Published: February 25, 2011 07:38AM

In his recent guest column (“Anti-science views of faith leaders cause concerns,” Opinion, Feb. 8), R. Dennis Hansen correctly points out that religion and science need not be at odds, but in our view draws the wrong conclusion that they are at odds to begin with, or that religion is the problem.

Alert! Alert! There is so much drivel in this ‘thesis’ that it isn’t worthy of point-by-point rebuttal. These three authors are involved with what they call the Foundation for Attraction Research. It is a transparent fraud. Go to its web page and it is readily seen that it is a very small and tight knit group of pseudo scientists who begin with a predetermined belief and set out to prove their hunches right. The problem with their hunches is that they are all based on religious fables.

They are not seeking riches or gold or the praise of the world. They are seeking the adoration of their church apostles and their devout neighbors and friends. They are looking to get praised in church every Sunday morning. They particularly want to come to the defense of one of The Twelve, Boyd K. Packer, to try to restore some dignity to his earthly  sojourn. This trio of lost souls is trying to find justification for the litany of sins their church has committed against gays.

These are scientists who believe that Joseph Smith saw God and that he was led to ancient Gold Plates and translated them into the Book of Mormon. They believe their church is the only true church in the world and that all the others are wrong. They believe that Three Nephites (Book of Mormon characters) are wandering the earth helping people until Christ returns, and that blacks were given a dark skin because they sinned in a pre-existent world. They believe in the superiority of males and that females should be submissive to their husbands. They believe the Book of Mormon is the most correct book of any book ever published, but the ‘most corrected’ book would be closer to reality.

The ‘prophets’ that taught them this stuff also taught them that homosexuality was a sin, and for some unknown reason, this is the point they have decided to prove as true. Of all the problems with the truthfulness of their religion, this is the one they feel compelled to defend.

Go at it boys. When you get that burning in the bosom be very, very careful what it might mean.

We suggest that true religion and true science, when they are found, are never at odds. While such a hypothesis may seem implausible to some, we can find a glimmer of this universally hoped-for condition in, of all places, the debate over homosexuality. True religion teaches a love for all people, including those who identify themselves as gay. Some people who experience same-sex attraction, however, do not wish to practice homosexuality or adopt a gay identity. And fortunately for such people, hope can be found in both true science and true religion.

As to science, contrary to a source cited by Hansen that same-sex attractions are of purely biological origin, Dr. Francis S. Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and the current director of the National Institutes of Health, reached a very different conclusion. Collins, in addressing the etiology of homosexuality in his book, The Language of God, offers the conclusion that homosexuality is “genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations.”

Interestingly, this scientific statement is remarkably similar to and supportive of Elder Boyd K. Packer’s recent statement

about homosexuality not being “preset.” Elder Packer, president of the LDS Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, also has a very long and well-documented history of teaching love for people with homosexual attractions. Contrary to media reports that sought to portray Elder Packer as intolerant and uninformed, he actually had the right religion and the right science, if people cared to look beyond the hype and headlines and consider his remarks in context.

Even the American Psychological Association, after a long period of supporting a purely biological view of the origin of homosexuality, recently adopted a position supported by Collins’ observations that homosexuality, like other traits, emerges from some combination of nature and nurture. As scientists would say, all human behavioral traits are polygenic and multifactorial. Janet Cummings eloquently summarized the evolution perspective on homosexuality: “The belief that homosexuality is always inbred flies in the face of available evidence that genetics, childhood environment, and personal choice are all factors. Granted, some may be more salient than others, but from a genetic standpoint alone, the genes responsible would have disappeared throughout the millennia from lack of reproductive activity.”

Collins offers the following additional insight on homosexuality: “There is an inescapable component of heritability to many human behavioral traits. For virtually none of them is heredity ever close to predictive. Environment, particularly childhood experiences, and the prominent role of individual free will choices have a profound effect on us. Scientists will discover an increasing level of molecular detail about the inherited factors that undergird our personalities, but that should not lead us to overestimate their quantitative contribution. Yes we have all been dealt a particular set of cards, and the cards will eventually be revealed. But how we play the hand is up to us.”

Other reputable scientists, some of whom personally support gay rights, have concluded that homosexuality is not invariably fixed in all people, including Robert Spitzer, a psychiatrist who is credited by some for spearheading the effort to remove homosexuality from the psychiatric manual.

Spitzer offers the following: “Like most psychiatrists, I thought that homosexual behavior could only be resisted, and that no one could change their [sic] sexual orientation. I now believe that to be false. Some people can and do change.”

It should also be observed that the type, degree, and potential for change vary with each individual, and many debates about change could be avoided by a more nuanced discussion about it.

Unfortunately, the dialogue about homosexuality has too often been reduced to a simplistic and divisive us-versus-them, religion-versus-science debate. When we bring true science and true religion together, however, they can and should unite us.

Dennis V. Dahle, John P. Livingstone and M. Gawain Wells are board members of the Foundation for Attraction Research. Dahle is a a Salt Lake City attorney and a FAR founder. Livingstone is an associate professor of Church History and Doctrine in Religious Education at Brigham Young University. Wells is a retired professor of psychology at BYU.

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© 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune

By Michael De Groote

Deseret News

Published: Friday, Feb. 4, 2011 7:10 p.m. MST

When British physicist Stephen Hawking came into the auditorium at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., the crowd went wild. The Los Angeles Times reported that one fan, 13-year-old Evan Hetland, even dubbed him “the nerd pope.”

Hawking was somewhat the darling of some religious people for his occasional references to God, such as one time when he said that if a complete theory of physics were discovered, then “we would know the mind of God.”

But Hawking’s latest book, “The Grand Design,” written with physicist Leonard Mlodinow, leaves little room for God — or philosophy for that matter. A Wall Street Journal article they wrote based on their book is titled “Why God Did Not Create the Universe: There is a sound scientific explanation for the making of our world — no gods required.”

Ouch.

“Ouch,” my eye! There is no ‘ouch’ for believers. Nevertheless, a compliment to the Deseret News for publishing this story. Hawking’s views are significant and obviously puts religious folks in a defensive posture. As expected the article by Michael DeGroote couldn’t be printed in the Deseret News without a significant counter punch that deflects the issue, and it is good and credible journalism to present opposing points of view.

Believers can take a punch better than anyone. Facts seldom hit a believer square on, they are almost always deflected. Believers are resilient beyond, no pun intended, ‘belief.’  There is no penetration. Once they have talked with God there is rarely any denying. There needs to be another scientific study to explain that phenomenon.

The fact that their God said the earth was created in seven days is meaningless to them. Despite incontrovertible evidence they insist their scriptures are the ‘Word of God.’ Science hasn’t proven there is a god, but it has thoroughly disproved the scriptures of Holy Writ.

Sure, there can still be a God, and Hawking hasn’t even completely ruled it out, but it is obvious that if by a long shot there happens to be a god—it is not the God of the myths of our early recorded history. It is not the God of Christianity, or of Muslims,  or of Jews, the three religions that seem to be on a collision course with Armageddon and dragging the rest of us with them. Those gods have been thoroughly debunked and the rest of the world is plagued with them.

It would be nice to be able to discuss the problems of the world without starting the discussion on the false foundation, the shifting sands, of religious belief. Let’s put mythology aside and try to make the world a better place for everyone for the short time we are all here.

The article starts with a story from Viking mythology that explained eclipses were caused by two sky wolves. “Ignorance of nature’s ways led people in ancient times to postulate many myths in an effort to make sense of their world,” Hawking and Mlodinow wrote.

Those myths (read “religions”) gave way to philosophy and now — tadah! — philosophy has given way to modern science. In the introduction,

Hawking says that “Philosophy is dead” because it hasn’t kept up with modern developments in science.

James E. Faulconer, professor of philosophy, and Richard L. Evans, Professor of Religious Understanding at BYU, disagree.

“It was a throwaway line,” Faulconer said. “Very little of philosophy is about deciphering the universe.”

But Hawking is famous for deciphering the universe. In his new book, he explains how M-theory and other physics make the need for a creator god obsolete.

“As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going,” Hawking and Mlodinow wrote.

Blue touch paper is a fuse for fireworks.

So gravity lit the fuse.

Hawking also uses the idea of a multiverse — that there are many different universes — to explain why such a precise universe exists that can create life.

Just how precisely tuned is our universe?

“By examining the model universes, we generate when the theories of physics are altered in certain ways, one can study the effect of changes to physical law in a methodical manner. Such calculations show that a change of as little as 0.5 percent in the strength of the strong nuclear force, or 4 percent in the electric force, would destroy either nearly all carbon or all oxygen in every star, and hence the possibility of life as we know it. Also, most of the fundamental constants appearing in our theories appear fine-tuned in the sense that if they were altered by only modest amounts, the universe would be qualitatively different and, in many cases, unsuitable for the development of life. For example, if protons were 0.2 percent heavier, they would decay into neutrons, destabilizing atoms,” Hawking and Mlodinow wrote.

They acknowledge that some may ascribe this fine-tuning to God, but if there are many universes — which physics predicts in string theory and more particularly M-theory — then out of the billions of possible universes, it is likely a universe like ours would be created quantum fluctuations as well.

So it is like a lottery.

Of all the possibilities, it is likely that our one universe with all its laws would be one of those possibilities. “(O)ur cosmic habitat — now the entire observable universe — is just one of many,” Hawking and Mlodinow wrote.

Stephen Barr is a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Delaware and published “Modern Physics and Ancient Faith” with the University of Notre Dame Press in 2003. Barr thinks the best answer to Hawking’s new book is Hawking himself. In Hawking’s 1988 bestseller “A Brief History of Time,” he wrote about what is at the base of physics: “Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”

Barr said, “Physicists can create a mathematical theory of a universe coming into being, but what makes it real? That is a question that a creator, as traditionally understood by Judaism and Christianity, answers. It gives reality to the universe. It’s what explains why there is a real universe that those equations are describing.”

Barr happens to think that M-theory is correct but recognizes that it is not yet a conclusion. “No description of anything, whether math as provided by physics or verbal descriptions, can confer reality on anything.”

Hawking, in fact, hasn’t proposed anything new in his book, Barr said. And so Hawking’s conclusions may be misleading or at least premature. “When he says physics answered the question, he knows that is nonsense,” Barr said.

Steven Faux thinks Hawking is reaching beyond his expertise when he makes pronouncements about philosophy and theology. “Generally, theologians make poor scientists,” said Faux, who is in the department of psychology at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and specializes in cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. “By and large, scientists make poor theologians.”

Faux, who is a Mormon, said that the job of science is to teach how things work in nature. “Religion teaches about a higher meaning in life, something science can’t get at.”

BYU philosopher Faulconer said, “Scientists have a circular explanation of the world. There is no reference to anything beyond the empirical. So they find nothing beyond the empirical.” He said God is not an empirical concept and that religious people need to look beyond the empirical — beyond the things that can be observed and measured — to know there is a God. “We shouldn’t be surprised when science can’t find God,” Faulconer said, then added in mock valley girl speak: “Well, yeah.”

Hawking sees a mechanical scientific creation that leaves nothing for God to do. Faux thinks Hawking is missing the main point. “He makes a presumption that we know how God works. But we don’t know how God created the earth or the universe.”

Faulconer sees the other side of the equation as well. “I can’t make an argument for God’s existence based on what science accepts. Science gives a perfectly adequate explanation of the world for certain purposes.”

Science teaches how things work in nature. Religion, according to Faux, teaches about higher meaning and purpose.

Barr sees Hawking’s explanations, not as a scientific conclusion, but as a story like those told in ancient times. But even if his particular story is true, it doesn’t exclude God. “It doesn’t take away the fact that the universe being life-bearing is a remarkable thing,” Barr said.

e-mail: mdegroote@desnews.com Twitter: twitter.com/degroote

First published Jan 29 2011 01:01AM

The front-page article “Without marriage, same-sex parents unable to adopt” (Tribune, Jan. 24) was both heartwarming and heart-wrenching.

I am a lesbian in a committed relationship of two-plus years. Like the family in the article, my partner and I hope to raise our children in Utah because here we have supportive and loving friends and extended family members.

I hope that people recognize that their doctrinal belief that two people of the same sex should not have the right to marry one another prevents families like ours from adopting children who need stable, loving homes such as ours.

We are 26 and 30 years of age. We plan to be together for the entirety of our lives. We can’t adopt, yet how is it that two people of the opposite sex who only just met can casually jaunt down to Vegas, be married by Elvis and have the legal right of adoption in this great, moral state of Utah?

Elaine Ball

Salt Lake City

04 February 2011 — Salt Lake City

Transcript of Elder Dallin H. Oaks speech given at Chapman University School of Law on 4 February 2011.

Preserving Religious Freedom

I am here to speak of the state of religious freedom in the United States, why it seems to be diminishing, and what can be done about it.

Although I will refer briefly to some implications of the Proposition 8 controversy and its constitutional arguments, I am not here to participate in the debate on the desirability or effects of same-sex marriage. I am here to contend for religious freedom. I am here to describe fundamental principles that I hope will be meaningful for decades to come.

I believe you will find no unique Mormon doctrine in what I say. My sources are law and secular history. I will quote the words of Catholic, Evangelical Christian, and Jewish leaders, among others. I am convinced that on this issue what all believers have in common is far more important than their differences. We must unite to strengthen our freedom to teach and exercise what we have in common, as well as our very real differences in religious doctrine.

We haven’t had a chance to carefully and thoughtfully review this speech by Elder Oaks and we will reserve comment until then. This is the transcript as made available by The Deseret News.

I begin with a truth that is increasingly challenged: Religious teachings and religious organizations are valuable and important to our free society and therefore deserving of special legal protection. I will cite a few examples.

Our nation’s inimitable private sector of charitable works originated and is still furthered most significantly by religious impulses and religious organizations. I refer to such charities as schools and higher education, hospitals, and care for the poor, where religiously motivated persons contribute personal service and financial support of great value to our citizens. Our nation’s incredible generosity in many forms of aid to other nations and their peoples are manifestations of our common religious faith that all peoples are children of God. Religious beliefs instill patterns of altruistic behavior.

Many of the great moral advances in Western society have been motivated by religious principles and moved through the public square by pulpit-preaching. The abolition of the slave trade in England and the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States are notable illustrations. These revolutionary steps were not motivated and moved by secular ethics or coalitions of persons who believed in moral relativism. They were driven primarily by individuals who had a clear vision of what was morally right and what was morally wrong. In our time, the Civil Rights movement was, of course, inspired and furthered by religious leaders.

Religion also strengthens our nation in the matter of honesty and integrity. Modern science and technology have given us remarkable devices, but we are frequently reminded that their operation in our economic system and the resulting prosperity of our nation rest on the honesty of the men and women who use them.  Americans’ honesty is also reflected in our public servants’ remarkable resistance to official corruption. These standards and practices of honesty and integrity rest, ultimately, on our ideas of right and wrong, which, for most of us, are grounded in principles of religion and the teachings of religious leaders.

Our society is not held together just by law and its enforcement, but most importantly by voluntary obedience to the unenforceable and by widespread adherence to unwritten norms of right or righteous behavior. Religious belief in right and wrong is a vital influence to advocate and persuade such voluntary compliance by a large proportion of our citizens.¹ Others, of course, have a moral compass not expressly grounded in religion. John Adams relied on all of these when he wisely observed that

“we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”²

Even the agnostic Oxford-educated British journalist Melanie Phillips admitted that

“one does not have to be a religious believer to grasp that the core values of Western Civilization are grounded in religion, and to be concerned that the erosion of religious observance therefore undermines those values and the ‘secular ideas’ they reflect.”³

My final example of the importance of religion in our country concerns the origin of the Constitution. Its formation over 200 years ago was made possible by religious principles of human worth and dignity, and only those principles in the hearts of a majority of our diverse population can sustain that Constitution today.⁴ I submit that religious values and political realities are so inter-linked in the origin and perpetuation of this nation that we cannot lose the influence of religion in our public life without seriously jeopardizing our freedoms.

Unfortunately, the extent and nature of religious devotion in this nation is changing.⁵ Belief in a personal God who defines right and wrong is challenged by many. “By some counts,” an article in The Economist declares, “there are at least 500 [million] declared non-believers in the world—enough to make atheism the fourth-biggest religion.”⁶ Others who do not consider themselves atheists also reject the idea of a supernatural power, but affirm the existence of some impersonal force and the value of compassion and love and justice.⁷

Organized religion is surely on the decline. Last year’s Pew Forum Study on Religion and Public Life found that the percentage of young adults affiliated with a particular religious faith is declining significantly.⁸ Scholars Robert Putnam and David Campbell have concluded that “the prospects for religious observance in the coming decades are substantially diminished.”⁹

Whatever the extent of formal religious affiliation, I believe that the tide of public opinion in favor of religion is receding. A writer for the Christian Science Monitor predicts that the coming century will be “very secular and religiously antagonistic,” with intolerance of Christianity “ris[ing] to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes.”¹⁰

A visible measure of the decline of religion in our public life is the diminished mention of religious faith and references to God in our public discourse. One has only to compare the current rhetoric with the major addresses of our political leaders in the 18^th, 19^th, and the first part of the 20^th centuries. Similarly, compare what Lincoln said about God and religious practices like prayer on key occasions with the edited versions of his remarks quoted in current history books.¹¹ It is easy to believe that there is an informal conspiracy of correctness to scrub out references to God and the influence of religion in the founding and preservation of our nation.

The impact of this on the rising generation is detailed in an Oxford University Press book, Souls in Transition. There we read:

“Most of the dynamics of emerging adult culture and life in the United States today seem to have a tendency to reduce the appeal and importance of religious faith and practice. . . . Religion for the most part is just something in the background.”¹²

Granted that reduced religious affiliation puts religion “in the background,” the effect of that on the religious beliefs of young adults is still in controversy. The negative view appears in the Oxford book, whose author concludes that this age group of 18 to 23

“had difficulty seeing the possible distinction between, in this case, objective moral truth and relative human invention. . . . [T]hey simply cannot, for whatever reason, believe in—or sometimes even conceive of—a given, objective truth, fact, reality, or nature of the world that is independent of their subjective self-experience.”¹³

On the positive side, the Pew Forum study reported that over three-quarters of young adults believe that there are absolute standards of right and wrong.¹⁴ For reasons explained later, I believe this finding is very positive for the future of religious freedom.

II.

Before reviewing the effects of the decline of religion in our public life, I will speak briefly of the free exercise of religion. The first provision in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution is what many believe to be its most important guarantee. It reads:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

The prohibition against “an establishment of religion” was intended to separate churches and government, to forbid a national church of the kind found in Europe. In the interest of time I will say no more about the establishment of religion, but only concentrate on the First Amendment’s direction that the United States shall have “no law [prohibiting] the free exercise [of religion].” For almost a century this guarantee of religious freedom has been understood as a limitation on state as well as federal power.

The guarantee of religious freedom is one of the supremely important founding principles in the United States Constitution, and it is reflected in the constitutions of all 50 of our states. As noted by many, the guarantee’s “pre-eminent place” as the first expression in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution identifies freedom of religion as “a cornerstone of American democracy.”¹⁵ The American colonies were originally settled by people who, for the most part, came to this continent for the freedom to practice their religious faith without persecution, and their successors deliberately placed religious freedom first in the nation’s Bill of Rights.

So it is that our federal law formally declares: “The right to freedom of religion undergirds the very origin and existence of the United States.”¹⁶ So it is, I maintain, that in our nation’s founding and in our constitutional order religious freedom and its associated First Amendment freedoms of speech and press are the motivating and dominating civil liberties and civil rights.

III.

Notwithstanding its special place in our Constitution, a number of trends are eroding both the protections the free exercise clause was intended to provide and the public esteem this fundamental value has had during most of our history. For some time we have been experiencing laws and official actions that impinge on religious freedom. In a few moments I will give illustrations, but first I offer some generalizations.

The free “exercise” of religion obviously involves both (1) the right to choose religious beliefs and affiliations and (2) the right to “exercise” or practice those beliefs without government restraint. However, in a nation with citizens of many different religious beliefs the right of some to act upon their religious beliefs must be qualified by the government’s responsibility to further compelling government interests, such as the health and safety of all. Otherwise, for example, the government could not protect its citizens’ persons or properties from neighbors whose religious principles compelled practices that threatened others’ health or personal security. Government authorities have wrestled with this tension for many years, so we have considerable experience in working out the necessary accommodations.

The inherent conflict between the precious religious freedom of the people and the legitimate regulatory responsibilities of the government is the central issue of religious freedom. The problems are not simple, and over the years the United States Supreme Court, which has the ultimate responsibility of interpreting the meaning of the lofty and general provisions of the Constitution, has struggled to identify principles that can guide its decisions when a law or regulation is claimed to violate someone’s free exercise of religion. As would be expected, many of these battles have involved government efforts to restrict the religious practices of small groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. Recent experience suggests adding the example of Muslims.

Much of the controversy in recent years has focused on the extent to which state laws that are neutral and generally applicable can override the strong protections contained in the free exercise clause of the United States Constitution. As noted hereafter, in the 1990s the Supreme Court ruled that such state laws could prevail.  Fortunately, in a stunning demonstration of the resilience of the guarantee of free exercise of religion, over half of the states have passed legislation or interpreted their state constitutions to preserve a higher standard for protecting religious freedom. Only a handful have followed the Supreme Court’s approach that the federal free exercise protection must bow to state laws that are neutral as to religion.¹⁷

Another important current debate over religious freedom concerns whether the guarantee of free exercise of religion gives one who acts on religious grounds greater protection against government prohibitions than are already guaranteed to everyone by other provisions of the constitution, like freedom of speech. I, of course, maintain that unless religious freedom has a unique position we erase the significance of this separate provision in the First Amendment. Treating actions based on religious belief the same as actions based on other systems of belief is not enough to satisfy the special guarantee of religious freedom in the United States Constitution. Religion must preserve its preferred status in our pluralistic society in order to make its unique contribution—its recognition and commitment to values that transcend the secular world.

Over a quarter century ago I reviewed the history and predicted the future of church/state law in a lecture at DePaul University in Chicago.¹⁸ I took sad notice of the fact that the United States Supreme Court had diminished the significance of free exercise by expanding the definition of religion to include what the Court called “religions” not based on belief in God. I wrote:

“The problem with a definition of religion that includes almost everything is that the practical effect of inclusion comes to mean almost nothing. Free exercise protections become diluted as their scope becomes more diffuse. When religion has no more right to free exercise than irreligion or any other secular philosophy, the whole newly expanded category of ‘religion’ is likely to diminish in significance.”¹⁹

Unfortunately, the tide of thought and precedent seems contrary to this position. While I have no concern with expanding comparable protections to non-religious belief systems, as is done in international norms that protect freedom of religion or belief,²⁰ I object to doing so by re-interpreting the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion.

It was apparent twenty-five years ago, and it is undeniable today, that the significance of religious freedom is diminishing. Five years after I gave my DePaul lecture, the United States Supreme Court issued its most important free exercise decision in many years  In Employment Division v. Smith,²¹ the Court significantly narrowed the traditional protection of religion by holding that the guarantee of free exercise did not prevent government from interfering with religious activities when it did so by neutral, generally applicable laws. This ruling removed religious activities from their sanctuary—the preferred position the First Amendment had given them.

Now, over twenty years later, some are contending that a religious message is just another message in a world full of messages, not something to be given unique or special protection. One author takes the extreme position that religious speech should have even less protection  In Freedom from Religion, published by the Oxford University Press, a law professor makes this three-step argument:

1. In many nations “society is at risk from religious extremism.”²²

2. “A follower is far more likely to act on the words of a religious authority figure than other speakers.”²³

3. Therefore, “in some cases, society and government should view religious speech as inherently less protected than secular political speech because of its extraordinary ability to influence the listener.”²⁴

The professor then offers this shocking conclusion:

“[W]e must begin to consider the possibility that religious speech can no longer hide behind the shield of freedom of expression. . . .²⁵

“Contemporary religious extremism leaves decision-makers and the public alike with no choice but to re-contour constitutionally granted rights as they pertain to religion and speech.”²⁶

I believe most thoughtful people would reject that extreme conclusion. All should realize how easy it would be to gradually manipulate the definition of “religious extremism” to suppress any unpopular religion or any unpopular preaching based on religious doctrine. In addition, I hope most would see that it is manifestly unfair and short-sighted to threaten religious freedom by focusing on some undoubted abuses without crediting religion’s many benefits. I am grateful that there are responsible voices and evidence affirming the vital importance of religious freedom, worldwide.²⁷

When Cardinal Francis George, then President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, spoke at Brigham Young University last year, he referred to “threats to religious freedom in America that are new to our history and to our tradition.”²⁸ He gave two examples, one concerning threats to current religious-based exemptions from participating in abortions and the other “the development of gay rights and the call for same-sex ‘marriage.’” He spoke of possible government punishments for churches or religious leaders whose doctrines lead them to refuse to participate in government sponsored programs.

Along with many others, I see a serious threat to the freedom of religion in the current assertion of a “civil right” of homosexuals to be free from religious preaching against their relationships. Religious leaders of various denominations affirm and preach that sexual relations should only occur between a man and a woman joined together in marriage. One would think that the preaching of such a doctrinal belief would be protected by the constitutional guarantee of the free exercise of religion, to say nothing of the guarantee of free speech.  However, we are beginning to see worldwide indications that this may not be so.

Religious preaching of the wrongfulness of homosexual relations is beginning to be threatened with criminal prosecution or actually prosecuted or made the subject of civil penalties. Canada has been especially aggressive, charging numerous religious authorities and persons of faith with violating its human rights law by “impacting an individual’s sense of self-worth and acceptance.”²⁹ Other countries where this has occurred include Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Singapore.³⁰

I do not know enough to comment on whether these suppressions of religious speech violate the laws of other countries, but I do know something of religious freedom in the United States, and I am alarmed at what is reported to be happening here.

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.³¹ 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.³² Professors at state universities in Illinois and Wisconsin were fired or disciplined for expressing personal convictions that homosexual behavior is sinful.³³ 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.³⁴ 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.³⁵ The Catholic Church’s difficulties with adoption services and the Boy Scouts’ challenges in various locations are too well known to require further comment.

We must also be concerned at recent official expressions that would narrow the field of activities protected by the free exercise of religion. Thus, when President Obama used the words freedom of worship instead of free exercise of religion, a writer for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty sounded this warning:

“To anyone who closely follows prominent discussion of religious freedom in the diplomatic and political arena, this linguistic shift is troubling.

“The reason is simple. Any person of faith knows that religious exercise is about a lot more than freedom of worship. It’s about the right to dress according to one’s religious dictates, to preach openly, to evangelize, to engage in the public square.“³⁶

Fortunately, more recent expressions by President Obama and his state department have used the traditional references to the right to practice religious faith.³⁷

Even more alarming are recent evidences of a narrowing definition of religious expression and an expanding definition of the so-called civil rights of “dignity,”"autonomy,” and “self-fulfillment” of persons offended by religious preaching. Thus, President Obama’s head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Chai Feldblum, recently framed the issue in terms of a “sexual-orientation liberty” that is such a fundamental right that it should prevail over a competing “religious-belief liberty.”³⁸ Such a radical assertion should not escape analysis. It has three elements. First, the freedom of religion—an express provision of the Bill of Rights that has been recognized as a fundamental right for over 200 years—is recast as a simple “liberty” that ranks among many other liberties. Second, Feldblum asserts that sexual orientation is now to be defined as a “sexual liberty” that has the status of a fundamental right. Finally, it is claimed that “the best framework for dealing with this conflict is to analyze religious people‘s claims as ‘belief liberty interest’ not as free exercise claims under the First Amendment.” The conclusion: Religious expressions are to be overridden by the fundamental right to “sexual liberty.”³⁹

It is well to remember James Madison’s warning:

“There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”⁴⁰

We are beginning to experience the expansion of rhetoric and remedies that seem likely to be used to chill or even to penalize religious expression. Like the professors in Illinois and Wisconsin and the lay clergyman in California, individuals of faith are experiencing real retribution merely because they seek to express their sincerely held religious beliefs.

All of this shows an alarming trajectory of events pointing toward constraining the freedom of religious speech by forcing it to give way to the “rights” of those offended by such speech. If that happens, we will have criminal prosecution of those whose religious doctrines or speech offend those whose public influence and political power establish them as an officially protected class.

Closely related to the danger of criminal prosecutions are the current arguments seeking to brand religious beliefs as an unacceptable basis for citizen action or even for argument in the public square. For an example of this we need go no further than the district court’s opinion in the Proposition 8 case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger.⁴¹

A few generations ago the idea that religious organizations and religious persons would be unwelcome in the public square would have been unthinkable. Now, such arguments are prominent enough to cause serious concern.  It is not difficult to see a conscious strategy to neutralize the influence of religion and churches and religious motivations on any issues that could be characterized as public policy. As noted by John A. Howard of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, the proponents of banishment “have developed great skills in demonizing those who disagree with them, turning their opponents into objects of fear, hatred and scorn.”⁴² Legal commentator Hugh Hewitt described the current circumstance this way:

“There is a growing anti-religious bigotry in the United States. . . .

“For three decades people of faith have watched a systematic and very effective effort waged in the courts and the media to drive them from the public square and to delegitimize their participation in politics as somehow threatening.”⁴³

The forces that would intimidate persons with religious-based points of view from influencing or making the laws of their state or nation should answer this question: How would the great movements toward social justice cited earlier have been advocated and pressed toward adoption if their religious proponents had been banned from the public square by insistence that private religious or moral positions were not a rational basis for public discourse?

We have already seen a significant deterioration in the legal position of the family, a key institution defined by religious doctrine. In his essay “The Judicial Assault on the Family,” Allan W. Carlson examines the “formal influence of Christianity” on American family law,⁴⁴ citing many state and United States Supreme Court decisions through the 1950s affirming the fundamental nature of the family.⁴⁵ He then reviews a series of decisions beginning in the mid-1960s that gave what he calls “an alternate vision of family life and family law.”⁴⁶ For example, he quotes a 1972 decision in which the Court characterized marriage as “an association of two individuals each with a separate intellectual and emotional makeup.”⁴⁷ “Through these words,” Carlson concludes, “the U.S. Supreme Court essentially enlisted in the Sexual Revolution.”⁴⁸ Over these same years, “the federal courts also radically altered the meaning of parenthood.”⁴⁹

I quote Carlson again:

“The broad trend has been from a view of marriage as a social institution with binding claims of its own and with prescribed rules for men and women into a free association, easily entered and easily broken, with a focus on the needs of individuals. However, the ironical result of so expanding the ‘freedom to marry’ has been to enhance the authority and sway of government.”⁵⁰

“As the American founders understood, marriage and the autonomous family were the true bulwarks of liberty, for they were the principal rivals to the state. . . . And surely, as the American judiciary has deconstructed marriage and the family over the last 40 years, the result has been the growth of government.”⁵¹

All of this has culminated in attempts to redefine marriage or to urge its complete abolition. The debate continues in the press and elsewhere.⁵²

IV.

What has caused the current public and legal climate of mounting threats to religious freedom? I believe the cause is not legal but cultural and religious. I believe the diminished value being attached to religious freedom stems from the ascendency of moral relativism.

More and more of our citizens support the idea that all authority and all rules of behavior are man-made and can be accepted or rejected as one chooses. Each person is free to decide for himself or herself what is right and wrong. Our children face the challenge of living in an increasingly godless and amoral society.

I have neither the time nor the expertise to define the various aspects of moral relativism or the extent to which they have entered the culture or consciousness of our nation and its people. I can only rely on respected observers whose descriptions feel right to me.

In his book, Modern Times, the British author Paul Johnson writes:

“At the beginning of the 1920s the belief began to circulate, for the first time at a popular level, that there were no longer any absolutes: of time and space, of good and evil, of knowledge, above all of value.”⁵³

On this side of the Atlantic, Gertrude Himmelfarb describes how the virtues associated with good and evil have been degraded into relative values.⁵⁴

A variety of observers have described the consequences of moral relativism. All of them affirm the existence of God as the Ultimate Law-giver and the source of the absolute truth that distinguishes good from evil.

Rabbi Harold Kushner speaks of God-given “absolute standards of good and evil built into the human soul.”⁵⁵ He writes:

“As I see it, there are two possibilities. Either you affirm the existence of a God who stands for morality and makes moral demands of us, who built a law of truthfulness into His world even as He built in a law of gravity. . . . Or else you give everyone the right to decide what is good and what is evil by his or her own lights, balancing the voice of one’s conscience against the voice of temptation and need. . . .”⁵⁶

Rabbi Kushner also observes that a philosophy that rejects the idea of absolute right and wrong inevitably leads to a deadening of conscience.

“Without God, it would be a world where no one was outraged by crime or cruelty, and no one was inspired to put an end to them. . . . [T]here would be no more inspiring goal for our lives than self-interest. . . . Neither room nor reason for tenderness, generosity, helpfulness.”⁵⁷

Dr. Timothy Keller, a much-published pastor in New York, asks:

“What happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won’t!. . . .

“Though we have been taught that all moral values are relative to individuals and cultures, we can‘t live like that. In actual practice we inevitably treat some principles as absolute standards by which we judge the behavior of those who don’t share our values. . . . People who laugh at the claim that there is a transcendent moral order do not think that racial genocide is just impractical or self-defeating, but that it is wrong. . . .”⁵⁸

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

Related

Additional Resources

• News release: Apostle Emphasizes the Importance of Religious Freedom to Society

“[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?”⁵⁹

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.”⁶⁰

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.⁶¹

Moral relativism leads to a loss of respect for religion and even to anger against religion and the guilt that is seen to flow from it. As it diminishes religion, it encourages the proliferation of rights that claim ascendency over the free exercise of religion.

The founders who established this nation believed in God and in the existence of moral absolutes—right and wrong—established by this Ultimate Law-giver. The Constitution they established assumed and relied on morality in the actions of its citizens. Where did that morality come from and how was it to be retained? Belief in God and the consequent reality of right and wrong was taught by religious leaders in churches and synagogues, and the founders gave us the First Amendment to preserve that foundation for the Constitution.

The preservation of religious freedom in our nation depends on the value we attach to the teachings of right and wrong in our churches, synagogues and mosques. It is faith in God—however defined—that translates these religious teachings into the moral behavior that benefits the nation. As fewer and fewer citizens believe in God and in the existence of the moral absolutes taught by religious leaders, the importance of religious freedom to the totality of our citizens is diminished. We stand to lose that freedom if many believe that religious leaders, who preach right and wrong, make no unique contribution to society and therefore should have no special legal protection.

V.  Conclusion

I have made four major points:

1. Religious teachings and religious organizations are valuable and important to our free society and therefore deserving of their special legal protection.

2. Religious freedom undergirds the origin and existence of this country and is the dominating civil liberty.

3. The guarantee of free exercise of religion is weakening in its effects and in public esteem.

4. This weakening is attributable to the ascendancy of moral relativism.

We must never see the day when the public square is not open to religious ideas and religious persons. The religious community must unite to be sure we are not coerced or deterred into silence by the kinds of intimidation or threatening rhetoric that are being experienced. Whether or not such actions are anti-religious, they are surely anti-democratic and should be condemned by all who are interested in democratic government. There should be room for all good-faith views in the public square, be they secular, religious, or a mixture of the two. When expressed sincerely and without sanctimoniousness, the religious voice adds much to the text and tenor of public debate. As Elder Quentin L. Cook has said:

“In our increasingly unrighteous world, it is essential that values based on religious belief be part of the public discourse. Moral positions informed by a religious conscience must be accorded equal access to the public square.”⁶²

Religious persons should insist on their constitutional right and duty to exercise their religion, to vote their consciences on public issues, and to participate in elections and in debates in the public square and the halls of justice. These are the rights of all citizens and they are also the rights of religious leaders and religious organizations  In this circumstance, it is imperative that those of us who believe in God and in the reality of right and wrong unite more effectively to protect our religious freedom to preach and practice our faith in God and the principles of right and wrong He has established.

This proposal that we unite more effectively does not require any examination of the doctrinal differences among Christians, Jews, and Muslims, or even an identification of the many common elements of our beliefs. All that is necessary for unity and a broad coalition along the lines I am suggesting is a common belief that there is a right and wrong in human behavior that has been established by a Supreme Being. All who believe in that fundamental should unite more effectively to preserve and strengthen the freedom to advocate and practice our religious beliefs, whatever they are. We must walk together for a ways on the same path in order to secure our freedom to pursue our separate ways when that is necessary according to our own beliefs.

I am not proposing a resurrection of the so-called “moral majority,” which was identified with a particular religious group and a particular political party. Nor am I proposing an alliance or identification with any current political movement, tea party or other. I speak for a broader principle, non-partisan and, in its own focused objective, ecumenical. I speak for what Cardinal Francis George described in his address at Brigham Young University just a year ago. His title was “Catholics and Latter-day Saints: Partners in the Defense of Religious Freedom.” He proposed

“that Catholics and Mormons stand with one another and with other defenders of conscience, and that we can and should stand as one in the defense of religious liberty.  In the coming years, interreligious coalitions formed to defend the rights of conscience for individuals and for religious institutions should become a vital bulwark against the tide of forces at work in our government and society to reduce religion to a purely private reality. At stake is whether or not the religious voice will maintain its right to be heard in the public square.”⁶³

We join in that call for religious coalitions to protect religious freedom. In doing so we recall the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin. At another critical time in our nation‘s history, he declared:

“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”⁶⁴

In conclusion, as an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ I affirm His love for all people on this earth, and I affirm the importance His followers must attach to religious freedom for all people—whatever their beliefs. I pray for the blessings of God upon our cooperative efforts to preserve that freedom.

———————

¹See Quentin L. Cook, Let There be Light, ENSIGN, Nov. 2010, at 27, 29–30.

²CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS,THE WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS,SECOND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,228–29(Books for Libraries Press, 1969).

³MELANIE PHILLIPS,THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN:  THE GLOBAL BATTLE OVER GOD,TRUTH,AND POWER,xiii (1st Am. ed., Encounter Books, 2010); see generally ROBERT D.PUTNAM &DAVID E.CAMPBELL,AMERICAN GRACE(2010).

⁴SeeJOHN A.HOWARD,CHRISTIANITY:  LIFEBLOOD OF AMERICA‘S FREE SOCIETY (1620-1945),57(2008); see also Dinesh D‘Souza, Created Equal:  How Christianity Shaped the West, IMPRIMIS, Nov. 2008 at 5 (available at http://www.hillsdale.edu/hctools/ImprimisTool/archives/2008_11_ Imprimis.pdf).

⁵See PUTNAM &CAMPBELL, supra note 3, at Chs. 3–4.

⁶John Micklethwait, In God’s Name: A Special Report on Religion and Public Life, THE ECONOMIST, Nov. 3, 2007, at 10.

⁷See, e.g., Lisa Miller, Sam Harris Believes in God, NEWSWEEK, Oct. 25, 2010, at 42.

⁸See Religion Among the Millennials, PEW FORUM ON RELIGION &PUBLIC LIFE(Pew Research Center), Feb. 17, 2010 at 1–3 (available at http://pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/Demographics/Age/millennials-report.pdf).

⁹Robert D. Putnam & David E. Campbell, The Tide of Public Opinion in Favor of Religion is Receding, DESERET NEWS, Nov. 20, 2010 at E1 (quoting L.A.TIMESsyndicated art.); see also PUTNAM &CAMPBELL, supra note 3.

¹⁰Michael Spencer, The Coming Evangelical Collapse, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, Mar. 10, 2009 available at http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html.

¹¹See, e.g., MATTHEW S.HOLLAND, BONDS OF AFFECTION:  CIVIC CHARITY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA, 252–53 n. 22 (Geo. Univ. Press, 2007).

¹²CHRISTIAN SMITH,SOULS IN TRANSITION, 84, 145 (Oxford Univ. Press, 2009); cf. PUTNAM &CAMPBELL, supra note 3.

¹³SMITH,supranote 12at 46.

¹⁴PEW FORUM, supra note 8 at 13.

¹⁵FINAL REPORT OF THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ABROAD TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE AND TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, May 17, 1999, at 6.

¹⁶ International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, 22 U.S.C. § 6401(a).

¹⁷See WILLIAM W.BASSETT,W.COLE DURHAM,JR.&ROBERT T.SMITH,RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LAW ”2.65-2.66(Thomson Reuters/West, 2010 ed., forthcoming).

¹⁸Dallin H. Oaks, Separation, Accommodation and the Future of Church and State, 35 DEPAUL L.REV. 1, 1–22 (1985).

¹⁹Id. at 8.  See also Michael McConnell, The Origins and Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion, 103 HARV.L.REV. 1409, 1488–1500 (1990).

²⁰ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 18, Dec. 16, 1966, 999 U.N.T.S. 302.

²¹ 494 U.S. 872 (1990).

²²AMOS N.GUIORA,FREEDOM FROM RELIGION,27(Oxford Univ. Press, 2009).

²³Id. at 30.

²⁴Id. at 31.

²⁵Id. at 31.

²⁶Id. at 39.

²⁷See, e.g., Brian J. Grim, Religious Freedom:  Good for What Ails Us? REV.FAITH &INT‘L AFF., Summer 2008, at 3–7; BRIAN J.GRIM AND ROGER FINKE,THE PRICE OF FREEDOM DENIED:  RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011).

²⁸ Cardinal Francis George, Catholics and Latter-day Saints:  Partners in the Defense of Religious Freedom, Brigham Young Univ., (Feb. 23, 2010).

²⁹Homosexuality Trumps Free Speech and Religion in Canada, NARTH(Aug. 9, 2005),  http://www.narth.com/docs/trumps.html; Pete Vere, Catholicism—A Hate Crime in Canada?, CATHOLIC EXCHANGE, (June 4, 2008) http://catholicexchange.com/2008/06/04/112780; see Stacey v. Campbell, 2002 B.C.H.R.T. 35 (B.C. Human Rights Trib. 2002); see e.g., Marshall Breger, Gay Activists vs. the First Amendment, MOMENT, (Feb. 2010) http://www.momentmag.com/Exclusive/currentyear/02/201002-Opinion-Breger.html.

³⁰See, e.g., The Pastor Green Case, Supreme Court of Sweden, Case no. B 1050-05 (29 Nov. 2005); The Ake Green Case:  Freedom of Religion on Trial in Sweden, AKEGREEN.ORG, http://www.akegreen.org/; Heidi Blake, Christian Preacher Arrested for Saying Homosexuality is a Sin, THE TELEGRAPH, (May 2, 2010) http://www.telegraph. co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7668448/Christian-preacher-arrested-for-saying-homosexuality-is-a-sin.html; Albert Mohler, It’s Getting Dangerous Out There—A Preacher Is Arrested in Britain, ALBERTMOHLER.COM(May 4, 2010) http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/05/04/its-getting-dangerous-out-there-a-preacher-is-arrested-in-britain/; Sylvia Tan, Police reports lodged against Singapore pastor over offensive gay and lesbian remarks, FRIDAE.COM(Feb. 18, 2010) http://www.fridae.com/newsfeatures/2010/02/18/9670.police-reports-lodged-against-singapore-pastor-over-offensive-gay-and-lesbian-remarks.

³¹See Vere, Catholicism, supra, note 29; See also The Cost of Being a Christian, ALLIANCE DEFENSE FUND, https://www.alliancedefensefund.org/Home/Detail/4333?referral=E0910B3F; David Walker, Photographer Loses Bid to Refuse Same-Sex Wedding Jobs, PDNONLINE(Jan. 4, 2010) http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/content_display/features/pdn-online/e3i7d41666c039b61afca226786f0011fd9.

³²Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley, 10-cv-00099, 2010 WL 3321873 (S.D. Ga. Aug. 20, 2010).

³³See Jodi Heckel, Instructor of Catholicism at UI Claims Loss of Job Violates Academic Freedom, NEWS GAZETTE(Jul. 9, 2010) http://www.news-gazette.com/news/university-illinois/2010-07-09/instructor-catholicism-ui-claims-loss-job-violates-academic-free; Julie Bolcer, Professor Sent Antigay E-mail to Student, ADVOCATE, (Oct. 14, 2010) http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/10/14/Professor_Sent_Antigay_Email_to_ Student/.

³⁴Ward v. Wilbanks, 09-CV-11237 (E.D. Mich. July 26, 2010).

³⁵Pete Vere, Gay Rights vs. Faithful, WASH.TIMES, July 31, 2008.

³⁶Ashley Samelson, Why “Freedom of Worship” is Not Enough, FIRST THINGS, (Feb. 22, 2010) http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/02why-ldquofreedom-of-worshiprdquo-is-not-enough added).

³⁷See Katelyn Sabochik, President Obama Celebrates Ramadan at White House Iftar Dinner, 14 August 2010, The White House Blog, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/08/14/president-obama-celebrates-ramadan-white-house-iftar-dinner;  Hilary Rodham Clinton, Remarks at the release of the 2010 International Religious Freedom Report, 17 November 2010, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/11/151081.htm; Clinton report on religious liberty applauded by panel, 18 November 2010, The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, http://erlc.com/article/clinton-report-on-religious-liberty-applauded-by-panel.

³⁸See Deacon Fournier, First Amendment Outdated?  Obama Nominates Homosexual Equivalency Advocate to EEOC, CATHOLIC ONLINE, (Oct. 1, 2009) http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=34533.

³⁹Id.  See also Chai Feldblum, Moral Conflict and Liberty:  Gay Rights and Religion, 72 BROOKLYN L.REV. 61 (2006) (also available at http://www.becketfund.org/files/4bce5.pdf).

⁴⁰James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention on Control of the Military, (June 16, 1788), in 1 HISTORY OF THE VIRGINIA FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1788, 130 (H.B. Grigsby ed., 1890).

⁴¹704 F. Supp. 2d 921 (N.D. Cal. 2010).

⁴²John A. Howard, Liberty: America’s Great Creative Power, (Howard Center), June 22, 2009 at 6.

⁴³HUGH HEWITT,AMORMON IN THE WHITE HOUSE?, 242–43 (2007).

⁴⁴Allan W. Carlson, The Judicial Assault on the Family, in EDWARD B.MCLEAN,THE MOST DANGEROUS BRANCH, 56 (2008).

⁴⁵See, e.g., DeBurgh v. DeBurgh, 39 Cal. 2d 858, 250 P.2d 598 (1957) (Traynor J.), quoted in id., at 59.

⁴⁶Carlson, supra note 44, at 60.

⁴⁷Eisenstadt v. Baird, 295 U.S. 438, 453 (1972).

⁴⁸Carlson, supra note 44, at 61.

⁴⁹Id. at 64.

⁵⁰Id. at 62.

⁵¹Id. at 66–67.

⁵²Compare Hope Yen, Holey Matrimony:  Marriage a moth-eaten relic?, SALT LAKE TRIB., Nov. 18, 2010, at A8, with Marriage’s Demise Exaggerated, DESERET NEWS, Dec. 5, 2010, at G1.

⁵³PAUL JOHNSON,MODERN TIMES:  THE WORLD FROM THE TWENTIES TO THE NINETIES, (rev. ed., 1991), at 4.  Declaring that secular ideology came to replace religious belief, Johnson charges moral relativism with being one of the underlying evils that made possible the catastrophic failures and tragedies of the century.  Id. at 48, 784.

⁵⁴GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB,THE DE-MORALIZATION OF SOCIETY:  FROM VICTORIAN VIRTUES TO MODERN VALUES(1st Vintage Books ed., 1996) at 9–12.

⁵⁵HAROLD KUSHNER,WHO NEEDS GOD(Fireside ed., 2002), at 78.

⁵⁶Id. at 65–66.

⁵⁷Id. at 208–09.

⁵⁸TIMOTHY KELLER,THE REASON FOR GOD:  BELIEF IN AN AGE OF SKEPTICISM(2008), at 114, 145–47.

⁵⁹Neal A. Maxwell, The Prohibitive Costs of a Value-free Society, ENSIGN, Oct. 1978, at 52.

⁶⁰Id. at 53.

⁶¹See Maxwell, supra note 59, at 52–53.

⁶²Cook, supra note 1, at 29.

⁶³George, supra note 28.

⁶⁴At the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

By Holly Bailey

Tue Feb 1, 9:41 am ET

Barbara Bush, one of former President George W. Bush’s twin daughters, is appearing in a new video voicing her support for same sex marriage.

“I’m Barbara Bush, and I’m a New Yorker for marriage equality,” she says in a 22-second video released Monday by the Human Rights Campaign, a group that lobbies for equal treatment for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders.

“New York is about fairness and equality,” she says in the video. “And everyone should have the right to marry the person that they love.”

The video ends with Bush, who is 29, imploring viewers to “join us.”

You can watch the video after the jump, courtesy the Human Rights Campaign.

Published: January 24, 2011 06:20AM

“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. … I do not know who has told you that we have it.”

— Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at Columbia University, September 2007

Legislators in Utah don’t quite have their heads in the same sand as the Iranian president when it comes to homosexuality. Most would admit that gays, lesbians and transgender Utahns do exist. But many Republican members of the Legislature ignore reality in another way: They don’t admit that LGBT Utahns are the victims of discrimination or that they deserve protection from those who would deny them their rights.

Like Ahmadinejad, these legislators, whether they admit it or not, are leaning on their religious convictions as justification for failing to extend government protections to these Utahns in the same way that ethnic and racial minorities, both genders, the elderly and religious groups are protected.

That kind of hurtful bias has got to end.

For the past two legislative sessions, Republicans have refused to seriously consider statewide laws banning discrimination in housing and employment. Fortunately, 10 city and county councils and several school boards have stepped up to do just that in the absence of a legislative conscience. A Salt Lake Tribune poll shows two-thirds of Utahns support a state-wide anti-discrimination law, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints endorsed the law passed by the Salt Lake City Council in 2009.

Despite the fact that ten city and county councils have passed this ordinance already, (in many cases by unanimous votes of the councils) and despite the fact that 66% of all Utahns are in favor, and despite the blessing of the LDS Church, the fact remains that Utah’s legislature is not a microcosm of Utah’s cities and towns, or even of its church leadership. It remains under the influence of extremists who don’t care what their ‘sinful’ neighbors think. They view themselves as having been ‘called of God’ and they take their marching orders from Someone beyond reach of the rest of us.

There is growing evidence that members of the LGBT community are regularly evicted or refused housing and laid off or passed over for promotions on the job. Many more have experienced harassment. The number of such incidents belies legislators’ belief that they are rare. But there is no such evidence to back up their supposed concern over “a flood of frivolous claims” once discrimination is outlawed.

Research completed by Equality Utah and a University of California Los Angeles think tank shows that 30 percent of 939 lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender Utahns surveyed have experienced harassment consistently during the previous year. Forty-five percent of transgender respondents said they had experienced such treatment.

Forty-four percent said they had been fired or denied a job or promotion because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. A shocking 67 percent of transgender Utahns said they also had been made victims.

Sen. Ben McAdams, D-Salt Lake City, is sponsoring another bill in the upcoming session to outlaw such discrimination. It should be made law.

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: January 24, 2011 01:01AM

The labor was surprisingly fast and calm for twins. Kelley Beeny watched in awe as her partner of a dozen years gave birth to two boys: Ben and Sam, weighing about 3 and 5 pounds respectively.

“It’s unbelievable how you can love these little things so much,” Beeny recalls. “Falling in love with somebody is totally different from falling in love with your children. … It changes who you are.”

Her partner, Kaye Christensen, adopted Beeny’s surname soon after the boys’ birth. The twins, who were conceived with the help of a sperm donor, also share the name.

“They’re the Beeny babies,” Kelley quips.

Three-and-a-half years later, Kelley stays at home with the twins in Tooele while Kaye, 40, commutes to work in Salt Lake City. Kelley, 48, is the family’s “domestic goddess,” folding laundry, fixing meals and tidying the house. She listens to Ben spout his knowledge of train mechanics and sing Thomas the Tank Engine songs. She admires Sam’s latest finger paintings.

Both boys call Kelley “Mommy.”

But to the state of Utah, she is not their legal parent.

“It’s infuriating,” Kelley says. “I love my children just as much as anybody else. It’s no different just because we’re gay.”

Utah is one of two states with statutes that block same-sex couples from adopting children. (The other is Mississippi.)

Salt Lake City Democrats Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck and Sen. Ross Romero hope to offer a remedy to families like the Beenys during the 2011 session of the Legislature, which begins Monday.

In 2000, Utah adopted a law that prohibits individuals who are living in unmarried, sexual relationships — whether gay or straight — from adopting or fostering children. Gay men and lesbians who live alone may adopt.

After pushing to change the policy in the previous three sessions without ever getting to a floor vote, Chavez-Houck has narrowed her scope to protecting families like the Beenys.

We wouldn’t have to be making these kinds of fairness proposals if we would just make same-sex marriage legal.

This is a worthy effort by legislators Chavez-Houck and Romero, but it will be seen as a ‘foot in the door’ or a ‘nose under the tent.’ The fairness of it is obvious, but that doesn’t matter to most of the Utah legislators. If fairness mattered same-sex marriage would be permitted.

Introducing the bill also helps in the gradual process of educating the citizens of the state on these important issues. This very informative article in The Tribune is one that won’t be seen in The Deseret News, but it is vital that the people of the state become aware.

Thanks to all involved in this long, slow, tedious process of education. Utah is destined to be the last state in America to accept equality for gays and lesbians and everyone knows why.

She and Romero hope to amend state law to allow second-parent adoptions — enabling a first, legal parent to designate a co-parent. The change would allow unmarried couples to adopt children only in situations like the Beenys’, in which one partner already is a legal or biological parent.

“There seems to be an understanding and a feeling [in Utah] that we should respect parents’ rights whenever we can,” Chavez-Houck says. “This is allowing parents to decide, ‘This is a person I would like to co-parent with me.’ It’s good for children to have two parents whenever possible.”

In Utah, nearly a third of cohabiting gay and lesbian couples are raising children. There are 2,900 children currently living in homes with two same-sex parents, according to a recent report by The Williams Institute, a sexual-orientation law center at the University of California Los Angeles.

Some of these couples may have adopted their children in other states. Others may have situations like the Beenys’. They may be gay men who hired a surrogate mother to bear a child who is one father’s biological offspring. Or they could be raising children from one partner’s previous heterosexual relationship.

Nonlegal parents like Kelley worry about not being able to make academic or medical decisions for their children if someone questions their status. They can’t add their children to their employer-sponsored health insurance plans or claim income-tax deductions for dependents.

In the event of their death, their children would not receive Social Security survivor benefits. In the event of the legal parent’s death, the nonlegal parent may not be able to obtain custody of the children if there is a dispute with other biological relatives.

Non-legal parents also do not have any rights to custody or visitation if they break up with their partners.

“That’s a bummer — not just for a partner who might not be able to see a child again, but also for the legal parent who might need child support,” says Lauren Barros, a Salt Lake City family-law attorney. “Creating a legal, parent-child relationship provides stability and continuity [for the child].”

Last year, state courts in Florida and Arkansas overturned bans on gay adoption and unmarried-couple adoption, respectively, holding that such policies were unconstitutional. The Arkansas decision has been appealed to the state’s supreme court.

In Utah, a new Salt Lake Tribune poll shows strong public support for employment and housing protections for gay and transgender individuals — 65 percent — but less backing for adoption rights for same-sex couples. When asked whether unmarried couples should be allowed to adopt if the biological parent consents or a child is in state custody, 39 percent of respondents were in favor and 53 percent were opposed.

That shows slight growth from the same poll a year ago, when 33 percent of Utahns favored unmarried-couple adoption. A comparison of the two polls shows virtually no movement among men, but support among women jumped from 37 percent in 2010 to 51 percent in 2011. Both polls surveyed 625 registered Utah voters at random and have a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

Chavez-Houck thinks there is more support for second-parent adoptions by same-sex couples, based on some polling she has seen from Equality Utah.

Wallace Brice, a 70-year-old Blanding resident, says he did not endorse unmarried-couple adoption when polled by The Tribune. But he struggled with the question.

He would, however, support legalizing second-parent adoptions for same-sex couples, which he sees as a way to keep families together.

“Most of my life, I would have said, ‘Absolutely not,’ ” Brice says. “But having seen married couples that do such a poor job and having observed a couple of same-sex couples providing very good homes for very unfortunate children, it’s definitely tempered my redneck attitude.”

Gayle Ruzicka, president of the conservative Utah Eagle Forum, predicts Utah legislators are not going to “sit back and let somebody come in and gut” the adoption law. She worries that allowing second-parent adoptions would allow gay couples to circumvent the law entirely. If a gay person lives alone for a period and adopts a child as a single parent, then he or she could later move in with a partner and petition for a second-parent adoption, she says.

“It’s an absolute gimmick to get around the law to once again create homosexual adoption,” Ruzicka says. “That’s just wrong.”

Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem, helped to write and pass the current law. He says concerns that nonlegal parents have can be addressed through wills, medical directives and guardianship contracts. And since nonadoptive parents do not have a claim to children in the break-up of an unmarried relationship, that is “simpler” for the children, he says.

“Certainty on the part of the child was more important to us than trying to say, well, we need to recognize this unmarried person’s rights to the child,” Valentine says. “I haven’t seen any new data or new arguments on it to say that is a policy choice that should be changed.”

He says the law was not directed exclusively at same-sex couples. It also applies to unmarried heterosexual couples.

But unmarried heterosexual couples can marry to gain adoption rights. Utah reinforced its ban on gay marriage with a voter-approved constitutional amendment in 2003.

Kelley and Kaye Beeny have considered moving out of state to secure a second-parent adoption. But both their parents, the twins’ doting grandparents, live in Utah and they worry about the financial toll of a temporary move.

Each day, Kelley and Kaye are just busy raising twins, wondering what they used to do with their time before they were moms.

“Three-and-a-half is a really funny age. We are laughing all the time,” Kaye says. “Even though we struggle with the laws of the state, and we worry every day, ‘what if, what if,’ the positives outweigh the negatives so much in our life. It’s just amazing.”

rwinters@sltrib.com

—

By the numbers Census snapshot of gay and lesbian families in Utah

Same-sex couples living together • 3,861 (58 percent are women; 42 percent are men)

Portion of those couples with children • 30 percent

Children living in same-sex couple households • 2,900

Among same-sex couples with children, average number of kids at home • 2.5

Among married couples withkids, average number of kids at home • 2.3

Portion of same-sex parents with a stay-at-home parent • 20 percent

Portion of married-couple families with a stay-at-home parent • 43 percent

Source • The Williams Institute

Congratulations to Rep. Jim Matheson and the 111th Congress, which just voted to lower the standards of our military (80 percent favorable rating) to that of Congress (13 percent favorable). It’s no coincidence that most of the politicians voting never served in combat. Congress’ vote legitimized sodomy as normal and acceptable, elevating and celebrating it!

When at the crossroads, this “District of Criminals” (as some of us in the Pentagon called Congress) took the wrong fork. Working backward from preconceived conclusions, and unmoved by reason, evidence, timeless standards and history, they pandered for votes. Now the military is forced to reflect their shameful, upside-down, politically correct values.

Pentagon reports repeatedly voice concern that allowing gays to serve openly would lead to widespread and overt displays of effeminacy and disruptive, unhealthy conduct. As a combat officer with 30 years of experience, I know that commingling of out-of-the-closet gays and straights is a disaster in the making.

The only moral and practical solution to the impeached former President Bill Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is to reinstate the total ban on gays in the military.

This Congress is unwanted, unclean and a disaster! Have they no shame?

Retired Col. Gary R. Stephens

Layton

There is one thing to his credit. He signed his name. He thought ‘Retired Colonel’ would give him some credibility on the issue and a reason to express his strongly held view. What he didn’t say was that he is also a ‘ recently retired LDS Mission President.’

Since its very difficult to discern a grain of charity or kindness in his letter the church leaders are probably pleased that he used ‘Retired Colonel’ instead of ‘former mission president.’ His letter was certainly absent any portion of the Spirit of the Lord.

In fact, in all liklihood the brethern are squirming about this letter. At this point in time they are trying to figure a way out of the box they have already built for themselves and these kinds of vile, anti-gay blather coming from prominent members of the church is not what the church needs right now.

Stephens sounds as brash and out of touch as Apostle Boyd K. Packer’s speech in general conference that had the other general authorities on ‘damage control alert.’

Ret. Colonel Stephens has probably served aside many gays during this years in the military, and if he is a combat veteran of 30 years (which is probably an extreme exaggeration given that he would have to be in combat almost continuously during his military career) a gay soldier may have saved his life.

Another liklihood that Stephens probably isn’t even aware of is that he has children or grand children who are gay and they are in the closet out of fear of their grumpy old grandpa.

The attitude expressed by this letter reflects poorly on the church and the military.

There were many commentors who took him to task for his letter. We will reprint two comments that appeared in the Standard Examiner in Ogden. It was as follows:

Al 12/21/2010 03:28 PM

Gary asserts that, “The Pentagon’s report “repeatedly” said that allowing gays to serve openly would “lead to widespread and overt displays of effeminacy and unsavory conduct.”"

What’s fun about the internet is that when people quote things, other people can look up the quotes to see if they are accurate. No surprise, Gary’s assertion is entirely wrong. Here’s what the report actually SAYS (page 5, Gary; you wouldn’t even have to read that much):

In the course of our assessment, it became apparent to us that, aside from the moral and religious objections to homosexuality, much of the concern about “open” service is driven by misperceptions and stereotypes about what it would mean if gay Service members were allowed to be “open” about their sexual orientation. Repeatedly, we heard Service members express the view that “open” homosexuality would lead to widespread and overt displays of effeminacy among men, homosexual promiscuity, harassment and unwelcome advances within units, invasions of personal privacy, and an overall erosion of standards of conduct, unit cohesion, and morality. Based on our review, however, we conclude that these concerns about gay and lesbian Service members who are permitted to be “open” about their sexual orientation are exaggerated, and not consistent with the reported experiences of many Service members.

So, yes, it says what Gary argues it says, but only if you ignore the rest of the words.

Another commenter said:

Well, Col (Ret) Gary:

I’m a civilian who worked at Hill AFB for 27+ years, and whose husband served three tours in Vietnam with the US Navy. I am very familiar with the military.

I must say that you have blinders on, ignored what was going on around you during your career, and evidently are so used to people taking your word for things, that you think we’re all as stupid?

I guess now that you have to produce your own writings (instead of someone doing it for you), you’re not as concerned with accuracy? As Al has pointed out, you’ve pulled a Beck-Limbaugh trick of taking a sentence out of context and weaving a little fantasy around it.

When I first went to work at the base in 1965, the first young airman I met, became a friend and confided in me that he was “queer” (the word everyone used back then). During my career, I met many many other gay members of the military. THEIR FELLOW MILITARY KNEW THEY WERE GAY! Oh, a few got teased — but no one really cared.

My father served in WWII. We talked about the issue a few years back, and he remembers serving with two gay members of the US Marines, 6th Marines Division!

You, Col (Ret) Gary, also met gay members of the military. Many of them outranked you.

Shamefully, Col (Ret) Gary, you are totally unaware of the bravery shown by the gays serving in our military.

In fact, I am positive that you owe your life, to at least one gay person.

By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Saturday struck down the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, bringing to a close a 17-year struggle over a policy that forced thousands of Americans from the ranks and caused others to keep secret their sexual orientation.

By a vote of 65 to 31, with eight Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate approved and sent to President Obama a repeal of the Clinton-era law, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a policy critics said amounted to government-sanctioned discrimination that treated gay and lesbian troops as second-class citizens.

Utah’s two senators, Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch, voted against the repeal, preferring instead to continue the discrimination. It will go down as one of Bennett’s last votes. As history moves on he will rue his vote and it will forever mar his career. Hatch will probably wear it as a badge of honor forever.

The LDS Church, although not shy about speaking out on moral issues facing the government, has chosen to remain mute on the issue. The issue offered the church a chance to extend a hand of friendship to gays, but once again it rejected the opportunity. Mum is the word from church headquarters.

Mr. Obama hailed the action, which fulfills his pledge to reverse the ban. “As commander in chief, I am also absolutely convinced that making this change will only underscore the professionalism of our troops as the best led and best trained fighting force the world has ever known,” Mr. Obama said in a statement after the Senate, on a 63-33 vote, beat back Republican efforts to block a final vote on the repeal bill.

The vote marked a historic moment that some equated with the end of racial segregation in the military.

It followed a comprehensive review by the Pentagon that found a low risk to military effectiveness despite greater concerns among some combat units and the Marine Corps. The review also found that Pentagon officials supported Congressional repeal as a better alternative than an court-ordered end.

Supporters of the repeal said it was long past time to end what they saw as an ill-advised practice that cost valuable personnel and forced troops to lie to serve their country.

“We righted a wrong,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the independent from Connecticut who led the effort to end the ban. “Today we’ve done justice.”

Before voting on the repeal, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created a path to citizenship for certain illegal immigrants who came to the United States at a young age, completed two years of college or military service and met other requirements including passing a criminal background check.

The 55-41 vote in favor of the citizenship bill was five votes short of the number needed to clear the way for final passage of what is known as the Dream Act. The outcome effectively kills it for this year, and its fate beyond that is uncertain since Republicans who will assume control of the House in January oppose the measure and are unlikely to bring it to a vote.

The Senate then moved on to the military legislation, engaging in an emotional back and forth over the merits of the measure as advocates for repeal watched from galleries crowded with people interested in the fate of both the military and immigration measures. “I don’t care who you love,” Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said as the debate opened. “If you love this country enough to risk your life for it, you shouldn’t have to hide who you are.”

Mr. Wyden showed up for the Senate vote despite saying earlier that he would be unable to do so because he would be undergoing final tests before his scheduled surgery for prostate cancer on Monday.

The vote came in the final days of the 111th Congress as Democrats sought to force through a final few priorities before they turn over control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans in January and see their clout in the Senate diminished.

It represented a significant victory for the White House, Congressional advocates of lifting the ban and activists who have pushed for years to end the Pentagon policy created in 1993 under the Clinton administration as a compromise effort to end the practice of banning gay men and lesbians entirely from military service. Saying it represented an emotional moment for members of the gay community nationwide, activists who supported repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” exchanged hugs outside the Senate chamber after the vote.

“Today’s vote means gay and lesbian service members posted all around the world can stand taller knowing that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ will soon be coming to an end,” said Aubrey Sarvis, an Army veteran and executive director for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

The executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay group that challenged the policy in federal court, thanked Republicans senators for participating in a historic vote. The director, R. Clarke Cooper, who is a member of the Army Reserve, said repeal will “finally end a policy which has burdened our armed services for far too long, depriving our nation of the talent, training and hard won battle experience of thousands of patriotic Americans. ”

A federal judge had ruled the policy unconstitutionial in response to the Log Cabin suit, but that decision had been stayed pending appeal.

Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center in California, a research institute at the University of California in Santa Barbara that studies issues surrounding gays and lesbians in the military, said that the vote “ushers in a new era in which the largest employer in the United States treats gays and lesbians like human beings.”

In a statement on the group’s website, Mr. Belkin said: “It has long been clear that there is no evidence that lifting the ban will undermine the military, and no reason to fear the transition to inclusive policy. Research shows that moving quickly is one of the keys to a successful transition. If the President and military leadership quickly certify the end of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ they will ensure an orderly transition with minimal disruption.”

Organizations that opposed repeal of the ban assailed the Republican senators who defied their party majority.

The Center for Military Readiness, a group that specializes in social issues in the military and has opposed repeal, said the new legislation “will impose heavy, unnecessary burdens on the backs of military men and women.” It said the Senate majority voted with “needless haste” by not waiting for hearings into a recent Department of Defense study of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Elaine Donnelly, president of the group, said that the Pentagon’s survey indicated that 32 percent of Marines and 21.4 percent of Army combat troops would leave the military sooner than planned if “don’t ask, don’t tell” were repealed.

Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, said senators like Scott Brown, a Republican from Massachusetts, “broke trust with the people” by voting on repeal before the federal budget was resolved and “have put the troops at risk during wartime.”

During the debate, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and his party’s presidential candidate in 2008, led the opposition to the repeal and said the vote was a sad day in history. “I hope that when we pass this legislation that we will understand that we are doing great damage,” Mr. McCain said. “And we could possibly and probably, as the commandant of the Marine Corps said, and as I have been told by literally thousands of members of the military, harm the battle effectiveness vital to the survival of our young men and women in the military.”

He and other opponents of lifting the ban said the change could harm the unit cohesion that is essential to effective military operations, particularly in combat, and deter some Americans from enlisting or pursuing a career in the military. They noted that despite support for repealing the ban from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, other military commanders have warned that changing the practice would prove disruptive.

“This isn’t broke,” Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said about the policy. “It is working very well.”

Other Republicans said that while the policy might need to be changed at some point, Congress should not do so when American troops are fighting overseas.

“In the middle of a military conflict, is not the time to do it,” said Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia.

Only a week ago, the effort to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy seemed to be dead and in danger of fading for at least two years with Republicans about to take control of the House. The provision eliminating the ban was initially included in a broader Pentagon policy bill, and Republican backers of repeal had refused to join in cutting off a filibuster against the underlying bill because of objections over the ability to debate the measure.

In a last-ditch effort, Mr. Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a key Republican opponent of the ban, encouraged Democratic Congressional leaders to instead pursue a vote on simply repealing it. The House passed the measure earlier in the week.

The repeal will not take effect for at least 60 days while some other procedural steps are taken. In addition, the bill requires the defense secretary to determine that policies are in place to carry out the repeal “consistent with military standards for readiness, effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention.”

Because of the uncertainty, Mr. Sarvis appealed to Mr. Gates to suspend any investigations into military personnel or discharge proceedings under the policy to be overturned in the coming months.

Mr. Lieberman said the ban undermined the integrity of the military by forcing troops to lie. He said 14,000 members of the armed forces had been forced to leave the ranks under the policy.

“What a waste,” he said.

The fight erupted in the early days of President Bill Clinton’s administration and has been a roiling political issue ever since. Mr. Obama endorsed repeal in his own campaign and advocates saw the current Congress as their best opportunity for ending the ban. Dozens of advocates of ending the ban — including one wounded in combat before being forced from the military — watched from the Senate gallery as the debate took place.

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, dismissed Republican complaints that Democrats were trying to race through the repeal to satisfy their political supporters.

“I’m not here for partisan reasons,” Mr. Levin said. “I’m here because men and women wearing the uniform of the United States who are gay and lesbian have died for this country, because gay and lesbian men and women wearing the uniform of this country have their lives on the line right now.”

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader and a crucial proponent of the repeal, noted that some Republicans had indicated they might try to block Senate approval of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia because of their pique over the Senate action on the ban.

“How’s that’s for statesmanship?” Mr. Reid said.

Joseph Berger contributed reporting from New York.

By Rob Boston

Americans United for Separation of Church and State

About a week before the Nov. 2 election, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins sent an e-mail to supporters plugging a bus trip to Des Moines, Iowa.

Why was the Washington, D.C.-based FRC road-tripping in the Hawkeye State?

The message, sent under the auspices of FRC Action, laid it out: Three Iowa Supreme Court justices who had voted to strike down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage in 2009 were facing retention elections. FRC and its Religious Right allies aimed to take them all out.

And they did. On Election Day, Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices Michael Streit and David Baker failed to garner 50 percent support to stay on the court.

This was very sad news for America. When the judiciary, the principal safety valve for minority rates, is co-opted by the majority it also puts in jeopardy the fundamental and basic rights of minorities. Majority votes are a distinguishing and important part of democracy, but the surviving grace of the constitution is its human rights clauses that cannot be over ridden by majority vote.

This action designed to deny basic human rights to a minority is a threat to the constitution and now all minorities of any category are in danger, including the very people who engineered this campaign.

Religious groups who organized this effort to deny equal protection under the law. Undoubtedly, there were many, many votes cast by people who were unthinkingly voting against their own best interests.

Shame on the Family Research Council and Tony Perkins in particular.

The removal of the three does not affect the same-sex marriage ruling, but it will likely have the Religious Right’s intended effect: sending a message to judges in other states who face elections.

“What is so disturbing about this is that it really might cause judges in the future to be less willing to protect minorities out of fear that they might be voted out of office,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Irvine’s School of Law told The New York Times. “Something like this really does chill other judges.”

The FRC, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and other Religious Right groups began taking aim at the judges months ago. They poured money into the state, organized in fundamentalist churches and blitzed Iowa with a bus tour.

The purple bus, emblazoned with the words “Replace, Renew, Restore” and photos of the three targeted judges, made stops in 20 Iowa communities over four days in late October. FRC and NOM were so proud of the bus that they created a special Web site (judgebus.com) full of pictures and messages sent via Twitter. (You could even “like” the bus on Facebook.)

Some clergy jumped into the effort, heedless of the legal consequences of church-based politicking. In Sioux City, the Rev. Cary K. Gordon of Cornerstone World Outreach Church implored other preachers to attack the judges from the pulpit.

Americans United reported Cornerstone to the Internal Revenue Service. (See “Bully Pulpit,” November 2010 Church & State.)

For years, Religious Right groups have fulminated against “activist judges” who issue rulings the far right dislikes. Their success in Iowa will undoubtedly spur them to move on to other states and threaten more judges.

The effect could be profound. Although federal judges are appointed by the president (with review by the Senate), many state judges are elected. A 2008 New York Times story cited the National Center for State Courts, which says that 87 percent of judges in the states face some type of election. The Center says 39 states elect some or all judges.

In Iowa, judicial candidates are nominated by a committee of lawyers and sent to the governor, who chooses to appoint them or not.

To further complicate matters, Iowa is undergoing political change. Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat, was defeated by former governor Terry Branstad last month. Branstad courted and worked closely with Religious Right groups during his time in office in the 1990s. It’s likely they’ll demand input into the judicial replacement process.

During the anti-judge campaign, FRC leaders railed against out-of-state gay-rights groups that they said were attempting to influence the outcome. But the FRC isn’t based in Iowa either and featured Louis Gohmert, a member of Congress from Texas, as one of its speakers.

The National Organization for Marriage, which is based in Princeton, N.J., poured $600,000 into the effort. The Christian Post reported that this was the largest donation made to the campaign.

The Des Moines Register reported that the vote “triggered a battle never seen in Iowa’s judicial history. Television, radio and Internet ads portrayed the justices as both activists and referees. Robo-calls urged a ‘no’ vote. U.S. Rep. Steve King embarked on a statewide bus tour to rally ‘no’ voters.”

Exulting in the victory, King remarked, “It’s something that will send a resounding message all across the country, and I think that every judge in the judicial branch of every state will learn about this decision by Iowans. We’ve been a little soft on the social issues lately, and we turned the corner last night.”

But the effort was not a total success. Two state judges in Polk County who were also targeted for issuing rulings favorable to same-sex couples were retained by overwhelming margins.

While the Religious Right celebrated the defeat of the Supreme Court judges, the Register sounded a note of caution.

“Tuesday’s vote was a body blow to the principle of an independent judiciary insulated from popular sentiment,” asserted the newspaper in an editorial. “If punishing judges for unpopular decisions becomes common, the people of Iowa will be the ultimate losers. That includes those who initiated this campaign, because their rights may one day be on the line.”

Deseret News

Published: Sunday, Dec. 5, 2010 11:50 p.m. MST

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah-born and BYU-educated judge will find himself in the middle of a whole lot of hubbub when the case stemming from California’s controversial Proposition 8 lands back in court Monday morning for oral arguments before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Judge N. Randy Smith, 61, was born in Logan. He attended Utah State University before transferring to BYU, where he received a B.S. in accounting in 1974 and his law degree in 1977. Successfully nominated to the 9th Circuit by President George W. Bush three years ago, Smith still remains the most recent newcomer of the nearly 30 active judges on the 9th Circuit. He currently resides in Pocatello, Idaho.

It’s interesting that the Deseret News avoided mentioning that the judge is a Mormon and that the Mormons have a keen interest in the outcome of this hearing. We do not know whether he is a Mormon, or an active Mormon, but the fact that he was born in Logan and graduated from BYU is almost a slam-dunk assurance that he was at least once upon a time a Mormon.

The judge  graduated from BYU and was a student there while Apostle Dallin Oaks was president of the university. Oaks has been an outspoken opponent of same sex marriage, and the church has poured millions of dollars into the Prop 8 issue and has largely been credited with its passing.

Can a Mormon judge be judicious when it comes to Mormon matters? There are some valid differences of opinion about that.

Joining Smith on the three-judge panel are Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, 65 years old, nominated in 1994 by President Bill Clinton to the 9th Circuit, and 79-year-old Circuit Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt, who was nominated to the 9th Circuit in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. (Proposition 8 supporters filed a motion last week seeking Reinhardt’s disqualification from the panel because his wife is the executive director of the ACLU of Southern California and a financial donor to the “No on 8″ campaign, but Reinhardt declined to recuse himself.)

Apparently Judge Smith has also declined to recuse himself! Can a Mormon judge who repeatedly repeats oaths of allegiance to his church and regularly pays tithing to the church be objective when it comes to an issue like this?

Why would Judge Reinhardt need to recuse himself because of his wife’s action and Judge Smith not recuse himself because of his own actions? (Keep in mind that we have no assurance of Judge Smith’s actual status. It is only surmised at this point.)

In what may be the final step of the appellate process before the matter reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, the judges will listen to attorneys from both sides in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case challenging the constitutionality of a California voter initiative restricting the scope of marriage to heterosexual unions. On Aug. 4, Judge Vaughn R. Walker of the trial-level U.S. District Court ruled Proposition 8 is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the 14th Amendment.

Throughout his adult life, Smith has consistently made time to teach business classes to university students. He began teaching college courses while still a student at BYU and continued doing so as a young attorney, first at Boise State (1977-82) and then Idaho State University (1984-present). His teaching regimen never yielded to the heavy time demands of some of the responsibilities he undertook along the way such as being partner at a law firm, chairman of the Idaho Republican Party or a state trial court judge.

“(Smith) teaches as an adjunct,” said Jim Jolly, who for the past 22 years has been Smith’s department chair in the Idaho State business school. “Even with his busy schedule, I always contact him when I’m ready to do the next semester’s schedule and say, ‘Are you going to be available? Are you willing?’

“He says, ‘Oh of course, I really want to do it.’ He finds the time in his busy schedule. He really enjoys teaching.”

Scheduling classes around his judge job is always an issue for Smith, who maintains his chambers in Pocatello but is obligated to commute to 9th Circuit headquarters in San Francisco when his name is randomly chosen from the pool of judges to hear a case (which is how Smith ended up on the panel for the Proposition 8 appeal).

“Being on the 9th Circuit now, he has to travel to California quite a bit,” Jolly said. “But that’s on a pretty regular schedule. He teaches night classes for us. For example, for a long time it was a Thursday night but then his travel schedule changed so now it’s on Tuesday night, and then he often travels late in the week.”

Smith’s course offerings include Legal Environment of Business, a sophomore-level class providing a broad overview of topics like employment law, and the upper-division Business Law, which teaches students everything they need to know about contract law in order to run a business. His teaching style incorporates the Socratic method, a way of teaching students by asking them questions that’s common fare in American law schools.

“Nobody doesn’t like Randy,” Jolly said. “Semester in and semester out, he is probably our most popular instructor in terms of student evaluations. They absolutely love him, he cares about them and he’s easy to talk to.

“He’s just a nice guy. If you met him on the street, you would probably never realize that he’s a Circuit Court judge. He’s kind of the guy next door — soft-spoken, easy-going, just another guy. He’s Randy, but he really knows his stuff too. The students really appreciate both those aspects.”

e-mail: jaskar@desnews.com

© 2010 Deseret News Publishing Company | All rights reserved

Published: November 24, 2010 11:12AM

Pleased that a pill may halt HIV infection, Utah activists and doctors are awaiting further information before changing their prevention or prescription tactics.

“It’s another tool. I don’t know how exciting it will be yet. That’s difficult to say,” said Claudia Goulston, a doctor who treats patients suffering from HIV at University Hospital.

But it doesn’t mean it’s time to abandon condoms and other proven prevention strategies, said Jennifer Brown, an epidemiologist at the Utah Department of Health.

In a global study, scientists found that the anti-retroviral pill Truvada, already used to treat HIV infection, turns out to be a powerful weapon in protecting healthy gay men from contracting the virus.

Daily doses cut the risk of infection by 44 percent when used with condoms, counseling and other preventative services. Men who took the pills most faithfully had even more protection — up to 73 percent.

Researchers had feared the pills might give a false sense of security and make men less likely to use condoms or to limit their partners, but the opposite occurred — risky sex declined.

“I am encouraged by this announcement of groundbreaking research on HIV prevention,” President Barack Obama said in a Tuesday statement. “While more work is needed, these kinds of studies could mark the beginning of a new era in HIV prevention.”

The results are “a major advance” that can help curb the epidemic in gay men, said physician Kevin Fenton, AIDS-prevention chief at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But he warned they may not apply to people exposed to HIV through male-female sex, drug use or in other ways. And gay and bisexual men need to continue using condoms, he said.

The pill “should never be seen as a first line of defense against HIV,” Fenton said.

Because Truvada is already on the market, the CDC is rushing to develop guidelines for doctors using it for HIV prevention, and it urged people to wait until those are ready.

Utah’s Goulston said she isn’t ready to change how she treats her patients based on the report.

“Taking a medication isn’t that easy,” she said, noting it is expensive, there are side effects and the possibility of developing a resistance.

She counsels patients who are having sex with known HIV patients to use condoms. And, for the past decade, she has offered patients who have been exposed to the virus doses of anti-retrovirals within 72 hours of exposure.

The pills cost from $5,000 to $14,000 a year in the United States, but only 39 cents a day in some poor countries, where they are sold in generic form.

In the U.S., who should pay for them — insurers or government health programs — is one of the tough issues to be sorted out, and analyses on cost-effectiveness should help, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Brown, who oversees Utah’s federally subsidized program that helps low-income HIV/AIDS patients acquire antiviral medications, isn’t sure that federal rules would allow using Truvada on uninfected patients. Even if they did, Brown would be loath to spend the program’s limited funding that way.

“We’re struggling to keep our patients who are HIV-positive on the program,” she said.

There are a lot of unanswered questions that warrant further research, including the risk of patients becoming resistant to the drug, she said: “There are a limited number of antivirals available.”

The news came as UNAIDS announced that the global epidemic was slowing — new cases dropped nearly 20 percent during the past decade — and about 33 million people are living with HIV now.

Health officials credit part of the decline to wider condom use, and on Tuesday, the Vatican said that using a condom is a lesser evil than infecting a sexual partner with HIV — further expanding what some see as Pope Benedict XVI’s softening stance on this issue.

“This is a great day in the fight against AIDS … a major milestone,” said a statement by Mitchell Warren, head of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, a nonprofit group that works on HIV prevention.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored the study.

Results were reported at a news conference Tuesday and published online by The New England Journal of Medicine.

It is the third AIDS-prevention victory in about a year. In September 2009, scientists announced that a vaccine they are now trying to improve had protected one in three people from getting HIV in a report in Thailand. In July, research in South Africa indicated that a vaginal gel spiked with an AIDS drug could cut a woman’s chances of getting HIV from an infected partner nearly in half.

Gay and bisexual men account for nearly half the more than 1 million Americans living with HIV. Worldwide, more than 7,000 new infections occur each day. Unlike in the U.S., only 5 to 10 percent of global cases involve sex between men.

“The condom is still the first line of defense” because it also prevents other sexually spread diseases and unwanted pregnancies, said the study’s leader, Robert M. Grant, of the Gladstone Institutes, a private foundation affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco.

But many men don’t, or won’t, use condoms all the time, so researchers have been testing other prevention tools.

AIDS drugs are already used to prevent infection in health care workers who are accidentally exposed to HIV and in babies whose pregnant mothers are on the medication.

Taking these drugs before exposure to the virus may keep it from taking hold.

—

Testing Truvada

The drugs tenofovir (brand name Viread) and emtricitabine, or FTC (Emtriva), are sold in combination as Truvada by California-based Gilead Sciences Inc.

The company donated Truvada for the study, which involved about 2,500 men at high risk of HIV infection in Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, South Africa, Thailand and the United States (San Francisco and Boston).

The men were given either Truvada or dummy pills. All had monthly visits to get HIV testing, more pills and counseling.

After a median follow-up of a little more than a year, there were 64 HIV infections among the 1,248 men taking dummy pills and only 36 among the 1,251 taking Truvada.

Among men who took their pills at least half the time, determined through interviews and pill counts, the risk of infection fell by 50 percent.

For those who took pills on 90 percent or more of days, risk fell 73 percent.

Tests of drug levels in the blood confirmed that more consistent use of the drugs provided better protection.

—

What’s next?

Studies are now under way to determine whether the pills protect people exposed to HIV through male-female sex, the use of drugs or in other ways. Further study is also needed on the possible long-term risks.

and NICOLE WINFIELD

The Associated Press

Published: November 23, 2010 04:10PM

Vatican City • In a seismic shift on one of the most profound — and profoundly contentious — Roman Catholic teachings, the Vatican said Tuesday that condoms are the lesser of two evils when used to curb the spread of AIDS, even if their use prevents a pregnancy.

The position was an acknowledgment that the church’s long-held anti-birth control stance against condoms doesn’t justify putting lives at risk.

“This is a game-changer,” declared the Rev. James Martin, a prominent Jesuit writer and editor.

The new stance was staked out as the Vatican explained Pope Benedict XVI’s comments on condoms and HIV in a book that came out Tuesday based on his interview with a German journalist.

How to make sense out of religion? It is such a mystery that it survives.  The Catholic Church, like certain other dogmatic churches that claim to be God’s only true church, just can’t admit to being wrong.

They must think that their flocks will fly away if they actually speak the words that they already know and accept, “we were wrong.”

Now the Catholic Church has really split the baby in half. The church has in essence said that it is immoral to use condoms while having sexual intercourse, but if it will prevent AIDS then it is the moral thing to do, and oh, artificial birth control remains immoral. So now you can wear a condom to prevent AIDS, but not to prevent pregnancy. Divine that one!

There was also breaking news that a pill has been designed that will prevent HIV. Now the next step for science is to design a pill that will prevent HIV and prevent pregnancy at the same time. It will sell like hotcakes to Catholics the world over, because there is nothing better than having your morality and immorality come together at the same time.

The Vatican still holds that condom use is immoral and that church doctrine forbidding artificial birth control remains unchanged. Still, the reassessment on condom use to help prevent disease carries profound significance, particularly in Africa where AIDS is rampant.

“By acknowledging that condoms help prevent the spread of HIV between people in sexual relationships, the pope has completely changed the Catholic discussion on condoms,” Martin said.

The change came on a day when U.N. AIDS officials announced that the number of new HIV cases has fallen significantly — thanks to condom use — and a U.S. medical journal published a study showing that a daily pill could help prevent spread of the virus among gay men.

“This is a great day in the fight against AIDS … a major milestone,” said Mitchell Warren, head of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition.

Theologians have debated for years whether it could be morally acceptable for HIV-infected people to use condoms to avoid infecting their partners.

The Vatican years ago was reportedly preparing a document on the subject, but it never came out.

The groundbreaking shift, coming as it does from the deeply conservative pontiff, would appear likely to restrain any public criticism from Catholic conservatives, who on Tuesday insisted the pope was merely reaffirming the church’s moral teaching.

Conservatives have feared that a comment like this would give support to Catholics who want to challenge the church’s ban on artificial contraception in an environment where they feel they are under siege from a secular, anti-Catholic culture.

George Weigel, a conservative Catholic writer, said the Vatican was by no means endorsing condom use as a method of contraception or a means of AIDS prevention.

“This is admittedly a difficult distinction to grasp,” he told The Associated Press in an e-mail. What the pontiff is saying is “that someone determined to do something wrong may be showing a glimmer of moral common sense by not doing that wrong thing in the worst possible way — which is not an endorsement of anything.”

—

Africans commend pope’s suggestion

From clerics to AIDS activists, Africans applauded Pope Benedict XVI’s suggestion that condoms could be used in limited situations to protect partners — a shift that could make a dramatic impact in a continent that is both battling an HIV pandemic and is the fastest-growing region for the Roman Catholic Church. “I say hurrah for Pope Benedict,” exclaimed Linda-Gail Bekker, chief executive of South Africa’s Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation in Nairobi, Kenya. She said the pope’s statement may prompt many people to “adopt a simple lifestyle strategy to protect themselves.”

Re “LDS half-measure” (Forum, Nov. 10):

The idiom “beating a dead horse” comes to mind each time I read a letter about non-acceptance of homosexuality by churches, religions, government leaders and the public in general.

Using examples of early American slavery or mistreatment of Jews throughout history to apply to non-acceptance of a lifestyle is ludicrous and an injustice to the memory of those events.

Religions have centuries-old doctrines and creeds that provide lifestyle guidelines to their adherents. Many religions — Christian, Eastern, Asian and others — do not view homosexuality as an acceptable practice.

Accusing individuals of intolerance or political incorrectness for not changing the beliefs that define their faith is the mirror image of homosexuals crying non-acceptance of their beliefs.

We all have the choice to accept or not accept lifestyles of others, while still maintaining kindness, compassion and civility. As we learned in junior high and high school, acceptance by one group or another should not define who we believe we are.

Bonnie Stone

Eden

Bonnie, gays aren’t trying to change church doctrines, just their behavior toward them, like perhaps trying The Golden Rule!! Gays are not mistreating religions. Religions are mistreating gays by restricting

The following editorial appeared in Monday’s Washington Post:

Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer were together for 44 years and legally married since 2007. They lived in New York, which recognizes same-sex marriage. But none of that mattered when Spyer died at 77 in 2009 after a decades-long struggle with multiple sclerosis.

Windsor, now 81, was treated like a stranger to Spyer because of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which recognizes only marriages between one man and one woman. She was forced to pay $350,000 in federal inheritance taxes.

Gerald V. Passaro II and Thomas M. Buckholz had been a couple for 13 years when they were married in 2008 in Connecticut, which legally blesses such relationships. Buckholz had worked for 20 years for Bayer Corp., which extends certain benefits to domestic partners; he was also vested in the company’s pension plan. But when he died in 2009, Passaro was denied benefits for surviving spouses. Because federal law governs the pension plan, DOMA applies.

This month, Windsor filed a lawsuit in New York challenging the constitutionality of DOMA. Passaro is one of the plaintiffs in a separate lawsuit in Connecticut. Their experiences demonstrate the injustice of this law. DOMA was created for the purposes of “defending and nurturing the institution of traditional heterosexual marriage,” “defending traditional notions of morality” and “protecting state sovereignty and democratic self-governance” — dubious goals, at best.

How does the denigration of committed same-sex relationships strengthen opposite-sex unions? How could it be moral to pile hardship upon grief by forcing surviving spouses to deal with financial strains others are shielded from? How is federalism bolstered when states are prevented from applying policy and legal preferences in defining marriage, long considered the states’ domain?

This year, a Massachusetts judge ruled that DOMA violated the equal-protection rights of same-sex married couples. Windsor and Passaro offer convincing arguments for why the jurists overseeing their respective cases should reach the same result.

Plaintiffs nationwide will probably try to chip away at DOMA’s indefensible foundations. And the Supreme Court may yet have a chance to weigh in. But justice would best and most gratifyingly be served if Congress simply repealed the law, once and for all.

Los Angeles Times

Published: Friday, Nov. 19, 2010 5:57 p.m. MST

The most rapidly growing religious category today is composed of those Americans who say they have no religious affiliation. While middle-age and older Americans continue to embrace organized religion, rapidly increasing numbers of young people are rejecting it.

As recently as 1990, all but 7 percent of Americans claimed a religious affiliation, a figure that had held constant for decades. Today, 17 percent of Americans say they have no religion, and these new “nones” are very heavily concentrated among Americans who have come of age since 1990. Between 25 percent and 30 percent of twenty somethings today say they have no religious affiliation — roughly four times higher than in any previous generation.

Another sociological study should be done regarding the division these issues have had on friendships and associations and the wedge they have driven between people who otherwise would respect and love each other.

‘Us’ have a tendency not to associate with ‘them,’ simply to avoid the inevitable conversational conflicts that arise and make life uncomfortable. The ‘us vs. them’ grouping solidifies the divide by discouraging interaction between people of differing views. Sadly, we have found that silence on politics and religion, the two most valued aspects of an individual, is required to maintain friendships. The question then arises, what good are shallow, artificial friendships? And the answer widens the divide.

The question has been answered. It’s obvious on its face. Politics and religion are divisive to begin with, but mix them and it seems to compound the extent of the intolerance we have for one another.

Politics and religion are the core of conflict and people are frustrated by it. There seems to be no lubricant that works.

For instance, take Utah’s political topic of the day—George W. Bush and torture. Read the comments people, are hurling at Rocky Anderson and, by inference, to all those who are opposed to torture. The newspaper comment boards expose how feeble our brains are. The newspapers have tried to supervise the comments, but they haven’t taken the one step that will elevate the conversation—the requiring of identification. Anonymous comments expose the depths of our ignorance. Not one of the people who hurled invectives at Rocky was willing to identify themselves, and the reason for anonymity was shown in the ignorance of their remarks.

We must learn to communicate better. We all need guidance in how to improve.  We need to make a more devoted effort to improve our communication skills so that we can talk with one another in honest dialogue while maintaining civility and respect.

The answer is in the words we choose and the tone of our voice. It requires enormous restraint, but most of all, it requires a knowledge of the subject that we are so cocksure about. When we recognize our own inadequacies and limitations it makes us less dogmatic in our relationships with others.

So, why this sudden jump in youthful disaffection from organized religion? The surprising answer, according to a mounting body of evidence, is politics. Very few of these new “nones” actually call themselves atheists, and many have rather conventional beliefs about God and theology. But they have been alienated from organized religion by its increasingly conservative politics.

During the 1980s, the public face of American religion turned sharply right.

Political allegiances and religious observance became more closely aligned, and both religion and politics became more polarized. Abortion and homosexuality became more prominent issues on the national political agenda, and activists such as Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed began looking to expand religious activism into electoral politics. Church attendance gradually became the primary dividing line between Republicans and Democrats in national elections.

This political “God gap” is a recent development. Up until the 1970s, progressive Democrats were common in church pews and many conservative Republicans didn’t attend church. But after 1980, both churchgoing progressives and secular conservatives became rarer and rarer. Some Americans brought their religion and their politics into alignment by adjusting their political views to their religious faith. But, surprisingly, more of them adjusted their religion to fit their politics.

We were initially skeptical about that proposition, because it seemed implausible that people would make choices that might affect their eternal fate based on how they felt about George W. Bush. But the evidence convinced us that many Americans now are sorting themselves out on Sunday morning on the basis of their political views. For example, in our Faith Matters national survey of 3,000 Americans, we observed this sorting process in real time, when we interviewed the same people twice about one year apart.

For many religious Americans, this alignment of religion and politics was divinely ordained, a long-sought retort to the immorality of the 1960s. Other Americans were not so sure.

Throughout the 1990s and into the new century, the increasingly prominent association between religion and conservative politics provoked a backlash among moderates and progressives, many of whom had previously considered themselves religious. The fraction of Americans who agreed “strongly” that religious leaders should not try to influence government decisions nearly doubled from 22 percent in 1991 to 38 percent in 2008, and the fraction who insisted that religious leaders should not try to influence how people vote rose to 45 percent from 30 percent.

This backlash was especially forceful among youth coming of age in the 1990s and just forming their views about religion. Some of that generation, to be sure, held deeply conservative moral and political views, and they felt very comfortable in the ranks of increasingly conservative churchgoers. But a majority of the Millennial generation was liberal on most social issues, and above all, on homosexuality. The fraction of twentysomethings who said that homosexual relations were “always” or “almost always” wrong plummeted from about 75 percent in 1990 to about 40 percent in 2008. (Ironically, in polling, Millennials are actually more uneasy about abortion than their parents.)

Just as this generation moved to the left on most social issues — above all, homosexuality — many prominent religious leaders moved to the right, using the issue of same-sex marriage to mobilize electoral support for conservative Republicans. In the short run, this tactic worked to increase GOP turnout, but the subsequent backlash undermined sympathy for religion among many young moderates and progressives. Increasingly, young people saw religion as intolerant, hypocritical, judgmental and homophobic. If being religious entailed political conservatism, they concluded, religion was not for them.

Sociologists Michael Hout and Claude Fischer of the University of California at Berkeley were among the first to call attention to the ensuing rise in young “nones,” and in our recent book, “American Grace,” we have extended their analysis, showing that the association between religion and politics (and especially religion’s intolerance of homosexuality) was the single strongest factor in this portentous shift. In religious affinities, as in taste in music and preference for colas, habits formed in early adulthood tend to harden over time. So if more than one-quarter of today’s young people are setting off in adult life with no religious identification, compared with about one-20th of previous generations, the prospects for religious observance in the coming decades are substantially diminished.

Evangelical Protestantism, which saw dramatic growth in the 1970s and 1980s, has been hit hard by this more recent development. From the early 1970s to the late 1980s the fraction of Americans age 18 to 29 who identified with evangelical Protestantism rose to 25 percent from 20 percent, but since 1990, that fraction has fallen back to about 17 percent. Meanwhile, the proportion of young Americans who have no religious affiliation at all rose from just over 10 percent as late as 1990 to its current proportion of about 27 percent.

Continuing to sound the trumpet for conservative social policy on issues such as homosexuality may or may not be the right thing to do from a theological point of view, but it is likely to mean saving fewer souls.

Nevertheless, predictions of the demise of religion in America would be premature. More likely is that as growing numbers of young Americans reject religious doctrine that is too political or intolerant for their taste, innovative religious leaders will concoct more palatable offerings. Jesus taught his disciples to be “fishers of men,” and the pool of unchurched moderate and progressive young people must be an attractive target for religious anglers.

To be sure, some of these young people will remain secularists. Many of them, however, espouse beliefs that would seem to make them potential converts to a religion that offered some of the attractions of modern evangelicalism without the conservative political overlay.

Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard University, and David E. Campbell, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, are the authors of “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.” They wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.

Published: November 13, 2010 01:01AM

Re “Same-sex attractions can change, 44% say” (Tribune, Nov. 5):

So 55 percent of Mormons persist in believing that gays can change (but only 20 percent of non-LDS). No surprise there, considering Mormons’ proclivity for believing myths over facts.

From a people among whom many don’t believe in evolution, what do you expect? If Mormons lived in Galileo’s day, they would be one of the last people to agree that Jupiter has moons and the Earth revolves around the sun.

Science: the other form of revelation.

Mike Waters

Salt Lake City

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: October 25, 2010 11:25PM

Mormons may not know until the hereafter what causes same-sex attraction, but “God loves all his children” and expects everyone to do the same, an LDS Church leader said Sunday.

While the message — delivered to more than 200,000 Utah Mormons — may not seem significant, the messenger was.

As second counselor in the governing First Presidency, Dieter F. Uchtdorf is one of the highest-ranking leaders in the hierarchy of the nearly 14 million member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to address the thorny topic of whether same-sex attraction is inborn.

The gentle tone and emphasis of Uchtdorf’s remarks — spoken at the Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City and beamed to dozens of church buildings — came in the wake of an earlier speech by Boyd K. Packer, senior member of the LDS Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

In Packer’s original General Conference speech earlier this month, he said, “Some suppose that they were pre-set and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and unnatural. Not so.”

Packer later changed “tendencies” to “temptations” on the church’s website.

Still, Packer’s speech generated national controversy and protests from those inside and outside the Salt Lake City-based faith, many of whom saw the apostle’s statements as contributing to the self-loathing and suicides of gays.

In response to the outcry, LDS spokesman Michael Otterson issued a strongly worded condemnation of bullying and belittling of gays, saying, “Their struggle is our struggle.”

On Sunday, Uchtdorf reiterated the church’s position that it doesn’t know the cause of homosexuality and that it doesn’t matter.

“Many questions in life, however, including some related to same-gender attractions, must await a future answer, even in the next life,” Uchtdorf said. “Until then, the truth is, God loves all his children, and because he loves us, we can trust him and keep his commandments.”

The church is clearly embarrassed and disapproving of remarks made in conference by Apostle Boyd K. Packer and thus the continuing damage control.

After the national negative fallout from the church’s involvement in Proposition Eight the church made an obvious policy change and began extending olive leaves to the gay community, including support of a SLC anti-discrimination ordinance that had not previously been forthcoming.

Packer’s speech was a throwback to older days and apparently the President of the Quorum of the Twelve wasn’t on board with the change of policy.

How do you rebuke the President of the Quorum of the Twelve? Consider it done!

Some audience members welcomed Uchtdorf’s approach, which seemed more consistent with the church’s position.

“It seemed fairly close to the line we’ve been getting lately — the idea that the practice is sinful, but homosexual tendencies are acceptable within the church as long as people don’t act on them,” said Jennie Pulsipher, a Mormon who watched the regional conference via satellite at her east-side Salt Lake City stake center. “He also emphasized that [gays] should be treated lovingly as children of God.”

Ty Mansfield sees Uchtdorf’s remarks as representing the church’s future.

“We’re going to be hearing more and more statements like this, calling church members to a greater expression of compassion and kindness,” said Mansfield, who writes at northstarlds.org, a website for believing Mormon gays. “Doctrine will remain the same, but we’ll see a pretty radical shift in the culture of the church in how we relate both to the issue of same-sex attraction and to those who experience homosexual feelings. We’ve made some significant strides over the last few years, and I think this is only the beginning.”

Though he wasn’t in the audience, Brigham Young University microbiologist Bill Bradshaw was pleased to hear of Uchtdorf’s remarks.

“I totally agree that no matter what the cause or what we eventually find out is the definitive explanation, it doesn’t alter our opportunities nor obligations to treat our gay brothers and sisters like everyone else — with Christian kindness,” said Bradshaw, who, with his wife, Marge, directs Family Fellowship, a support group for LDS parents of gays and lesbians.

That compassionate approach, he said, “resonates with me.”

Yet Bradshaw, who has a gay son, believes a wait-and-see approach to causality belies a mountain of scientific research.

“I have spent a long time investigating the published evidence from empirical studies, and I know that the overwhelming evidence strongly favors the position that sexual orientation is programmed by biological mechanisms,” he said. “The evidence that it’s a choice or that it’s programmed by social or psychological forces is lacking.”

On Monday, Bradshaw lectured about the topic in a BYU bioethics class, explaining all the research he has uncovered in recent years.

The question of cause inevitably leads to the next question — the issue of change, he said. “The evidence shows overwhelmingly that orientation is not amenable to change.”

During Sunday’s wide-ranging address, Uchtdorf did not mention the issue of same-sex attractions changing or anything else related to the issue.

But the German leader did allude obliquely to the question of immigration by calling himself a “legal alien.”

He thanked Utahns for welcoming him and his family to the Salt Lake Valley in 1999 when he was called for an “overseas assignment,” but he expected to return to his home in Europe one day. Then, in 2004, he became an apostle, a lifetime position. He and his wife, Harriet, realized, he said, that “the ‘Wild West’ was now our final destination.”

“You are and have been for generations wonderful examples,” he said, “of integrating foreign people into your neighborhoods and communities.”

Utah’s dominant religion hasn’t taken a definitive position on the immigration debate. Instead, LDS leaders have called for “compassion” and encouraged “careful reflection and civil discourse” when discussing the issue.

pstack@sltrib.com

Wayne Steffner is correct when he cites the biblical references that denounce homosexuality, adultery, and bestiality (“It’s in the Old Testament,” Forum, Oct. 13). He shouldn’t just admonish us with his lurid interest in sexual behavior; he needs to follow all of his Bible’s “moral” teachings:

• Don’t work on the Sabbath; kill anyone who does (Exodus 31:12).

• Never wear clothing made of mixed fibers (Leviticus 19:19).

• Don’t eat pork, rabbits and shellfish (Leviticus 11:6).

• Men, do not cut your hair and don’t shave (Leviticus 19:27).

• Shun menstruating women; they and everything they touch are unclean (Leviticus. 15:19).

• Kill new brides who are not virgins (Deuteronomy 21:18).

• Force rapists to marry the women they rape (Deuteronomy 22:28).

• Parents may kill disobedient children (Deuteronomy 21:18).

As Steffner wrote: “We cannot escape our responsibility toward our fellow men; we should never sanction, facilitate or ‘tolerate’ any of these acts.”

People who use books written 2,500 years ago by superstitious Bronze Age goat herders, who claimed the world was flat and the sun revolved around the Earth as their moral code, scare the hell out of me.

Ken McCabe

Bluffdale

Violence Against Gays Must Stop!

It Begins in Our Own Hearts!

To all open minded friends and readers:

Please listen to and watch the video in the Visual of the Day section. It is a speech given by Joel Burns of the Ft. Worth, Texas,  City Council.

Watching the video may help each of us realize the serious challenges our gay and lesbian children face growing up in our anti-gay, homophobic society.

Matthew Shepherd was enough. That terrible beating and murder happened in Wyoming more than ten years ago. What has our society learned? Why is it continually repeated? When will the violence against gays stop? When will gays be able to live a normal, constructive, happy life? Why do we stand in the way? Will the next Matthew Shepherd be your son? Or grandson?

We should also ask ourselves what makes our society so anti-gay and homophobic? And what can we do about it? And, seriously, what part does religion and government play in contributing to this environment? And what can religions and government do to change the environment?

When our religious doctrines condemn and shame homosexuals and excommunicates them, when our military won’t accept gays and lesbians, when our own state won’t give gays and lesbians equal protection under the law regarding employment and housing, and when we deny them the right to marry, when we ostracize them in so many ways, how can we expect our children to treat homosexuals any differently? Why do children mock gay children? Is it because their parents and church mocks them?

Are we really willing to live with this environment? What part are we individually playing in contributing to this environment?

How does one realistically separate the sin from the sinner?

Love the sinner and hate the sin isn’t cutting it. It’s a cop out. Hating the sin rings loud and clear—-and loving the sinner is just words, no action. It rightfully rings hollow!

It is patently clear that homosexuality is arrived at honestly and involuntarily and is not amenable to significant change, and yet our church leaders continue to place all homosexuals on a guilt trip and absolve themselves from any responsibility for the bullying environment that seems to be escalating.

The churches are in essence saying, “Gays are going to burn in hell, and we should condemn them, but in the meantime love them.” And then they puff out their chests, proud of  their righteousness, and continue to deny them equality under the law.

Those of us who have been working for acceptance of gays for many years recognize and appreciate the progress that has been made, but it is not fast enough, and every day delayed continues the terror for another gay kid—and perhaps at the hands of our own kids.

What would devastate you more? Having your gay child beat up by bullies? Or having your bully son beat up on a gay?

Everyone passes the buck, but the buck stops here—–right in our own hearts!

Don’t just read this and resolve to do better. Do it! Don’t be a silent supporter. Speak up! Silence continues the injustice. Change yourself! And then others one by one.