In which we discover that the Exotic East isn't much different from the unexotic East Valley
When you read the hedline on this EVT story out of Mesa (“Parents sue to stop suspension for drinking on China band trip”), you probably think the same thing we do:
Jesus, aren’t these conservative Mesa types all about personal responsibility and strict rules?
Their high schoolers get caught drinking on a fields trip—to China, no less—get a lenient three days os suspension… and they sue the district to protect their little ones from having to take responsibility?
Read the story and … it’s true: These grimy parental units are suing the district after their kids got a measly three-day suspension for drinking on a band trip, to China no less.
But there’s a twist: The parents do have a case on a different aspect of what turns out to be an story with a twist or two.
The kids were drinking in China, according to the suit, but the circumstances were a little … rococo:
A Chinese tour guide provided beer while spending hours in a hotel room with the teens. The suit says the tour guide took his shirt off because he was hot, then watched the students play drinking games until they were wearing nothing but boxers.
Now that’s something the kids could have experienced back home in the good old U.S. of A., and in church, to boot.
The district’s side:
The district contends the parents threatened to generate bad publicity if administrators kept the suspensions in place. The parents' suit includes other allegations of sexual conduct and a Chinese sex worker groping a boy in the hotel.
“In any event, Plantiffs' arguments are baseless and meant to do nothing more than embarrass and discredit the school and its staff in an effort to win a tactical advantage,” the suit states.
7:55 AM
The ruling on California's gay marriage ban is coming today
This is the case to overturn Proposition 8, the Mormon-backed initiative that wiped out the ability of gays and lesbians to marry in California.
Most analysts say the U.S. District Court judge will void the proposition, but you never know.
The case against to overturn Prop. 8—and make gay marriage legal again—was led by David Boies and Ted Olsen. The pair got a lot of notice because they were on opposite sides of Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush.
From the SF Chronicle:
Walker’s ruling, due sometime between 1 and 3 p.m., is certain to be appealed to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The case could reach the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 or 2012.
Meanwhile, a new study shows that the millions the Mormons spent spreading misinformation to California families worked.
From the LAT:
The numbers are staggering. In the last six weeks, when both sides saturated the airwaves with television ads, more than 687,000 voters changed their minds and decided to oppose same-sex marriage. More than 500,000 of those, the data suggest, were parents with children under 18 living at home. Because the proposition passed by 600,000 votes, this shift alone more than handed victory to proponents.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. The Yes on 8 campaign targeted parents in its TV ads. “Mom! Guess what I learned in school today!” were the cheery-frightening first words of the supporters' most-broadcast ad. They emerged from the mouth of a young girl who had supposedly just learned that she could marry a female when she grew up.
Among the array of untrue ideas that parents could easily take away: that impressionable kids would be indoctrinated; that they would learn about gay sex; that they would be more likely to become gay; and that they might choose to be gay. California voters, depending on where they lived in the state, were exposed to the Yes on 8 ads 20 to 40 times.
If you haven’t seen it, Netflix 8: The Mormon Proposition, a fairly rigorous documentary that examines the national campaign the Mormons waged against the proposition.
It’s nice—a supposed church collecting money from its flock under the guise of doing good works, and then using it to spread hate and intolerance.
Churches get a pass in our political debate—everyone’s scared to criticize groups that run around with the idea of morality draped about them.
But why can’t we call bigots bigots?
Why don’t they build tolerance rather than spread intolerance?
7:43 AM
The Republic profiles Russell Pearce
The paper ledes today with a long, if not really in-depth, look at the bozo who’s been at the forefront of taking the state back into the stone age.
Here’s how it begins:
Nothing stops Russell Pearce.
Not a heart attack. Not a stroke. Not a bullet in the chest.
And most certainly not the criticism from opponents who have long accused him of putting politics ahead of facts, pushing too hard and cooperating too little.
The story does its best to deal with a few of Pearce’s most obvious vulnerabilities, but as usual with the Republic, the staff there just doesn’t seem up to the task.
For example, the reference to “putting politics ahead of facts” in the third paragraph is an initial taste of an issue the story flits back to, but never deals with head-on:
How Pearce talks incessantly about immigrant-fueled crime, when the facts clearly show that crimes' been declining in the state for a decade.
The reporter, Gary Nelson, interviewed Pearce for the story. There’s a lot of he-said she-said in the story about crime, but he never confronts Pearce with the facts, so Pearce is never forced to deal with his fabrications and fear-mongering.
There’s a lot on Pearce’s background with a wacko Mormon fringe figure, W. Cleon Skousen. (The article describes him with a straight face as a “Mormon political theorist.”)
But we don’t get to hear from Pearce what his vision is about church and state. (And nothing about how the Mormons feel about SB 1070.)
And one more thing: Pearce could have been asked why, if he’s so devoted to the Constitution, he’s promoting a bill about immigrant births that plainly is rendered moot by the 14th Amendment.
5:08 PM
SB 1070--The Mormon anti-immigration bill?
The Republic reports that the LDS is suffering some backlash because SB 1070 author Russell Pearce is a Mormon:
Kenneth Patrick Smith, a Mesa lawyer and president of the Valencia Branch, a Spanish-speaking LDS congregation in Mesa, said missionaries from his church have had doors slammed in their faces since Arizona’s new law was signed by Gov. Jan Brewer in April.
“They say, ‘Why would we want to hear anything from a religion that would do this to the Hispanic community?’ ” said Smith, who emphasized that he was speaking for himself, not the church. “It’s a great disconnect because on one hand the missionaries are out there preaching brotherly love, kindness, charity, tolerance, faith, hope, etc., and then they see on TV a quote-unquote Mormon pushing this legislation that makes them not only … terrified but terrorized.”
The church itself says it doesn’t have a position on the legislation, though Pearce himself uses the church’s teachings to defend his law:
Pearce has repeatedly said his efforts to drive illegal immigrants out of Arizona and keep them from coming here is based on the Mormon Church’s 13 Articles of Faith, which includes obeying the law.
Pearce is a cretin and ordinarily it wouldn’t be fair to tar the church with his membership. But even the Catholic Church has smacked Pearce’s hateful bill; just by being silent, the Mormons are fostering bigotry …
…. as they have of course done against homosexuals.
Previously in PHXated: “Temples of Bigotry”
7:35 AM
The Arizona Republic comes out against the Mormon Temple, but for the wrong reasons
An editorial says the plan, originally for a 48-foot-high building, “needs tweaking”:
The church deserves credit for lowering the building by 8 feet, to 40 feet. But more concessions are needed to make this project a nice fit for the neighborhood.
The Church still gets to add a spire of nearly 80 feet on top.
It’s good the paper, however delicately, is telling the city council to limit the church’s plans to what is currently allowed.
But it should have made clear that the Mormons vaporized any claim to religioso bonus points when it went on a jihad against gay marriage.
As PHXated has said before, the Mormons should be able to build what the current zoming allows—a thirty-foot building—and nothing more.
The Church’s hostility to gay marriage—and its funding of anti-gay marriage initiatives here and in California—is within its right. But there’s no reason the city should give special dispensation to an institution that spends its money persecuting those who are striving for equal rights under the law.
Phoenix has enough problems with its national image without having the Mormon Church’s profile be any higher than it is now—literally or figuratively.
12:00 AM
Mormon leader says the LDS is being persecuted as blacks in the Civil Rights Era were
… according to this AP story on AZCentral.com:
The anti-Mormon backlash after California voters overturned gay marriage last fall is similar to the intimidation of Southern Blacks during the civil-rights movement, a high-ranking Mormon said Tuesday.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks referred to gay marriage as an “alleged civil right” in an address at Brigham Young University-Idaho that church officials described as a significant commentary on current threats to religious freedom.
Oaks suggested that atheists and others are seeking to intimidate people of faith and silence their voices
I think there’s a flaw in his argument, but I can’t think of what it is …
… Oh, I just figured it out. The difference is that, in the 1960s, the blacks were the one being persecuted, and Bull Connor and his ilk were the ones doing the persecuting.
Today, gays are the ones being persecuted, and the Mormons are actively working to repress them, specifically by funding attacks on gay marriage across the country.
12:00 AM
Temples of bigotry
PHXated is lucky enough to own a house in northeast Phoenix. As homeowners know, there’s a lot of worries and anxieties that go along, and an owner can be forgiven for a neurosis or two. (Or three.)
But: What if I said it really bothered me that … Mormons owned houses. That Mormons’ owning houses affects my ownership of my house?
What if I said that Mormons shouldn’t be allowed to own houses?
Well, you’d say I was batshit crazy.
That whether a Mormon owned a house didn’t affect my homeownership a bit.
That I was being intolerant, a little bit crazy, and, frankly, something of a bigot.
We were thinking along these lines while reading some recent local news stories about how the Mormon Church wants some zoning variances to build two new temples in the area, one in Gilbert and one waaay up at 51st Avenue and Pinnacle Peak Road.
The Mormons were in the news last year because of the enormous financial support the church gave to two state ballot measures involving gay marriage. The church was on the anti side, both here in Arizona and in California. It’s been reported that the church spent literally millions of dollars to make sure the anti-gay marriage side won.
The church was successful in both cases, fairly narrowly in California. You could make the argument the church’s money tipped the balance.
We don’t have to point out to you the analogy we were making above. Just as it would be intolerant for us to try to deny a Mormon the right to buy a house, it’s intolerant for Mormons to try to stop gay people from marrying.
Whether a Mormon owns a house doesn’t affect me one whit, just as a couple of gays or lesbians getting hitched doesn’t affect Mormon couples one whit. That’s why it’s crazy, in both cases, to get one’s panties in a knot about it.
And finally, to go on a political campaign to deny other folks the right to buy a house—why, that’s bigoted.
And so is spending millions to dollars to make life more difficult for people who want to love and care for each other under the protection of the law.
A lot of the coverage of this issue, it seems to us, is just a little too polite.
Right now, the Mormons aren’t just building a couple of new temples, which is their right to do. They want the city in both cases to give them zoning variances. In Gilbert, they want to build to a height twice as high as is currently allowed.
In both cases, the cities should not give the Mormons any special rights to build that the current zoning doesn’t allow.
Let them built what they wish, under the laws in effect—but nothing more.
Why should the intolerant get special treatment from government?
Now, here’s the final point I want to make. What if I did get a movement going to deny Mormons the right to own houses. What if I played on people’s prejudices—and got a ban passed?
Then let’s let 100 years go by. A more tolerant age might dawn, and a movement might rise to ease those awful rules against Mormon house ownership.
Some however, would resist the change. They would demonize Mormon house ownership. It’s always been that way, they’d say. Mormons just can’t own houses.
Just because … that’s the way we’ve always done it.
How would Mormons feel? Probably a lot like the way gays and lesbians who want to get married today do.
They’d feel, in a phrase, like victims of a pointless and cruelly destructive prejudice that has no basis in reason or morality.
6:00 AM