In a reversal of the usual pattern (T & S asking other bloggernackers to guest-blog), I’ve just had the chance to be a guest-blogger myself. Yep, I was asked if I would do a guest post over at Various Stages of Mormondom, on the interesting topic: “Is it hard for you to say you’re Mormon? What baggage comes with that label?”
Here is my post as a guest blogger at Various Stages — T & S readers may find it interesting. And don’t forget to check out the rest of the posts there on the same topic (VSM has seven bloggers post each week, all on the same topic). Thanks to the VSM crew for my first chance to be a guest blogger!
Kaimi, the most obvious baggage is that now our common acquaintances expect me to act like you, since we’re both mormon. They expect me to be equally intelligent and bizarre. I can only satisfy one of those criteria.
Kaimi –
Thanks for blogging with us, you did an awesome job. I feel that we may need to take a tip from Kulturblog at some point and ask our guest blogger to stay for the entire month… not there yet, but maybe someday.
Again, thanks and nicely done.
Kaimi wrote at VSM, when speaking of possible negative ramifications of interviewers knowing he is Mormon: Mormons are a diverse lot. You get people like me — I have friends who are gay, I think that gay marriage should be legal, I’m generally in favor of civil rights. You get people like my co-bloggers Matt and Adam, who think that gay rights are a bad idea.
Matt replies: I’m not sure why you used Adam and me as stand-ins for the church. It is the Mormon church that has spent millions of dollars to preserve traditional marriage and oppose gay marriage and gay adoption, and the Mormon church your interviewers have read about. The reason interviewers might assume you oppose gay marriage is not by your associating with me, but your association with the church. When potential employers look upon you scornfully from their perches in the great and spacious building, it is primarily for your decision to sustain a church, and its prophets, whose teachings they disdain.
I should also clarify that I too favor civil rights and have gay friends, since readers might infer from the paragraph’s structure that Kaimi meant to suggest the oppposite.
Matt,
The church’s official statements on legal rights for gays have been very few and limited in scope. Individual members put flesh on that skeleton as they choose.
And the complete context of the paragraph may make more clear that I was not infering that you or Adam don’t support civil rights. I wasn’t giving a bilateral comparison, but listing some different points on a spectrum. I wrote:
“The fact is that Mormons are a diverse lot. You get people like me — I have friends who are gay, I think that gay marriage should be legal, I’m generally in favor of civil rights. You get people like my co-bloggers Matt and Adam, who think that gay rights are a bad idea. And you get people even further to the right — people who think that Martin Luther King was an evil communist, and that gays are equivalent to pedophiles. And it’s hard to know whether someone will think that I’m one of the nuts, knowing that I’m Mormon.”
Kaimi that was an excellent post. Thanks for providing a link over to it. I found it quite interesting.
The church’s official statements on legal rights for gays have been very few and limited in scope. Individual members put flesh on that skeleton as they choose.
I’m mulling this over Kaimi. I haven’t thought of it this way before.
Kaimi, when people claim that the church is “homophobic” it is not simply by virtue of the church’s positions on legal issues regarding homosexuality: all of the church’s policies regarding homosexuality are relevant (and anathema inside the great and spacious building).
Even if you limit the universe of relevant policies to those dealing with legal status, it is very likely your interviewers read news stories about the Mormon church spending millions of dollars on marriage initiatives in Hawaii, California or Alaska, or that the church has officially endorsed ammending the US Constitution to preserve traditional marriage. That’s a lot of meat on the most pressing legal question.
Matt,
News stories about spending aren’t official church policy statements.
The official statement endorsing a constitutional amendment is of relatively recent vintage, as well — I’m relatively sure that both you and Adam blogged against gay marriage prior to the recent statement.
I’m aware of where the church stands on legal issues relating to gay rights. But I stand by my prior statement — the church’s official statements on this are relatively few and relatively limited in scope. Individual members add to this as they will. I don’t believe that the church has officially stated that gay marriage will lead to the parade of horribles (group marriage, sibling marriage, etc) that some individual members, including you, have suggested.
I’m fine with any assumptions that as a church member, I will accept official positions and statements. I’m less sanguine about the reaction when someone reads T & S and comes away with the impression that all Mormons equate gay marriage to sibling marriage or whatever else.
Kaimi,
Yes, news stories about the church spending large sums of money to preserve traditional marriage are not official church policy statements, but those news stories manifest that the church’s official policy is to spend large sums of money to preserve traditional marriage.
Here is the church’s official statement, from February 1994.
As for a ‘parade of horribles,’ I think the church’s language is more dire than mine. I’ve argued that if traditional marriage is not preserved, other groups will successfully alter its definition again. The church, on the other hand, warns of “calamaties foretold by ancient prophets” in the Proclamation and, even if that warning wasn’t intended for same-sex marriage, we can discern from the their unprecedented involvement in this issue that the Mormon church believes same-sex marriage would be horrible.
That fact, and church’s teaching that homosexual behavior is a grievous sin generally, is why your interviewers might look down on Mormons. I doubt they accept the church’s position but find offensive my argument that an altered definition of marriage won’t withstand attempts to alter it further.
Matt,
Are you saying that there are no Mormons who hold beliefs opposed to gay marriage, gay rights, or whatever else, that might go beyond the church’s official position?
I’m saying that your interviewers find the church’s position offensive, and that is the position they attribute to Mormons.
Matt,
And I’m saying the opposite. The instance that I alluded to in my VSM post (which you seem to be disputing) was a case where the opposite was true. I wrote there:
“I know one person who was looking at an academic job; the hiring professor googled some publications and came across some Mormon, anti-gay writings, and assumed that the applicant was also anti-gay. And that applicant didn’t get that job.”
For reasons of confidentiality, I can’t disclose further details, but I will say that, for various reasons, I’m sure that the outcome in at least that case was created by individual anti-gay writings of an individual member going beyond official church positions.
I haven’t claimed more than anecdotal evidence. However, I daresay that — since it’s an anecdote that was told to _me_ — I probably have a better understanding than you do regarding the details of the particular anecdote to which I’m alluding.
Kaimi,
Does your friend believe that had the professor attributed to him only the positions of the church (homosexual behavior is a great sin, is contrary to the purposes of human sexuality, distorts loving relationships; good people should actively oppose same-sex marriage) that they would have looked upon him favorably? I’m somewhat doubtful your friend could know that. I mean no offense to your friend, but it’s hard for me to believe that the interviewer told him, “Had I attributed to you only the positions of your church about homosexual behavior, that it’s a great sin that distorts loving relationships, but not the positions of your co-blogger, I’d be extending you an offer right now.”
Kaimi, my feeling is that looking for an official Church statement on the question of gay marriage might be a problematic approach to the issue. Why is such a statement even necessary? Doesn’t approval of any marriage imply an underlying approval of a the sexual relationship that exists between marriage partners?
Danithew,
Should the church then be opposed to legal authorization of polygamy in countries where that is allowed?
It’s entirely possible to approve of legal permission for an activity, without approving of the underlying activity itself. I may think that the state’s issuance of a liquor license, for example, is a bad idea and encourages sinful behavior. But I may also believe that the state should not stop issuing liquor licenses, as a legal matter.