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By Gregory Taggart, February 9, 2011 2:55 pm

Veronique de Rugy, an economist at George Mason University, has a post at The Corner on bias an academia. This paragraph captures the essence:

“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”

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By Gregory Taggart, February 5, 2011 11:13 am

Elder Dallin H. Oaks recently gave a speech on religious freedom at Chapman University School of Law. He also gave an interview on the subject. Both are worthy–very worthy–of our attention.

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A little background on Elder Oaks, currently an Apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Elder Oaks graduated from the University of Chicago School of Law; clerked for Earl Warren, then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; taught at Chicago; and served as interim dean of that law school, as president of BYU (where he also oversaw the establishment of the J.Reuben Clark Law School), and finally a justice on the Utah Supreme Court. He was considered for the U.S. Supreme Court by both President Ford and Reagan.

In his speech, Oaks gives a number of troubling examples of what he is concerned about and why he is calling for religions to join together in protecting religion’s place in the public square:

In New Mexico, the state’s Human Rights Commission held that a photographer who had declined on religious grounds to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony had engaged in impermissible conduct and must pay over $6,000 attorney’s fees to the same-sex couple. A state judge upheld the order to pay. In New Jersey, the United Methodist Church was investigated and penalized under state anti-discrimination law for denying same-sex couples access to a church-owned pavilion for their civil-union ceremonies.  A federal court refused to give relief from the state penalties. Professors at state universities in Illinois and Wisconsin were fired or disciplined for expressing personal convictions that homosexual behavior is sinful. Candidates for masters’ degrees in counseling in Georgia and Michigan universities were penalized or dismissed from programs for their religious views about the wrongfulness of homosexual relations. A Los Angeles policeman claimed he was demoted after he spoke against the wrongfulness of homosexual conduct in the church where he is a lay pastor. The Catholic Church’s difficulties with adoption services and the Boy Scouts’ challenges in various locations are too well known to require further comment. (see sources in transcript)

As Elder Oaks made his case that we–religious believers–need to stand up and speak out, I was particularly impressed by his quotation of his fellow Apostle, the late Neal A. Maxwell:

My esteemed fellow Apostle, Elder Neal A. Maxwell, asked:

“[H]ow can a society set priorities if there are no basic standards? Are we to make our calculations using only the arithmetic of appetite?”

He made this practical observation:

“Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being ‘society’s supervisors.’ Such ‘supervisors’ deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.”

Elder Maxwell also observed that we increase the power of governments when people do not believe in absolute truths and in a God who will hold them and their government leaders accountable.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 2, 2011 3:41 pm

I’m linking to her BloggingHeads episode with Robert Wright.

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By Gregory Taggart, January 30, 2011 9:15 pm

If you want to understand Mormonism, you would do well to pay attention to probably the two most important Mormon publications of the last 15 1/2 years. On September 23, 1995, Gordon B. Hinckley, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced The Family: A Proclamation to the World.

Among other things, the Proclamation declares–in the first paragraph–that:

[M]arriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.

In November 2010, in a Worldwide Leadership Training, church leaders introduced the new Handbook 2: Administering the Church, a manual of policies and procedures for church leaders throughout the world to follow.

Section 1 is titled “Families and the Church in God’s Plan.” Subsection 1.1 is titled “God the Father’s Plan for His Eternal Family.” Section 1.1.1–the very first paragraph of the manual–reads in its entirety:

The Premortal Family of God

The family is ordained of God. It is the most important unit in time and in eternity. Even before we were born on the earth, we were part of a family. Each of us “is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents” with “a divine nature and destiny” (“The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 102). God is our Heavenly Father, and we lived in His presence as part of His family in the premortal life. There we learned our first lessons and were prepared for mortality (see D&C 138:56).

Yes, marriage is an embattled institution. Yes, the divorce rate is too high. Yes, those failed marriages have almost exclusively been between a man and a woman (there having been very few same-sex marriages to date). But no, don’t expect the Mormon Church to surrender on this doctrine: Marriage is ordained of God, is between a man and a woman, and will–if worked at by the parties involved–continue into the Eternities. That is something worth fighting for.

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By Gregory Taggart, November 2, 2010 10:11 am

Without comment:

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By Gregory Taggart, October 30, 2010 10:11 am

This is troublesome. More troubling, however, is the possibility that these two fires could be the second and third steps in a trend of violence against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints–the Mormons.