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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Jul 25, 2006 11:49:02 GMT -4
Well, somewhat. None of the 12 were Gentiles.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jul 25, 2006 12:07:21 GMT -4
He didn't have a gentile as one of the twelve but he did freely associate with them. The gentile centurion who asked him to heal his servant was praised as having more faith than many Jews.
Incidently, and more in line with my original topic on this thread, there's been a recent poll taken by the L.A. Times that showed 37% of Americans would not vote for a Mormon for President (obviously linked to Massachusettes Gov. Mitt Romney's possible bid for the presidency in 2008). In other words, religious prejudice in the US is unfortunately alive and well - more than 40 years after we may have thought we were over it (with Kennedy becoming the first Catholic president). Of course, there was also a survey (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060721/laf027.html?.v=56) that showed that only 9% of South Carolina's population could say anything at all accurate about Mormon doctrine, so there is a chance to educate the public to change those numbers.
Yesterday was Pioneer Day here in Utah, and it served me at least as a reminder that the reason Salt Lake City exists today is religious prejudice (the Mormons had to leave the Eastern US in order to escape religious persecution).
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 25, 2006 12:37:31 GMT -4
This was the first year my company -- now an international company -- did not offer Pioneer Day as a paid holiday.
Since, at the time, the Eastern states were the only United States, it's more proper and more poignant to say that the Mormons had to leave the country in order to escape religious intolerance and remain outside it for 50 years.
I would be interested in knowing how that 37% broke down along party lines. The Mormon church has historically (but not officially) aligned itself more with the Republican party than with the Democrats. Beginning last year or the year before, the LDS church has announced their policy that both major political parties espouse platforms that are compatible with the ideals of LDS belief. Not that we're about to become a blue state by any means, the church has for decades attempted to shake any perceived connection to American political parties.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jul 25, 2006 13:37:45 GMT -4
Yes, I believe Utah was technically part of Mexico when the poineers arrived here.
There is a little more detail on the news story about the survey but party affiliation is not one of the things covered.
The LDS church has always encouraged its members to be politically active without telling them to vote for one party or the other, and they have also had a strict policy against allowing political rallies or other such events on church property. They have taken occasional stands for or against specific political issues (legalized gambling, homosexual marriage), but these are rather rare, and they've never taken a stand for or against specific candidates.
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 25, 2006 17:22:32 GMT -4
1. A great deal of churchianity
The proliferation of Christian denominations and the squabbling among them have led many Christians to abandon the notion of organized religion. The bumper stickers saying things like "O Lord, deliver me from your followers" express the frustration many of us have with the infighting among Christians. It reminds me of children arguing over which one the parents like best.
Churches as social clubs and political activism organizations do much to harm the reputation of Christianity in general.
To be fair, a church exists as a community of like-minded believers. That implies a distinction which in turn implies the existence unlike-minded believers. In short, there's a reason some people are Baptists and some are Catholics and some are Mormons. To imply that they all ought to recognize each other denies, in essence, why those people came together. So on the one hand Mormons want to be recognized as Christians, but they don't want to be thought of us equivalent to Catholics or Baptists. Similarly Protestants as a whole are who they are precisely because they resist being Catholics.
But like-mindedness can be carried to a dangerous extreme. There is some value in associating with those who believe approximately the same as you do about what Jesus taught, but very little value in combatting those who believe differently. To ignore the distinction is foolish, but to emphasize, enforce, and obsess over the distinction is even more foolish. And like-mindedness can be carried over into things that have little to do with Christian teaching, hence the "country club" approach to denominations. When you see a homeless man being escorted out of an immaculately white-painted chapel in an affluent neighborhood attended by Armani- and Dior-clad worshipers, you get the feeling that someone is really missing the point.
We've had this discussion before, but I've met people in Utah who express the firm believe that the separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution is mean to apply only in one direction. That is, that the state may not impose any influence or impediment on the church, but that the church -- where possible -- has every right (a duty, in fact) to meddle in the affairs of the state.
Again here it's easy to weed out the pathological cases where churches exist only to further some political agenda. One need look only to Fred Phelps' congregation in Topeka, Kan. as an example of religion run completely amok. I struggle to see what is especially Christian about what they do.
But churches are in the business of teaching ethics and morality. Therefore to expect them to remain silent when political discussion also treats ethics and morality is somewhat unrealistic. I think we have to examine carefully how a church can and should engage with the secular government. One must clearly avoid the appearance of a theocracy in which God's will is enforced by secular punishment. Clearly "Thou shalt not kill" sits squarely within the bounds of both secular and religious law. And just as clearly, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" lies far outside secular concerns, but what about "Thou shalt not commit adultery"? Is there a compelling social need to confine sexual behavior to marriage? Therein lies an energetic debate.
Whether a church (either officially through its ruling body or through grass-roots efforts among its members) should have an opinion on secular issues is immaterial. How that church and its members engages with secular authority is a different matter.
This is an especially acute question in Utah, which is widely believed to be shadow-governed by the Mormon church leadership. That's probably not actually true, but the fact remains that the voting blocs here tend to correlate with religious demarcations, and that's probably unavoidable. People who don't believe in, say, gambling because they consider it an affront to God (or at least not something God's people should condone) and who constitute a voting majority probably aren't going to vote to allow gambling.
Nothing in the hallowed tenets of democracy dictates what a citizen should use as his guide to deciding how to vote. But I believe it's up to the individual to separate his religious beliefs from what he chooses to have enforced by secular authority. Hence I don't believe it's appropriate for a church to tell its members how God wants to them to vote, nor do I believe it's even kosher to tell people that they have to vote their conscience. I think a Christian must also be a respectful citizen and vote in a way that is conducive to good government, even if it's not necessarily good religion.
Lengthy diversion here.
Salt Lake City, as many of you know, was laid out by Brigham Young according to a plan for the City of God put forth by Joseph Smith. Nothing especially religious about it. Basically in the historic part of town, where I live, the blocks are ten-acre squares. A square with an area of ten acres is 1/8 mile on each side. This has led many to say that traveling a distance of eight blocks in our city is equivalent to traveling one mile, but that ignores the width of the streets, which were specified to allow a team of horses to turn a complete circle, a distance roughly given as 130 feet. If you include the width of the streets you have to cross, seven linear blocks is one mile.
Generously appointed blocks and generously provisioned streets were intended to support agriculture. The blocks were divided into four square plots with the owner's house built on the corners of the blocks. The interiors of the blocks were cultivated.
I bring this up because I live on one of Brigham Young's original blocks, and the house on the corner of my block is one of the original houses built on the corner of the 10-acre block, governing its 2.5-acre subplot. The house was owned not by a farmer of grain or a rancher of livestock, but by Utah's first vintner. I believe my grapevines are descendents of his. By about 1870 life in Utah had progressed to the point where winemaking was deemed a worthy and commercially-viable business. Not that Utah wines would win any awards, but the point is that even though the vast majority of people in the city had no use for his wares, they didn't see anything wrong with him doing what he did.
Less so these days. The Utah liquor control laws are some of the silliest in the nation, making it very difficult to obtain and consume alcoholic beverages. Should I care? I don't drink alcohol. But I believe my responsibility as a citizen in controlling the consumption of alcoholic drinks ends at assigning legal responsibility to the state of inebriation. Making alcohol harder to get does not generally achieve a social benefit. But if one's religion prohibits alcohol, it does tend to make that religion a bit easier to live.
That's sort of where I like to draw the line. If one is voting in order to make one's religion a bit easier to live while out in society, then that is probably not a good use of one's democratic power. The joy in not gambling or in not drinking is not that one is punished here and now for doing it, but that one has the opportunity to do it, and refuses or abstains. Making abstention easier to accomplish eliminates the lessons and moral fiber gained by facing it and resisting it.
2. A great deal of religiosity.
Here I think you get into the social engineering aspect of religion. It seems some people want to return to the heavy-handed social engineering of the 1950s and blame it all on Jesus. Much of what is put forward as "Christian" morality -- to be enforced by appropriate legislation where possible -- seems to be little more than a resurrection of those ill-fated attempts decades ago to create a homogenized lifestyle and mode of thought.
That is alien to what I suppose Christianity to be. As I said, having lived all over the world and worshiped happily with the Christians I found there, I can say that there is room for all manner of lifestyles in Christianity.
3. Heaps and heaps of Paulianity.
Since St. Paul is the patron of the church I most frequently attend, I always have to be careful on this one.
This is one of the problems I have with an infallible New Testament. If you get one of those Bibles where Jesus' words are printed in red, and you start at Matthew and go through John, and time how long it takes to read just those red-printed selections out loud, you find it takes all of half an hour to read the entire body of sayings attributed directly to Jesus. And this is a man we know to have preached for entire days -- for so long at times that they had to break for a meal.
The lion's share of the NT is taken up with the writings of Paul, a person who never met Jesus in the flesh, never heard him preach, and who was known before his conversion as a persecutor of the faith. Nor did the rest of Jesus' followers accept Paul at face value. In fact there is a tradition of interpretation that necessarily separates Paul from the teachings of Jesus and his in-person disciples. Not every Christian -- either in Paul's day or in ours -- accepts Paul as a teacher of "true" Christianity. There is such a thing as a "Pauline" Christian. Whether Paul's epistles constitute a valid interpretation of Christian belief is an ongoing debate, as is whether Paul's personal opinions are also represented in the epistles and have nothing to do with what Jesus taught (e.g., that women should "keep silent" in church, or that men should wear their hair short).
Not every book of the NT is of equal value as every other book. Nor is every book worthy of its place. There are a great many nonbiblical works such as the Gospel of Thomas that are far more at home amid the NT canon than the Apocalypse of John. Having read a number of the Apocalypses I can say that John's is probably the least delusional of the bunch, but there is nothing to be gained, in my opinion, in trying to "map" what is essentially a science fiction story to events unfolding in our or anyone else's time. Historians tell us that the Apocalypse of John made it into the NT by the skin of its teeth, and I can see why.
But this is what happens when you draw an arbitrary line in the sand and say that everything on one side of it is heresy and everything on the other side of it is 100% truth without distortion or interpretation. That's just a very superstitious way of approaching written scripture, in my opinion.
So I take Paul with quite a grain of salt. I don't believe that just because Paul said something, that's necessarily the way Christians were or are supposed to believe. Nor do I simply discount him. He was a well-educated man who clearly expended a great deal of thought, and so he strikes a responsive chord within me.
4. Quite a lot of Old-Testamentanity
I don't mind that so much. In addition to worshiping with various sects of Christianity I have also worshiped with various non-Christian faiths including Judaism. I have been to Israel twice. There is much in the Old Testament that helps us better understand the first Christians. But there is also a lot in there that frankly doesn't apply anymore either to Jews or to Christians. Not to be flippant, but does salvation really depend on not eating shellfish with your head uncovered, or whatever?
5. And lastly, away down the line, more befitting No. 10 on this scale, a tiny bit of Christianity (i.e.: a little of the pure, unadulterated teachings of The Christ).
If only there was more from him personally. That's where the Mormons really have everyone. They just say Jesus is still talking to people. That's why they're not so uptight about the infallibility of scripture. But those churches who rely solely upon the Bible either have to make do with the 30-minute Christ or elevate others' commentary to equal status.
I've been hoping you might reply to PhantomWolf's thread...
If only I had a good answer.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jul 25, 2006 18:10:48 GMT -4
We've had this discussion before, but I've met people in Utah who express the firm believe that the separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution is mean to apply only in one direction. That is, that the state may not impose any influence or impediment on the church, but that the church -- where possible -- has every right (a duty, in fact) to meddle in the affairs of the state. Fortunately the leadership of the Church itself does not believe this. I think they understand the damage that such an attitude does to both government and religion. I myself feel that the "seperation between church and state" crowd has gone a little overboard on the secular side. For instance, when the LDS Church purchased a section of mainstreet downtown a short while ago, turned it into a park, and wanted to treat it the same as the rest of their downtown properties (by placing the same restrictions against smoking and protestors against the Church) the ACLU filed suit against it seemingly just because a church was involved. If it had been the Coors brewery who had purchased the street and wanted to ban protestors against beer from their new business park I'm sure the situation would have played out completely differently. In the end it the Church had to give extra incentives to the City above and beyond the $8 million they had spent purchasing the land in the first place simply to be able to treat their private property as if it were truly theirs. They were effectively descriminated against because they are a religious organization.
This is an especially acute question in Utah, which is widely believed to be shadow-governed by the Mormon church leadership. I think it's only the non-Mormons who really believe that, but it unfortunately does seem to be a fairly common attitude.
Salt Lake City, as many of you know, was laid out by Brigham Young according to a plan for the City of God put forth by Joseph Smith. Nothing especially religious about it. As far as I can tell, the only religious aspect to the city plan is the fact that the street numbering system uses the LDS temple as its centerpoint, although you can also argue there was considerable prophetic wisdom involved in making the streets so wide.
That's sort of where I like to draw the line. If one is voting in order to make one's religion a bit easier to live while out in society, then that is probably not a good use of one's democratic power. The joy in not gambling or in not drinking is not that one is punished here and now for doing it, but that one has the opportunity to do it, and refuses or abstains. Making abstention easier to accomplish eliminates the lessons and moral fiber gained by facing it and resisting it. I'm not sure if the only motivation is "to make it easier on us." Drinking has long been thought of as a social problem, and the motivation in restricting it may be the same as, say, the motivation in restricting firearms, or requiring people to be licensed to operate motor vehicles.
Do you claim that we are missing out on moral fiber when compared with the Dutch because marijuana and prostitution are illegal here but legal there?
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 25, 2006 20:32:35 GMT -4
Fortunately the leadership of the Church itself does not believe this.
Nor, I think, does the majority of its members. The church advises government, but does not implement it.
For instance, when the LDS Church purchased a section of mainstreet downtown a short while ago, turned it into a park, and wanted to treat it the same as the rest of their downtown properties...
You have to add some additional detail for the benefit of those who haven't seen it. The section of Main Street in question lies between two properties of great historical and cultural significance to the church -- Temple Square and the block on which the church's administration building, Brigham Young's house, and a substantial garden are located. The sale of the property effectively created a single, contiguous, two-block area that was somewhat seamlessly developed across the new strip of land.
But the question of allowable behavior arose. As a matter of law, the property was private property and the church was quite within its rights as owners of that property to restrict the behavior of persons on it, including the injunction against anti-Mormon protests. However, the strip continued its function as a public thoroughfare allowing foot traffic without barrier or restriction between the two streets on the long sides of the rectangle. The law also states that private owners of property that is offered as an unrestricted public thoroughfare have limits on their ability to enjoin behavior on it.
Consulting the original documents pertaining to the sale, some discrepancies were discovered in whether any agreement had been made on that point. There were simply multiple copies of the documents in various drafts, some containing explicit language on the allowable injuctions and some not. This is about where the ACLU stepped in an escalated what might have been an easily-negotiated loose end to a full-blown, high-profile court battle. The ACLU simply assumed that the church had behaved deceitfully in obtaining and developing this property and argued accordingly in court, whereas the city and the church had simply believed it to be a simple miscommunication. Neither the city nor the church wanted the settlement that the ACLU eventually forced.
In that the ACLU's involvement was likely solicited by anti-Mormon activists, this likely represents a situation in which religious persecution was both evident and counterproductive.
I think it's only the non-Mormons who really believe that, but it unfortunately does seem to be a fairly common attitude.
The LDS church routinely offers official statements on matters before the Utah legislature. They were consulted prior to relaxing some of the liquor laws for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Now this is somewhat different from shadow-government, as alleged by many based on nothing more than idle speculation, but you can see how such consultations would create that impression. Now couple this with the church's history of implementing secular government, and you have a ripe conspiracy theory.
Granted you have many liberals in Utah who naturally chafe against the conservative government. I think those people will idly blame the LDS church for what is nothing more than the legitimate actions of a duly elected government representing Utah's conservative majority. That's just tough luck.
As far as I can tell, the only religious aspect to the city plan is the fact that the street numbering system uses the LDS temple as its centerpoint...
Yes, that was my point. Calling it the City of God doesn't imply that God was dabbling in town planning. Smith called it that, but I tend to believe it was largely his idea and wasn't understood to be a revelation from God.
In most communities the religious edifices are prominently located. It was likely that the church buildings would also serve civic functions, especially in small towns, allowing rooms for the town councils and so forth to meet. So I don't see anything especially theocratic in putting the religious buildings at the center of the town numbering system. Habitually the cardinal street in one direction would be Main Street and Center Street in the other direction. Eminently practical, in my opinion, and not religious.
"City of God" is really a misnomer. The plan is a remarkably utilitarian approach to city construction.
...although you can also argue there was considerable prophetic wisdom involved in making the streets so wide.
Perhaps, since Salt Lake City streets have become very well adapted to vehicular traffic as well as various forms of light rail. However Young's specification of 130 feet (or 135 in some accounts) is attributed only to his experiments in what was required to turn a wagon and team. If he claimed any sort of prophetic wisdom on that point, it hasn't survived in the record. And so Occam doesn't require us to attribute anything Godly to that particular pearl. It may have been divine foresight or simply human foresight.
I'm not sure if the only motivation is "to make it easier on us."
It may not be consciously so. But to make alcohol more difficult to obtain will have the effect of making that behavior less pronounced.
Drinking has long been thought of as a social problem...
Drunkenness is a problem; drinking is not. The two are not the same.
And all jurisdictions in the U.S. that I am aware of have laws against public drunkenness and recognize drunkenness socially as a problem even where it does not violate the law. If we enjoin in all amounts any behavior that is considered socially hazardous in excess then we would have quite a list.
I think Utah's somewhat provincial institutional attitude toward alcohol consumption may have something to do with the continued appointment to the state alcohol control board of people who don't actually drink alcohol. I'm not really interested in what teetotalers have to say on the subject of what drinking alcohol does to people. They may have an opinion, but I wouldn't necessarily consider it a well-informed one compared to what others might offer.
There was enormous pressure prior to 2002 to relax some of the more draconian liquor laws, likely due to the impending visit of several tens of thousands of Olympics visitors from across the world, all of whom manage to have lawful and orderly societies where alcohol may be consumed within reason according to laws that avoid the problem of drunkenness without the unnavigable intricacies of Utah laws and taxes.
...and the motivation in restricting it may be the same as, say, the motivation in restricting firearms, or requiring people to be licensed to operate motor vehicles.
But all states license firearms and drivers, and all states license and regulate the sale, possession, and consumption of alcohol. It is illegal, for example, in nearly all states to serve alcohol to a person who is drunk. The problem is that Utah administers the trafficking in alcohol markedly differently than all other states, for no other apparent reason than to make it more difficult for all persons to obtain alcohol, not merely for those who would likely use it to public detriment.
I'll wager most LDS Utahns don't know anything about their state's liquor laws and how they compare to other states'. You should go talk to some local hoteliers, restauranteurs, or other legitimate and well-licensed distributors of alcohol to hear how backward, deleterious, useless, and generally poorly-administered the liquor policy in Utah really is. These businessmen are people who are committed to a responsible approach to alcohol, not drunkards or uncaring peddlers of pain and suffering. And they are fairly united in their opinion that Utah's policy on liquor is aimed squarely at making it artificially as difficult as humanly possible to obtain alcohol in any amount for any purpose.
The classification of liquor-serving establishments is needlessly complex, horrendously expensive to accommodate, and in some cases even contradictory. Some places actually fall under multiple categories, and are variously licensed and regulated as one or the other, almost guaranteeing that every single alcohol-serving establishing in the state will, at one time or another, be heavily fined or lose its license despite its best efforts to comply with the law.
These are not common practices of controlling alcohol. If you argue that Utah is doing no more than any responsible society would do in order to restrict the use of alcohol, then you have to answer why other jurisdictions don't follow Utah's model. The answer, apparently, is that Utah is governed by a citizenship composed of an LDS majority, and that their special discomfort with alcohol, not society's discomfort in general, is what causes this special behavior.
Do you claim that we are missing out on moral fiber when compared with the Dutch because marijuana and prostitution are illegal here but legal there?
Yes, in a sense. If one does not patronize a prostitute in Salt Lake City, there is some question as to whether that's because one fears the wrath of God or instead because he fears the wrath of Rocky Anderson (our mayor). If one is free to do something but chooses not to, then one has clearly established motives.
Think of it as free agency.
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 26, 2006 15:52:33 GMT -4
I'm not as happy as I was yesterday with my message above.
I know some club owners and restauranteurs in Salt Lake City who were quite successful and responsible in other places (e.g., Los Angeles, Seattle) but whose businesses failed in Salt Lake simply because they couldn't stay afloat amid the capricious and confusing enforcement of state liquor laws. It would be dishonest if I didn't list that vicarious frustration as a bias.
There appears to be a much higher barrier to operating a business involving alcoholic beverages in Utah than exists in any other state. The methods of enforcement seem intended toward making it easier not to sell alcohol at all than to sell it lawfully. That's obviously a subjective opinion.
Jason, I don't want to bait you into justifying Utah's liquor laws in general. As I said, I don't drink alcohol, so personally I don't care whether alcohol is easy to get or difficult -- except that I do like cooking occasionally with wine and it's annoying to have to find a state liquor store that's open and has what I want at a reasonable price. That's an inconvenience I can live with. But I have many friends who are responsible, conscientious consumers of alcohol and other friends who are responsible, law-abiding (to the best of their ability) suppliers of alcoholic beverages. I have to listen to their complaints as a condition of their company and friendship. I don't have a vested interest, but I do have an interest.
The question in my mind is not whether alcohol should be generally regulated by law; I agree that it should. It has the potential to be misused by individuals to the detriment of society as a whole, and so we as an orderly society have a responsibility to put laws into place regulating its use. In my opinion those laws should prohibit the misuse, and therefore enjoin misuse without undue hardship on those who would use it responsibly.
I believe Utah goes much further than prohibiting the misuse of alcohol. I believe Utah is trying, within constitutional limits, to be a dry state. If we agree for the sake of argument that this is what Utah is trying to do, then we might consider why.
Let's start with the premise that Utah is inhabited in much greater proportion than other states by Mormons. Where I live in Salt Lake City, there is not an LDS majority. Nor would I expect that to be true in Ogden (near the Air Force base). But in most other communities I would expect the majority of inhabitants to be LDS, and I would wager that the population as a whole in Utah has an LDS majority. And if not, at least there is a far larger percentage of Mormons in Utah's population than in any other state's population.
From that we can infer that Utah, as a whole, consumes less alcohol per capita than other states. It assumes, of course, that those people who identify themselves as LDS are in fact good Mormons and aren't down at Port O' Call on Saturday nights boozing it up with their pals.
There's no evidence that non-Mormons in Utah as a group consume more alcohol per capita than others in the nation, nor that they are collectively less conscientious. This amounts to a smaller-than-average percentage (compared to total state population) of all consumers of alcohol, and a smaller-than-average percentage (again, of entire population) of problem drinkers.
In short, if ever there was a state that didn't need a whole lot of regulation on alcohol, it's Utah. The population is naturally inclined to avoid it at all, more so than any other state.
It's said that you don't have to ban pornographic magazines in a town where everyone is blind. Now that doesn't mean you don't outlaw murder even in towns were no murder has been committed; you still want the ability to punish the first murderer. But the point is that you don't need to go overboard regulating and enjoining behavior to a greater extent than elsewhere if that behavior is less likely naturally to occur anyway.
So it doesn't make a lot of sense to argue that Utah's liquor laws are so stringent and restrictive because the relevant society's need requires it. You don't need artificial restrictions if the society is likely to restrict itself naturally. In fact one of common civic-oriented beliefs of Mormons historically was that you didn't need a lot of government if people just naturally knew what was right and what was wrong. That's actually an echo of G. Washington's theory on the civic responsibility of a democracy.
The majority in Utah has enacted strict liquor laws, yet the majority in Utah does not consume alcohol and does not suffer those effects. Utah as a whole is not likely to suffer as much from alcohol as any other state, and in fact is likely as a whole to suffer considerably less. Thus the likely motivation is to enjoin the behavior of the minority who do consume alcohol, less by outlawing the misuse of it, and more by making it more difficult for all consumers and purveyors of alcohol. This smacks of making life for Mormons in Utah more comfortable by enjoining the behavior of drinkers more so than they are enjoined in other states composed of drinkers and non-drinkers.
And to me this looks like laws that were enacted because they could be, not because they should be. Why is drinking alcohol in Utah so much worse an activity than it is in, say, Wyoming?
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jul 26, 2006 16:44:33 GMT -4
Unfortunately this isn't a topic I know enough about to discuss at any length. You pretty much had my number, Jay, when you guessed that most Mormons in Utah really have no idea how the local alcohol laws work or how they differ from those of other states.
I have heard a couple of friends complain about how wierd the laws involving private clubs are, but I don't know any restaurant owners.
I do recall hearing that Utah's vote was the deciding vote in repealing the 18th ammendment (Prohibition). And I have heard that some of the laws in the Bible Belt are comparable in their wierdness.
I believe the figures I have heard on State population are that roughly 60% are LDS. Salt Lake City itself has the lowest percentage of church members and the Provo area has the highest (around 90%, I believe). This probably explains why Salt Lake's mayor is a liberal Democrat and non-member.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jul 26, 2006 17:14:40 GMT -4
I am still wrestling with the idea that a society that bans a particular vice is depriving its citizens of the moral strength they would gain in resisting that vice if it were instead readily available.
On the one hand I agree. I believe it is necessary to have evil present in the world in order to make a meaningful choice for good. Therefore it is necessary to have the opportunity to chose immoral or evil actions.
On the other hand it seems counter-intuitive to say that a society that does not permit certain immoral behaviors (such as prostitution or recreational drug use) is morally weaker than one which does permit them.
If a society were to freely allow murder, for instance, one might rightfully say that a man who choses not to murder his enemies has the moral highground, but doesn't such a society as a whole show a lack of respect for human life in allowing murder to go unpunished?
Edit: And on the gripping hand, drug dealers in part are criminals because they have contributed to the plight of the addict. If the State makes a vice freely available (say, by sponsoring a state lottery), are they not at least in part responsible for the misery that results from those who abuse the vice (such as gambling addicts who spend more than they can spare on lottery tickets)?
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 26, 2006 18:30:22 GMT -4
Unfortunately this isn't a topic I know enough about to discuss at any length. You pretty much had my number, Jay, when you guessed that most Mormons in Utah really have no idea how the local alcohol laws work or how they differ from those of other states.
And that's why my conscience kicked in this morning and told me it would be oh-so-easy for this to descend into a subjective debate over some particular law, which wasn't really the topic that interested me.
For most Utahns the liquor laws are a sort of fait accomplit. Many of today's citizens had no part in passing them, and they are simply the long-standing law of the land. The majority do not have to deal with them since they neither purchase alcohol nor frequent the establishments most affected by the laws. It doesn't matter to most Mormons whether it's lawful to order a double martini because none of them would be ordering a double martini even if it were allowed.
I guess in a perverse sort of way, that's my point. But not really. You can argue that the majority of Utahns have absolutely no idea what senseless burden they've imposed on other people, but in actual fact today's majority isn't necessary the ones who have actually carried out that imposition. The more interesting question, in my mind, is what other sorts of burdens might they consider imposing, and what is the line of reasoning -- in the abstract -- that happens in a Christian's mind as he stands in the voting booth.
When you act as a citizen in a democracy you have to keep in mind that you are participating in governing a populace that isn't expected to be homogenous. It's expected to exhibit some diversity in beliefs and behavior. If you contemplate passing a law enjoining behavior that you don't agree with because it violates your religious principles, I think you have to think carefully about whether that's an appropriate use of civic power.
I have heard a couple of friends complain about how wierd the laws involving private clubs are...
They are. The problem is less the laws than the capricious enforcement of them. There is no such thing as a bar in Utah. There is no place in Utah where you can just walk in and order a martini (double or otherwise). Every establishment whose primary purpose is the sale of hard liquor (excluding "beer bars") must be a private club and must be operated as a non-profit organization. The latter restriction still allows the operator to make a "profit" (a "surplus" in NPO terminology), but the law limits what he can do with it and how much of it he can keep as his own earnings. The former restriction requires everyone that the establishment serves to be a dues-paying member of the club. Clubs cannot advertise that they serve liquor, and depending on the classification some establishments cannot keep liquor bottles where customers can see them.
A loophole in the law lets a private club member have as many "guests" as he wants. So in practice anyone can go into a club and order a cocktail as long as a paying member is willing to sponsor him. How this usually works is that a member signs in at the front desk and is available to sponsor visitors that night. You simply sign your name and become the guest of so-and-so whom you've never met and who (often) may not even be on the premises all the time you are.
The bigger problem is capricious enforcement. That loophole and others let clubs in Utah actually operate a little more like clubs in other states. It makes the harsh and contradictory laws a little easier to swallow. Unfortunately the alcohol control board can step in an any time and for any reason and suddenly decide to enforce the letter of the law, often leaving club owners with little recourse. The problem with being lenient and good-natured about the law for the most part is that the enforcers have all the effective authority, not the law. That is, the liquor law agents have more say than the law itself in how the business operates.
And we're not talking necessarily about meaningful violations. I agree that if a club sold alcohol to a minor, for example, or served someone who was already intoxicated, that there should be a legitimate punishment. Those constitute the misuse of alcohol, something that society has an interest in curbing.
But rather the violations are usually those involving the arcane or secondary appendages to the law -- the stuff that has little to do with whether alcohol is actually being abused. The liquor laws are nit-picky in some cases and ambiguous in others. The nit-pickiness (for no real purpose) means it's almost a given that every establishment is operating in violation of some arcane provision. (It's sort of like the traffic code. No one really obeys every single traffic law, and it's not a problem. But if a cop really wanted to pull you over, he could nail you for not signalling your lane change. Now imagine that the penalty for most traffic violations was suspension or revocation of your driver's license.) And where the laws are vague or contradictory, the owner may be doing his level best to operate lawfully and conscientiously, but simply be judged later to have been subject to a different provision that he did not think he had to follow.
Any time you have a situation where complex and contradictory laws exist, and where they are selectively enforced, you have a fertile environment for corruption. I have anecdotal evidence of corruption in Utah alcohol enforcement.
You have to ask yourself whether these laws are really serving the public good. Now to be fair, a great deal has improved since 2000 or 2001. Restaurants can now hand patrons a wine list. (Previously the patron had to ask for it specifically.) But the laws are still arbitrarily enforced.
...but I don't know any restaurant owners.
The pertinent law is the so-called 30-percent rule. If a business considers itself a restaurant, and applies to the state for a restaurant's liquor license, that establishment is only allowed to do 30% of its business in the sale of alcohol. The problem again is the capricious enforcement. A restauranteur literally has to maintain a running count of his liquor and food sales at any given moment and may have to refuse to sell some patron alcohol if the sale would put him over the limit.
The standard method of enforcement is suspension or revocation of the liquor license, which can suddenly put a tremendous financial hardship on a restaurant whose only violation may have been a trivial excession of an arbitrary limit. Harsh penalties for trivial innocent violations does little to actually curb the misuse of alcohol, but it has a tremendous chilling effect on the business of selling alcohol. Some restaurants simply choose not to sell alcohol in any amount rather than deal with the strict accounting.
I do recall hearing that Utah's vote was the deciding vote in repealing the 18th ammendment (Prohibition).
I didn't know that.
And I have heard that some of the laws in the Bible Belt are comparable in their wierdness.
Well, I grew up in the Bible Belt and I never saw anything like Utah's laws. Some weird laws, yes, but isolated ones here and there. Nothing like the systematic repression of alcohol at all levels.
This probably explains why Salt Lake's mayor is a liberal Democrat and non-member.
Definitely. Salt Lake City has long been the site of a sort of political backlash. The joke goes that Utah may be as red as it gets, but Salt Lake City is blue -- or at least a healthy purple. And so Salt Lake City traditionally elects a Democratic mayor.
The last campaign was atypical. Rocky's opponent let slip the implication that because he was LDS and Republican, LDS voters should be predisposed to vote for him. That's the quickest way to alienate LDS voters; Mormons voted for Rocky in droves probably just to send a message to other LDS candidates: "We will not vote for you just because you belong to our church." Good for them.
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 26, 2006 20:16:08 GMT -4
I am still wrestling with the idea that a society that bans a particular vice is depriving its citizens of the moral strength they would gain in resisting that vice if it were instead readily available.
That's because it's a hard question.
The answer lies partly in the notion of what constitutes a vice. At one end of the spectrum you have behavior such as murder, one of the worst acts one person can perpetrate upon another. It is generally agreed that an orderly society should prohibit its participants from murdering each other.
At the other end of the spectrum you have behavior such as singing. In some cases singing is also a heinous act perpetrated by one upon another, but we generally accept that singing is not a vice but rather an activity appropriately enjoyed freely by members of an orderly society.
So now that we have activities generally agreed to be bad and others generally agreed to be harmless, we have to look at the stuff in the middle over which there may not be much agreement and which may not be considered a vice by everyone.
The question was really where religion should stand on the matter. I sense that you want to make these questions about civic responsibility and duty, but that's not precisely the question that intrigues me. The question that interests me has more to do with how one reconciles one's religious sense of morality with one's imposition of civic responsibility through the democratic process. Basically, does one's religious belief about the morality or immorality of some act legitimately bear on whether one should invoke his democratic powers of governance to enjoin that behavior in the population as a whole? That's the hard question. I don't have the ultimate answer.
Prostitution always makes for a lively test case on this subject.
We classify it as a "victimless" crime, although we can discuss criminality and victimization in conjunction with it. By "victimless" we mean that the parties to the activity are (putatively) giving informed consent to it. In form, prostitution is no different than getting a haircut -- you contract with someone to perform a personal service.
What makes prostitution dangerous as undertaken in many U.S. cities is precisely the unlawful nature of it. That is, we don't outlaw prostitution because it's dangerous to the participants; it's dangerous to the participants because it's outlawed. Because it exists outside the law, it operates according to the law of the jungle. It capitalizes on those who are victimized having no recourse, so a pimp can beat up on his girls and they won't dare turn him in because they're also breaking the law. They won't get medical treatment if they need it because they're afraid of being turned in.
We can know this because while prostitution exists everywhere, it is not illegal everwhere in the U.S. Where it is a legal business we can examine its dynamics and determine which effects from it are the result of its inherent nature and which instead derive from our imposition of illegality upon it. And we generally find that legalized prostitution is no more exploitative or dangerous (to society or to the participants) than any other business that offers a personal service.
So we reject the argument that prostitution is dangerous to society because of all that surrounds it and therefore it must be enjoined. That's a circular argument, because the societal danger derives from the injunction, not from the action.
The real objection from the typical Christian is that the act itself is morally reprehensible. Most Christians believe that sex outside of marriage is forbidden. The fact that people try to make a business out of it is generally immaterial. But in a larger society composed of people holding various beliefs on the licetness of sex we cannot expect the population to agree with us that prostituition constitutes a vice for which a legal injunction should exist.
That is true even if we who oppose extramarital sex are in the majority. The democratic precept of "majority rules" is not a license for the majority to make arbitrary policy. The members of a majority must always keep in mind that they are imposing their will upon everyone (with real penalties attached), and so must take care what they choose to impose.
If we propose a hypothetical religion that believes singing is morally reprehensible and should not be engaged in by its adherents, and we establish that religion as the civil majority in some jurisdiction, then we set up a situation where the majority's will may be imposed upon the minority that believes there's nothing wrong with singing. Among that minority might be some very talented singers who propose to earn money by singing for others who will pay to listen to them.
What would be the religion's motivation in outlawing singing, should they through their majority do so? Would it be to free society of an ill? Or would it be to create a comfortable environment at the arbitrary expense of the minority, in which the majority is simply not presented in any way or form with an activity they have arbitrarily deemed inappropriate?
Consider carefuly the implications of this.
If singing is outlawed, then the law enforcement authorities will be charged with enforcing that law. That means resources allocated from the public coffers to do so. Higher taxes. More prisons.
If singing is outlawed under the pretense that it's a public nuisance, or morally disgusting, or harmful to society, then there will continue to be those who disagree with that rationale and who will continue to sing illicitly. Those who want to hear singing will have to do so in dangerous and uncontrolled environments intended to hide the activity from government authorities. Concert promoters will have to operate outside the law, and they realize that singers will have no recourse should the promoters decide to treat them unfairly. The actions of this society, while well-intentioned, simply create more problems than they solve.
The youth who grow up in this religion in this town may not fully comprehend the distinction between singing as an unlawful activity and singing as an act enjoined by their faith. They will come to identify singers not as people simply with different ideas than theirs, but as criminals with malicious intent. Better in my opinion that parents in this religion should teach their children that there's nothing necessarily or inherently wrong with singing as society sees it, but that they refrain from it as a matter of faith and obedience.
I'm really arguing two points here, and I hope you can sort them out.
The first is that I believe I as a Christian have a duty in society not to use the secular government as a means of setting up an comfortable enclave where my religious beliefs are enforced as the law of the land. I do not believe in legislating my Christian morality even if Christians happen to be in the majority and therefore able to enact such laws.
Murder we know is bad. Singing we know isn't harmful (not morally, but perhaps artistically). So the question for the Christian is whether the thing he is about to vote on, which presumably lies somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, is truly a vice that the law needs to enjoin, or simply something he himself should choose not to do and let others do it within reason as they please.
The second is that I don't think this makes for good religion either. The whole point of the LDS doctrine of free agency is that one must choose to be saved. Happily other Christians believe substantially the same. It doesn't work if it's crammed down your throat and you have little choice. That's the case whether you are compelled to do something under pain of penalty, or where you're simply left with no other choice because all the alternatives have been eliminated. The value in obedience comes from the journey, not the arrival at the destination. Thus the notion that you're going to make things better for you and your children by legislating away everything you consider a vice ultimately undermines faith.
Murder is just as illegal in South Central Los Angeles as it is in Provo, Utah. What makes Provo such a nice place to live compared to L.A.? Is is the laws under which the town operates? Or is it that the people in Provo are simply more collectively committed to a certain lifestyle regardless of what the law demands?
Since enacting laws has side effects, there is no such thing as a "harmless" law. If you don't need to enjoin behavior, don't.
Edit: And on the gripping hand, drug dealers in part are criminals because they have contributed to the plight of the addict.
Possibly. And again we have to carefully distinguish which effects are due to the inherent properties of trafficking in drugs, and which effects derive from the current illegality of trafficking in drugs and would go away if it were legal. There is way too much danger of circular reasoning on this and other points.
What if the drug-dealer were regulated and licensed by the state? What if he were penalized for selling to an addict? The problem we have as a society is that these and other activities won't go away just because we pass laws against them. They will simply move underground where they are subject to barbarian rules of behavior and wholly outside of our oversight. If the State makes a vice freely available (say, by sponsoring a state lottery), are they not at least in part responsible for the misery that results from those who abuse the vice...
Well, there's a separate question in my mind about whether the state should be participating in such activities as opposed merely to licensing and regulating it. But let's save that for another time. I suspect you and I agree on whether that's an appropriate activity for the state.
The separate question is the extent to which some vendor or arbiter is complicit in the abusive or addictive behavior of private participants in the activity he administers. Is the bartender complicit in the increasing inebriation of his clients? Yes, he is. Every state requires a bartender to refuse to sell alcohol to someone who is drunk. Now it's easier to tell whether someone is drunk than to tell whether he's a compulsive gambler. But if need be, there are ways to control, for example, the sale of lottery tickets (e.g., presenting an I.D. that is checked against buying records). It's not categorically wrong to license and regulate those who control the supply in order to help curb abuse.
But again the larger problem is one of use versus abuse. Because some people abuse a service, shall we curtail it for everyone, including those who merely use it and do so responsibly? Should we forbid all television because some people watch it to excess? Should we restrict all sugar because some people get fat? Should we enjoin all gambling because some people do it too much? Should we control all access to web boards because some people spend too much time on them?
The general theory of government says we should outlaw as little as possible and as least restrictively as possible. Blanket prohibitions where careful distinctions should be drawn instead don't really solve society's problems. They're just easily-enacted quick fixes.
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Post by Joe Durnavich on Jul 26, 2006 23:04:46 GMT -4
What would be the religion's motivation in outlawing singing, should they through their majority do so? Would it be to free society of an ill? Or would it be to create a comfortable environment at the arbitrary expense of the minority, in which the majority is simply not presented in any way or form with an activity they have arbitrarily deemed inappropriate?
Are you framing your examples in terms of a non-constitutional democracy where there are no guaranteed rights? The singers, for example, could retaliate by organizing themselves into a voting majority and voting to outlaw the religion. We could then question if the affected members should accept the new laws that ban their religion.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jul 27, 2006 12:19:31 GMT -4
What makes prostitution dangerous as undertaken in many U.S. cities is precisely the unlawful nature of it. That is, we don't outlaw prostitution because it's dangerous to the participants; it's dangerous to the participants because it's outlawed. I disagree. I believe that prostitution is dangerous to the participants whether or not it is illegal. Granted it's more dangerous when it's also illegal, but I feel that it is not a healthy behavior no matter how it is regulated or practiced. I feel that treating another as an object to gratify one's own desires does psychological harm to both you and them. Regularly engaging the services of prostitutes could do serious damage to one's ability to emphasize with others. Having sex with someone is not equivalent to having them give you a haircut, and never can be. So in my view it's not that it's immoral just because God said so - it's immoral because it actually does harm to the participants. The reason for outlawing it is that it is dangerous.
That's where your whole hypothetical on singing falls down for me. While I do believe there are things that God has commanded that could have gone other ways - like which day of the week is proper for worship - when it comes to prohibitions against behavior I tend to think that God only explicitly prohibits behavior that is genuinely harmful. I can't view a hypothetical religion that considers singing immoral in the same way I can view a real-life religion that views prostitution as immoral because singing and prostitution are in my view as fundamentally different as singing and murder. Of course I have to say that the hypothetical anti-singers would be wrong to impose their agenda on everyone else. In my view it's basically a straw man argument.
The first is that I believe I as a Christian have a duty in society not to use the secular government as a means of setting up an comfortable enclave where my religious beliefs are enforced as the law of the land. I do not believe in legislating my Christian morality even if Christians happen to be in the majority and therefore able to enact such laws. If I thought the a church was using secular government merely to convenience following their beliefs - like legislating that stores must be closed on Sunday, for instance - then I could see a problem. When they are encouraging legislation against activities that have little or no positive benefits to any users and cause real harm to at least a minority then I don't see much need to argue.
The second is that I don't think this makes for good religion either. The whole point of the LDS doctrine of free agency is that one must choose to be saved. Happily other Christians believe substantially the same. It doesn't work if it's crammed down your throat and you have little choice. That's the case whether you are compelled to do something under pain of penalty, or where you're simply left with no other choice because all the alternatives have been eliminated. The value in obedience comes from the journey, not the arrival at the destination. Thus the notion that you're going to make things better for you and your children by legislating away everything you consider a vice ultimately undermines faith. I guess I agree with you in principle but disagree in practice. The fact of the matter is that it's impossible (at least currently) to completely remove vice from a society through regulation, and thus there is no danger in actually arriving at the situation you describe - a society where everyone is forced to obey all laws because there is no alternative. Therefore, in a society that outlaws vice what an individual may lose in learning experience from a lack of opportunity commit it is made up for by the society as a whole not suffering from those who would dangerously abuse the choice. Society and the individuals that make it up come out ahead in the end.
If it were possible to completely remove the possibility of making a choice through legislation or technological means (as in A Clockwork Orange) then we would have a problem.
Since enacting laws has side effects, there is no such thing as a "harmless" law. If you don't need to enjoin behavior, don't. I agree generally with this idea. If there is no real reason to prohibit it then it's generally better not to. The disagreement is in what constitutes a valid cause to prohibit behavior and what the motivations behind current prohibitions are.
But again the larger problem is one of use versus abuse. Because some people abuse a service, shall we curtail it for everyone, including those who merely use it and do so responsibly? Should we forbid all television because some people watch it to excess? Should we restrict all sugar because some people get fat? Should we enjoin all gambling because some people do it too much? Should we control all access to web boards because some people spend too much time on them? We would have to look at what the detrimental effects of abuse of the behavior are when compared to the benefits it provides, and how likely it is that individuals will fall into an abusive pattern. Heroin use out. TV watching in.
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 27, 2006 13:24:31 GMT -4
Are you framing your examples in terms of a non-constitutional democracy where there are no guaranteed rights?
No, not consciously. My point is that in a practical democracy certain rights will always be guaranteed, but certain others will not be even though they are enjoyed. The right to engage in certain behavior -- while not explicity guaranteed -- is allowed simply because there is no compelling reason to forbid it. But in theory the majority could forbid it.
The example is meant to guide a discussion on what might be acceptable grounds for voting a certain way. And by expressing my personal belief on the subject and giving my reasons for it, I don't mean to establish that as the objectively correct decision. Jason, for example, might just as validly argue that if his religious beliefs compel him to hold a certain position, he is well within his rights as a citizen in a democracy to rely upon whatever beliefs he deems appropriate in order to make his civic decision. The Founding Fathers established that "everyone" could vote (that is, white land-owning males) but made no provision on why one should vote a certain way. That decision was left up to us to regulate or not to regulate, and that's why I think it's important to discuss it.
The point is especially salient in the context of this thread, which is religious persecution. There are examples in which both sides of religious debates may have used secular power to advance their cause. Specifically the anti-Mormons through the ACLU are accused of using the courts to embarrass the LDS church over a botched land-use agreement, and the Mormons are accused of using liquor laws to discriminate against non-Mormons who drink.
The singers, for example, could retaliate by organizing themselves into a voting majority and voting to outlaw the religion.
In a democracy where the right to practice religion were considered inviolate, this would indeed be a course of action, and we would need want to debate whether either side were properly motivated. In the United States such a law would not be upheld, and so that's another form of the debate. Where we discuss the use of secular power to strike blows in a religious debate we have to be more careful about how secular power and hidden religious and anti-religious motivations come into play. And I don't think one side or the other is necessarily more to blame than the other; I believe both sides (at least in Utah) use secular authority to one extent or the other to further their religious and anti-religious agendas.
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