Thus Matt Walsh.
I expect, that imagining that the World at large to understand beyond what is popular at the moment, is an exercise in vanity, if not a serious work out.
The 10th circuit court of appeals has decided we have a constitutionally protected right to Same sex marriage, and all our reasons against it are “tepid”.
Eli Wallach, who played the “Ugly” in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, alongside Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef, passed on.
Most of the other jokes about this are even worse.
So why link such vulgar material at our genteel blog? Well, we’re observers of culture and cultural decadence, and the fact that the fertility idols of the ancient world have made a comeback seems noteworthy.
Except, given the setting, perhaps these are better described as infertility idols.
Far be it from me to preach a prosperity gospel with golden idols for everyone, righteousness should yield a minimum of national success. But if we can’t even compete with the corrupt and backwards regimes, then that should be a trumpet in our ears. If we are defeated in soccer/fütbol at the Worldcup, not one will be greatly surprised. If Japan or Korea makes a better smart phone, we are not shocked.
But if we don’t lead the world in pizza delivery, then something just isn’t right. Russia has pizza delivery drones and we can’t even manage the redtape. America invented and perfected pizza as we know it. But here we are with Russia doing what we have only talked about.
I hate feeling like we are falling behind.
That and I am hungry for some supreme with extra cheese.
But some people do. I hope it is in jest.
Jeff G, at New Cool Thang, has some powerful self-reflections as a former liberal with an interesting take on the matter:
– One does not simply lose one’s testimony.
– Who’s really behind Ordain Women?
– Drawbacks to ordaining women.
Here are two good posts by Jeff G on intellectuals in the Mormon Blogosphere:
Darn. I don’t deny her conversion experience, but I wish she had talked to Mormon sister missionaries first. She looks like she has some good genes that she could have passed along.
Geteilter Schmerz halber Schmerz.
Which is why we are under solemn covenant to mourn with those that mourn. Reading Dan’s blog this week has been awfully hard on the photoreceptors, which don’t respond well to saltwater immersion.
And please consider making a modest donation to nowilaymedowntosleep.org, which Dan has indicated provided its free services to his family. I visited the web site and it seems like a very worthy charity.
From a recent conversation I had with His Majesty:
CLASSICAL CONSERVATIVE: People are idiots.
CLASSICAL LIBERAL: Most people are not idiots.
MODERN LIBERAL: Most people are idiots.
MODERN CONSERVATIVE: Most people are not idiots most of the time, but all people are idiots some of the time.
LIBERTARIAN: Idiots are not people.
PALPATINE: Most politicians are idiots.
Rather cynical, as is His Majesty’s wont, but with a bit of the sting of truth, I think.
My first thought was that this was a response to situations like that in Boston, where religious adoption agencies have more or less been put out of business because they prefer not to mediate adoptions by gay couples. The story says it’s about the service not being used enough to warrant the effort.
I believe that. I’m close to several young LDS couples who have adopted recently, both in and out of Utah, and not one worked through LDS Family Services. The usual reason given was that LDS Family Services had so few children to adopt that the waiting list was a decade long. It’s much less than that for other agencies, though it can still take years.
Fathers matter.
Quince Rufus Pack at age 94 in 1952 remembers his life:
My dance hall was used by the people for any of the public dances, parties and so forth that they had. One night Fred Robinson had his wedding party and dance. Some of the fellows brought some liquor with them and really made a drunken brawl out of the party.
Two or three days later the Stake President came to see me and told me that if I didn’t quit selling liquor in my dance hall they would have to discontinue holding M.I.A. in my building. Now, I didn’t sell liquor in my store and like I said those fellows at Fred Robinson’s party brought their own. I tried to explain that to Lewis Pond, our Stake President, but he was angry and so was I and before long we were really having an argument.
“With Christian or Jewish presuppositions, or indeed Muslim, then if you believe in what it says in Genesis 1 about God making heaven and earth—and the binaries in Genesis are so important—that heaven and earth, and sea and dry land, and so on and so on, and you end up with male and female. It’s all about God making complementary pairs which are meant to work together. The last scene in the Bible is the new heaven and the new earth, and the symbol for that is the marriage of Christ and his church. It’s not just one or two verses here and there which say this or that. It’s an entire narrative which works with this complementarity so that a male-plus-female marriage is a signpost or a signal about the goodness of the original creation and God’s intention for the eventual new heavens and new earth.”
Scholar NT Wright explains marriage, and gay marriage and scripture