Links Left Lying
I share now a bunch of links, in simple chronological order, that I’ve been accumulating for a while.
Oy veh. This is not a story that I was happy to see:
“Duncan Event at BYU Law School ‘Canceled’”
And here, for your convenience, is the article to which reference is made:
“BYU Cancels Debate Event on Abortion: Beams before Motes”
Which leads me into a more general topic. We have, I think, entered into a period of flat-out insanity. Regarding which, I share now a bunch of links, in simple chronological order, that I’ve been accumulating for a while.
First, though, I need to say — quite in vain, if past experience is any guide — that I do not do so out of “hate.” I don’t hate anybody, so far as I’m aware. Not even those who have tried mightily for years to earn such hatred from me. Quite the contrary: I believe in treating others kindly, charitably, and respectfully, and I try seriously and (I think) pretty successfully to do so. However, I don’t believe that kindness demands of us that we deny reality or live a lie. Anyhow, here are the links in question:
26 February 2023: “Does Being Christian Disqualify Politicians from Leadership Now?”
7 March 2023: “Christian College Claims Biden Executive Order Violates Religious Freedom and Student Safety”
22 March 2023: “IT NEVER ENDS: Hollywood’s Relentless Campaign to Destabilize the Family”
27 March 2023: “Doctors Report Startling Rise In Testicular Injuries Among Woman Athletes”
28 March 2023: “If You Don’t Publish This Manifesto, Publish None of Them”
28 March 2023: “Yes, We Are Making Kids Trans: We’re going to look back years from now and wonder how we failed young girls so badly.”
30 March 2023: “The Nashville Tragedy”
30 March 2023: “Male Canadian Powerlifter Breaks Women’s Bench-Press Record in Protest against Trans-Inclusion Policy”
30 March 2023: “Female University of Wyoming Students Sue Sorority for Admitting Male Student”
31 March 2023: “Podcast: Was the attack on a conservative Presbyterian school in Nashville a religion story?”
2 April 2023: “Woke Accreditors Are Coming for Medical Schools: Supposedly neutral institutions meant to determine a school’s quality are turning into ideological enforcers.” (There’s a Utah connection to this one.)
4 April 2023: “Enough with the ‘Trans Community’ Nonsense”
4 April 2023: “Can We Spare a Moment for the Murdered Children?”
5 April 2023: “Maine Mom Sues School District That Secretly Gave 13-Year-Old Daughter a ‘Chest Binder’”
6 April 2023: “10 Disturbing Responses by LGBTQ+ Activists After the Nashville School Shooting”
8 April 2023: “Former college swimmer says she was assaulted at an event opposing the inclusion of trans women in women’s sports”
9 April 2023: “Riley Gaines Condemns San Francisco State University for Statement Thanking Students after Attack”
10 April 2023: “How a Flamboyant Gay Man Conquered Corporate America: Dylan Mulvaney figured it out.”
12 April 2023: “Amazing! Brief mention of doctrine in LGBTQIA+ war at Point Loma Nazarene University”
12 April 2023: “Proving the Point”
And then there’s this:
“Dutch Euthanasia Deaths Soar, Mentally Ill Also Killed”
And these:
“Debates in England about free speech and religion veer into ‘thoughtcrimes’ zone”
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I like the writing of David French very much, and I really like this recent article of his in the New York Times: “Easter Rebukes the Christian Will to Power”
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We had dinner with friends last night, and then, with them, attended a show, entitled “A Simple Space,” by the Australian acrobatic team “Gravity and Other Myths.” Pretty amazing. I think that even I would have a difficult time replicating their feats. The performance took place in the former Provo High School — which now belongs to Brigham Young University under the name of “West Campus Central Building” — because the Harris Fine Arts Center (HFAC), a William Pereira design that I really liked and in which my future wife (a theater major) spent much of her undergraduate time is, well, simply gone. It is no more. The BYU School of Music is moving into its own separate building, which is essentially complete, and a new arts building will be constructed on the site where the HFAC stood from 1964 until just a few weeks ago.
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Many, many years ago, when I began to write an article on whether Latter-day Saints are Christians that eventually became the book Offenders for a Word: How Anti-Mormons Play Word Games to Attack the Latter-day Saints, I came across an article about Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, in Centennial, Colorado, which was sponsoring an open house to counter the open house of the soon-to-be-dedicated Denver Colorado Temple by revealing that Latter-day Saints aren’t real Christians. At that stage, I was trying to systematically survey all of the major reasons adduced for denying our Christianity. So I wrote a short, very polite, business-like letter to the church’s lead pastor, Rev. Henry F. Fingerlin, inquiring as to whether he would be willing to send me copies of the materials that he was handing out and offering to pay postage and handling costs.
In response, I received not only the requested materials but a twelve-page typed letter denouncing my religious beliefs that opened with his confidence that I was a Latter-day Saint only because I had never been outside of Utah and, accordingly, knew nothing better. His presumption was, umm, slightly inaccurate. I had, in fact, been born and raised in California, had served a German-speaking mission in Switzerland, had earned a degree in classical Greek and philosophy, had lived (by that point) for six months in Israel and nearly four years in Egypt, and was, at the time, writing my doctoral dissertation on a topic in medieval Islamic philosophical theology for the University of California at Los Angeles. I wasn’t, I thought, quite the rustic and narrow provincial that he assumed me to be.
In that light, here’s an interesting suggestion from the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof of CNN and the New York Times (who, by the way, according to his Wikipedia entry, holds degrees from both Harvard University and Magdalen College, Oxford, and who claims to have visited at least 150 different countries):
“Utah may well be the most cosmopolitan state in America. Vast numbers of young Mormons — increasingly women as well as men — spend a couple of years abroad as missionaries and return jabbering in Thai or Portuguese and bearing a wealth of international experience.”
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Plainly — and as you’ll instantly recognize — this horror was found in the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™: “From the ashes: When a volcanic eruption set a tsunami in motion last year, thousands of Tongans tapped the island’s deep reserves of faith”
And here’s an old item that I just came across in the section of the Hitchens File that is commonly known as “The Church helps nobody; it’s just a heartless business focused on profits”: “‘To see it in action is incredible’ — community influencers from around the world visit Welfare Square”
There is also some good, solidly infuriating Hitchens File material in this story: “Ga Mantse King Visits Church Headquarters: King Tackie Teiko Tsuru II of Accra, Ghana, attends April 2023 general conference”
