Let's revisit President Nelson's talk in the Saturday evening session.
Between him and President Oaks, there was a message that social media might be a source of stress and unhappiness, and that can be a good reason to take a break.
That is fine. There are good points to it. I wrote about that:
https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2018/10/using-social-media.html
Here is what I think that they missed: one reason many women were having bad feelings right around then were the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, where women were being painfully reminded of how much gets done to us by men, and how little it matters to men.
Much like the Clarence Thomas hearings, there were multiple accusers, but only one got to speak. It got her publicly ridiculed, though in this case they were trying to be kinder, so many people were suggesting that she was just mistaken about who did it, rather than saying that she was lying and crazy. However, there were still a lot of people calling her crazy and lying and evil. Many people were sympathetic to the disruption in his life, easily forgetting that weeks later she had still not been able to return home or to her job.
Of course different women reacted differently. Some women even participated in the attacks on Christine Blasey Ford. They have their own price to pay for that. However, more women were angry. Women who had experienced their own sexual assaults - including rape - were plagued by their own memories. Specific things that she said in her own testimony were felt physically. That especially included the memory of the laughter, and the memory of the fear that she would be killed, even accidentally, because of the disregard.
Even for women with the "easier" backgrounds of never having been physically assaulted but "only" being harassed at work or held back - things where the problem can only be your sensitivity or some problem with you, and not the problem of men just mattering more and being allowed to get away with more - it brings a lot back.
Even the comparisons with Clarence Thomas and all the focus of #metoo made it worse, because there is still so little progress. There were so many good reasons to not confirm Kavanaugh, and he still ended up confirmed for life. Dr. Ford's worst fear was that she would do this and go through it and turn her life upside down and it wouldn't matter; that's pretty much how it went down. It was a completely reasonable fear, and still one that gets no sympathy, only blame for not coming forward.
(Pro tip: the people who blame you for coming forward late really didn't want you to come forward at all. They are mad, but they are being disingenuous in their reasons.)
So here's the thing: while taking a break from social media AND news coverage might lessen the acute stress of those hearings, it doesn't do anything to alleviate the stress of being treated as less, even by the people who claim to honor and love and admire you.
Even very good men do not seem to be ready to understand that.
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Monday, November 19, 2018
One more thing about the financial threat to families
I know I said today I would go into the second threat to marriage, but it didn't feel right.
My issue is that what I want to say will be off-putting to some, but I want readers to at least have to consider the possibility. I am currently pondering if there is a process I can follow whereby laying the groundwork and connecting the dots will make it more palatable. Maybe it will be better to just be blunt.
For now, though, there was a point that I had thought about making last week, but when I was writing, it didn't come up.
If you recall, last week was about how financial problems threaten families, and while it is not necessarily a concentrated, intentional attack, the damage still gets done, mainly because of greed.
That is largely the greed of a shrinking few, as economic mobility becomes more constricted, but it is abetted by the pride of others. Pride makes it easy to compare and assume that the misfortunes of others are due to their stupidity or laziness, but you are good and the bad things that happen to you are unfair.
There are obvious downsides to that way of thinking. I am sure some are less obvious (like an increasingly difficult to suppress anger that burns harder as your luck runs out despite your goodness), but there is another, terribly "duh" thing that we frequently miss:
Jesus spoke really strongly against the wealthy.
He told people that he provided for animals and plants who did not labor. If you look more closely, you can see that the birds and flowers do what they are supposed to do, but he was not promoting toil for acquisition. The guy who was so prosperous that he wanted to build bigger barns died, without getting to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The rich man who did not help Lazarus languished in Hell. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Don't get caught up on whether that was the name of a certain gate; that would be missing the point.
I could bring up many scriptural examples. That is not just the teachings during the mortal ministry of Jesus, but also from other prophets, on both continents, where in multiple dispensations there have been saints who have practiced communal living.
Over and over again, wealth is bad. Could that be because its accumulation tends to involve exploiting others? Could it be because having too much tends to make people forget God? Could it be because the more people have, the more they think it is not enough, but nor realizing why? There are reasons.
None of that devalues hard work, but there is no scriptural basis for allowing unbridled capitalism or laissez-faire capitalism, or anything else where you justify people working hard for poverty wages so that a few people can be wildly wealthy.
It may be in the service of avoiding the obvious that the dehumanization and vilification of others happens, where you assume they are lazy, and not deserving of food or vacations or being able to spend weekends enjoying the company of their children, but I promise you, there is still no scriptural justification.
Just something to think about while I try to find a tactful way of saying...
My issue is that what I want to say will be off-putting to some, but I want readers to at least have to consider the possibility. I am currently pondering if there is a process I can follow whereby laying the groundwork and connecting the dots will make it more palatable. Maybe it will be better to just be blunt.
For now, though, there was a point that I had thought about making last week, but when I was writing, it didn't come up.
If you recall, last week was about how financial problems threaten families, and while it is not necessarily a concentrated, intentional attack, the damage still gets done, mainly because of greed.
That is largely the greed of a shrinking few, as economic mobility becomes more constricted, but it is abetted by the pride of others. Pride makes it easy to compare and assume that the misfortunes of others are due to their stupidity or laziness, but you are good and the bad things that happen to you are unfair.
There are obvious downsides to that way of thinking. I am sure some are less obvious (like an increasingly difficult to suppress anger that burns harder as your luck runs out despite your goodness), but there is another, terribly "duh" thing that we frequently miss:
Jesus spoke really strongly against the wealthy.
He told people that he provided for animals and plants who did not labor. If you look more closely, you can see that the birds and flowers do what they are supposed to do, but he was not promoting toil for acquisition. The guy who was so prosperous that he wanted to build bigger barns died, without getting to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The rich man who did not help Lazarus languished in Hell. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Don't get caught up on whether that was the name of a certain gate; that would be missing the point.
I could bring up many scriptural examples. That is not just the teachings during the mortal ministry of Jesus, but also from other prophets, on both continents, where in multiple dispensations there have been saints who have practiced communal living.
Over and over again, wealth is bad. Could that be because its accumulation tends to involve exploiting others? Could it be because having too much tends to make people forget God? Could it be because the more people have, the more they think it is not enough, but nor realizing why? There are reasons.
None of that devalues hard work, but there is no scriptural basis for allowing unbridled capitalism or laissez-faire capitalism, or anything else where you justify people working hard for poverty wages so that a few people can be wildly wealthy.
It may be in the service of avoiding the obvious that the dehumanization and vilification of others happens, where you assume they are lazy, and not deserving of food or vacations or being able to spend weekends enjoying the company of their children, but I promise you, there is still no scriptural justification.
Just something to think about while I try to find a tactful way of saying...
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Attacks on the family - Money
One thing that struck me about conference was that there were two different stories told where families lost everything financially without it being their fault.
(I strongly suspected that the bishop in Elder Holland's story was exercising unrighteous dominion on the "full tithe payer" question, and it may have been a missed opportunity not to point out that was a possibility, but at least he did not rule it out.)
It felt like an acknowledgment that it is getting much harder to keep afloat financially. The stories were past, but them coming up now at a time when so many are struggling felt significant to me.
It's not that the longstanding councils about avoiding debt and spending wisely were wrong, but things are worse, and not necessarily in ways that can be fixed by individual choice. Just consider the debts that have traditionally been considered acceptable:
Finances can be a threat to the family in two ways. Concerns about being able to provide for a family are a factor in at least some decisions about marrying and children. Church leaders have encouraged us to have faith for years, but that has required less of a leap in the past.
Beyond that, financial stress can tear existing families apart. Going back to those medical bankruptcies, an illness that bankrupts the family is probably severe enough or long-lasting enough that the bankruptcy would be far from the only stress. Some adversity can bring families closer together, but that's not always how it works.
When survival feels like a struggle, you are not your best self. This often means not being a picnic to be around. Spread that around a household, and it is not great for families.
In addition, strong families require time spent together. Our church has historically encouraged having one stay-at-home parent, but they emphasize that less now, presumably because fewer people can make it work. A prominent member of the church and presidential candidate said that modern families needed to have 2-3 jobs to keep going - is that good for families?
There are two important things to note here. One is that when we think of an attack on the family, there may be something alluring about imagining a Hollywood that corrupts people because they are evil and hate families, but it is false. (Which we already covered.)
It is not completely unreasonable to think about these financial stresses as an attack on the family, but it is not helpful to understand it as a personal attack. Unbridled capitalism only cares about getting the money, not whom it's hurting, and there is no one source. There are many, many businesses that will pay as low as possible and avoid taxes as much as possible. It's not just the Walton family or John Schnatter.
Once upon a time there were better wage regulations and unions and programs that did curb the economic inequality. Some reverses should be possible.
Right now Italy's birth rate is at an all time low. There are multiple reasons for that, but I do know that young people are reluctant to marry and have children. Job insecurity plays a role, but also there are traditions where a wedding is expected to cost around 30,000 Euros, which very few people have. Doing it really cheaply would still be 15,000.
Now, it should certainly be possible to break those traditions, and encourage elopements or smaller ceremonies or some ways of economizing. However, doing that still leaves the issues with jobs and doubts about successfully supporting oneself, let alone a family.
Those aren't necessarily easy things to fix, but if you care about people - as individuals and as family units - they need to be addressed. It requires honesty, but it can be done.
There is one other big threat to family happiness, both for people deciding to marry and to stay married. It gets back to that conference talk that started this series.
We will get to that next week.
(I strongly suspected that the bishop in Elder Holland's story was exercising unrighteous dominion on the "full tithe payer" question, and it may have been a missed opportunity not to point out that was a possibility, but at least he did not rule it out.)
It felt like an acknowledgment that it is getting much harder to keep afloat financially. The stories were past, but them coming up now at a time when so many are struggling felt significant to me.
It's not that the longstanding councils about avoiding debt and spending wisely were wrong, but things are worse, and not necessarily in ways that can be fixed by individual choice. Just consider the debts that have traditionally been considered acceptable:
- Education - costs have risen in a way that wages have not, making college a far riskier proposition than it should be.
- Homes - theoretically using caution and not being greedy could have saved you from the housing bubble (for all of my problems, I have still never been underwater on the mortgage), but the market fluctuations still have an impact.
Finances can be a threat to the family in two ways. Concerns about being able to provide for a family are a factor in at least some decisions about marrying and children. Church leaders have encouraged us to have faith for years, but that has required less of a leap in the past.
Beyond that, financial stress can tear existing families apart. Going back to those medical bankruptcies, an illness that bankrupts the family is probably severe enough or long-lasting enough that the bankruptcy would be far from the only stress. Some adversity can bring families closer together, but that's not always how it works.
When survival feels like a struggle, you are not your best self. This often means not being a picnic to be around. Spread that around a household, and it is not great for families.
In addition, strong families require time spent together. Our church has historically encouraged having one stay-at-home parent, but they emphasize that less now, presumably because fewer people can make it work. A prominent member of the church and presidential candidate said that modern families needed to have 2-3 jobs to keep going - is that good for families?
There are two important things to note here. One is that when we think of an attack on the family, there may be something alluring about imagining a Hollywood that corrupts people because they are evil and hate families, but it is false. (Which we already covered.)
It is not completely unreasonable to think about these financial stresses as an attack on the family, but it is not helpful to understand it as a personal attack. Unbridled capitalism only cares about getting the money, not whom it's hurting, and there is no one source. There are many, many businesses that will pay as low as possible and avoid taxes as much as possible. It's not just the Walton family or John Schnatter.
Once upon a time there were better wage regulations and unions and programs that did curb the economic inequality. Some reverses should be possible.
Right now Italy's birth rate is at an all time low. There are multiple reasons for that, but I do know that young people are reluctant to marry and have children. Job insecurity plays a role, but also there are traditions where a wedding is expected to cost around 30,000 Euros, which very few people have. Doing it really cheaply would still be 15,000.
Now, it should certainly be possible to break those traditions, and encourage elopements or smaller ceremonies or some ways of economizing. However, doing that still leaves the issues with jobs and doubts about successfully supporting oneself, let alone a family.
Those aren't necessarily easy things to fix, but if you care about people - as individuals and as family units - they need to be addressed. It requires honesty, but it can be done.
There is one other big threat to family happiness, both for people deciding to marry and to stay married. It gets back to that conference talk that started this series.
We will get to that next week.
Sunday, November 4, 2018
Assumptions: Marriage Equality Edition
Going back to those stories from 2007 World Congress of Families, a lot of the focus was on the corruption of the world, where corruption mainly equated gay people, and the harmful effects this would have on children.
For some context, this was kind of a critical mass period for marriage equality (which they were primarily calling gay marriage or same-sex marriage at the time). Some countries and some states supported it, but other states and countries were taking specific steps to ban it. Dick Cheney had punted to states. The 2007 congress happened between South Africa legalizing same-sex marriage and California's Supreme Court overturning a ban on gay marriage.
https://gaymarriage.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000030
Sometimes you will see a reaction against change coming. I have been advised that Armand Mauss of WSU has done some work on this and calls it retrenchment theory, though I have not had a chance to look into it. I see some things related to it now that I will refer to later. Part of my seeing a pattern now is because there was a five year period where it feels like conference talks were more about being heterosexual than anything else. The timeline makes sense. Perhaps we should call it a gay panic.
The important thing for today's post is that generally the stated logic for the condemnation of marriage equality was the harm it would wreak on children, who needed both a mother and father. That may have seemed plausible in 2007, but it has been generally well-established that children raised by same-sex couples do equally well.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11113-014-9329-6
Let me point out that some of those studies focus on lesbian couples, I believe because at one point it was more common to find children with lesbian couples than with gay men in long-term relationships. There are some ways in which it is easier for women to get children without a husband.
That leads to a second point worth noting. I remember some research showing that children raised by same-sex couples had better outcomes. That would not have been a slam on heterosexual families, but more likely a reflection of that fact that children don't just happen for gay couples. Straight couples may have accidental pregnancies or give in to societal pressure while their own feelings about having children are ambivalent. I suppose it's possible that gay couples may start to get the same kinds of pressure to have children now, but in general, historically a gay couple that has children has really wanted them and jumped through several hoops for them, allowing for a more thorough preparation for raising children.
I also know that there will be people who mentally recoil that a family with two parents of the same sex could have children that are happier and healthier than a more "traditional" family, because that's the way it was ordained, right? That's how nature says it should be, right?
It's certainly more common; you will get no arguments from me there. Marriage between a man and a woman is no guarantee either. That is very clear.
In the absence of guarantees, we can still look at things that help and hurt, and we should. Helping families isn't a bad goal, but it also won't be served by lying to ourselves.
As it is, the primary difference between children raised by gay couples is that they are less likely to be raised homophobic than the children of straight couples. Yes, society may still give them messages that it is not okay to be gay, but they are less likely to internalize them.
Once again, I know that there are people who will not be happy about that. For gay children who become gay teenagers, I like that they will be less likely to need to run away to the danger of the streets, or waste a lot of time hating themselves (I mean, more than straight ones; adolescence is rough no matter how you cut it). I love that they are less likely to be suicidal. However, straight parents are also capable of getting those results, if they can also not be homophobic.
There have also been some concerns expressed about gay marriage devaluing straight marriage.
There may indeed be some threats to "traditional marriage" out there, and I want to get into that next week. For now, let's talk about different people wanting to get married, especially people to whom it has been denied. That seems to make marriage look valuable.
I suppose the issue goes back to the idea that if you tell people that being gay is okay they will do it, when otherwise they wouldn't. That just isn't how it works. No one should still believe that. Those kids who run away or kill themselves, they have been emphatically told that it is not okay, and somehow they are still gay.
So, if someone in a heterosexual marriage leaves it for someone of the same sex, that was there before. There may have been good things about the marriage, but it was built on a lie, and that tears at people.
In conjunction with thinking about writing this, I have been thinking about couples I know where someone gay pretended to be straight - which would have been the only way for all but the most recent of them to have gotten married. There were moments of happiness in those marriages. There are beloved children from those marriages. They still all broke up.
They often broke up with feelings of betrayal. There was broken trust. Sometimes there was cheating. In the case of one, there was abuse that was at least partially inspired by her perceived failure to cure him. He believed he could conquer being gay, and that sex with a woman would fix that and he had to get married to do that.
Does anyone think this helps?
(I am afraid that it is not a coincidence that the least horrible of the breakups was one where neither was a member of the church.)
It is common for people to want to be married to someone who is attracted to them. There are people who lost significant chunks of their lives because they believed someone who was never going to be able to be attracted to them, but wouldn't tell them.
(No, none of these examples are Josh and Lolly Weed. They were always honest with each other. The terrible thing is that I keep thinking of more couples who went through this.)
You may have complicated feelings about this; I am not going to hold it against you. I am going to suggest that you redirect your efforts. You can still help families. You can even work to help traditional families, but make it more a matter of helping families than fighting gay people.
That will require honesty about what families need and what makes good families. You may have a mental image that is wrong. Maybe it mixes up correlation and causation. It may be wrong enough to keep you from helping.
We can work on that.
For some context, this was kind of a critical mass period for marriage equality (which they were primarily calling gay marriage or same-sex marriage at the time). Some countries and some states supported it, but other states and countries were taking specific steps to ban it. Dick Cheney had punted to states. The 2007 congress happened between South Africa legalizing same-sex marriage and California's Supreme Court overturning a ban on gay marriage.
https://gaymarriage.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000030
Sometimes you will see a reaction against change coming. I have been advised that Armand Mauss of WSU has done some work on this and calls it retrenchment theory, though I have not had a chance to look into it. I see some things related to it now that I will refer to later. Part of my seeing a pattern now is because there was a five year period where it feels like conference talks were more about being heterosexual than anything else. The timeline makes sense. Perhaps we should call it a gay panic.
The important thing for today's post is that generally the stated logic for the condemnation of marriage equality was the harm it would wreak on children, who needed both a mother and father. That may have seemed plausible in 2007, but it has been generally well-established that children raised by same-sex couples do equally well.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11113-014-9329-6
Let me point out that some of those studies focus on lesbian couples, I believe because at one point it was more common to find children with lesbian couples than with gay men in long-term relationships. There are some ways in which it is easier for women to get children without a husband.
That leads to a second point worth noting. I remember some research showing that children raised by same-sex couples had better outcomes. That would not have been a slam on heterosexual families, but more likely a reflection of that fact that children don't just happen for gay couples. Straight couples may have accidental pregnancies or give in to societal pressure while their own feelings about having children are ambivalent. I suppose it's possible that gay couples may start to get the same kinds of pressure to have children now, but in general, historically a gay couple that has children has really wanted them and jumped through several hoops for them, allowing for a more thorough preparation for raising children.
I also know that there will be people who mentally recoil that a family with two parents of the same sex could have children that are happier and healthier than a more "traditional" family, because that's the way it was ordained, right? That's how nature says it should be, right?
It's certainly more common; you will get no arguments from me there. Marriage between a man and a woman is no guarantee either. That is very clear.
In the absence of guarantees, we can still look at things that help and hurt, and we should. Helping families isn't a bad goal, but it also won't be served by lying to ourselves.
As it is, the primary difference between children raised by gay couples is that they are less likely to be raised homophobic than the children of straight couples. Yes, society may still give them messages that it is not okay to be gay, but they are less likely to internalize them.
Once again, I know that there are people who will not be happy about that. For gay children who become gay teenagers, I like that they will be less likely to need to run away to the danger of the streets, or waste a lot of time hating themselves (I mean, more than straight ones; adolescence is rough no matter how you cut it). I love that they are less likely to be suicidal. However, straight parents are also capable of getting those results, if they can also not be homophobic.
There have also been some concerns expressed about gay marriage devaluing straight marriage.
There may indeed be some threats to "traditional marriage" out there, and I want to get into that next week. For now, let's talk about different people wanting to get married, especially people to whom it has been denied. That seems to make marriage look valuable.
I suppose the issue goes back to the idea that if you tell people that being gay is okay they will do it, when otherwise they wouldn't. That just isn't how it works. No one should still believe that. Those kids who run away or kill themselves, they have been emphatically told that it is not okay, and somehow they are still gay.
So, if someone in a heterosexual marriage leaves it for someone of the same sex, that was there before. There may have been good things about the marriage, but it was built on a lie, and that tears at people.
In conjunction with thinking about writing this, I have been thinking about couples I know where someone gay pretended to be straight - which would have been the only way for all but the most recent of them to have gotten married. There were moments of happiness in those marriages. There are beloved children from those marriages. They still all broke up.
They often broke up with feelings of betrayal. There was broken trust. Sometimes there was cheating. In the case of one, there was abuse that was at least partially inspired by her perceived failure to cure him. He believed he could conquer being gay, and that sex with a woman would fix that and he had to get married to do that.
Does anyone think this helps?
(I am afraid that it is not a coincidence that the least horrible of the breakups was one where neither was a member of the church.)
It is common for people to want to be married to someone who is attracted to them. There are people who lost significant chunks of their lives because they believed someone who was never going to be able to be attracted to them, but wouldn't tell them.
(No, none of these examples are Josh and Lolly Weed. They were always honest with each other. The terrible thing is that I keep thinking of more couples who went through this.)
You may have complicated feelings about this; I am not going to hold it against you. I am going to suggest that you redirect your efforts. You can still help families. You can even work to help traditional families, but make it more a matter of helping families than fighting gay people.
That will require honesty about what families need and what makes good families. You may have a mental image that is wrong. Maybe it mixes up correlation and causation. It may be wrong enough to keep you from helping.
We can work on that.
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