BoM, civilizations were not nearly as advanced as the BoM would suggest - people actually traveled in small nomadic groups, i.e. wanderers and gatherers, etc... There are many, many, many problems that FARMS or other LDS "experts" can not rationally explain to get support from the broad scientific communities. This is a fact and it is a problem.

Additionally, many of the linguistic virtues of the BoM were actually plagarized from the King James version of the Bible, which diminishes their value. I think I recall that something like 40-50% of the BoM is plagarized word for word from the King James version of the Bible (I saw this for myself and you can too if you'd like). Further, there are even a few scriptures in the BoM that were plagarized from the Bible, which Joseph Smith ended up correcting in the Bible but forgot to correct in the Book of Mormon (I also saw this for myself). How could this ever happen if Joseph Smith was really translating a record that was written by an entirely different people than those who wrote the Bible, especially considering that Mormon's believe the King James version of the Bible is not even a pure translation like the BoM theorhetically is? The list of problems go on so either Jeffrey Holland is not being truthful or he is ignorant of the facts, both of which are problematic for someone of his position.

There are better answers for a lot of these things than you think (start plugging in some search terms at http://www.fairlds.org/), although it's true that debating the Book of Mormon on scientific grounds is never going to prove it. It's a book that tests faith, and it's possible to receive divine, supernatural confirmation of its truth. Looking at it using human tools of understanding is always going to make it come up short. It may be that God designed it that way, to help people develop faith.

Holland mentions that in the "Last Days" it is prophesied that the elect will be decieved. I have a few problems with this type of discussion. First, it is a common fear tactic that can be mis-used to convince people to belong to a specific organization simply out of fear (Mormon leaders have been guilty of this since the beginning). For example, if you lose your testimony and question the church, you will go to hell. This is a scary scenario and certainly is reason for keeping many people "in" the church. It used to scare me too but at this point, I see it for what it is and find that there is more virture in questioning and thinking for yourself than following blindly.

Your language is inaccurate and misrepresents reality. Mormons don't say you're going to go to hell for these reasons. Doubt is something to work on and can eventually lead to greater faith, but even if someone never overcomes their doubt but still lives a good life, they will receive a high degree of glory in the resurrection. And also, it's quite possible to question in the Church while still retaining a basic testimony, or enough of a testimony to know the Church doctrine and organization are the truest in the world and have divine origins.

Second, and speaking about my situation specifically, before I decided that the Church was no longer what I thought it was, I spoke with several leaders about my questions. All of them had "answers" for me, NONE of them were the same. I found this to be very problematic, especially within a church that is supposed to be lead by a living prophet. Furthermore, throughout time all of the prophets have said very different things on the same subject points and are therefore in conflict with one another, which again, is another red flag for me. Therefore, to say that I've been deceived and am in error is inaccurate when I diligently tried to find answers and only came up with more confusion. How is this my fault? I turned to my leaders and none of them had any answers that made sense or even remotely answered the question. The one answer I did get is "listen to the spirit and don't be mislead". This is quite unhelpful and an easy answer when there are no others. If Holland has the answers to all of my questions and the many others like me who also question, then he should write an authoritative book that clearly states the church's position. Unfortunately, the church is unwilling to be very clear on many simple subjects for fear of being wrong, as they have been on many occasions in the past.

Again, you are being too intellectually rigid, not relying enough on spiritual insight. Humanity is too imperfect to give you the perfect doctrinal/historical system you want. If such a thing existed, there would be no test of your faith, which is a big part of why we're on the earth. I would say humble yourself, quit relying so much on intellectual pride, and quit thinking you know better than so many other people. And if you don't want to believe, fine. It may be part of your test to go through years or decades of doubt. But if and when you get to the point where you want to believe again, the Church will be waiting for you, and you'll have to humble yourself and not expect to have all the answers be easily communicated. You're going to have to do a lot of spiritual work, not intellectual.

Regarding the spirit, this is a very elusive and vague element of faith. I saw this all of the time on my mission, as I assume you did too wherein people would share their testimony with me regarding their faith and experiences. I clearly remember many people telling me about how they believed in the Virgin Mary and even saw her. They cried as they told me, would not doubt and even bore testimony to me that they had the truth. I would always doubt their stories because they seemed so implausible but then I would bare testimony that I knew Joseph Smith's story was true, when I didn't experience it myself firsthand. So then, how can I question those feelings and not expect them to question mine? The point is, this is a very slippery slope and people of ALL religions claim to strong spiritual feelings that validate their faith, what makes the feelings Mormons have any more special or true? I've never tried to admit that I didn't have spiritual feelings about the church and uplifting experiences, I did, however I now have a hard time explaining that these feelings came from god when there is plenty of scientifc reason to support that these feelings/experiences are from the mind and can easily be explained psychologically, especially when people all over the world claim to similar feelings for different reasons.

I agree that emotion and spiritual influence are difficult to separate. But that doesn't mean that sometimes the spirit doesn't actually speak to people, beyond their own emotions. You are discounting all of it just because lots of it may be faulty. We call that throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Regarding Joseph and his brother Hyram in Carthage Jail...many people in the church do not realize that the reason why they were there in the first place is for breaking the law. Joseph Smith ordered that the printing press be burned down because reports were about to be published about his polygamous affairs and he knew this would be damning. Many of his additional wives were actually already married to other members of the church who were away serving missions overseas. These men did not know that Joseph Smith had taken their wives into secret marriages after which he had sex with them. He was not in jail being persecuted as the prophet of the church, he was in jail for breaking the law and therefore, he died because of his own mistakes and this is a fact. As an aside, I personally believe there is no purpose in polygamy, especially knowing all of the harm that it has caused the church. God could of course forsee the damage polygamy would cause and therefore, if he was really running the church, he would not have introduced such a problematic practice. Why did Joseph need to have secret marriages and have sex with other men's wives and even girls as young as 14 years old? Where is the virture in this? What is the purpose of this, especially seeing that he was the primary beneficiary of
the doctrine? Keep in mind that Joseph's wife never was in support of the doctrine and after his death, she distanced herself from the church for this purpose.

Joseph Smith may have made mistakes, but that does not negate his role as a prophet. I agree that he perhaps acted unwisely with destroying the Expositor's press. He admitted to mistakes throughout his life, but in my opinion that makes him all the more believable. As far as polygamy, it was practiced in the Old Testament and Joseph restored it. If he went too far with it, I don't really blame him and am sure he has repented. But I'm not sure he did go too far. We cannot judge until we have all the details, which we definitely do not.

Again, if you WANT to believe that God would restore the true gospel to the earth and that he has instituted the plan of salvation, etc. then God will give you ways to deal with the ambiguities. If deep down you don't really want to believe, or you want to think you're smarter than believers, or you have some other character flaw that makes you too proud to follow the path of faith, then you'll have to work through those flaws somehow. I think there's something to be said for sticking with it even if you don't have all the clarity and answers you want, and God eventually rewards such displays of would-be faith.

Not to go on and on but the bottom line is that I am happy and have peace in my life. Going to church does not make me happy anymore because I find that there are simply too many unanswered questions and it doesn't work out for me logically. I wish it did because I know it has been hard on my family but at the end of the day, you have to be true to yourself and that's what I am doing.

Personally I would probably be happier in the short term too if I didn't have to go to church. It's a discipline to go. And if you are an (overly) intellectual person, I can see where some things would irritate and dissatisfy. But you don't have anything better to replace the Church with, as far as I can see. And deep down you probably know there isn't anything any better out there, as far as religions or belief systems or whatever. So by default you join the world's growing secular/agnostic/atheist movement, which offers absolutely nothing meaningful as far as explaining why we're here on this earth or where we're going after. But that's a religion too, with its own morals and values, etc. Good luck with that.

Reconsider the story of Korihor, because you're on the same path: Korihor (c. 74 B.C.) was an extremist, rejecting all religious teachings. He was labeled "Anti-Christ" because he taught that there was no need for a Christ and that none would come. He described the religious teachings of the church as foolish traditions designed to subject the people to corrupt and lazy priests. In a dramatic confrontation with the Nephite chief judge, and with the prophet Alma, Korihor claimed that one cannot know anything that cannot be seen, making knowledge or prophecy of future events impossible. He ridiculed all talk of visions, dreams, and the mysteries of God. He called belief in sin, the Atonement of Christ, and the remission of sins a derangement of the mind caused by foolish religious traditions. He denied the existence of God and, after demanding a sign as proof of his existence, was struck dumb. After Alma accused him of possessing a lying spirit, Korihor confessed that he had been deceived by Satan, had taught words and doctrines pleasing to the carnal mind, and had even begun to believe them himself (Alma 30:6-60). [Korihor text comes from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism.]

You may not acknowledge the reality of Satan, but one way he deceives is by overemphasizing human intellect and science, overreliance upon which are a form of unhealthy pride. He is feeding these ideas to you in his subtle ways, and you are biting on them. Humble yourself, give up on your need to know everything perfectly, refocus on what's good and right in the Church, and build on that.

Sorry this came out a little preachy, but I've known so many people who've gone this route, and I get so tired of it. Oh, and you better be damn sure you don't have any secret sins going on that would blunt your spirituality and make it impossible for you to really exercise faith. The majority of my friends who have lost their faith have eventually mentioned that they enjoy looking at porn, for example. Well, duh. I'm not saying that EVERYONE who looks at porn loses their faith or that everyone who loses their faith has looked at porn, but I think that's true more often than not, if not with porn than with some other secret sin.

The Atonement & Same-Sex Attraction

2009-11-06T16:58:00.002-07:00

No Going Back author Jonathan Langford has written a powerful account of why he chose to write this novel about teen Mormon same-sex attraction, which I published; what the critical response has been so far; and how the Savior's atonement relates to this topic.

Following is the full text, or you can read it over on Jonathan's blog, which is well worth following.

On Writing a Realistic Novel

It’s interesting being the author of a novel about a topic that matters so much to a lot of readers. Sex and religion are topics that people care about passionately (if you’ll pardon the double pun), and when they intersect, there’s little that’s more potentially volatile.

That’s all to the good when people like my book. I’ve gotten some amazing comments from people, not just about how the book affected them as a story but about the positive good they think it can do in the world. I’d like to believe those comments are all true. But it can be especially unpleasant when people don’t like my book — especially those who share my religious beliefs.

Most of the comments I’ve received from believing Mormons have been highly positive. Some reviewers have cautioned that this is a book “not for the faint of heart.” I agree. I recently emailed a friend, “I have to admit that it’s a pretty intense book, so if you don’t feel up to that, it may be better that you avoid reading it.”

Which brings me to the topic of this blog.

A few readers criticize No Going Back for being too realistic and/or not optimistic enough. I don’t have an unequivocally happy ending. I don’t show Paul’s gender orientation changing. I show him describing himself as gay, not same-gender attracted as the LDS (Mormon) Church encourages. I show him going to a GSA club. I show him (and other teenage boys) cussing and making crude jokes, as well as some serious mistakes. I don’t show all the LDS Church members acting perfectly toward him and his mother.

Well, hello. That’s the way the world is. Kids are confused. They make mistakes. They pick up the attitudes of the world around them. They have to make choices, and sometimes the choices they make aren’t good ones. What positive purpose is served in creating literature that denies this?

My goal, in writing this novel — beside telling a story that would engage readers, about characters they would care about — was to depict realistically what an LDS teenager in today’s world might go through in feeling same-sex attracted but also wanting to stay true to his
religious beliefs. I wanted to depict fairly both his desires to live his religion and the struggles that might present for him. I wanted to present a story that had a hopeful ending, but also one that took seriously just how hard things might be for my main character going forward.

I’ve written on my website about issues such as gay identity and why my book doesn’t focus much on the possibility of Paul’s orientation changing. What I want to do here is say why I think there’s value in writing a tough, challenging, realistic novel about a topic like this, instead of always writing the happiest, best, or most positive outcome.

I believe in the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I believe it has the power to change and heal all our infirmities — not just those that are the result of sin, but also those that relate to things we didn’t choose, such as same-sex attraction in most if not all cases.

I don’t necessarily believe this change and healing will all happen in this life. In fact, I think we’re given a pretty clear indication in scriptures that in many cases it won’t. However, I do believe we’ll be given strength to meet the challenges we confront in life, if we go
before God and sincerely ask him for that help.

I think stories — nonfiction and fiction both — can help us to see and feel better just what the Atonement can do for us. But in order to show the true power of the Atonement, they have to also show the conditions in which we live. If they don’t show realistically what we need to be rescued from, they aren’t really showing us the power that Jesus Christ can have in our lives.

Teenagers, as much as any of us, live in a fallen world and fall victim to it in a variety of ways. Despite that, they too are capable of receiving grace through spiritual realities such as prayer,
scripture study, personal pondering, and service in the priesthood. In order to show the power of the spiritual side of things, I felt that I needed to include a small (and fairly tame) dose of the cruder realities of high school as well — in order to demonstrate that the Spirit can operate in the conditions of real teenage life.

The process of change and healing that comes through the Atonement often takes a long time. I think showing it all happening at once makes the Atonement seem like less than what it is — and has the potential to make readers despair when they realize that the reality of the lives they lead doesn’t match what they’re reading. And it can make the rest of us less compassionate by reinforcing a sense that other people’s trials aren’t as challenging as they really are.

I believe that short of God’s ultimate healing, the single thing that helps us most in getting through the trials of life is the support, understanding, and love of other people. I think that’s particularly important in the case of teenagers for whom God is (let’s admit it) largely an abstract concept, and for whom the notion that they might change 10, 20, 50 years down the road provides little if any comfort.

Even more than my book is about God and spiritual healing, it’s about the comfort that can be provided by other people — and the damage that can be done when others aren’t supportive and understanding.

There’s a lot that doesn’t happen in my book that I’d like to see happen in the life of a teenager who was struggling like Paul. There’s a lot I’d like to say to him myself, if he ever happened to wander into my ward or family. I hope that by reading my book, other people will be more likely to say those positive things to the Pauls in their lives, or at least to understand a little better what they’re going through. If my book is real enough to do that, I’ll be content.

New Novel Now Available

2009-09-10T18:21:00.003-06:00

RIFT
A novel by award-winning author Todd Robert Petersen
Published by Zarahemla Books

Jens Thorsen's retirement is not what his wife, Lila, was expecting. Rather than tending to things around the house, Thorsen has thrown himself into a life of charity: visiting the sick, the widowed, and the incarcerated. Between these acts of service, Thorsen finds the time to nurse his feud with local bishop Darrell Bunker. The two have hated each other for as long as anyone in Sanpete, Utah, can remember.

Even though the valley is much too small for the both of them, Thorsen and the bishop have managed a tense ceasefire that allows daily life to carry on. But when the bishop's daughter moves home, there are suddenly too many egos in one place, and Sanpete starts to pull apart at the seams.

"What a pleasure to read the work of a writer who understands and can accurately portray the small, out-of-the-way parts of this world where honor, generosity, and sheer cussedness are still operative principles. With Rift, Todd Petersen has written a funny and tough-minded account of a place where family, faith, and community still come first."

—Brady Udall, author of Letting Loose the Hounds
and The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Todd Robert Petersen is originally from Portland, Oregon. He has lived in Washington, Arizona, and Oklahoma. He currently teaches in the English Department at Southern Utah University in Cedar City. His first book, Long After Dark, received an ARTYS award from Salt Lake
City Weekly. Rift was given the Marilyn Brown Novel Award.

Trade paperback
350 pages
ISBN 978-0-9787971-8-8

Click here to order. Please help spread the word!

Book Review: Longshot, by Lance Allred

2009-08-25T22:26:00.003-06:00

It's not often that a national publishing company contacts me to review one of their new titles; in this case, it was the HarperOne division of HarperCollins that sent me this review copy. I agreed to review Lance Allred's memoir Longshot: The Adventures of a Deaf Fundamentalist Mormon Kid and His Journey to the NBA mainly because I'm rather fascinated by polygamy and anything related to Mormonism, especially when it's published by a non-Mormon national company. However, I probably never would have purchased this book on my own, because its main focus points appeared to be basketball and the NBA, which don't interest me much.

In the end, I don't regret the time I put into reading the book, although I got my fill in 250 pages and wouldn't have wanted more. Overall, it's a pretty quick, entertaining read, and I enjoyed Allred's youthful, somewhat goofy voice, even when he overreaches or is otherwise uneven as a writer. I told myself that I would skim or skip the sports-related parts, but I found myself sticking with the story of Allred's twists and turns in the worlds of college basketball and the NBA minor leagues. I was surprised how negative the publisher let Allred be about the verbally abusive University of Utah coach Rick Majerus and some other people, and the publisher allowed the author's own idiosyncratic prejudices and stereotyping to remain intact, which I think is overall good because it reflects the whole person rather than a sanitized, politically correct person.

While the editor did allow much of the author's voice and many quirky details and tangents to shine through, I saw several errors and typos and punctuation problems and imprecise expressions and weird literary misfires and wobbly attempts at humor that I would have fixed or maybe even deleted, if I were the editor. I liked the often-funny asterisked footnotes that the editor let him include, but I strongly disliked the sappy, cliched epilogue about following your dreams, blah, blah, blah. I found the climax quite moving when he finally got called up into the NBA after all he'd been through.

For such a short book, this memoir covers a lot of ground, from Allred's upbringing in the Rulon Allred polygamous group (Rulon was the author's grandfather) to fleeing that group along with his parents and siblings to facing hearing loss and OCD, including a form of OCD in which he feared he was gay even though he didn't apparently feel attracted to males. After reading his memoir, I found Lance Allred interesting enough to look up online, and I found that he lasted only a few weeks in the NBA and is now moving on to play pro basketball in Europe and write additional books. While uneven in places, the book is certainly not boring and is sometimes funny and inspiring, with plenty of personality.

Annual Goofy Name Roundup

2009-08-22T21:28:00.002-06:00

Each year when school starts, I go down to the kindergarten on back-to-school night and jot down the bizarre names or spellings with which many parents choose to saddle their kids for life. Here's this year's crop:

Taryn
Kaden
Brinley
Hailey
Kaylee
Janae
Debany
Teanekuma
Taygen
Liora
Maika
Uijin
Loryn
Sione
Garreth

Caveat: It's possible that some of these are sane ethnic names with which I'm personally not familiar.

How I Like My Steak, Etc.

2009-08-17T20:00:00.003-06:00

What time did you get up this morning?
6:30 a.m. That's way too early; I'd much rather get up at 8:00 every day.

How do you like your steak?
Rare to medium-rare.

What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
District Nine. Quite intense and fascinating. I've been thinking about it a lot.

What is/are your favorite TV show(s)?
I don't watch any TV. Seriously.

If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?
New York City or Boston. I'd also like to do Hong Kong for 2-3 years. Or somewhere in Europe.

What did you have for breakfast?
Four chocolate chip cookies and a few bites of cottage cheese and peaches.

What is your favorite cuisine?
Asian. I know that's a little general, but I don't like to commit to only one.

What foods do you dislike?
Bananas, raisins, licorice, all breakfast cereals.

Favorite place to eat?
Bombay House.

Favorite dressing?
I swing pretty freely among ranch, blue cheese, and Italian. Not a big salad eater, frankly.

What kind of vehicle do you drive?
2002 Honda Civic.

What are your favorite clothes?
Shorts, T-shirt, flip-flops.

Where would you visit if you had the chance?
Japan, various places in Europe, and I'd like to take my whole family to Australia.

Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full?
Both at different times, but overall half empty a little more often than half full.

Where would you want to retire?
Hawaii, perhaps?

Favorite time of day?
Lunch.

Where were you born?
Newport, Rhode Island.

What is your favorite sport to watch?
None

Bird watcher?
Casually in passing, but not in any serious way.

Are you a morning person or a night person?
Night.

Pets?
Cat.

What did you want to be when you were little?
Don't remember, probably just general "businessman."

Are you a cat or dog person?
Cat. I don't dislike dogs and in some ways they're more rewarding than cats, but they're a lot higher maintenance.

Are you married?
Yes, permanently.

Always wear your seat belt?
Yes, I got in the habit during my mission to Australia, where it was mandatory long before here.

Been in a car accident?
Only a few minor ones.

Favorite pizza topping?
Pepperoni with green olives.

Favorite ice cream?
Coffee-Oreo when I can get it, otherwise usually mint chip.

Favorite fast food restaurant?
Apollo Burger.

How many times did you fail your driver's test?
I failed the driving portion once.

Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?
Wal-Mart or Sears, because of the variety of useful stuff I could get.

Like your job?
Very grateful for the paycheck and the comfy conditions.

Broccoli?
Yeah, I quite like it, but not raw. It makes me feel virtuous and healthy to eat it.

What was your favorite vacation?
China with my wife.

Last person you went out to dinner with?
I treated a group of former Sugar Beet writers to dinner at Bombay House.

What are you listening to right now?
Fan and air conditioner. For some reason I haven't turned on iTunes yet today.

What is your favorite color?
Cooler colors, like blue, green, purples. I don't commit to one.

How many tattoos do you have?
I think tattoos are generally not a good idea, although I wouldn't mind one small one in a hidden place, something ironically Mormon like an Angel Moroni or a CTR symbol. My only tattoos are some small permanent dots made during my radiation therapy for Hodgkin's disease in 1995.

Coffee drinker?
I usually have a cup of decaf most nights in the cooler months, but I get mad if my kids call it coffee. That's how freakin' Mormon I am.

My Rock Concert History

2009-08-08T22:25:00.002-06:00

My wife has been getting back into her blog lately, which inspires me to do the same, especially during this pleasantly mellow month of August, during which I'm actually feeling like I have some time to relax and write for pleasure before the next round of teaching and freelance writing hits me hard...

When I was young, I loved the excitement of rock concerts. I loved hearing that a favorite band thought Salt Lake was cool enough to pay us a visit, and I loved buying tickets and then anticipating the show. Growing up in white-bread Bountiful, I loved going to the big, bad Salt Palace and watching all the freaks and breathing their second-hand smoke of various kinds.

Nowadays, I find attending live-music events to be quite tedious, for the most part, with the parking and all the waiting around and the imperfect sound, etc. So I only go every year or two now, it seems. But I still have some fantastic memories of partaking in the past. Here are my concert memories:

Journey (x2): This was my first-ever concert in high school, probably 1983 or 84, and then for some reason I saw them again their next time around, even though I'm not a huge Journey fan. They had a handful of songs I liked, but they veered over into sappy ballad territory too often for my taste.

April Wine: I remember really enjoying this concert during my senior year in high school. Some other band shared top billing with them, but I don't remember who it was. After the concert I had to go to the KFC where I worked and help with some late-night cleaning for an inspection the next day, and I felt weird and pleasantly woozy, perhaps because of someone smoking something near me during the concert?

The Cars: My friend Dean gave me a free ticket at the last moment, so I didn't get to feel any real anticipation build for this concert. Maybe that's part of why I thought it was so boring. Live, the Cars were just detached and flat. But I still listen to a lot of The Cars and consider them in my top-10 bands.

Oingo Boingo: I really liked this group at one time but don't like to listen to them anymore. By the time of their concert at the Utah state fairground in about 1985, I was already a little tired of them, and I remember moping around by myself during most of the concert, probably due to girlfriend trouble.

Rush (x2): This is the band I've probably listened to the most in my life, and I loved seeing them for their Signals tour in about 1984 even though that album marked the point where I started not liking their new music, some of which got so sappy and synthesizer-heavy during the late eighties/early nineties that I've had to delete it off my iTunes. Then I saw them again in the early 2000s after they'd taken a five-year break, and they played the whole concept album part of 2112, which was so cool. I would go see them again if the right D&D nerd friends from the old days went along.

Sheryl Crow: This was the most recent concert I went to, I think, just last year with my wife. I love nearly all of Sheryl's music and have all her albums, and the concert was fine outdoors in the Usana Ampitheater, but it was kind of windy and I got a little tired of sitting there. The older I get, the less I like sitting through any kind of event, not only work meetings and church but also concerts and plays. It's kind of sad, really...

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks/Radiohead: This one was relatively recent too, probably about 2006 or 2007. It was outdoors at the Usana Ampitheater, and I really, really enjoyed it, for some reason. I found Radiohead's music so emotional that night, and I sat there with tears running down my face, which isn't like me. I don't know how Radiohead tapped into that part of my brain. The lights and sound were really good. I already liked Stephen Malkmus before he warmed up for Radiohead and I still enjoy his albums with the Jicks, more so than his earlier work with Pavement.

B-52s: I saw them in about 1989 in an old Boston theater called the Orpheum, where they wouldn't let us dance up on the balcony because the floor was too unstable. I've enjoyed the B-52s a tremendous amount over the years and still listen to them regularly, but I don't remember too much about this concert.

Violent Femmes: This was at the Utah state fairground in about 1985. I think I liked it well enough. I remember seeing some of my Kimball cousins there and feeling pretty cool.

311: I saw them outdoors up at Park West or the Canyons or Wolf Mountain or whatever they were calling it in the late 1990s. I was with my sister Stacey and maybe some other siblings, and we were quite far up the slope, and guys locked together in wrestle-fights kept rolling down the mountainside around us, stirring up the dust.

The Eurythmics/Howard Jones: This was the summer of 1984, outdoors up at Park West, soon after I graduated from high school. One of my friends rented a condo up there that we stayed in. It was the occasion when I fatefully hooked up with a girl named Cindy, who would be in and out of my life for the next five years, bringing me some joy but even more grief. I don't listen to either of these bands, but that's just because I don't like the poppy, femmy type of eighties New Wave music.

Moby: I went to this one up at Kingsbury Hall at the University of Utah with my parents and siblings, and I remember it being a fun night and a surprisingly good concert. It was sometime in the late 1990s, I think.

Weezer: My dad likes Weezer, so several of my siblings and I got him tickets for Father's Day and we all attended the show together out at the E Center sometime in the early 2000s. Weezer was great, but we were quite far from the stage, and there were two emo warm-up bands that I really didn't like, and it took forever setting up between bands. My dad was joking with people that he was a "Weezer geezer."

Disturbed/Godsmack/Stone Temple Pilots: My sister Liz's then-husband invited me to this show out at the E Center in the early 2000s, and I enjoyed it a lot. I actually enjoyed the first two bands more than the headliners STP, but I like listening to STP on iTunes more than I do the other two.

Dan Fogleberg: My wife and I attended Dan's show at some ampitheater in Sandy. I remember it was pleasant enough and a nice night out with my sweetie. He's dead now, right?

Spoon: I quite like this indie band, and my brother Jeff and I saw them in Times Square, New York, in about 2005. I was a little bored with the concert for some reason, although I like their music and they played well.

Pinback: Without having heard their music beforehand, I saw them with my parents and siblings at the Depot in Salt Lake not that long ago. I remember liking them a lot, but when I bought some of their albums afterward, I didn't recognize them from their performance, although I still like listening to them.

Berlin/INXS: I saw this double billing at the Salt Palace in about 1985. I remember standing right at the front for Berlin but then just sitting outside during most of INXS. The evening has an uneasy, dissatisfied vibe in my memory, but I can't remember exactly why. Probably girlfriend troubles again. That Cindy made me quite miserable at times.

Styx: This show was about 1984, the year of their career-ending Kilroy Was Here album. I remember the audience actually booing during the first fifteen minutes while they were showing some video to try to set up some kind of storyline. But later in the concert, they got into the older good stuff, and people got happier.

The Police: This was about 1984 as well, before they got so huge. I think it was before Synchronicity, and several of the songs were in French. It was a pretty good show, but I've never been a gigantic Police fan, although I still enjoy some of their early songs quite a bit when they pop up in my shuffle.

Smashing Pumpkins: This was in the late 1990s out at Saltair. A long show but a good one. Billy Corgan was like a preacher with his flock.

Midnight Oil (x2): I love this Australian band and have practically all their albums. I saw them out at Saltair in the mid-1990s and again at a free concert at Utah Valley State College in the early 2000s. I remember the Saltair show was excellent, but somehow I didn't enjoy the UVSC one as much, because the sound wasn't as good and it was free. I always thought Midnight Oil was a much more interesting band than either U2 or REM and wondered why they didn't make it as big.

Crosby Stills and Nash: I remember hopping a fence into this show up at Park West. Can't remember the show itself, though. CSN have a couple of really sublime songs.

The Osmonds: Saw them when I was quite young down at BYU, very early eighties. I had been a big fan of the Donny & Marie TV show growing up and probably enjoyed this concert a lot. I think my grandparents were there with us.

The Doobie Brothers: My parents took me to this at BYU. I remember totally loving it. Maybe this counts as my first real rock concert, not Journey. But hey, I was with my parents...

Alanis Morissette: I was quite taken with her Jagged Little Pill album and enjoyed this show at the Delta Center, even though I felt out of place among all the young girls. I haven't really connected with anything she's done since then, though.

Alanis Morissette/Plant & Page: Saw this lineup at the E Center in the late 1990s. I really love a lot of Led Zep, and I find the whole Jimmy Page mystique interesting. I remember coming away from this show quite satisfied.

String Cheese Incident (x3): Between marriages in the late 1990s, I hung out a fair bit with my sister Stacey and went with her to hear this band no fewer than three times, twice in Salt Lake and once in Denver. I quite enjoyed them.

Modern English: Saw them up at the University of Utah. Don't remember much.

English Beat (x2 or x3): They come through Utah a lot with various line-ups but always the indomitable Dave Wakeling at the forefront. They put on a great show, and I still like listening to my What Is Beat? album.

Garbage: I was big into Garbage in the mid-to-late 1990s, and I remember really enjoying this show at some weird venue somewhere in Salt Lake.

Matthew Sweet: I didn't know him before I saw him at the Zephyr Club, but I remember it being a cool show. One of my coworkers at the Ensign named Paul invited me to go. Come to think of it, Paul and I saw several of the late-1990s concerts in this list together, but I've lost touch with him now.

Stretch Armstrong: Just a tiny bit of ska goes a very long ways with me, but after I left the Ensign I worked with the lead singer of this former band, and I attended their reunion show in the early 2000s. At one point in the mid-1980s, Stretch was big enough that No Doubt opened for them in Salt Lake rather than vice versa, and they sold over 25,000 copies of their CD, which is fantastic for a regional band. To my great surprise, a brainiac kid from my old Bountiful ward was their keyboardist, which I never would have predicted.

Billy Joel: During my senior year, I got great tickets for this show and actually asked a date, one of the half-dozen total dates I went on in all of high school. I remember it being a very satisfying show, all the more so because we were sitting so close. At one point my parents listened to a lot of Billy Joel and I liked him a lot too, but he has not survived in my musical interests.

Seems like there were some additional big Salt Palace shows I attended as a high schooler, but I can't remember who. And then I attended a fair few little punk shows in the Salt Lake scene circa 1984-85, but again, it's hard to remember any band names for certain. In my memory, the best out of all these concerts was probably Radiohead, followed by the more recent Rush show. However, I also sure remember loving that April Wine concert...

Gay-Mormon Coming-of-Age Novel

2009-08-04T16:01:00.005-06:00

TO BE RELEASED THIS AUTUMN BY ZARAHEMLA BOOKS

No Going Back
A novel by Jonathan Langford

A gay teenage Mormon growing up in western Oregon in 2003. His straight best friend. Their parents. A typical LDS ward, a high-school club about tolerance for gays, and a proposed anti-gay-marriage amendment to the state constitution. In No Going Back, these elements combine in a coming-of-age story about faithfulness and friendship, temptation and redemption, tough choices and conflicting loyalties.

“A home run exploring these issues. Langford captures many of the things I have personally felt as I have navigated these waters.”

—Rex Goode, social worker and webmaster for www.ldsr.org

“Abiding by Mormonism’s high standards challenges all its faithful adherents. Coping with one’s besieged status as a young gay is no less difficult. What if you are both at the same time? Like no other work I know, Langford’s frank and poignant novel brings this real-life impasse into bold relief.”

—Thomas F. Rogers, playwright and BYU professor emeritus

“The narrative opens some of our deepest concerns, and the prose makes us glad to be there.”

—Steven C. Walker, BYU professor

Stay tuned for more information on this release, coming soon.

BYU's New Creative Writing Degree?

2009-07-10T16:23:00.004-06:00

Apparently BYU is gearing up to offer a new master of fine arts (MFA) degree in creative writing. I’m very curious to see how BYU’s MFA is different from its M.A. with creative writing emphasis, which I completed back in 1998.

I really enjoyed my BYU experience, but not so much the actual creative writing track. For one thing, at that time they lumped all kinds of creative writers into one workshop, which made only a little more sense than lumping those learning French, Spanish, and Chinese into one class.

For another, the theory courses were very ambiguous and ethereal and academic and didn’t provide any practical training for a creative writer. The emphasis seemed to be more on preparing me for a Ph.D. program, since the M.A. is not considered a terminal degree. I did like some of my two workshop experiences, but in one the professor never said anything, so it seemed like students teaching students, and in the other I had to complete it by mail with the instructor, as I came down with Hodgkin's disease and had to file an incomplete. My favorite class of the whole degree was the Mormon literature reading class I took from Eugene England.

My BYU M.A. gave me some great things. It turned me on to Mormon literature, the Association for Mormon Letters, etc. which have continued as abiding interests in my life. And it was through the M.A. program that I got an (extremely boring) summer internship in the LDS Church’s curriculum dept. which then directly led to a less-boring full-time stint at the Ensign magazine and a subsequent reasonably well paid career in corporate marketing communications. However, as far as preparing me to become an actual published creative writer, the BYU program did less for me than two years of participating in a good writer’s group and studying books and magazines put out by the likes of Writers Digest would have done.

While I can see benefits to M.A. and MFA programs, I come down on the side of thinking it’s too often all just a big pipe dream for the students. It’s a lot like the multilevel marketing industry in which I work: everyone wants to launch their own successful home-based biz and make money, but fewer than 5% actually make it. If a program in law or dentistry had those job-placement odds, it would fail.

If someone has the time and the money to spend on an MFA without needing to earn a living afterward, I think it's potentially a fair-to-good investment in personal development and could lead to some satisfying literary experiences later, for those who stick with the writing discipline beyond school or luck out with a sustainable teaching job. But for the majority of us who need a real career, I think MFA programs should be much more realistic and should include much more practical emphasis on carving out a workable writing life.

In fact, I tend to think that most creative-writing degrees should be a tag-on minor to some real vocational degree in a discipline with reasonable odds for providing a lifetime remunerative career. For most of us, an MFA is a luxury we can't afford, but I don't think many students realize that until later, when the impossibility of making a living as a creative writer really sinks in.

Here's a very interesting article from a recent New Yorker on this whole topic.

Zarahemla Clearance Sale

2009-07-08T13:39:00.003-06:00

Like nearly all publishers in this economic climate, Zarahemla Books has been hit by returns of unsold books from booksellers.

To help us move excess inventory and raise funds to publish several upcoming new titles, we are currently offering the following titles at heavily discounted prices:

Hooligan - $4.95
Hunting Gideon - $3.95
On the Road to Heaven - $5.95
Long After Dark - $6.95

Shipping is only $2.95 for orders totaling under $25.00 and FREE for orders totaling $25.00 or more.

If you've been procrastinating purchasing these titles, now's obviously the time! It's also a good time to stock up on gifts. Prices will return to normal once inventory catches up.

To take advantage of this sale, visit the Zarahemla Books website, where you can order with secure PayPal payment processing:
http://www.zarahemlabooks.com/main.sc

15 Books I've Read that Will Always Stick with Me

2009-05-18T14:33:00.000-06:00

1. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
3. Couples, John Updike
4. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
5. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
6. The Crimson Petal and the White, Michel Faber
7. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
8. Saturday, Ian McEwan
9. Middlemarch, George Eliot
10. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
11. How We Die, Sherwin Nuland
12. The Stand, Stephen King
13. Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
14. The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt
15. The Beatles: The Biography by Bob Spitz

And you?

Going Underground on Gay Marriage?

2009-04-23T16:49:00.003-06:00

As a Kool-Aid-swilling Mormon, my big question on the whole gay marriage issue is, What is the LDS Church's next move?

I used to think the church should keep fighting in the public arena on this issue. But now I'm thinking it would buy us more peaceful years in society if we went mostly dark on the issue—not refute our beliefs, but circle the wagons, reaffirm what we believe to each other and our children and whatever sincere seekers come our way, and let society do what it will without much further input from us.

I think winning Prop 8 actually backfired because it galvanized the gay movement. Gay marriage is definitely coming, one way or another, probably on the federal level. But Prop 8 was an important opportunity for the LDS Church to make it clear to all Mormons everywhere that the gay lifestyle isn't going to be accepted by the church, despite all the wishful thinking that goes on within liberal Mormon circles. The message is clearer than ever: If you want to be in the church, you need to work on resisting and overcoming your same-sex weakness, not seek justification through so-called marriage. And this message is especially important for our children, who will grow up in a world where the gay lifestyle is promoted and celebrated far more than it is today. God help any of our kids who feel same-sex attraction, because it's going to be damn hard to survive spiritually in tomorrow's radically pro-gay moral climate.

Obviously Mormons will continue to reaffirm the sanctity of godlike marriage within our own group, but I don't see the point in raising much more stink about it in general society, which is pretty much equivalent to the great and spacious building nowadays anyway. It's not worth all the bad publicity and ill will to fight something that's going to happen anyway. We've gone on record with Prop 8, we're now widely known to oppose gay marriage, and I think we should just wash our hands of it and sit back and watch with dismay as society does what it will. To do otherwise seems as unwise to me as pasting targets on our foreheads and butts.

Even if we go mostly underground about this issue, though, I still think society will eventually become so culturally fascist about gay marriage—so politically correct in a twisted, diabolical way—that society will eventually dig us out of our burrows, and of course we'll have to hold our ground at that point, come what may. But clamming up until then will hopefully buy us more time.

The only exception I can think of is that the church should probably help block gay marriage at the Utah level, because we can't just roll over and play dead right here in our own backyard. However, even if Utah votes against gay marriage, it will still eventually gain federal acceptance, and then Utah won't really have a choice, at least while the union still stands.

At some point down the road closer to the Second Coming, when our society is really falling apart due to the majority's departure from God, I'm sure we Mormons will be able to say, "Told you so." Your thoughts?

Why I'm Against Gay Marriage

2009-04-06T22:02:00.005-06:00

Okay, I got myself involved in another blog smackdown on the gay marriage issue. I think I did a better job representing my position this time; below are all my comments, and you can click here if you want to go to the original post on Mormon Feminist Housewives and read them all in context. While I'm not following that blog anymore (for reasons you'll see below), I welcome being reasoned with on this blog, if you have any counter-arguments (however, I've been around the block on this issue enough that I've probably already heard them all).

Some interesting logic, but your post shows that you don’t really understand (or accept) Mormon theology. Same-sex marriage is simply absolutely impossible in Mormon theology. Marriage with accompanying sexual relations is a holy, godlike state. As far as we understand, God doesn’t have sex with other male Gods, and neither does Heavenly Mother have it with other female Gods.

To convince someone who really understands and believes in Mormon theology that God would ever say it’s OK for same-gender couples to marry and have sex with each other, you would have to convince us that our heavenly parents could do that too with other same-gender deities. Good luck with that.

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#5: With interfaith marriages, the status of the non-Mormon partner can change in this life or the next, with regards to accepting the Mormon gospel. However, gender is eternal, so there’s no way to transform same-gender couples into godlike couples. Sorry!

#6: Absolutely not satirical. Just voicing the Mormon side, putting out the challenge for someone to harmonize same-gender marriage with Mormon theology. I think it’s impossible, but I’m all ears.

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#13: OK, I’ll tell you my logic. (I know sources exist outside of the four standard works in which GAs have spoken of similar things, but I don’t have them handy. Some of it was McConkie, which may not hold much credibility anymore anyway.)

We’re taught that God has a corporeal body with “parts and passions.” We’re also taught that we’re created in God’s image and that gender is eternal. So, basically, our heavenly parents must have actual genitals. Personally, I cannot conceive of a God who has a humanoid body and who possesses male gender who is just blank and smooth between his legs, like a Ken doll. (And similar reasoning applies for our female deity.)

And if God has a reproductive organ, I can’t imagine he doesn’t use it in some celestial way, and same with his spouse(s). I don’t pretend for a moment to understand exactly how celestial procreation works, but my Mormon logic tells me that it is a glorified, ultra-turbocharged version of our mortal version here on earth. (By the way, I personally tend to agree with one GA who gave his opinion that those resurrected to a lesser degree will not receive their genitals in the resurrection–indeed, perhaps they WILL be like Ken and Barbie dolls in the crotch area.)

This is deep stuff, and today’s GAs won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole, but it’s essential to the conversation about same-gender “marriage” and why it will never be compatible with Mormon theology, in my opinion.

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#11 said: “Why in a pluralistic,civil society does Mormon theology take precedence over equality for all?”

If I understand Mormonism correctly, we believe that God inspired America’s founding on Judeo-Christian principles chiefly as a seedbed for the restoration of the gospel. If this society devolves from this original purpose and nature, then it is cause for great alarm and strong action. Legitimizing sodomy in any form is against basic Judeo-Christian principles, not just against Mormon ones. Now, the libertarian in me personally agrees that we shouldn’t be prosecuting people for committing sodomy or anything, but to change the definition of marriage to fully accommodate sodomy is just WAY over the top.

From a Mormon standpoint, I agree with us taking any steps possible to help slow our host society’s devolution into post-Judeo-Christian secularism, because otherwise we know that the same thing will happen to our civilization that happened to the Book of Mormon civilizations. In fact, we know it WILL eventually happen in the time leading up to the Second Coming, but it’s worth fighting to delay the inevitable by a few decades. Also, standing up for what’s right helps sort out the god-fearing from the post-god people, a process that will only keep accelerating as we progress ever deeper into these latter-latter days.

This whole gay-marriage issue is both a sign of our civilization’s degree of pulling away from God and an unprecedented opportunity for people to choose which side they’re on. I’m sure thousands of people are weeding themselves right out of Mormonism because they’ve been deceived by the modern-day gay movement. In my belief and that of most Mormons like me, same-gender attraction is a mortal failing to be resisted or dealt with like any other addictive tendency that may be beyond some individuals’ control, with compassion that stops well short of actually condoning sinful behavior or, even worse, presuming to change eternal principles to legitimize the sin.

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#44: That’s all fine and good, and obviously you know history better than I do and how to discuss it. My statement wasn’t a sweeping statement precluding any other influences on this country’s founding as well, and I also wasn’t using the term “Judeo-Christian principles” to mean the whole package transported over from Europe or something. I was more meaning biblical morality and the bits and pieces of the Judeo-Christian tradition or mindset that God saw fit to salvage from among the errors of history and put into the hearts and minds of America’s founders, many of whom asked for such inspiration, after all.

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Eh, you guys don’t scare me. I’ll continue to browse FHM any time I want and comment any time I want, unless you ban me.

I guess lots of people see blogs like this as havens from things in Mormonism they don’t like, rather than as places to really fully consider all viewpoints, including conservative Mormon ones like mine is on these issues.

I’m sure there are at least a handful of readers out there who relate with and appreciate most of what I’m saying, even if they don’t speak up because they don’t have much stomach for the demeaning flak that ensues. Get used to it, folks, because it’s only going to get worse, and it’s eventually going to reach YOU too, one way or another, as society puts more and more pressure on us to deny our beliefs. It’s too bad when it comes from ostensibly within the faith…

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Like I said before, Quimb-o, I’m open to people using logic and evidence to help me examine my beliefs, which I admit have been hard-fought and hard-won and are not something I’ll put aside easily, and which I tend to communicate as certainties because that’s how I experience them at this point in my life.

That’s why I occasionally get involved in discussions on this issue, to allow for the chance that someone might be able to explain some bit of theology or spiritual reasoning that might make it possible to give up my views against gay marriage and go along with the secular/liberal crowd. But so far no one has been able to do that; instead, I get lots of logical fallacies and emotional stuff. (And I’m not claiming that I don’t return in kind, sometimes.)

Also, I’m very interested in learning more about how others think, and it’s breathtaking to me to see the audacity of people within Mormonism on this issue. Really, it’s VERY entertaining to me and thought-provoking too, mostly in a cautionary way.

Bottom line: I think it’s a discussion worth having and am glad it’s online rather than in person. Quimby, I don’t really care if you’re on my side either, but I have an almost voyeuristic interest in how people with views like yours justify yourself and–again–just a TINY bit of curiosity to see if anyone can win me over to the other side.

++++

OK, I’m back from having Indian food with the editors of Sunstone and Dialogue, both in town for a conference today, and I wanted to weigh in on a few more things before I watch some Big Love on DVD:

#33: I agree that the idea of no genitals in the lower kingdoms is wonderfully hilarious, while also being something that I can believe. I admit I got the concept out of one of the Tanners’ anti-Mormon books, but they’re usually quite scrupulous about their quotes, if quick to go for the weirdest stuff in places like the Journal of Discourses. I just went down in the basement and tried to find it, but couldn’t. I like testing out my Mormon mind against people like the Tanners from time to time, and I’ve learned a lot about my own religion from them. I also get a real kick out of The Godmakers.

Mfranti, I have somewhat more to say unto thee. I think you were too quick to take my crack about Mormon Kool-Aid too personally. I don’t have a clue about your background or anything, so I was responding solely to the person who made the outraged comment in #41. Judging solely by that comment, the person writing the comment has not encountered or absorbed much deep Mormon thought yet, at least in some areas. I can’t reconstruct for you exactly how my Mormon worldview came about, but it goes far beyond the scriptures and includes countless other Mormon books and articles, as well as countless seminary and institute classes, firesides, and employee meetings and retreats while I was an editor at the Ensign magazine for over six years, at which high-ranking church officials, apostles, and other GAs would share frank, intimate insights into the Church, the latter days, America, the gay movement, etc. So you see, I’ve drunk very deeply of Mormon Kool-Aid, and anyone else who has drunk as deeply would recognize what I say as very much reflective of fairly widespread currents of Mormon thought, not freak out and attempt to apologize for them like the writer of comment #41 did, whoever she may be.

Oh, and as far as the “gay movement,” here’s a starting place for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_rights_movement

Personally, I feel no doubt that Satan has largely inspired the gay movement to legitimize sodomy-based relationships as a valid lifestyle. And this must make it incredibly hard for today’s people who are same-sex attracted, to have this large, well-organized campaign luring them all the time by making gayness look normal and acceptable. A hundred years ago, people who felt same-sex attraction might in rare cases act on it furtively but would never have tried to publicly embrace it and defend it as a legitimate long-term lifestyle. But now someone who feels SSA and doesn’t act upon it is made to feel like a repressed coward, so no wonder we have people feeling such pressure to “come out.” With such a vibrant, alluring gay lifestyle beckoning, many people with mixed gender attraction are giving in to same-gender attractions who never would have done so if society had not become so permissive, a process aided and abetted by the devil, who I believe is a real being with a real agenda and real ways of confusing and tempting us.

#56: Huh? I’m actually against sodomy laws. I think consenting adults should be free to practice whatever vices they want and face the consequences, as long as they don’t directly infringe on the rights of others. Even the church hasn’t said anything about enforcing sodomy laws, and it even stated that it doesn’t necessarily oppose basic legal rights for gay couples. Committing blasphemy against God by changing the definition of holy matrimony to include sodomy is a whole other ballgame, though.

#64: That’s a really interesting viewpoint with some good logic. However, Joseph Smith and other early leaders made it quite clear, and it makes total logical sense to me, that God is part of an eternal lineage of Gods who all follow and obey and uphold the same eternal principles, which are very clear when it comes to marriage and procreation and parentage. The universe is one big endless Zion beehive of Gods who are all on the same program, not a chaotic sci-fi scenario like you speculate with “creative families.” At least, from my Mormon perspective.

#68: In logic class, we call this an ad hominim attack. If I do have any narcissistic tendencies, I have lots of other easier topics and more welcoming venues to feed that need. I admit I do feel a sense of responsibility to speak out on this issue as a conservative Mormon when I feel so inclined, because so few other people who think like me do so in venues that I find interesting, such as this one. It’s boring to talk about this with people who already think just like I do.

#71: Thank you. This is just the kind of Mormon Kool-Aid that I’m talking about, which people like the writer of comment #41 don’t seem to have internalized much yet.

#73: Oh, I just like conversations like this online because I have time to formulate my responses and can space it out over a longer time period rather than getting caught in some intense face-to-face encounter. In face-to-face debate, I’m the kind of person who tends to do more listening than talking, with lots of head nodding because I can always see what the other person is saying, but online I can focus on what I think and formulate my responses. I’m sure this is true for other people who are text-driven rather than verbal-driven.

#82 said “There are so many Christian and Jewish sects that are totally fine with gay marriage (either secular or religious) so why should this church, or a group of conservative churches, have the say?” That doesn’t mean anything to me, because none of those churches has the full truth or is authorized by God or led by his priesthood. I’m sure we’ll see the day when the Mormon church is the only one left standing in the right place, all other churches having caved in to secular societal pressure and persecution. (This is another concept I learned at the foot of a mentor while employed at the church.)

#83: Yes, I’m sure he’ll be patient for you to hopefully eventually come around and fully understand Mormon theological reality and accept the stand of the prophets. And if you don’t, he won’t be able to fully trust you and reward you, but he’ll still love you and give you as much reward as he can justify and as you can handle. And if you have some real mental or spiritual block that makes you not fully accountable in this area, then I know he’ll take that into account too, but it won’t make him change the doctrine.

#85: Whoa, the church isn’t trying to force anything on anybody, just trying to rally the majority to block the wrong-headed efforts of the minority to change basic laws and principles upon which the nation was founded. Everyone already agrees that greed, materialism, and poverty are not good, so the church doesn’t need to state the obvious; the reason the homosexual issue is such a telling one is that it’s a recent development in which you now have people saying that the sinful vice of sodomy is actually a good, acceptable thing. That kind of twisting of God’s laws shows an amazing lack of sensitivity to his spirit and respect for his laws, and the more this kind of secular, proudly humanistic thinking catches on in our civilization, the faster God will naturally withdraw his blessing from among us, eventually leaving us to the fate of the Jaredites and the Nephites.

I think one of the most effective ways that Satan is confusing people is to conflate the gay issue with the racial issue and, yes, perhaps even the feminist issue. Race and gender are unchangeable, unavoidable characteristics, while sexual preference is something that one can choose to act upon or not. And I want to say that I’m personally much more alarmed by a supposedly Mormon heterosexual who is so confused by the world that he or she thinks gay marriage is a good idea than I am by a gay person who is having sinful sex but acknowledges that it’s not the ideal and that he is breaking God’s laws but just hasn’t yet figured out a way to resist the temptation. And yes, I do have some gay friends who have left the church.

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#142: Hmm, good point. I’m sure I’ve heard someone else argue this better and haven’t restated it as well. I don’t think homosexuality is a characteristic; I think it’s a temptation that can be so strong in some cases that it may FEEL like a characteristic, especially when gay propaganda abets such a feeling. But this gets into areas of whether there’s a biological component to it, which is unproven in either direction. Bottom line: It’s certainly not a clear-cut case like race or gender. Personally, I believe it’s analogous to alcoholism; some people are more prone to it than others and some seem almost born to be taken into its clutches against their will, but it’s something that ideally should be resisted and that should not be enthroned or celebrated by society as something good for us.

#143: Huh, not sure what to say. Are you saying it was wrong for me to comment on your comment from a certain not uncommon Mormon perspective? If so, I think you’re overreacting a bit. I agree with you that God won’t condemn you for doing your best and will give you all the opportunity you need to work it out, and maybe someday someone will finally pull the rug out from under me on this issue and I’ll be in the same boat as you, at odds with the church but feeling that God fully accepts my differing opinion.

I remembered a scripture that encapsulates why I think the LDS Church did the right thing on Prop 8 and should keep trying to rally the people of America along these lines:

26 Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people.
27 And if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you; yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction even as he has hitherto visited this land. (Mosiah 29)

I think when this will really get interesting is when gay marriage makes it to the federal level within a few more years or decades.

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#174: Bah, no regrets on this end. The reason I brought up my Mormon background is because Mfranti commented as if I were some kind of oddball embarrassment for which she felt the need to apologize, when in reality I’m well seasoned to communicate ideas that come from deep within the church (not without my own idiosyncrasies added in, I admit; and I certainly wouldn’t claim to be free of ego, either; it’s hard to be any kind of effective writer/communicator without some healthy self-confidence).

The main reason I like to let loose in this discussion from time to time in somewhat hostile venues like this is because I suspect that for every person who is vocal about their pro-gay-marriage stand and about their disdain for the Church’s involvement in the issue, there are one or more silent readers of comments who are still trying to figure out where they stand on the issue, and I hate to sit by and not try to communicate the orthodox Mormon side, for those still weighing the evidence.

Personal disparagement like what you just said about me, calling me a judgmental ass, just comes with the territory, that tired old ad-hominem cop out often resorted to when other rhetorical devices aren’t strong enough to effectively counter the orthodox position. I don’t expect that my position will convince anyone who’s actively debating the anti-Church side; it’s the undecided onlookers I’m hoping to influence. Don’t be persuaded by so-called Mormons who go counter to the prophet, even if they claim to have received their own revelation from God!

++++

#167: Ah, the old “the same thing is going to happen with the gay issue as happened with the black issue” argument. “Boy, won’t you prophet-following sheep all feel dumb when the church eventually sees the light and accepts gay marriage.”

Here’s why I think it’s different this time, and I’m open to correction if I get any history or interpretation wrong: With the black race issue, it seems like individual GAs gave their opinions for reasons why the church didn’t give the priesthood to blacks, but I don’t think the church ever had an official unified position that rose to the level of today’s practically scriptural proclamation on the family.

And the Church, to my knowledge, never openly resisted the civil rights movement in any organized way, although I understand that some individual GAs expressed concern about some of the militant aspects of the civil rights movement.

However, the Church leadership is obviously quite intensely unified about resisting the gay rights movement, at least at the marriage level. We have the proclamation, and we have organized campaigns and efforts against gay-rights efforts. That signals a whole different ball game. The church ain’t going to back off from this one; there’s too much solid doctrine and theology behind it, not the sketchy mark-of-Cain stuff used by individuals here and there to justify the racial ban.

With the racial issue, our society moved in a positive, godly direction and the church eventually came around. I agree it’s disappointing that the church didn’t lead out in this area and took so long to change its racist policy. With the gay issue, though, society is moving in the direction of ungodly, permissive, radical change that the church cannot abide or capitulate to. Some people may indeed be
individually unaccountable for their homosexual orientation, and we’ve got to find better ways to help them deal with this challenge, but legitimizing the sin of sodomy with marriage status ain’t the way.

++++

Quimby, I don’t understand you. While “ass” is a pejorative remark based on subjective standards, if someone is pro gay marriage when the prophet is anti gay marriage, isn’t it just a cold, hard fact that the person is “counter to the prophet” on that issue?

++++

#194 wrote: “The American Public sector forced a re-evaluation of LDS doctrine on several occasions, and perhaps that is exactly what Heavenly Father intended by locating the church in American borders.”

Yes, agreed. In my opinion, however, it works the other way around too, and the LDS Church is now called upon by God to try to help persuade the American public from going down the wrong moral path by putting sodomite relationships on an equal footing with procreative hetero relationships.

++++

#196: I’d like to see if I can respond to some of this well-written comment.

And with all due respect, I find your position full of folk doctrine and speculation at best.

I wouldn’t deny that there’s some of that in my beliefs, but are you calling the proclamation on the family folk doctrine?

The uniquely LDS scriptures say not one word about homosexuality. […] Having never canonized anything about this issue since the Restoration, and with the founding prophet Joseph Smith saying nothing about it either, this means all statements by the Church about homosexuality rest on a Biblical basis which is questionable at best.

I don’t really have a direct refutation for this, especially for the biblical stuff, but here’s my thought: It may be that the reason homosexuality isn’t dealt with in LDS scripture is because it wasn’t even an issue, it wasn’t even on the radar, it wasn’t even within the realm of possibility that society could devolve to the point where same-sex marriage could actually become a serious proposal on the table. (After all, we’re often reminded that most all of Joseph Smith’s revelations came in response to the Church’s needs and requests.)

I’m sure someone can cite some obscure society somewhere that performed something like gay marriages, but unless someone can convince me otherwise, I would say that our civilization is the first major civilization that actually has the nerve to say the same-sex marriage is a good idea and deserves equal status with traditional hetero marriage. I know that same-sex attraction has always been with us, and I know that people like the Greeks indulged it to an alarming degree, but most of those men were still heterosexually married and, as far as I know, no one tried to say that a same-sex relationship was a suitable alternative. I mean, they wanted to have progeny, after all. Today, of course, we’re a lot less excited about having progeny, and procreative science has muddied the waters further.

Here’s the thing with me: I don’t judge individual gays. I fully believe there are some gay people who really don’t have any choice about their attraction (at the same time, I believe some “gay” people have chosen to magnify their same-sex attractions and minimize their hetero ones). I think it’s even possible that some gay people who have chosen to live a life of fidelity with a same-sex romantic partner may actually be forgiven fairly readily at some point for the sinful sodomy aspect of it; only God knows each person’s degree of accountability and whether they made the best of their circumstances, and the Atonement can fix everything that’s out of whack, for those who let it. (I absolutely do not believe, however, that these couples could ever be sealed as eternal sexual partners, although perhaps their relationship could continue on some basis through the eternities. I’ve heard arguments that same-sex partners could be sealed, but it comes across to me as pure science fiction.)

My problem is with giving gay marriage equal footing with hetero marriage. I’ve already talked about the theological reasons why I object to that. I’ve also talked about why I’m alarmed by the idea of the majority of people preferring this to what we’ve been taught by prophets of God. Another thing I’m concerned about is the confusion it causes for young people. Many young people experiment sexually before settling on their sexual identity. If the gay option becomes so widely accepted and legitimized, many more young people will lock into that lifestyle than otherwise would have. Yes, there will always be some who are just 100% gay through and through regardless of societal influences. But there are many—perhaps the majority—who could resist gay impulses and capitalize on their hetero impulses, but society’s acceptance of the gay side makes it much harder to do so. Bottom line, I don’t want my kids growing up in a world that offers such confusion about marriage.

Here’s another reason I’m against gay marriage from a Mormon standpoint: In our temples, we perform sealings for all married couples. At some point if it hasn’t happened already, some of these gay marriages are going to creep into our family history databases and get sealed, if the fact that they’re same-sex can’t be spotted. For those who believe in Mormon theology, this is a huge inadvertent desecration of the ordinance.

Nothing in your arguments, CB, necessarily excludes the possibility of same sex relationships in the eternities. The best you can defensibly say is that our knowledge is incomplete. If you truly believe the 9th Article of Faith then you must concede this.

Yeah, you’re right, I can’t prove it. But I think the bigger burden is on those who are trying to introduce this new idea, not those who are trying to defend the status quo.

A generation ago it was proclaiming as a matter of doctrine and faith that homosexuality was a choice. Now it’s flipped on that. So when was/is the Church
wrong?

I don’t think the Church has so much flipped as they have refined and clarified their verbiage. They acknowledge that unwanted homosexual feelings are not a choice, but they continue to maintain that acting on those feelings is a choice.

Now the Church is conceding that this “core characteristic” may not change for some in this life. In which case, what afterward? The Church has no answers.

Incorrect. Through the Atonement and resurrection, all earthly flaws can be corrected, including same-sex attraction, even for gay people who can’t currently imagine what it will be like to have hetero desires.

The best you can say CB is that based on your limited knowledge at present, you and the Church believe XYZ, and you must acknowledge that it is all subject to change.

Anything’s possible! But it’s also possible to hope for change for the wrong reasons, such as extreme compassion for gays and/or the desire to be politically correct in today’s society. Both of these motives have redeeming qualities, but not when they outweigh understanding and adhering to the bounds the Lord has set. Any Mormon who is not following the prophet’s lead on this issue is taking a real gamble; I acknowledge that the gamble paid off for those who rejected the Church’s racist policies prior to 1978, but I just don’t see it paying off this time, and I really worry about you Mormon folks who are pro-gay marriage. I worry more about you than I worry about an actively gay person who acknowledges that his lifestyle is in error.

++++

Go ahead and ban me on principle then, Quimby. If I can’t state how I feel from a Mormon perspective when talking about things with other Mormons who are on dangerous ground by preaching against the prophet, then I’d like to request my name to be removed from your records.

I’ve been spending too much time on this anyway. It will be the second blog I’ve been banned from, including Mormon Matters.

Things I've Done in My Lifetime

2009-04-02T22:23:00.002-06:00

X = I've done it
O = I haven't

(X) Gone on a blind date - that's how I met my wife Ann
(X) Skipped school - a fair bit during my senior year, especially seminary
(O) Watched someone die - never seen someone actually pass away
(X) Been to Canada - Alberta when I was young; Montreal and Toronto (twice) as an adult
(X) Been to Mexico - just Tiajuana; I'd love to visit Mexico City and southward
(X) Been to Florida - just Orlando a couple of times for conventions
(X) Been to Hawaii - one time, Oahu
(O) Been on a helicopter - I'm not particularly interested
(X) Gone to Washington, DC - yeah, maybe 5-6 times; not my favorite
(X) Swam in the ocean - Pacific and Indian (Perth, Australia); I've been to Atlantic but may not have actually swum, due to cold
(X) Cried yourself to sleep - I'm sure I did as a kid
(O) Sang karaoke - I don't drink alcohol, so what's the point?
(X) Paid for a meal with coins only - I'm sure I did in high school or college
(O) Been to the top of the St. Louis Arch - just drove by it
(X) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't - duh
(X) Made prank phone calls - yeah, did a lot of those at one point in junior high
(X) Been down Bourbon Street in New Orleans - with my wife
(X) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose & elsewhere
(X) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
(O) Been deep-sea fishing - I may very well like to try it, with a good guide
(X) Driven across the United States
(O) Been in a hot air balloon - would like to try sometime
(O) Been sky diving - absolutely no interest
(X) Gone snowmobiling - once as a boy scout; would like to go again
(X) Lived in more than one country - Australia for my mission; would LOVE to again somewhere
(X) Enjoyed the beauty of Old Faithful Geyser - yep, and going again this summer
(X) Seen the Statue of Liberty - I've even climbed up into her head (took longer than it was worth)
(X) Gone to the top of Seattle Space Needle - I'd like to spend more time in Seattle
(O) Been on a cruise - part of me wants to try, but part worries it would be boring at times
(X) Traveled by train - the farthest is probably Boston to New York City
(O) Traveled by motorcycle - no, just a little local riding
(X) Been horseback riding - just hour-long trail rides at resorts
(X) Ridden on a San Francisco cable car
(X) Truly believe in the power of prayer - I was miraculously healed of cancer
(O) Been in a rain forest - not sure exactly what the definition of one is
(X) Seen whales in the ocean
(X) Been to Niagara Falls
(O) Ridden on an elephant - I would love to visit India someday
(O) Swam with dolphins - sounds a little corny to me, but I'd probably try it
(X) Been to the Olympics - one hockey match here in Provo, seat so uncomfortable I waited outside in the lobby
(O) Walked on the Great Wall of China - plan to this June
(O) Saw and heard a glacier calf - not a big priority
(O) Been spinnaker flying - I don't even know what this is
(X) Been waterskiing - several times in high school, no interest now (I hate cold water and exertion requiring any skill)
(X) Been snowskiing - quite a bit in high school, don't mind going with kids every once in a while
(X) Been to Westminster Abbey - yes, last April I attended a fascinating evensong service there
(X) Been to the Louvre - yes, last April, cool building but I like the contents of British museums better
(O) Swam in the Mediterranean - maybe this September, if my work sends me on a trip there (50/50 chance)
(X) Been to a Major League Baseball game - several Dodger games as a kid in L.A.; no interest now
(O) Been to a National Football League game - I would be willing to try one

So far in 2009 have I . . . ?

2009-03-28T23:08:00.005-06:00

Sorry, it's been a while, and this questionnaire I pulled off Facebook is kind of lame...

1) kissed someone? Of course, my wife, every day.

2) been dumped? Nope, I'm still married and employed. I think a few people have unfriended me on Facebook, though. Can't imagine why...

3) been drunk? No. I sometimes wonder if I could actually handle moderate alcohol usage in my life right now or if the Mormon church is right that none of us should enjoy any of it, ever.

4) stayed out/up all night? Not on purpose, but I've lost a few nights to insomnia, due mainly to indigestion from eating too much too late. But I still slept at least a few hours.

5) ate so much you got sick? See number four above. The older I get, the less well my digestive system works, though I continue to eat mostly what I want.

6) cried? Oh, my eyes have welled up quite a few times, usually more feelings of excitement than sadness.

7) gone to a funeral? Not that I remember.

9) watched something/someone die? Yes, I witnessed my furnace dying. It was more hearing it than seeing it, though. Oh, and our dishwasher and computer printer. Fortunately I haven't witnessed any biological death, that I can remember.

10) left home without permission? I guess this list is geared toward younger people?

11) smoked? No. Sometimes I enjoy sneaking some second-hand smoke, but I'm never around that anymore, what with all the new laws and stuff.

12) got in a fight? Maybe some verbal sparring with my ex-wife.

13) made someone cry? Not that I know of, but I wouldn't be surprised if I did.

14) found out who your friends are? Just here on Facebook, if you judge by who invited me and who accepted my invitations. I was offended today because I got a Facebook e-mail saying that a woman I used to work with at the Ensign magazine had accepted my invitation this morning, but when I clicked on her profile she was no longer my friend, suggesting to me that she clicked on my profile and considered me unworthy to keep. I sent her a message that said, "Well, at least the Lord still loves me."

15) been told you were hot by a complete stranger? Yeah, people stop me on the street all the time and tell me that--not.

16) left the state? Not so far this year, but I have plans to do so later this year as many as four times, if they all work out, including possibly two international trips.

17) been kicked out? My boss may have kicked me out of a meeting if I started dozing or getting too smart alecky.

18) been arrested? No.

19) had your heart broken? No.

20) Told someone (outside the family) you love them? Not that I remember. If so, I was using the term casually.

21) fell asleep with the opposite sex in a bed? Every night with my wife. (Yeah, I do think this list is for high school and college ages.)

23) had someone tell you they hate you? Sometimes my kids say that when they're mad, especially our little drama king Austin.

24) been in a wreck or wrecked a car? No, thank goodness. I worry about it a little every day.

25) cried for no reason? No.

26) felt like dying? I certainly wouldn't go that far, but I'm the kind of person who occasionally thinks I wouldn't be all that disappointed if I DID happen to die. Usually I don't feel that way, though.

27) felt like killing someone else? Not for real, although I can think of some people who I certainly wouldn't be disappointed if they died.

28) wished you were someone/somewhere else? Very often, multiple times per day, as far as my career goes and often with regard to not liking living in Utah.

29) missed someone so much it hurt? No.

30) lost someone close but not through death? No. Oh, wait, I did let the little boys wander away from our house one afternoon when I was supposed to be watching them, so I jumped in the car and luckily found them at the bottom of the street.

31) wanted to ask someone something but couldn't? I tend to avoid confrontations and difficult discussions, so probably.

32) lied to your parents? No.

33) lied to anyone? Probably some little social fibs, nothing I can remember. I was totally honest on our taxes, to our great financial pain.

34) bought something for someone other than yourself? I buy things that my wife and kids ask me to, but I don't initiate giving gifts. I hate giving gifts! Not the expense but the pain of picking out something for them.

35) argued over the petty things in life? "Argue" is a strong word, but I tend to nag my wife a little more than she does me, mostly about household cleanliness.

36) wanted to tell someone something but never did? Probably.

37) learned a lesson the hard way? No doubt, but can't remember a specific example right now.

38) trusted someone you shouldnt have? Probably.

39) done something you shouldn't have? If I were as pure and spiritual and religious and healthy as I should be, there are many things I probably should not read, listen to, watch, eat, and drink.

40) laughed so hard you cried? Yeah, a couple of times, at least got tears in my eyes.

41) danced under the stars? Give me a break. I don't dance, and I don't linger under the stars, at least not this time of year.

42) had a pillow fight? Maybe a brief one with some of my boys. I don't like that kind of horseplay much.

43) kissed somone but regretted it? No, except maybe my wife if she had a cold.

44) met someone new? Yeah, lots of new students in my night class.

45) became friends with someone you never thought you would? Hmm, can't think of any.

46) wished on a shooting star? No. Another dumb question.

47) wanted to go back in time and change something you did/said? Sure, but can't remember what. Well, a few weeks ago I cut my thumb.

48) gone to church? Yeah, I've actually been better about attending church this year, because the time changed from 9:00 to 11:00 and Zachary stopped taking naps, which was a good excuse to stay home lots of weeks last year. I don't like attending much, though, and wish I could get away with going only once a month.

49) cried yourself to sleep? No.

50) loved someone so much it hurt? Huh? I worry about family members from time to time, but I don't really get what this question means.

The BBC's Book List

2009-03-02T21:27:00.002-07:00

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. I bolded every one I've read, plus added comments here and there:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (really enjoyed it, have read many other Austens)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (love the idea of it, but it bogs down in places and I don't think I ever actually finished the last book)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (quite likable, but not quite as charming as Austen)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (actually just the first three volumes so far, but I intend to eventually read the rest, especially if one of my sons wants me to read them aloud)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (great, but perhaps a touch overrated?)
6 The Bible (read a lot of New Testament straight through on my mission, but otherwise just pieces here and there)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (started it, strongly disliked it)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (I don't remember actually ever reading it; I read fewer than a third of the novels assigned in high school)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (haven't read it yet but am committed to reading more Dickens in my lifetime)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (started it, didn't like it enough to continue)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read only a handful of plays, not a big fan)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (probably my single favorite book ever, seriously)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (what's all the fuss about?)
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (fantastic book, in my top 10 for sure)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (way overrated, kind of boring)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (I happen to be reading this one right now)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (enjoyed the first section, but then bogged down and quit)
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (not the book, but loved the radio show and hated the movie)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (quite liked it)
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (liked the portion I read, but didn't even get halfway)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (loved it in high school)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (wow, this one really turned me on to Dickens, and relatively recently too)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (enjoyed the first one but thought they got progressively boring, not sure how far into the series I made it)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (this one really appealed to my imagination)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (enjoyed it quite a bit)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (I suppose Disney doesn't count?)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (seems like I read at least part)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (made the time pass fast on the treadmill)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (in some ways kind of flat and distant but in other ways quite interesting and certainly unpredictable)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (went on way too long, but I did finish it; it sort of put me off Irving)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (I've enjoyed quite a few Atwood novels, but this one doesn't make my top three of hers)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (I'd like to reread this one)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (I'm actually a much bigger fan of his book Saturday)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (quite a narrative experience!)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (while I'm well read in fantasy, I'm quite weak on sci-fi)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (not sure what Austen is my favorite; I'd like to reread them all)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (I read the first few chapters online recently and would like to continue it)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (wow, quite a stylistic, queasy trip, certainly not the slightest bit boring)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (eh, not as great as I expected for all the fuss)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (this one's on my reading list)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (I didn't like it well enough to seek out more Hardy)
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (I loved this one unexpectedly well, probably in my top 10)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (seems like I read it, can't be sure)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (ditto)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (read the first few pages, sold the book quick)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (this one is in my top three ever, I think)
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (loved the movie)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (loved this one, in my top 10)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (read all these within a short period of time as a teen, would like to revisit sometime)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (couldn't get into it in high school)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (really didn't like this at all)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (it's on my list to read someday)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (I consider myself a big Dahl fan)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total I've read: 39 (more or less)

More Random Things

2009-02-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? I share a first name with my father. I don't recommend this. We've had lots of confusion with mail, phone calls, credit reports. For example, when I go to the Jiffy Lube down here in Springville, my dad's info in Bountiful comes up. As for my middle name of Kimball, that's my mom's maiden name.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? Hmm, my eyes got a little teary whenI was reading my student papers the other night about drug addiction, abuse, murder, job loss, etc.

DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? It's OK. But like most everyone else, I do precious little handwriting anymore.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? I like tuna at home and smoked turkey at Subway.

DO YOU HAVE KIDS? Oh, yeah. I'm in deep.

IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Yeah, Iwould be attracted to my own irreverence, humor, sarcasm, lightmindedness, smell, etc.

DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes

WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? No

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? I hate all forms of cereal, which I consider equivalent to dog kibble with tons of sugar added. About every two years, I will chew my way through a bowl of Captain Crunch, but it always scratches up the roof of my mouth.

DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? No.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? I like to get a double cone at Baskin-Robbins with mint chip and chocolate fudge. At home my favorite is mint chip, but only with lots of little tiny chocolate flakes, not bigger chunks of chocolate.

WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? Physically, I've never liked having such light-blond hair. Personality-wise, I think I'm too passive and lightminded about too many things, lacking in passion and drive and leadership mojo.

WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? Interesting question, but I'm not aware of missing anyone per se. I suppose I wish all my siblings lived in state.

WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? None. I'm just in my garmies, which I use as lounge wear around the house.

WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? Ann is reading the boys stories in the next room, and electronic book keeps making animal sounds, most notably an elephant but also others.

FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? I don't watch any sports. They all bore me.

HAIR COLOR? Very light blond, probably with lots of gray/white mixed in that you can't see because it's already all so light.

EYE COLOR? Dominantly blue with some hazel leanings.

DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? Tried them once and was relieved when one of them tore, because they were uncomfortable to me. I've never felt the need to try them again. I got my wife to stop wearing them too, because they made her eyes look more tired, with circles underneath.

FAVORITE FOOD? I'm not the kind of person to commit to one and only favorite food, but I love all forms of Asian food (especially sushi and Indian), fries with ketchup, ribs, broccoli.

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Scary movies are not fun, but I don't like Hollywood formula movies either. I like the more independent type of stuff, with recent examples including No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. I also really liked some of the recent raunchy comedies, which I suppose have happy endings, such as Pineapple Express, Role Models, Superbad, etc.

LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Hmm, maybe Frost/Nixon? Really enjoyed that one, better than expected.

SUMMER OR WINTER? Don't like either one as well as spring and fall, but probably prefer winter over summer. I enjoy the holidays and the dark evenings, and summer bugs me for a number of reasons that I've written about before.

HUGS OR KISSES? Kisses with my wife, neither for anybody else.

FAVORITE DESSERT? I'm not a big dessert guy, but there are some things I enjoy when I'm in the mood, such as my wife's chocolate-chip cookies.

WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? I'm currently in the middle of Bleak House, America in Danger, Rough Stone Rolling, and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I'm also in the middle of a novel I'm publishing later this year, Rift by Todd Robert Petersen.

WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? An airliner (Jordan made it for us).

WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT? I never watch TV, but last night I did watch an episode of Big Love on DVD. I'm only just finishing up season one and am quite engrossed in it.

FAVORITE SOUND(S). iTunes

ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Beatles, by far. I somewhat enjoy a couple of Stones songs, but by and large they do nothing for me, whereas the Beatles fascinate me enough to actually read books about them, let alone own pretty much all their albums.

WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? Perth, Australia

DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? Writing, I suppose, although I'm no magician at it.

Random Factoids about Moi

2009-02-24T17:53:00.002-07:00

Five names you go by:
1. Chris (in person)
2. Christopher (in print, so I'm not mistaken for female)
3. Jimmy or Jimbo (my weird, random nickname at work)
4. Bigs
5. Bigsy (the Australian version of Bigs)

Two of your favorite smells:
1. Ground coffee
2. Anything printed with ink (I'm a sniffer of printed matter)

Three things you are wearing right now:
1. Mormon garments (clean too, I might add)
2. Khaki pants
3. Brown leather slip-on shoes that are sort of cloggish

Two things you want very badly at the moment:
1. To feel secure about my career (I feel queasy about my future the majority of every day)
2. To have enough free time to work on a novel

Two things you did last night:
1. Read Diary of a Wimpy Kid to the boys in their blanket tent
2. Tossed and turned with gas blasting out both ends all night

Two last things you cried over:
1. Felt some eye moisture while watching Glenn Beck's conversion story on DVD
2. Felt some eye moisture while reading student papers about abuse, addiction, murder, etc.

Two things you ate today:
1. A steak burrito on whole-wheat tortilla at Cafe Rio
2. Two boiled eggs for breakfast

Two people you last talked to on the phone:
1. My wife
2. The nurse with my colonoscopy results (the one polyp taken was benign)

Five favorite bands/songs (these are not necessarily my top five, just the first five faves that come to mind):
1. Stereolab
2. Radiohead
3. Beatles
4. Black Sabbath (until Ozzy left)
5. The Cars (first three albums only)

Two things that you are proud of:
1. Having published five books
2. Having done the treadmill three times a week for over five years now

Two things that you are not proud of:
1. That my triglycerides are high from too much fat in my diet
2. That I don't enjoy being a Mormon much even though I believe in it

Two things you are going to do tomorrow:
1. Try to catch up at work on the catalog, video scripts, etc.
2. Teach my night class at Utah Valley University

Two longest car rides:
1. In 1990 I drove from Boston to Salt Lake City when I moved
2. In 1995 I did a three-week road trip from Salt Lake City to Washington D.C., New York City, Palmyra, Kirtland, and Nauvoo—and then back again

Two favorite beverages:
1. Coke
2. Sharps

Two of your favorite memories:
1. Going on a trip to London and Paris with just my wife
2. Growing up in Rancho Palos Verdes, California until age 10

My Thoughts on Buttars

2009-02-19T21:38:00.005-07:00

I don't like Chris Buttars, the Utah legislator who spouts off racist rhetoric and is otherwise apparently a boneheaded hillbilly. After last year's kerfuffle with his "black baby" remark, I thought he should have been unseated, and I was unpleasantly surprised when he actually earned reelection.

Now he's in the news again for so-called hate speech against gays, and I again feel uncomfortable with the way he's expressed himself and with all the bad publicity he's generating. And this time my feelings are even more mixed because I also agree with some aspects of his position.

I don't hate gays or think they are completely evil or that the average gay person has any desire to bring down America. I think they are people saddled with a difficult attraction, and those who choose to follow that attraction have made a terrible mistake that I hope they can ultimately repent of. I don't presume to judge any individual's accountability, and there may be some people who honestly can't help themselves, but I don't think there's any situation where God would countenance an actual gay marriage.

I would put it differently than Buttars. I don't think that gays "will destroy the foundation of the American society." But I do agree that the gay ISSUE could well contribute to destroying our society, splitting it apart and causing God to remove his protection and blessing if and when the majority of the nation accepts something contrary to his will.

I am more alarmed by a person who does not have gay sex but who says that gay sex is fine and should be celebrated with marriage than I am by someone who has gay sex but admits it's wrong. Gay behavior is like any other vice or perversion; it's bad to do but can be repented of, and we need to be patient and understanding of those who are caught in its grip, especially if they are humble about it and do not try to redefine God's laws to accommodate their sin.

I absolutely do not accept that God created some people as gay and that they should receive special dispensation to follow their bliss, while the rest of us have to keep resisting our desires that aren't in harmony with God's laws.

We're in a war here, and the gay activists are very powerful. I'm amazed by how many Mormons who should know better are caught up in the deception that homosexuality is just like race and that the Church will eventually come around like it did with blacks and the priesthood. I definitely think the gay issue will be the main engine that divides those who follow God from those who do not, including within the Mormon church. And as more people choose to put aside God and champion the gay cause, I think society is really going to break down.

So I agree with Buttars when he says, "In my mind, it's the beginning of the end." It's a new, terrible phase that clearly shows how mixed up our nation is getting and how far from God we're getting. Never before have people actually said, "Let's take a sin and embrace it and celebrate it and put it on an equal level with real marriage." It's a whole new ballgame compared to abortion or drugs or anything else. I mean, no one has been trying to say that abortion is acceptable to God, just that people have their freedom of choice (which I agree with). But gay marriage is saying that gay unions are deserving of God's full acceptance, which they're not.

I agree with Buttars when he says, "Sodom and Gomorrah was localized. This is worldwide." Previously, one civilization could be falling apart morally while another one was on the upswing. But now we're essentially one big worldwide civilization, or fast becoming one, and when we go down, we're all going down together as a planet. I can see how the Second Coming will happen because it will be necessary, because the whole planet will have gone rotten all at once and will not be salvageable except through such a dramatic, extreme event.

I don't think there should be laws against sodomy or that we should be mean to gay people. I wish they could just live their lives and not try to gain further acceptance for their lifestyle, which I'm certain that deep down they must all sense on some level is not right. Many gays probably are content just to lie low and follow their own passions without trying to alter the civilization. But there are gay radical activists out there who will not stop until they've persuaded our civilization to not only accept but embrace their sinful lifestyle, and they are gaining in power and influence.

One main reason I'm religious is that I've experienced the devil in person for myself, so I know he's a real being, and I see his handiwork all over everything related to homosexuality and the gay movement, from tempting kids starting at a young age to think they are gay and follow same-sex temptations to carefully orchestrating the whole gay agenda and campaign, twisting it to confuse people and appeal to their sympathies by making it seem like it's an issue equivalent to racial rights.

I don't know how long it will take--I hope several more decades. But I agree with Buttars that eventually the gay issue is going to help split this nation apart and cause terrible civil war. It's the latter days, and the world is going to gradually get worse, and this whole gay thing is a BIG part of that. I honestly don't know for sure if Buttars is doing us a favor by drawing a line in the sand or if he's just making things prematurely worse (probably more of the latter). On some level, I admire his courage to say what he thinks, even if most people don't like it, including fellow Mormons who deep down think much like he does but who want to keep things peaceful and easy.

It's going to be very painful for a lot of Mormons to have to choose which side they're on and, if they do choose the right side, to stand up for it in the face of persecution that I'm sure will eventually get every bit as bad as it was for the early Mormons. I hope it takes another 100 or 200 years, but I think it will take only 10 or 20 years for things to really start getting bad, especially if we have another 10-year depression that keeps everyone in a pissy mood.

25 Random Married Things

2009-02-13T12:07:00.003-07:00

I'm afraid all my blogging mojo has migrated over to Facebook these days. It appeals to both my voyeuristic and exhibitionist tendencies, and it's fun when things happen such as your wife's gay cousin, your boss at work, and your mom all chatting together in the comment section of a particular post. Anyway, here's something I typed up over at Facebook, with a few additional tweaks:

♥ What are your middle names?
Ann: None, Me: Kimball

♥ How long have you been together?
Married 11 years in April, plus our four-month courtship/engagement.

♥ How long did you know each other before you started dating?
The extent of one brief phone call.

♥ Who asked who out?
We were set up on a blind date.

♥ How old are each of you?
Me 42, Ann 43

♥ Whose siblings do you see the most?
Probably mine. I have five out of six sisters living relatively nearby (all three brothers are in other states), while Ann has only one sibling in the state.

♥ Do you have any children together?
Three: Austin (9), Kimball (4), Zach (3)

♥ What about pets?
The kids feel like pets quite often, and we also have a cat officially named Dragon but often known as Titty.

♥ Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?
Dealing with the baggage from my previous marriage, including two kids and their mom. That's the only thing that's ever landed us in a therapist's office, which helped, actually.

♥ Did you go to the same school?
Not for undergrad, but we both earned master's degrees at BYU.

♥ Are you from the same home town?
No, she's a Provo gal and I'm from Southern California and Bountiful, Utah.

♥ Who is smarter?
We're well matched. Ann is definitely better on things like logistics and directions. I'm more the dreamy creative type. We're both pretty logical in most areas.

♥ Who is more sensitive?
Neither one of us is very emotional, most of the time. Neither gets their feelings hurt by the other very easily. We're both quite live-and-let-live, without unrealistic expectations, grudges, all that high-maintenance crap.

♥ Where do you eat out most as a couple?
Bombay House

♥ Where is the farthest you two have traveled together as a couple?
Paris, France (but we're shooting for China this June)

♥ Who has the craziest exes?
Me, by far. My ex-wife disrupts our life at least weekly. And from what we've talked about regarding earlier partners, it sounds like I had a knack for attracting fairly dysfunctional women (up until Ann, that is).

♥ Who has the worse temper?
We're pretty close to the same. I think I yell at the kids more than she does. Ann has probably gotten madder at me than I've gotten at her, but it doesn't happen very often.

♥ Who does the cooking?
Ann does most of the time, but I'll occasionally make lunch or cook some spaghetti or macaroni for dinner.

♥ Who is more social?
Pretty close to the same. We're not very good about reciprocating invitations or reaching out socially as a couple. It seems like we just don't have time. Ann has some girlfriends from her single days that she stays in pretty close contact with, and I tend to get most of my social interaction at work.

♥ Who is the neat-freak?
Me, hands down. I'm not a white-glove kind of guy, but I'm driven crazy by a cluttery, untidy environment. Ann, on the other hand, is a great organizer/cleaner when she gets around to it, but she is content to let things pile up for weeks or even months. I think she probably has better priorities than me, though, in terms of using more of her time and energy to actually, you know, interact with the kids and stuff.

♥ Who is the more stubborn?
Neither one of us stands out as more stubborn than the other. We both have our little weird hang-ups, I guess (maybe I have slightly more than she does). We're very evenly matched on temperament, which is why we experience almost no conflict on an ongoing basis. Seriously, we just get along extremely smoothly. It's been great!

♥ Who hogs the bed?
I am probably ruder about kicking out the sheets so my feet can breathe and then sometimes pulling the covers off her when I roll over in the night. We would love to upgrade to a king-size bed sometime.

♥ Who wakes up earlier?
Most weekdays we both get up at 6:45, but sometimes Ann gets up earlier to go to the gym. On weekends, she is usually the first one up with the kids around 8:00, while I sometimes sleep until closer to 9:00.

♥ Where was your first date?
I was forty-five minutes late to Los Hermanos in Provo (I was driving down from Salt Lake, and it was during the big freeway reconstruction project, so she waited for me). After dinner, believe it or not, we went to a BYU basketball game with her parents.

♥ Who has the bigger family?
I have nine siblings, she has three.

♥ Do you get flowers often?
I'm the man, so no. I get them for her 2-3 times a year, almost always on the expected holidays. I really don't like trying to surprise people or get them gifts.

♥ How do you spend the holidays?
We alternate Thanksgiving between our extended families. We spend Christmas eve with her family and usually some close neighbor friends of theirs (we live in the same neighborhood where my wife grew up—in fact, her mom still lives across the street from us). We have Christmas morning at our house and then go up to my folks' house in Bountiful for Christmas dinner that afternoon. New Year's Eve we usually just spend home with Ann's mom.

♥ Who is more jealous?
Again, neither one, although Ann did have a weird, uncharacteristic episode of jealousy about two years ago when I was corresponding with a lady in France, who I'd never met, about critiquing each other's novels.

♥ How long did it take to get serious?
We were dating exclusively after our second date and engaged about two months after we met, then married six weeks later.

♥ Who eats more?
I eat larger portions at meals and often succumb to the temptation for seconds, but I think Ann eats more baked goods and desserts than I do.

♥ Who does/ did the laundry?
Ann does all of it, but I'd like to start sending out my work clothes more because she's already too busy and sometimes they sit for several months in the ironing pile.

♥ Who’s better with the computer?
I may be slightly better on some things, but there are also things she does better.

♥ Who drives when you are together?
I drive unless we need to get somewhere fast or follow complex directions or parallel park, and then she takes the wheel. I'm very much an autopilot driver who puts very little thought or effort into it, while she puts a lot of thought into routes and traffic patterns and gas prices and all that stuff.

Temple Photos Wanted

2009-01-29T19:00:00.001-07:00

PLEASE FORWARD AND POST THE FOLLOWING REQUEST FAR AND WIDE:

We are looking for print-quality exterior photos of all 129 LDS temples around the world (plus Kirtland), to be included in a large, full-color book about temples under contract to be published later this year.

While we need straightforward shots, we are also interested in temple photos with artistic elements, such as unusual angles, filters, and lighting, as well as close-ups of distinctive exterior elements.

In return for use of your photo(s), you will receive a credit line in the book (with your personal URL, if desired). We are asking for nonexclusive rights, so you can still use your temple photo(s) elsewhere.

Send your temple photo(s) to book designer Kelli Pratt at thedesignlady@hotmail.com. Photos must be high-res with a minimum DPI of 300. If your photo(s) is chosen for the book, you will be asked to sign a release form.

Deadline for submissions: February 15, 2009

Please forward and post this request wherever it might be appropriate.

25 Random Things about Me

2009-01-28T13:19:00.005-07:00

Here's my take on that writing prompt that's been circulating through the social networks:

1. I wear button-down shirts on MWF and polo-style shirts on TTh.

2. I was born in Newport, Rhode Island, and still feel that New England is my real spiritual homeland; I do not feel psychically at home in Utah.

3. I don't like raisins, bananas, or coconut.

4. I haven't shaved my beard once in over nine years.

5. My favorite ice cream is still Baskin-Robbins, despite all these new-fangled places.

6. I really wish I could get away with attending church only once a month—maybe when the kids are grown up.

7. I didn't like my LDS mission to Australia. I liked Australia but not the mission thing.

8. I was sealed to two women at the same time for a few years.

9. I'm surprised by how much I like our new pet cat.

10. My biggest problem in life currently is my career. I'm simultaneously dealing with dissatisfaction, worries about the future, and overwork.

11. I eat cottage cheese and peaches for breakfast every MTW, and I eat two boiled eggs every TTh.

12. I've been consistent for several years now about working up a sweat for a half-hour three times a week on the treadmill.

13. I eat out for lunch every day.

14. I'm a little fuzzy on what I really have to look forward to in life, beyond the little daily pleasures.

15. I've never broken a bone and I still have my wisdom teeth.

16. I've never watched the Super Bowl, except catching glimpses when I walked through the room.

17. I love to sit by the fire and read during the winter.

18. I love Asian food of all types, think Mexican is just OK, and find Italian food pretty boring.

19. I like London better than Paris.

20. I had Hodgkin's disease in 1994 and did the full round of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

21. I don't attend high-school or mission reunions.

22. I feel little fear of speaking in public, as long as I know what I'm going to say. But I hate the idea of being on TV so much that I turned down an invitation from the local FOX station.

23. I'm usually sort of a glass-half-empty guy.

24. Parenthood is harder and less fun and satisfying than I thought it would be, but marriage is easier and nicer and better (at least with this spouse).

25. I follow a certain rotation of which shampoos I use on which days.

Go and do thou likewise, if you feel so inclined...

Damn, Updike's Dead

2009-01-27T11:52:00.004-07:00

Well, my favorite author is suddenly dead, and it hits me personally more than usual when a famous person dies, because I felt such a connection to his work. But now maybe I can catch up with reading all his books before I die.

I just love the way Updike writes, the great descriptions and metaphors and observations mixed with lots of sex. (In fact, even a big fan like me occasionally asks, "Do you have anything to write about other than suburban adultery?")

A couple of years ago, I sent Updike a letter and copy of my own novel Kindred Spirits, but I never heard back. I consider him an influence on my own writing, though I'm nowhere near as talented in sheer writing ability. He enboldened me somewhat to include some sex in my Mormon novel, though nowhere near as graphic as he does it. I quite envy his literary career and once may have hoped that something similar could happen for me.

I'm glad I still have several Updike novels sitting on my bookshelf for me to discover, but I'm sad that I can't look forward to any more. I wonder if his publisher has anything else left to publish posthumously. Actually, I'm not really interested in Updike's poetry, criticism, or essays, just the fiction. Man, he was amazingly prolific, with over 50 books in his career. I wonder what God thinks of him.

Another Gay Marriage Rebuttal

2009-01-24T13:35:00.003-07:00

In a recent Sunstone magazine, a person wrote a letter arguing that Mormonism could abide gay marriage if the partners are married just for earthly time, not for eternity. (He even mentioned that such marriages-for-time could take place inside the temple, but I think the church has stopped doing those, which was smart in light of today's marriage wars.) Here is my rebuttal, which I hope Sunstone will publish:

In response to Jim Rasmussen's letter (December 2008) regarding my essay "Why Mormonism Can't Abide Gay Marriage" (October 2008), let me add some more reasoning about why Mormonism shouldn't and can't, in my opinion, ever condone same-sex marriage, not even just for time rather than eternity.

First of all, Mormonism abhors a sealing vacuum. The church takes pains to encourage everyone to get sealed for eternity to a spouse. In fact, it's better for a woman to remain sealed to her civilly divorced husband than to revert to an unsealed state. After I was divorced, my ex-wife was not able to cancel our sealing until she had found a new husband with whom to become sealed in the temple. So if the church condones marriage for time between same-gender spouses, that removes those parties from the possibility, however slight it may be, of getting properly sealed to a spouse for eternity. (The most difficult case remains that of men who marry widows who were previously sealed to someone else; while it's true that these men apparently remain unsealed to a spouse for now, any progeny are sealed by virtue of the wife's prior sealing. Of course, in many if not most cases, such marriages happen in later life, and the male was already previously sealed to a spouse too, so he's already taken care of and there's no sealing vacuum.)

Secondly, and more importantly, is the issue of actual gay sexual relations, which Rasmussen did not address in his letter. Just because the church seems to have adopted a don't-ask-don't-tell policy regarding oral sex between heterosexual marriage partners doesn't mean that it could ever come anywhere near accepting gay sexual practices, which it would be doing if it condoned gay marriage in any form. In my essay, I tried to address this issue in muted language, but now I will be more blunt: God has a penis. Created in his image, his male children also have penises, and they are commanded to use them only in Godlike ways within marriage. If we say that it's OK under certain circumstances for males to manipulate each other's penises or insert them into each other's mouths or rectums, then we have to imagine male gods being able to do that amongst themselves with their own genitals, which of course makes reason stare, at least for most of us. (Equivalent logic can be applied with females.) So if we can't imagine our corporeal God doing this, that makes gay sex an unholy and impure practice that Mormonism can never accommodate on any terms. We're here to learn to become like God, especially in the sexual arena, and there is no temporary allowance or validation for earthly sexual perversion, even for those burdened with seemingly insurmountable exclusively same-gender attraction.

When I hear liberal Mormons romanticize the notion of gay marriage, I think they are glossing over the cold reality that the physical aspects of such unions are simply unacceptable in Mormon theology, period. Personally, I believe that oral sex between married heterosexuals is also an unholy and impure practice to some degree, even if the church has backed off from trying to outright prohibit it, and I feel that society's recent open acceptance of this practice has indirectly strengthened the gay agenda. While I personally don't pretend to fully understand the same-gender-attraction dilemma and would never judge any individual's accountability in that area, the fact remains that physical gay couplings of any kind run counter to Mormon theology and can never be accepted through consecrating gay unions via marriage, even if only for time.

Evaluating President Bush

2009-01-21T16:57:00.003-07:00

It's easy for me to get caught up in the media-led dislike of Bush and evaluation of his presidency as one big failure. I admit that my gut feeling toward Bush has been fairly negative, and that includes his cronies Cheney and Rumsfeld.

However, this address of Senator Hatch's before the U.S. Senate is a good counter-balance to that kind of thinking and helps me look at Bush with a little more appreciation and respect. I recommend taking a good look at Hatch's evaluation of Bush's presidency. Personally, I think Bush's biggest sign of success is that there have been no terrorist attacks on our country since 9-11, though I'm sure they're still trying with all their might.

I'm pretty high on Obama right now, caught up in his charisma and the historical significance of his ascendancy. However, there's an accompanying shadow in my thinking that if Obama fails, the results could be much worse than Bush's failures, with another major economic depression, terrorists making new inroads into our country, and moral depravity further removing us from God's protection and blessings.

Realities of Writing

2009-01-20T06:04:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Langford has made some comments recently in two venues about the realities of writing, and I've felt myself prompted to respond to him in both venues.

First, in response to his very interesting post at A Motley Vision:

I have an ongoing mental conversation with myself about the role that creative/fiction writing should have in my life. Sometimes I’ve got myself convinced that it’s the equivalent of a hobby, but other times I realize that it’s too much work to be considered a hobby, and you can’t help but hope the work might lead to successful publication, which makes it a would-be profession, not a hobby.

I too write/edit for a living. Even when I’m doing all kinds of whorish work solely for money, as I have been doing with all my spare time recently, I am fantasizing about getting back to my novel, memoir, personal blog, etc. I do get a buzz from working on all of those personal outlets, although I also cause myself some anxiety by trying to get myself onto schedules and by thinking too much about publication prospects. I really do hope to get my personal creative writing more onto the hobby level, somehow, something that may be possible now that I’m middle aged and have already tried and failed so many times at monetizing/professionalizing my creative writing.

I’m really hoping 2009 brings me a few open months for personal writing, but hopefully not because the paying work dries up!

And now, my response to Jonathan's recent post on AML-List, titled "Economic downturn and Mormon letters":

Well, as I think I've already pointed out, the downturn has directly affected Mormon publishing, with Signature on hiatus and Cedar Fort holding an emergency liquidation sale due to massive returns of unsold merchandise from retailers. At Zarahemla Books, we've noticed a big slowdown in sales in the last quarter of 2008, and our wholesale distributor in the LDS market is nearly a year behind in our consignment payments, which fortunately hasn't affected our cash flow needs yet but will catch up to us soon, if they don't cough up.

Z had a good 2008 because of Doug Thayer's Hooligan, even though we released only one new book (Angel Falling Softly) that has sold only about 100 copies. Total revenues for Z were about $18,000 for 2008 with no grants, all book sales, and we spent about that much too. (I don't take any direct salary out now that I've paid off my personal loans to the biz, but I do have Z pay for business-related computers, cell phone, travel, meals, etc. And every book or magazine I ever buy is paid for by Z. I wish I could justify having Z pay for my music and movies too...)

Personally, my problem is that I have way too much paid writing/editing work on my plate, for which I'm very grateful, but it's taking away from time I can spend on Z and my own personal creative writing, let alone family, house, church, community, etc. I've been working 60-hour weeks for several months now on both salaried and freelance writing/editing jobs, and I find the constant deadline pressure quite wearying. There have been layoffs at my day job but I have survived and feel pretty secure, as the executives seem to value having a strong communications guy around (there's another good writer on staff here too).

For me, freelance shows no sign of slowing down yet. The Dummies people keep pitching editing projects my way, some of which I've had to turn down, and the publisher I work with in England is, at this very moment, pitching a new line of seven Mormon-themed books to a big distributor owned by Baker & Taylor; he even wants to start a new Mormon-themed imprint. If even just some of that plays out, I'll be slammed for years to come and may even need to subcontract out some writing.

I live in almost daily fear of layoffs and the financial privation and debt that would ensue, but part of me would relish having six months off to really focus on my own personal projects, especially getting out another novel. The reality, of course, is that those six months would be very stressful and go by very fast, so it's not something I really do wish. And of course, you wouldn't know if it would turn out to be six months or longer, so you couldn't really relax and enjoy it. If unemployed, I would feel guilty taking 3-4 hours a day for a novel when I should be spending all my waking hours looking for real income-earning opportunities. Plus, I have so many kids and other distractions at home that I wonder how much work I would really get done as a home-based writer.

Nevertheless, I wonder very often about seeing if I could match my corporate salary through freelance, including teaching adjunct courses at local colleges. (I wouldn't expect to match corporate benefits, but fortunately my wife could get those through her half-day kindergarten teaching gig.) I fear that it would be feast or famine, though. I think that if I get laid off this year, I would give myself a year to see if I could develop a viable full-time freelance writing/editing business, but I fear that at the end of that year I'd be frazzled and in debt tens of thousands on my home equity line just to keep my family functioning. I really admire people who can make self-employment work. My dad has been largely self-employed for more than 30 years, and while he managed to keep our family of 10 kids functioning and my mom out of the workforce except for giving piano lessons at home (often full time), he's had some desperate times and financial hardships, and he's got no retirement cushion. I'm not sure I have the stomach for that.

I think many creative/literary writers have produced good work under economic stress, though. Dickens and Twain both did, I understand. And I think I remember hearing that Orson Scott Card has felt pressure to produce work that would bring in the most income for his family and staff. I wonder if, under economic stress, I could get myself to think more commercially and write something creative that would actually sell rather than something I just feel like writing for self-expression. I would love it if I could run a full-time freelance operation in which creative writing earned a certain percentage of my income and I made up the rest with work for hire, marketing/business communications, teaching, eBay sales, lawn care, gigolo services, etc.

Notes on Vasectomy

2009-01-16T17:47:00.002-07:00

Over on the Feminist Mormon Housewives blog, they've been talking about vasectomies, and I've been commenting:

I had my V at age 40, almost three years ago. Sex has been noticeably better for me since then, with no fertility/pregnancy anxieties. And my wife ASKED me to do it, so I felt no guilt about cutting off the sperm pipeline for selfish reasons. (I believe women call more shots in the procreation arena than men do.)

The procedure itself was not a big deal, and it was funny how the doctor was selling me on his reversal services even as he was snipping me. I used frozen peas too and only one Lortab. After one clean sperm-free checkup, my wife let me skip the subsequent follow-up checks. (It’s not that fun rubbing one out in the restroom.)

Thumbs up. And what’s been great is that my wife has never second-guessed the decision, even after holding someone’s newborn. She knew she was DONE. Of course, she was 41, probably close to being done naturally anyway–but we’d just had a surprise pregnancy only nine months after the previous one. We’d had a five-year dry spell after our first kid and did fertility treatments that didn’t work, but then a few years later things suddenly kicked back into gear for no apparent reason for numbers two and three, and it was like “Turn it off! Turn it off!”

Some months after my V, my wife had an IUD put in just to control periods, and those have pretty much dried up now, just a little spotting every few months. Woo hoo! We like married sex with no baggage.

+++++

Responding to #41: I served a mission in colorful-lingo Australia, so “rub one out” may have come from there, although I thought I’d heard it several times before here in the States too. I think the term is mostly used for pre-date masturbation when one wants to take the edge off so one can perform longer later on.

My other favorite Aussie sexual terms are “cracking a fat” for getting an erection and “rubbing uglies” for male-female genital intercourse.

Another favorite Aussie-ism I still use is “Who opened their lunch?” for when someone emits a silent odor in company.

+++++

I think there is now a home sperm testing kit available, or at least I read an article last year that said one was being planned. That would be convenient for post-V patients.

A couple of other notes about the actual process: I’ve had many moles removed, and I’d say the V was only slightly more involved than having two moles removed in one visit. There was a twinge of gut discomfort at one point, the same feeling as when one is bumped in the balls, but it was fleeting. I remember that when the doc cut the cord, it made a rather loud snip, as if it were made of firm stuff.

As far as after-effects, I remember feeling some lumps along the cord some weeks after the procedure, but I think they went away. (I don’t go looking for them anymore–I was told they’re normal.) I still don’t understand where the sperm goes now, but the ejaculate doesn’t look any less or different. But I also have to admit that I don’t understand why my water softener doesn’t make my water salty, even though it’s been explained to me several times.

I remember that after the procedure, I was expecting the nice young nurse to come back and give the area a sponge bath, but they sent me home pretty yucky down there, with disinfectant and blood and whatnot.

I’ve always said there’s a vas deferens between men and women…

+++++

Responding to #63: I was in Victoria too (1986-88), and I have heard the variations you mentioned. But I’ve also heard them the way I stated them.

I loved how Aussies said “damn” and “hell” even at church, even from the podium. I still do that too. And I always thought the word “stuffed” was funny, both as a replacement for the f-word and meaning you’re pregnant. You never sit back after a meal and say, “Well, I’m stuffed.”

Paying My Authors

2009-01-09T18:41:00.003-07:00

I just finished writing over $1,600 in annual royalty checks to the authors whose books I've published through my Zarahemla Books enterprise. While this puts a big dent in the Zarahemla checking account, it's fun to actually pay people for their writing.

The big winner for 2008 was definitely Doug Thayer, who received over $1,000 in royalties for Hooligan: A Mormon Boyhood, which has now sold over 1,700 copies since I published it in 2007. In contrast, I personally received about $30 in royalties for my novel Kindred Spirits, which has now sold a grand total of 93 copies since publication. And you know what? That sounds just fine to me, definitely worth having written it.

I may do a more detailed annual report on Zarahemla soon, but I am too busy at both work and home to do it now. January is shaping up to be a hellishly busy month, and February isn't looking much better as far as having too much freelance work and too many kids. But hey—at least I have good income! There were layoffs at my day job today, so I'm feeling grateful to still have a regular salary.

I Made the Washington Times Belief Blog

2009-01-07T16:45:00.002-07:00

My recent article in Sunstone titled "Why Mormonism Can't Abide Gay Marriage" was the topic of a post today at the Washington Times Belief Blog.

It's a fairly neutral, respectful post. Is the Washington Times the paper that's owned by the Moonies?

My Classic English Novel Kick

2008-12-31T11:03:00.002-07:00

In recent times, I've been getting more into classic English novels again. I remember one of my favorite college classes was an English novel class in which I discovered Vanity Fair, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, Moll Flanders, and Jane Austen. (However, I rather disliked what little I read of Wuthering Heights and wasn't crazy about Hardy's Jude the Obscure or Dickins's Hard Times, both of which I believe I finished. The one bit of unfinished business from that class was Tom Jones, a thick novel that I enjoyed but didn't get very far into.)

Anyway, what's gotten me into these novels again is that I've been watching dramatizations of them, mainly produced by BBC. The guys here at work tease me about it, but I just totally love those shows. Right now we're doing Dickins's Bleak House and I'm doing Middlemarch, and both are almost thrillingly good. I suppose I love the combination of the setting, the bygone English culture, the accents, the good characterization, and the wonderful performances. I even love the Jane Austen ones, which just makes my male coworkers hoot and holler with derision. But I am what I am.

I recently ordered Vanity Fair—which is perhaps my favorite of them all—and Middlemarch to read again, which is a rare step for me because I practically never reread novels. And I'd really like to get my Dickins on and work my way through him. Though Hard Times didn't particularly impress me, a couple of years ago I was unexpectedly taken with David Copperfield, which I started reading just by random chance and couldn't put down, and I think I'll try to pick up Bleak House this year, though it's dauntingly thick and the first few pages I browsed last night featured rather long, complex sentences that zonked me out pretty quick. (As I get older, I find that reading puts me to sleep disconcertingly fast.)

Comments on Mormon Publishing

2008-12-21T14:50:00.002-07:00

Here are some thoughts I shared with an AML-List guy who does a year-end report on Mormon publishing:

The main reason why Zarahemla slowed down in 2008 is not financial—with over 1,000 copies sold, Thayer's Hooligan refilled the coffers nicely—but because I got caught up in a lot of freelance work for other publishers. I was hired by Wiley to edit Power Boating for Dummies, and I'm working on several Mormon-themed titles for a publisher in England that wants to start a Mormon imprint, tentatively named Liahona Press. The books are not literary, but they are lucrative. They're in full color and suitable for stacking deep and cheap at Costco, which has already placed some very large orders.

Fortunately, 2009 looks like several excellent things could be published by Zarahemla. Todd Robert Petersen's novel is under contract with Zarahemla and undergoing final revisions, with Brady Udall on board to blurb (whose own next novel was just delivered to Norton this month, I'm told, where Udall's champion Carol Houck Smith recently passed away, unfortunately). Serious discussions have taken place with Angela Hallstrom to put together a Mormon fiction anthology, Mahonri Stewart to put together an anthology of play scripts with an introduction by Orson Scott Card, Darin Cozzens (whose writing I love) to publish a story collection, Stephen Carter to publish a collection of personal essays (some contest winners and/or previously published in reputable Mormon journals), and a few others. Also, Zarahemla will likely publish volume two of the Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer, a collection of satirical Mormon news from the old Sugar Beet website and other sources.

Zarahemla has also made well-received overtures to two well-established authors with exciting, promising Mormon-themed projects that these authors are still trying to sell to national publishers, and we hope that one or both will choose Zarahemla if national publishers don't pick them up. I probably better not say who, since talks are so preliminary.

I hope many of these projects will come to fruition in 2009; it's the most exciting stuff we've had in the pipeline at one time since Zarahemla started, and more than one author has commented to me that he or she undertook his or her project because Zarahemla, in fact, exists.

I find that Zarahemla is negotiating only with writers with whom we are already familiar through their previously published writing or through literary circles. While we receive a steady stream of unsolicited manuscripts, very few of these manuscripts are even reviewed anymore, and we generally won't invest time in anything unless, at a minimum, it comes with recommendations from people we know and trust. In other words, if Orson Scott Card forwards us your novel and urges us to consider it, we will.

As is likely the case with many publishers large and small, sales are way down for Zarahemla in this last quarter. As soon as the stock market started getting wonky this past autumn, people seemed to stop ordering books from our website, and things picked back up only a little for Christmas. I know that Cedar Fort recently held an emergency liquidation sale at their warehouse because they've received so many returns of unsold merchandise from retailers. So that might make 2009 a bad year for introducing books, with new titles certain to sell fewer copies than if they had been published, say, a year earlier.

This Year's Christmas Letter

2008-12-14T20:21:00.007-07:00

See if you can guess who wrote the following, me or my wife Ann:

Greetings from the Bigelows, who are so full of Christmas cheer we can taste it when we burp. Here's the rundown on our year:

Chris & Ann: Enjoyed London and Paris for our 10th anniversary, but will be glad when this stressful year is over, with its overabundance of spirited children, moonlighting freelance jobs, and crazy stuff in the news. Here's hoping 2009 is a little mellower! (But not too mellow, which is a danger in this economy...)

Jordan (13): Is playing the tuba and learning German, but isn't too interested in following through on the regular ol' subjects. Recently refurbished an old computer and sold it for a profit on eBay. Future entrepreneur? We wish we saw him more than every month or two...

Sophie (11): Has been living with us since early this year. Is playing the clarinet in the school band and recently joined a swim team. Quirky sense of humor, especially when we forget her morning pill.

Austin (9): Is our performer, loving choir and community theater. Is waiting to see what part he'll play in this spring's production of Oliver. When asked if performing onstage makes him nervous, got a puzzled look on his face, as if he didn't even understand the question. Sometimes acts like he could use one of Sophie's pills...

Kimball (4): Ah, our intense one. Enjoyed his first year of BYU preschool, learning how to read and studying the anatomy of spiders. Likes to go on walks and get what he wants when he wants it. Could maybe use half a pill from time to time...

Zachary (2): Our brown-eyed boy with questionable DNA (except the big head). Just surrendered his pacifiers to Santa so Santa could give them to some babies, because pacifiers are for babies. Likes to play with the new kitty. Doesn't really need any pills.

From our home to yours, complete with all our most heartfelt sounds and odors, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year. (We were going to send you a figgy pudding, but we had a pudding fight with it during family home evening the other night...)

New Release from Zarahemla Books

2008-12-10T15:44:00.002-07:00

Here's some information about the newest release from my Mormon publishing company:

When Harris Thatcher’s father dies, the boy’s journey into manhood becomes complicated with questions of faith, the meaning of life, and the capriciousness of death. Harris soon finds himself preaching the Mormon gospel as one of the first missionaries to West Germany following the devastation of World War II. Little does he know that his own war horrors await him upon his return home, when he is drafted into the Korean War.

Starting out in the same 1940s-era Provo, Utah, that Thayer brought to life in his memoir Hooligan: A Mormon Boyhood, this novel deepens and darkens as Harris is drawn into his harrowing Korean ordeal. Will he survive the war, not only physically but also emotionally and spiritually? And if he does survive, what other trials does death hold in store?

“Thayer is one of the most truthful writers of fiction I know. Add to that the clarity and beauty of his writing, and his fiction is always illuminating in every sense.”

—Orson Scott Card

“Doug Thayer’s The Tree House ranks with The Red Badge of Courage in its creation of the ghastly bubble inhabited by a soldier in battle. Claustrophobic, electrified by panic, astonishingly intimate, Thayer’s chapters on war have a power we have not seen from him before. There is not a shred of moralizing here, yet the book nourishes the soul from start to finish.”

—Elouise Bell, BYU professor, emeritus

“Douglas Thayer’s writing style is an acquired taste—short, pungent, declarative sentences. But once caught in its grip, one swings along like Tarzan from branch to branch, confident that one will not fall! I have never read such a powerful exposition of the realities of war. The Tree House is an outstanding novel. All who read it, regardless of their background, will be deeply touched.”

—John A. Taylor

“I was totally engrossed in The Tree House. The depictions of Harris growing up in Provo, serving an LDS mission in post-war Germany, and fighting in the Korean War are excellently crafted. I’ve never read a better or more gripping treatment of men at war. Thayer’s characters and places are real; they are alive. This novel is literature, and reading it is a splendid experience.”

—Richard Cracroft
BYU professor of English, emeritus

This title is available for ordering now at the Zarahemla Books website (delivery before Christmas is likely but not guaranteed). Will be available soon at Amazon and other retailers.

Adventures in Babysitting

2008-12-04T14:16:00.005-07:00

A few weeks ago I wrote about the jobs I held as a teenager, but I forgot one of the first ones: babysitting for several families in our Bountiful, Utah, neighborhood.

I suppose because I was the oldest of ten kids, some neighbors thought I must naturally make a good sitter. And with my parents quite consistent in their weekly movie night, it’s true that by the time I was twelve or thirteen, I had already done a lot of babysitting at home. Sure enough, I proved to be a responsible, dependable sitter for hire—in fact, I was even the type of sitter who tidied up before the parents got home.

One of my first clients was the Pope family down on the corner. One night, their twins both started puking in their cribs, and I had to call my mom to come help me.

Another night, a strange, wild-looking, long-haired man knocked on the locked front door and claimed he lived there. Adrenalin spurting in my veins, I tried to block the door and prevent him from entering. Finally he appealed to the little girl standing behind me, and she confirmed that he was her adult brother. He was a black sheep who didn't attend church or anything, so I had no idea he existed. I felt extremely embarrassed, but they complimented me on trying to defend the house.

The two other families I babysat for most often were the Paxtons and the Lewises, but I don’t remember any particular adventures at either one. I believe I earned a whole dollar an hour. I can’t remember how I eventually stepped off this career path, whether I started turning people down or they just stopped calling me. I suppose that, on some level, the more a male progresses into puberty, the less comfortable you feel about leaving him alone with your kids.

It seems like my kids now are a lot harder to deal with and put to bed than the kids I used to babysit. In fact, Ann and I are currently trying to retake control of our household, which has been dominated in recent months by demanding, uncooperative, selfish, lazy kids. (In case you can't tell, I honestly don't enjoy parenthood very much, especially now with four kids in the house all the time. I really do think I'll be mostly relieved once they're out of my face so much.)

Recent Reading

2008-12-02T04:17:00.003-07:00

The Garden of Last Days: Having enjoyed House of Sand and Fog, I read this recent novel by Andre Dubus III. It’s about how the lives of a 9-11 hijacker, an exotic dancer with a little girl, an elderly widow, and a frustrated construction worker intersect. It’s well written on a scene-by-scene level and kept my interest, but I’m not sure all these plot threads really gelled together in a satisfying way. It’s a thick book but really clips along with very short chapters.

Rough Stone Rolling: I've been working my way very slowly all year long through Richard Bushman’s dense biography of Joseph Smith. I’m now on page 357, but I’m down to reading only a few pages on some Sundays, when I have time and remember. On some levels I find it engaging and feel like I'm learning a lot, but on other levels I wouldn’t call it an entertaining read and I feel like I will forget 98 percent of it. Thinking back, I remember that the book offered me some great insights on Joseph's father and on the Book of Mormon, but I'm already forgetting the details; but hey, at least I remember enough to know that it might be worth rereading those parts at some point. I want to read No Man Knows My History as my next Sunday book and compare my impressions.

Awakening to Our Awful Situation: This book by Jack Monnet is all about how modern-day conspiracies are fulfilling Book of Mormon prophecies about secret combinations in the last days. I felt like I’d already heard most of the conspiracies before, such as how secret families and committees manipulate wars and economies, but it was interesting to read this update, although I found myself wanting to skim parts that got too historically detailed. I got the sense that the author thinks virtually everything happens by conspiratorial design except maybe natural disasters, so it seems a bit exaggerated, but I’m sure there are some elements of truth as well. It’s full of obnoxious editing errors.

America in Danger: This book by Stephen M. Studdert is a lot more timely and compelling than Awakening to Our Awful Situation, and I’m still in the process of reading it. Studdert looks at the top-ten dangers currently facing America, and he paints a compelling case that we’re really in bad shape in a lot of areas and that if even just a few of these dangers come to fruition at the same time, life as we know it will change. His chapter on debt—which he identifies as the second most worrisome danger facing us—is already coming true. If you haven’t read the book, what would you guess are some of the other dangers he identifies and their ranking? At a minimum, what do you think he identifies as the number-one danger facing America and our way of life? I have been using this book a little in my freshman composition class at UVU. This is another book with tons of distracting editing errors, even though it appears to be published by a New York press.

The 19th Wife: My current novel is by David Ebershoff, and I’m about a third of the way through it. It’s a hybrid of historical and contemporary events related to Mormon polygamists, and the modern-day part involves a murder among fundamentalist polygamists like those in Colorado City. The novel innovatively blends various forms of writing from both time periods—in fact, I’m unsure whether some of the nineteenth-century stuff is real or made up—and I’m interested to see how it all comes together and plays out. It’s a nationally published book from Random House, and it’s gotten some good reviews. I wish I could read faster, but in my middle age I can read only a handful of pages at night before getting sleepy, so it takes me two or three months to finish a book.

Recent Watching

2008-11-29T14:01:00.002-07:00

Big Love: I recently finished watching the first season of HBO’s Utah polygamy drama, which I quite like. They’ve obviously done some homework (including referring to my Mormonism For Dummies book, my coauthor tells me), and yet it’s fun to spot the Utah/Mormon nuances they get wrong. The show has some sexual elements, but overall it does not make you want to live the polygamous lifestyle. The characters really come to life and grow on you, although sometimes you find yourself asking, “Now, why are they living this lifestyle again? What is their motivation?”

Role Models: I’m a sucker for these Judd Apatow–style raunchy-with-a-heart-of-gold comedies. I thought the best thing about Forty-Year Old Virgin was Seth Rogen, and sure enough I really liked his subsequent movies Knocked Up, Superbad, and Pineapple Express. My conscience is not entirely clear about enjoying these movies, because they are pretty raunchy, but damn, they're funny. I have not yet seen Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and part of me hopes I'm not tempted.

Quantum of Solace: I’m not a big James Bond fan, by any means. I liked a couple of the movies as a kid but don’t have much use for them now. Even the recent new-direction-for-Bond Casino Royale didn’t do much for me—I can't even remember it, tell you the truth. I wouldn’t have made any effort to see Quantum except that my employer arranged a free screening and my 13-year-old Jordan wanted to go. I actually liked it better than expected, although I felt quite confused most of the time about the characters' motivations and interrelationships. But the stunts and cinematography were good, and it held my interest. I really love the rhythm and tone and style of the Bourne movies, and this one imitated those quite a bit, so that’s probably why I liked it.

Kid movies: This month I’ve taken my kiddoes to see Madagascar 2 and Bolt. I was able to enjoy both of them pretty well. The hippos in Madagascar 2 were strangely sexual, and I didn’t particularly enjoy exposing my kids to that. Animation is getting pretty impressive—I particularly loved the 3-D animation in Bolt.

Water: I enjoyed this subtitled film about the plight of widows in India. Widows there are of all ages, including little girls. They live lives of pseudo-religious poverty and isolation in order to make amends for the sins from their previous lives, which supposedly caused their husband's deaths, and if they remarry they will be doomed to seven lifetimes of being reborn as jackals. Check it out if you like foreign films and learning about other cultures, but don’t watch it too late or you’ll get sleepy.

I Finally Get Facebook

2008-11-28T21:00:00.003-07:00

I've had a Facebook account for quite a while, but I never really saw the point in visiting the site. It just seemed like a distraction that I didn't have time for or interest in. Occasionally I would accept friend requests and go through and delete all the requests for weird stuff like pillow fights.

However, now I quite like Facebook, and here's why: I love the one-line status updates that people type during the day, and I like typing my own quick updates. It's a strangely addicting, satisfying way to keep track of people during the day and feel more connected. Writing a clever, engaging update that's not too obscure or confusing is a real art form, almost like a haiku.

Another big reason I like Facebook now is because I use the mobile version on my iPhone. This makes it very easy to scroll through people's status updates and type in my own while I'm waiting in line or whatever. I have to admit that when I find myself with a spare few moments, I often check Facebook before I check my e-mail, so that's really saying something.

Now if I could just discipline myself to check the scriptures on the iPhone once in a while and see if there are any status updates from the Lord...

My Blog on a Salt Lake Tribune Blog

2008-11-25T14:47:00.001-07:00

Not necessarily a rave review of what I said... Click here.

Nacho Cheese Doritos & Country Time Lemonade

2008-11-23T15:24:00.003-07:00

When I was ten, right after my family moved to Bountiful, Utah, my eight-year-old brother Andrew and I went to stay a week at my Uncle David Kimball’s house in Vernal, Utah. The main purpose was to help him rake rocks and make some progress on landscaping his new house, but we ended up working for only about an hour on one of the days, because it was too hot and overwhelming.

On the drive to Vernal, we heard the news on the radio that Elvis Presley had died, so I know the date was August 16, 1977. I remember that Uncle David was quite taken aback by the news. At some point, he stopped at a convenience store and bought us a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos and some Country Time Lemonade. I had never experienced these two items before, and I couldn’t believe how good they tasted. My family usually ate plain tortilla chips because my mom always made guacamole and was a purist.

Seriously, as I munched and sipped these chips and lemonade, I was in total nirvana. They had an almost druglike effect on me. I still remember the sense of discovery and wonder I felt.

In Vernal, we mostly spent the week sleeping in, watching The Price Is Right each morning, and riding David and Lorna’s ten-speed bikes. That was the first time I’d ridden a ten-speed, and I loved it. We rode all over the smooth, new streets among the empty lots and half-built houses in their subdivision. Our constant companion was Aunt Lorna’s daughter Lisa from a previous marriage, upon whom I remember having a crush for the week.

On the drive home, I worked up the courage to ask Uncle David if we could stop at that same convenience store and get those same chips and lemonade again. He looked at me funny and said we could probably get them at any store. I don’t remember if we got them again, but if we did, I’m sure they didn’t taste quite as good as that first time.

Uncle David passed away not long ago. As for me, I will always be able to tell you where I was when I heard that Elvis died and where I was when I first tried Nacho Cheese Doritos and Country Time Lemonade, neither of which I particularly enjoy anymore.

More Prophesying about Salt Lake City

2008-11-21T10:30:00.004-07:00

As a person who is quite interested in what I term "latter-latter-day developments" and who is writing a novel set in near-future times, I have some more thinking that I'd like to float out there and see if it could be plausible. Personally, I find it quite therapeutic to turn to literature—both reading it and trying to write it—to parse complex problems.

Regardless of what a person feels about individual gay situations, it's clear that we have some intense gay activists out there who may no more represent the outlook of most gays than terrorists represent most Muslims or polygamists represent most Mormons. Nevertheless, I'm not the only one who thinks this gay activism could lead somewhere quite dark quite fast. Here's an interesting article in which Newt Gingrich says, "I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion."

I have spoken before about the future fate of Salt Lake City. Since I was quite young, I have always felt that when some new form of evil arose in the latter days, it would make Salt Lake its world headquarters. I used to think it would be some kind of new drug or occult power somehow tied to Salt Lake, but now I have another idea. There is some spiritual logic to this: If Salt Lake is the headquarters of God's kingdom, wouldn't Satan be working as hard as he could to counterfeit and counterbalance that?

Now, I am not saying that being homosexual is innately evil. However, like most human impulses and institutions, the gay movement is surely subject to temptations and the influence of the devil—heck, even Mormonism is at times, if you look at things like the Mountain Meadows Massacre. So I'm not singling out gays due to homophobia or something, just focusing my attention on them right now because of recent events. Homosexuality itself is not the "new evil" I'm talking about, but certain elements of the modern-day gay movement—the fascist anti-religion elements—could represent that new evil.

Here's what I think is going to happen both in real life and in my novel: militant gays will take over Salt Lake City.

I'm not talking about uniformed gay armies marching into Salt Lake with guns on their shoulders. I'm talking about a cultural takeover of the city. As I noted earlier, Salt Lake City proper is already fast moving away from Mormonism and swiftly moving toward the most liberal, progressive "worldly" values and outlooks. I'm not saying those values and outlooks are necessarily or 100% bad, but this process is creating a vacuum in Salt Lake proper as the old Mormon hegemony sloughs off and something else arises to take its place. When the pendulum has been as far right as it historically has been in Salt Lake, it's natural that, once loosened, it would swing way over to the left.

Salt Lake City is already known for having a surprisingly large and active gay population, and I think we will see more gays flocking here, especially those who are militant against Mormonism. It will become the ultimate "we're here, we're queer" trend to move into the shadow of the Salt Lake Temple and practice their alternative lifestyle. I think we'll see a gay mayor of Salt Lake within a decade. And it will be all the more fun for the participants knowing that the city is a gay doughnut hole surrounded by suburbs where the Mormons are cowering. "You take our rights, we'll take your city." Church HQ itself will become, essentially, a fortress in the midst of it all.

The momentum is already moving toward Salt Lake City becoming the main focal point of the national gay activist agenda. For instance, there's a huge nationwide march on Salt Lake being planned for this next March. Check out this article from Salt Lake City Weekly about other plans and outlooks gay activists have regarding Salt Lake.

Wickedest city the world has ever known? If you get a critical mass of people who are openly fighting against God's kingdom and true church and doing a lot of willfull, in-your-face glorying in lifestyles opposed by the prophets, then yeah, I could see where Salt Lake could become a real pressure cooker of wickedness and depravity on a scale not seen before, not just sodomy but other carnalities too. Again, I don't think all gays are wicked and depraved, but if you get enough of the kind who are wicked and depraved together, you could have a real party. Heteros can be just as wicked and depraved as gays, of course, but gay activists have another factor focusing them and galvanizing them and contributing to their momentum: a so-called civil rights movement.

So anyway, in my novel I'm going to have those who refuse to renounce Mormonism be driven out of portions of the West Coast where the gay agenda has succeeded in taking over the culture and the government, with all church property destroyed or confiscated within those zones (including some temples). And at the same time I'm going to have gay activists successfully establish a Utah beachhead by taking over Salt Lake City culture and government, and one of the key places of friction and conflict will be the Church's new billion-dollar shopping center downtown, which the gay activists will gleefully attempt to co-opt.

I'm working on it as fiction, but I think things are going to play out at least somewhat along these lines in real life, too. Anyway, the way I have it right now in the novel I'm working on, all this stuff happened before the novel even opens, along with the New Depression. My novel opens after biological warfare from the China-led Asian Union has already wiped out 90% of the population of the western United States, which due to the Chinese-engineered hypervirus is quarantined from the eastern U.S. at the Mississippi. (And yes, my reasoning follows the Book of Mormon pattern; due to the West Coast's wickedness and rejection of the Saints, God has withdrawn his protections and permitted the Lamanites—er, the Asians—to make drastic inroads and humble the nation; and by the way, in my story the eastern U.S. does not persecute the Mormons as much or expell them, and it is preserved from the hypervirus by the quick, inspired action of the White House to throw up the firewall at the Mississippi).

Also by the time my novel opens, Latino survivors from Central and South America—where the hypervirus spread unchecked—have banded together and marched north to take over several depopulated western U.S. cities, including Salt Lake (however, the Latinos did not win the battle of Denver, and that's where the LDS Church headquarters is now hunkered down). My novel revolves around a group of Mormons who have turned the Provo missionary training center into a fortress against the two gangs running rampant in the area, and then Cain himself rears his head and enters the picture...

The Coming Civil War

2008-11-18T13:16:00.005-07:00

After a good month or more of consistency, I seem to have slipped out of daily blogging mode, largely due to an overabundance of work at both home and the office. In the meantime, following is a comment made by a fellow AML-Lister and a preliminary draft of my response, which later turned out fairly different because the moderator thought it was too "us versus them":

I think you are right about the potential for division of the country by the gay rights issue. The other issue that could do it is abortion. Any issue for which advocates find justification both in their personal moral codes AND in its effect on the lives of individuals has that explosive potential.

Yes, gay marriage is simply part of a bigger cluster of issues that are polarizing us, though I think it's the most incendiary one so far and is changing the game. As society continues splitting apart, it will be due to the polarization that all these issues together foment. With Obama in office, the ERA people now see a chance for revitalizing their amendment, so maybe we'll see a three-fer at the national level one of these days: gay marriage, abortion, and the equal rights amendment.

I could see these and other issues causing enough division to bring us to a civil war, not of exactly the same nature as the one over slavery but enough of a conflict to be labeled a real war nonetheless, with violence involved. In my last-days novel that I'm working on, temples in California are being bombed and Mormons are emigrating to Utah in droves, driven out much like in Missouri or Nauvoo.

From my perspective, it's all really clear what lies in the future, for those watching for signs and comparing them to history. Even though the battle isn't technically at the national level yet (like it soon will be), I keep reading stuff like what gay man Andrew Sullivan wrote today on his Atlantic Monthly blog in a post titled "The Mormon War on Gay People": "What we have just witnessed is a trial run for much larger ambitions. If we don't resist this now, we will not be able to resist it later."

Clearly Book of Mormon–level social cataclysm is coming our way. It's taken a good 40 years for the devil to advance his campaign of sexual revolution this far since he started it in earnest in the 1960s, and hopefully it will take another 40 years before the bottom really drops out, but I suspect the next twenty years aren't going to be as fun for us Mormons as the last twenty were. Somewhere during the Romney campaign, the tables turned on us, and then the Texas polygamist thing didn't help. Now with the gay agenda galvanized against us, we're headed down the other side of the mountain into shadow again, as far as our public image and place in society.

Another interesting piece of the puzzle has been to watch how worldly Salt Lake City proper has become, where the church is now actually shrinking and selling off meetinghouses. Former SLC mayor Rocky Anderson's "worldly morality"—he's definitely got his passionate moral causes, but they're far from what God's prophets are saying—was both a symptom and a cause of this trend, which for me was recently illuminated by an interesting blog post written by a virulently anti-Mormon, pro-gay returned missionary about feeling unexpectedly at home after having just moved to Salt Lake:

Here's my thought about Salt Lake City captured in a passage from my novel Kindred Spirits:

While Eliza disliked Utah County for its excessive Mormonism, Salt Lake City gave her a creepy vibe for the opposite reason. The summer after she'd graduated from high school, she'd briefly fallen in with a group that liked to go to clubs and parties in the big, bad city. Eliza had glimpsed some wild partying, which seemed all the wickeder because the people were all either non-Mormons rebelling against the dominant faith or Mormons rebelling against their own religion.

If she remembered right, one of the prophets had said that Salt Lake would eventually become the world's wickedest city, and it wasn't hard to imagine. As the Book of Mormon showed, the evilest people were those who knew the truth but then turned against it. She preferred Boston, where people were worldly and sensual because they generally didn't know much better.

Prospects for a Mormon Gay Novel?

2008-11-13T05:08:00.003-07:00

Over on the AML-List e-mail discussion group about Mormon literature, I wrote the following post in answer to the question, "Where is the modern transcendent . . . Mormon gay novel?"

As a person who cannot compute Mormonism and non-sinful homosexual activity coexisting together, I am open to a novel that could somehow open my understanding differently. However, it would have to have a convincing theological component to it, because I'm 100% into Mormon theology and that's the reason why I can't accept homosexual behavior as a valid non-sinful alternative. (For more of my thoughts on that, here's the link to a Sunstone essay I recently wrote called "Why Mormonism Can't Abide Gay Marriage.")

Since no loopholes currently exist in our theology for accommodating the celestial-level active practice of homosexuality, which I argue is where you logically have to go if you're both a so-called believing Mormon and pro-gay marriage, I suppose such a novel would have to be fantasy/speculative. If it were well done, I would consider it even if I knew it didn't reflect actual reality as we understand it today. Many people expect that we will eventually have a gay equivalent of Roe vs. Wade that legalizes gay marriage on a national level and blows away all the individual state firewalls against it, and many Mormons similarly believe that our church will eventually have a gay equivalent of the 1978 race revelation. I'd like to see a novel tease out how that could possibly happen and what it would mean. (By the way, I think the issue of gay rights/marriage is potent enough to eventually divide our nation into civil war like slavery did.)

I'm not homophobic toward individuals—just last night, a gay former college roommate of mine called me from New York City for help contacting someone regarding the anti-Prop-8 demonstration some "gay Mormons" are planning for tonight at 6:30 at the Manhattan temple, and I didn't hesitate to catch up with him on the friendliest of terms and try to help him with his request. But I'm so anti-gay in principle that I think reading a gay-Mormon justification/rationalization novel would just be an intellectual exercise for me, not something that actually changed how I believe.

I have issued the challenge to gay friends in the past to somehow justify and harmonize homosexuality and Mormonism on an eternal scale (meaning both pre-mortal and post-mortal), and no one has been able to do it with any convincing theological logic—the best anyone can do is talk about God's love for all his children, equality, and stuff that just applies to the mortal here and now and doesn't explain why or how God would or could purposefully create or redeem people with homosexuality as an integral part of their eternal identity. Part of me would like to see a good novelist pull it off somehow and really restructure my Mormon mental/spiritual core with regards to homosexuality, which I believe literature could conceivably do if it's powerful and convincing enough—however, that includes literature that is actually a very well-executed deception.

"The Most Honest Mormon-Themed Novel Since The Backslider"

2008-11-12T09:48:00.003-07:00

The new issue of Mormon literary journal Irreantum includes a great review of my novel Kindred Spirits. Following are some excerpts:

Character development is the key strength of Kindred Spirits. Bigelow has created real people, the kind you see every day at the ballpark, at the movies, or on the way to work. Eliza is one of the most appealing characters I have come across in American literature. She is neurotic, impulsive, contradictory, judgmental, regretful, and prone to righteous anger. She is also passionate, liberal, tolerant, understanding, wild, and patient. She would have fit in just perfectly with the early Saints who followed Joseph Smith. Eliza was made for the mid nineteenth century—the progressive era of Mormonism. . . .

The novel switches from Boston to Utah and back, and Bigelow offers up a quirky cast of Utah characters as Eliza’s family. Although Eliza moves to Boston to get away from her preachy dad, Bigelow makes them a lot alike. Both possess folk magic testimonies of the LDS gospel. Eliza’s dad, with the delightful Book of Mormon name Gidgiddoni (“Gid” for short), is prone to impulsive revelations and speculations along the lines of where Kolob might be found in the solar system. Likewise, Eliza embraces the old-style religion. For example, she believes a castaway spirit friend, Hanniah, is haunting her. Her reaction is pure Mormon: a mixture of revulsion and pity for the lost spirit. Eliza and her dad also lean on each other for guidance. Eliza’s reliance on priesthood authority causes her to reconsider a life-altering decision after her father makes known a revelation.

On a lighter note, Eric, who adopts Eliza’s life with relish, becomes converted to a multilevel-marketing company introduced to him by Eliza’s mom, LaVonna, and starts an eastern distributorship of “Zongi,” a “Tongan wonder ingredient” for smoothies, capsules, soap, powder, bread, etc. Kindred Spirits is full of Bigelow’s references, common and esoteric to the Mormon faith, and LDS readers will smile over several quirky examples. . . .

[S]ome scenes are quite musky in their sexual frankness. But the passions described are real. Most of us have lived them. Honesty does not bring a novel down, and Kindred Spirits is the most honest Mormon- themed novel since Levi Peterson’s The Backslider.

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