Caveat: You Might Find This Post Boring and Technical

I was recently telling a friend about how on my mission I (sort of) knowingly lied to people all the time about the LDS church. I told people that if they got a testimony that the Book of Mormon was true/the word of God, then they would know that the LDS church is true, too. While I believed (and still believe) both those things, I recognized even then that the latter doesn't automatically follow from the former; the Book of Mormon's veracity alone could just as plausibly fit with the view that the Community of Christ (once known as the Reorganized LDS Church) is true, or that the FLDS church is true, or lots of other things. But I didn't spell that out for any of my investigators. Some people might be mad at me for lying to convert people to my religion, but I didn't and still don't have a problem with it. Here's why.

Essentially, what I did was leave out a caveat: that there are other possible inferences to draw from a testimony of the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon being true does make it more likely that the LDS church is true, and it is a necessary condition of the LDS church being true. But I didn't spell out every step in my argument, and I didn't define every term precisely at the outset. I was presenting a concise version of (what I took--and take--to be) the truth. I admit, it's inherently paternalistic. But the thing is, it's also necessary. I challenge you to make any argument without leaving anything out. It can't be done. Every story we tell, every argument we make, every truth claim we assert--they're all partial and selective, based on certain assumptions and concealing certain necessary steps. (Lewis Carroll demonstrated this principle beautifully in the field of logic with his short story What the Tortoise Said to Achilles -- text and wiki summary.)

Of course, that doesn't mean you can just leave out enormous steps in any argument and consider yourself justified--if I told you that my gas station had the lowest prices of any place anywhere nearby, but I was defining "anywhere nearby" to mean "within 10 feet of my station," that's grossly misleading and not OK. But my point is that any words we use to express ourselves lie somewhere on the spectrum of misleading--the deception may be inconsequential or it may be significant, but some amount of it is inevitable. I view my statement about the Book of Mormon proving the LDS church's veracity as sitting much more towards the former, innocuous end of the spectrum. Of course, what one considers a minor or major deception depends on a lot of things and is ultimately a value judgment; personally, I feel good about still testifying that the Book of Mormon's truthfulness is one of the proofs that the LDS church is true. Maybe you disagree and think the deception inherent in that claim is unacceptably large, and that's OK. Anyway, I don't think anyone relied purely on a testimony of the Book of Mormon and nothing else when they joined the church--if there isn't a spiritual testimony of other aspects that are actually unique to the LDS church I don't think people will choose to convert.

This issue comes to mind for me all the time now after a few years of law school. Law is in many ways an exercise in trying to pin down words into one specific meaning, which is why contracts are so long and detailed, and why I personally have started getting into the bad habit of using caveats with everything I say. It comes from a good place--I want to minimize the deception I wreak!--but as a byproduct it can increase my annoyance factor and even impede actual communication when I'm in an informal (read: almost every) situation. I'm trying to talk (and write!) using fewer caveats and nuances. It helps me remember when they're actually important and when I just need to let the human condition, with all its inherent foibles and shortcomings, just be.

What is a Bigot, Really?

Honest question here: What is a bigot? I'd really like people to leave thoughts and comments.

Some further framing of the question: dictionary.com defines 'bigot' as "a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion." (One of their example sentences is "To be a bigot means that you hold negative views of a group despite evidence.") Google's define function refers me to 'bigoted,' which is then defined as either "Obstinately convinced of the superiority or correctness of one's own opinions and prejudiced against those who hold different opinions" or "Expressing or characterized by prejudice and intolerance." Merriam-Webster defines a bigot as "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially: one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance."

Of course, I'm really asking this in the context of the Supreme Court's recent hearing of arguments in two high-profile gay marriage cases. A lot of claims of bigotry have been thrown around, mainly by supporters of marriage equality about their ideological opponents, but sometimes vice versa as well. I don't think many people would disagree that there do exist bigots who oppose marriage equality (exhibit one: the Westboro Baptist Church), but does that label apply to most of the people who are against gay marriage? Surely a simple disagreement on policy doesn't equate with bigotry--otherwise every opponent on any issue would deserve the label. There seems to need to be some kind of animus against a group, utter intolerance of opponents, and a head-in-the-sand disregard of evidence that could disprove one's own views.

Depriving LGBT people the right to marry (and the concomitant benefits afforded by state and federal laws, not to mention society) could be a sign of animus towards that class, it's true. And I am very unconvinced by conservative claims about gay marriage harming children--the evidence seems to me to point quite strongly in the other direction. But I'm not sure there's utter intolerance or real hatred motivating the people I know who oppose marriage equality. It's largely a conservative, in the Burkean sense, hesitance to allow a significant change to a revered institution. While I agree that that ends up perpetuating harm against the people who are less privileged under the status quo, it does so indirectly, not as its primary purpose. (Maybe that shouldn't matter, though?)

I think I want to reserve the term bigot for the people who sic dogs on protesters (or otherwise condone violence against their political opponents), or who disown their children if they belong to or associate with those "others," or who use slurs towards a group, etc. I don't deny that there are people who oppose marriage equality who do some of those things and thus deserve the label of bigot, but I don't think that voting in favor of Prop 8 automatically qualifies one as a bigot. But then, maybe I'm hedging because I count many, many people as friends and loved ones who oppose marriage equality--and naturally I don't want to label them as anything so ugly as 'bigots' unless I have to.

For those reading this who support marriage equality, do you agree with that take? Or are all the people who disagree necessarily bigots? If not, what does it take to qualify as a bigot in regards to this issue? Do you ever worry that the term 'bigot' is being thrown around so much it's losing meaning?

For those reading this who oppose marriage equality, what do you think a bigot is? Do you see people on your side who qualify? Have you seen people on the other side who qualify? (Do all marriage equality proponents qualify?) And finally, do you think it was possible for people who opposed interracial marriage in 1965 to not be bigots, or is that an issue where opposition equaled bigotry? What about someone who is against it today?

I'm really curious. Please leave thoughts and further questions in the comments.

How to Get Married in 12 Months

A friend of mine gave me a checklist of things to do in order to get married in just one year (as well as some words of wisdom at no extra charge). It's tongue in cheek and it always gives me a laugh. So here ya go, Internet!

1) Embrace your nerdiness
2) Realize that everyone is in the business of fashion (i.e., dress and groom well)
3) Take girls out on dates [I think this could easily be emended to taking whoever you want out on dates, regardless of your or their gender--let's not be too androcentric and heteronormative here, eh?]
4) Make out with them when you're both having a good time.
5) Continue making out while getting to know them better
6) Date them when after making out you find out they're not crazy.
7) Marry one of them when you date for like 9 months and you still really like them.

7 steps.
You got this.
Numbers 1 through 4 are key to get the ball rolling.
Numbers 5 through 7 are genuinely tricky.

Google Reader is dead. Long live Google Reader!

It's stupid, I recognize that. But I'm almost distraught at the news that Google Reader is being shut down in a few months. No point in explaining it if you don't already know it, but it's the best RSS feed reader out there as far as I was concerned. And while there are replacements out there, the simple, clean interface and the perfect integration with my Google account just can't be replaced.

But why should I even care? I should probably be grateful: maybe this will help me be less addicted to the internet. And obviously in the grand scheme of things, this is obviously the smallest of small inconveniences. It's basically a parody of #firstworldproblems that I'm even writing any of this. Again, I recognize that. And yet . . .

We don't think it's that weird for people to have an emotional attachment to a car, or a house, or a local grocery store, or any of a number of other inanimate objects. I remember reading a pretty moving virtual memorial service for a chapel that had burned down back in 2009! And there's the classic Mormon example of holy nostalgia for otherwise normal places that were the scene of some transcendental experiences. So why not a nonphysical thing? Now don't misunderstand this analogy. I'm not suggesting that Google Reader was in any sense holy or really even all that great on its own. It was wonderfully functional, but I'm not trying to deify a web app.

No, I'm just saying that Google Reader was a simple background for most of the most interesting stuff I've read over the last few years. (And Molly Mormon Democrat can confirm that that's a lot :) ) It's like the road you walked to school on for years--it wasn't anything particularly special in itself, but when it gets bulldozed to make a new housing development or a highway, you miss it. Something that was simple, comfortable, and dependable is gone.

I'm sure people thought it was stupid for an audience member to be emotionally affected by a play the first time that happened. ("They're just actors! As in, everything they said was not real. You realize that, right?!") Or by a TV show. ("It's a stupid half-hour vehicle for showing you commercials!") Or whatever. This century it's going to be websites. I mean, even if you didn't use Reader, can you imagine the day when Google will be shut down? It's almost unfathomable today, but it will be happen. And you might not be upset, but you'll probably at least be annoyed about having to find a new search engine (or whatever we're using then for some vaguely analogous purpose). Or when Gmail closes its doors. It's just kinda weird to think about. It will happen someday. Of course life will go on, but a little bit of who you were as a human was wrapped up in something you used extensively and reflexively. And that's how I feel today. Just weird. And yes, a bit sheepish about feeling so weird.

And it's going to be especially weird to see this very post pop up in my Reader feed in about 30 seconds, when I open it again in the Pavlovian response that is built into my fingers when I'm using the internet . . . :)

A Random Thought on the Day of Obama's Second Inauguration

I was recently on a plane, and while I was reading books the entire flight, there were small TV screens up above that were showing a few TV shows. Every once in a while I'd glance up and catch a few seconds of soundless video. At one point, the show on was 1600 Penn, which I knew was about a family in the White House (with the president played, as is only fitting, by Bill Pullman--he who gave us the greatest presidential performance ever caught on film).

Anyway, the moment I happened to see from 1600 Penn was of the actor Andre Holland, who plays the White House Press Secretary, standing at a podium in the West Wing taking reporters' questions. And the first thought to pop into my head was that, even though I technically knew that Bill Pullman was the president in the show, Andre Holland must be the president--because, you see, Andre Holland happens to be black and thus look more like Barack Obama than Bill Pullman does.

The small fact that my brain subconsciously assumed the black person was the president seems in some way huge to me. Of course we all knew in 2008 that anyone--black, white, Asian, latino, male, female, etc.--could be president, until January 20, 2009, for the most part we all subconsciously pictured "The President" as a white dude. Because that's how it had always been.

Say what you will about his policies; I'm immensely grateful that Barack Obama has helped us all understand more viscerally that anyone really can be president.

Les Mis, Christianity, and (Lack of) Nuance

Critical reviews of the recent film version of Les Miserables, directed by Tom Hooper, are somewhat middling. Some people hate it, and while others think it's quite good almost everyone seems to throw out the word "bombast" or decry the straightforward, hitting-you-over-the-head way of telling the story. Close-ups everywhere!

Buzz and Woody were too cerebral to enjoy a great movie

To be clear, I'm a wannabe film snob myself, and I tend to agree more with critics than not regarding movies. I like nuance and artistic storytelling and all of that, and highly value it. But I can't disagree more with the reviews that take Les Mis to task on this issue. The reason is that I think Les Mis is a very Christian work, and Christianity (as perhaps most religions do) has a long, proud, and deliberate tradition of eschewing nuance--and for good reason.

I feel like it all started with the 12 disciples. Christ dropped some pretty strong hints, especially seen in retrospect, that he was going to be resurrected after he was killed. But his disciples just didn't get it, or at least didn't believe it. It took them seeing the empty tomb and handling his resurrected body, scars and all, for them to be convinced. The gospel writers thus took pains to make it as obvious as possible for all their readers, who by and large wouldn't have that physical confirmation of the risen Lord, that Christ really was the Son of God and really did rise on the third day etc. etc. etc. They try to hit you over the head with it as much as possible!

Of course, there is plenty of nuance and depth and artistic things to be found in the story of Christ, and those should be sought after. But they are not the point. The point is "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . . And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." Christianity is meant to be universal; we want the earth to "be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." That can sound pretentious and overzealous and haughty, and I'm all for expressing it as tactfully as possible--but that really is the goal.

This film version of Les Mis, to me, embraced that unnuanced approach to Christianity and good versus evil. It hits you over the head with Jean Valjean as Christ figure, with the transformative power of mercy, with the rash beauty and tragedy of youthful courage, and (most importantly) it hits you over the head with the message of love. The end, with the final lines of "To love another person is the see the face of God" and the reprise of "Do You Hear the People Sing?," only this time with lyrics of spiritual--not political--revolution, were perfect to me. Those who have died--whether after a long life of struggle to do what's right despite murky issues of stealing bread to live and negotiating extra time with justice, or after being killed by political forces that robbed them of promising lives, or after a death brought on by the most degrading and inhumane circumstances brought on by the uncaring of others--"will live again in freedom in the garden of the Lord." Enemies from all sides of a failed uprising one day "will walk behind the ploughshare / They will put away the sword."

That Christian message deserves sometimes to be shouted from the rooftops, nuance be damned. I wholeheartedly agree with one meta-reviewer who made this same point, albeit in secular tones: "The point of Les Misérables is its pure bombast: the way that it steamrolls any suggestion of cynicism with yet another soaring refrain." That's what this film did, at least for me. It embraces the truth of passion (and The Passion) for a moment without worrying about whether it's entirely rational or whether sophisticated people will scoff. Les Mis, like the Christianity with which it is so tightly enmeshed, is best enjoyed by the salt of the earth, the childlike, the trusting. This is one time I'm happy to go against the critics.

America when will you be angelic?

If you've ever wondered where the subtitle of my blog ("mystical visions and cosmic vibrations") comes from, you're in for a treat. It's from probably my favorite poem ever: America, by Allen Ginsberg.



It's basically my exact thought process.