A Soft Answer

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Call it a period of mourning, a time of introspection to avoid embarrassing my oversea brothers and sisters, trying to get a real life, or a simple hiatus. Regardless, posting will stop here for a time except to catch up on updates to LDS and Mormon Blogs.

However, in the meantime here are some silver linings to ponder in the aftermath of Election 2008.

• No more hearing “my friends.”
• “the next time a hurricane strikes, it will be the Democrats’ fault“
• the world will start loving us again
• it could have been worse
• Hollywood can start making patriotic films again
• it’s pretty remarkable to elect a Black president
• Provo was spared, as angry Republicans decided not to riot
• McCain staffer sniping has promptly reassured us that their campaign deserved to lose
• I guess I will understand how “dissent is patriotic”
• no more presidential polls until at least Spring 2009

And finally, proof that there is life after the election:

One of the new blogs I recently added to LDS and Mormon Blogs is Brick of Mormon Stories. It’s author was kind enough to send me a copy of his book, conveniently titled Brick of Mormon Stories.

As you may gather, the book is a collection of 26 stories from the Book of Mormon illustrated with LEGO enacted scenes. It may sound silly but I thought it was pretty cool and my family has enjoyed it (It may help if you are a LEGO enthusiast).

My eight and six year-olds especially like the book and only wish they were more pictures. Brick of Mormon Stories seems like it would be a good stepping stone to help out children starting to read the Book of Mormon. While we have been reading the illustrated Book of Mormon Stories the children can now read the actual text from the Book of Mormon but with entertaining photos.

I recommend you check out Book of Mormon Stories and get a copy yourself if you’re interested (I liked the book so much, you’ll notice I placed an ad over in the column but the only thing I got out of it was a free copy).

Perhaps there’s something to the Gospel and LEGOs. My second-cousin made a LEGO replica of the Nauvoo Temple that is on exhibit at the Washington D.C. Temple Visitor Center.

Mormon Church Responds to the passage of Proposition 8.  It covers defending the integrity of marriage, church involvement in politics, bigotry on both sides, and members who opposed the Church’s position.

We hope that now and in the future all parties involved in this issue will be well informed and act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility toward those with a different position.   No one on any side of the question should be vilified, intimidated, harassed or subject to erroneous information.

It is important to understand that this issue for the Church has always been about the sacred and divine institution of marriage — a union between a man and a woman.

Allegations of bigotry or persecution made against the Church were and are simply wrong.  The Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage neither constitutes nor condones any kind of hostility toward gays and lesbians.  Even more, the Church does not object to rights for same-sex couples regarding hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights, or probate rights, so long as these do not infringe on the integrity of the traditional family or the constitutional rights of churches.

Some, however, have mistakenly asserted that churches should not ever be involved in politics when moral issues are involved.  In fact, churches and religious organizations are well within their constitutional rights to speak out and be engaged in the many moral and ethical problems facing society.  While the Church does not endorse candidates or platforms, it does reserve the right to speak out on important issues.

Before it accepted the invitation to join broad-based coalitions for the amendments, the Church knew that some of its members would choose not to support its position.   Voting choices by Latter-day Saints, like all other people, are influenced by their own unique experiences and circumstances.  As we move forward from the election, Church members need to be understanding and accepting of each other and work together for a better society.

As politically cliched as it sounds, there will have to be a lot of healing after this.  Although Prop 8 passed, there’s not a lot to celebrate.  I feel like the Church and supporters of traditional marriage were forced to enter into a tough fight and everybody got badly bruised.

Congraulations also goes to Senator-elect Tom Udall of New Mexico. He will be joining Senator Reid as the second LDS Senator who is a Democrat.

His cousin, Mark Udall (who is not LDS) also won in Colorado.

Their second cousin’s fate, incumbent senator Gordon Smith, is still up in the air as his race is still too close to call.

And why of all GOP Senators does Stevens have to hang on? It’s been a cruel election.

Congratulations to President-elect Obama and his supporters. It’s truly a historic moment.

While I doubt I will agree with many of his policies, he will be my president. I won’t have a bumper sticker or a yard sign calling for his impeachment, and don’t expect to be moving out of the country anytime soon (where do ex-pat conservatives move to anyway?).

To be honest, it’s hard to feel like celebrating and I’m not too optimistic about the promise to “fundamentally transform” this country for at least the next four years. But, democracy has spoken and life goes on.

Hopefully, those of us on the right will tamp down those who will try to kick start Obama Derangement Syndrome. There will be plenty to disagree about but we have four years to work on that in an honest and loyal fashion (Plus, we will have a Vice-President Biden to keep us amused)

But tonight is history.

Wow. This isn’t exactly subtle.

KUTV summarizes this full-on attack ad smearing the LDS Church:

In the commercial they knock on the door, say they are from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and tell a lesbian couple “we are here to take away your rights.”

They enter the home take the women’s rings, ransack the house looking for their marriage license, find it, and then tear it up.

At the end, the missionaries was away saying, “that was too easy, yeah, what should we ban next?”

So who has the campaign of hate? Mormon missionaries are now portrayed as fascist stormtroopers out to take away people’s rights? What kind of treatment is in store for missionaries going door to door or proselytizing in the streets?

Last week several commenters suggested that much of the Pro-Prop 8 arguments were attacks on the judges. Somehow using the same arguments as the dissenting justices was demonizing the court and judicial system. I would like to ask those commenters how does this ad compare? Not being in California, I don’t know but I fear for the damage this will to do the Church in California.

This isn’t your quickie dime-a-dozen internet ad. It’s professionally done and KUTV reports it will be airing tomorrow in California as well as on CNN and MSNBC.

I guess this is what was meant when a San Francisco city attorney said that the Prop 8 debate was a “blood feud” with the Mormon Church.

UPDATE: The Church’s response:

“The Church has joined a broad-based coalition in defense of traditional marriage. While we feel this is important to all of society, we have always emphasized that respect be given to those who feel differently on this issue. It is unfortunate that some who oppose this proposition have not given the Church this same courtesy.”

[via Article VI]

When I get a viral email, everybody must be getting it.

President Packer’s refuted “A Great Catastrophe is Coming” talk has created quite the ruckus. Fortunately, FAIR was all over it and reported that while Church Public Affairs confirmed that President Packer did speak at his home ward, the transcript is inaccurate at best.

What I find odd is the understated response from the Church. While so many have seen the purported (and oddly very detailed) transcript of the talk, few seem to have heard of the Church’s response. And for something that has taken on a life of it’s own on the internet, there really isn’t an official response to be found online.

Strangely however, you can call a hotline at the Church Administration Building to hear a denial of the talk’s accuracy (1-800-453-3860, extension 2-2833 or 801-240-2833 [via FAIR comments]).

The recorded message says the transcript is not accurate, refers members to his most recent General Conference talk, and cites a 2004 First Presidency letter specifically requesting that members do not pass on statements attributed to church leaders unless they come from an official source.

Is this low key and low tech response intended to not draw further attention to the ersatz transcript?

The SL Trib covered the talk’s online popularity but waited until the fifth paragraph to mention that the Church denies the talk is accurate. Even if the Church does not have a greater response, Julie Smith from Times and Seasons speaks well on its behalf:

“People really gravitate toward the idea of ’secret teachings.’ It is a weakness, one that I’ve seen in myself and one that we need to be more aware of. There is some spiritual immaturity there” . . .

“The scariest thing is that people just don’t seem to realize how dangerous spreading this type of thing is,” Smith said, “not only is there the potential to spread false doctrine, but even if you have a 100 percent accurate transcript, you have taken away the right of a General Authority to speak specifically to a local group about their circumstances in a way that might not be applicable to other areas of the world.”

I don’t know how new this is, but it appears that the Church News site is now freely accessible.  From what I can tell you are no longer required to be a subscriber via mail or the Deseret News.

Even more welcome is a complete redesign of Church News which makes navigation much, much easier.  The site is tagged “Beta” but it’s my impression that it must be a “Google beta” as it appears to work pretty well (although a RSS feed would be nice).  I just stumbled across it but believe it is fairly new as well.  

If you are nostalgic for the old site, you can still access it at http://www.ldschurchnews.com/cn/  It appears to be freely accessible as well.

It’s a very welcome development but it makes me wonder: are official/church-owned news sources too fractured? Each may have a different purpose and/or audience, but it can be hard to keep up. By my count we have:

1. Newsroom
2. Around the Church
3. Church News
4. LDS Newsline
5. Mormon Times

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