Most of what I write takes place in the fictional state of Deseret. This post is somewhat unique in that it’s more of an outside look involving the real world. As such, for the sake of this post, state lines are drawn as they are in real life and unfictionalized.

Believe it or not, the Mormons have a temple in Las Vegas. A Mormon Temple is different from a church. They have churches everywhere, but temples are only built in places that have enough members to justify one, enough money to build one, and/or another reason. Las Vegas falls into the latter category. Basically enough Mormons wanted to get married in Vegas that they set up a temple almost especially for marriage. Despite the fact that there is already a temple in nearby St. George, Utah. Who says Mormons are not flexible? They built the temple on the east side of town. When Jesus returns, he is supposed to return to Jackson, Missouri, where they believe the Garden of Eden to have been. On the top of all of their temples they have a statue of Moroni, the angel that gave Joseph Smith the tablets. Moroni faces the way of Eden. So he’s on the east side of Las Vegas, facing away from Sin City and looking at Utah.

That’s quite appropriate, both in their disdain of sin and the special place that Utah holds in the faith.

The Salt Lake Tribune has an interesting series of articles on the declining population of Mormons in Utah. A quick word about the Salt Lake Tribune and Salt Lake City in general. Salt Lake City has two halves and two newspapers. The oldest newspaper, Deseret Morning News, is actually run by the Church. For a church-run entity it is actually a decent news source, but it comes with its fair share of biases (as all newspapers do, my newspaper back home was so in the pocket of the Chamber of Commerce it was not even funny). The Salt Lake Tribune represents the other half of SLC. It bills itself as Utah’s “independent” newspaper. It doesn’t say “independent” of what, but it doesn’t really have to. Most of the writers for Deseret Morning News are presumably Mormon. Most of the writers for the Salt Lake Tribune are not. So when one reads negative news about the church in the Salt Lake Tribune, you have to consider that the writer probably took a little pleasure in writing the story and the intended audience is being served with news they will find comforting.

According to population estimates, Utah may no longer have an LDS majority by 2030. The article does, however, acknowledge that this is unlikely to change the state’s atmosphere. Regardless of the actual populations, Mormons tend to be more civic-minded and are extremely over-represented in the voting population. More than that, the institutions are all theirs. They run the Little League, they are on the school board, and so on. Frankly, it would likely take at least a generation of a non-LDS majority before real cultural changes started to be instituted. Needless to say, my wife and I will not be in or around Utah any time soon.

One of the ironies here is that Utah is a victim of its own success. Out-of-staters are moving here in large part due to opportunities. The Utah economy is doing really well. A lot of this is owed to Mormon industriousness. Some of it is due to a friendly business environment owed in part to Republican dominance that is based largely on conservative social issues. Besides jobs, the fact that Utah is such a family-friendly place helps attract conservative out-of-staters. The LDS connection there is more straightforward. The other thing that helps is the environment, which is bringing in all the “wrong” kind of people.

But places are apparently feeling quite a pinch. Inner-city wards are closing because families are sprawling in Utah just like they are elsewhere. On the other hand, while the LDS majority is being cut across the state, I’d be willing to bet that the largest cut is in Salt Lake City, which may not even be 50/50 anymore.

The original article alluded to another article about LDS families praying for other LDS families to move in. It also discussed that what may be necessary is an economic hit to get those not culturally devoted to Utah to move along. I’d be willing to bet that some people are even praying for that. The Mormon population spills heavily into eastern Idaho as well as in to Nevada (Nevada Senator Harry Reid is Mormon, in fact) and Arizona (most of the wacko fundamentalist Mormons are actually in Colorado City, Arizona) and Wyoming. The one state that has comparitively few is Colorado. There is little concern that Utah will ever turn in to heathen Nevada, but turning into a secular Colorado is quite a concern.

I suspect quite a few Mormons would take an economic hit to ensure that it doesn’t happen.

One year ago today, half of Deseret celebrated the Fourth of July. A couple pious mayors decided that it would be inappropriate to celebrate a secular holiday on the Lord’s Day and proposed that the fireworks be held on the fifth. Some vaguely recalled something about Church and State being separate, but academic knowledge unused atrophies. Some, amazingly, suggested that to hold the public displays on the fourth constituted religious discimination against The Brethren because they would not be able to partake.

Those of us new to the area looked around and disbelief at the discussion it would never even occur to us needed to be had. Celebrating the fourth on the fifth?

Ultimately, they put on demonstrations both days.

I didn’t see either as I was out of state. Ironically, the rain was falling hard on the fourth of July, so I saw Fifth of July fireworks, too.

This day in history, courtesy of the Daily Rotten:

Mormon leader Joseph Smith, along with his brother Hyrum, are shot and killed by a mob while in jail at Carthage, Illinois. According to church legend, after Smith is shot a man raises a knife to decapitate him, but is thwarted by a thunderbolt from heaven.

Not to be a smart-ass or anything, but if God was just itching to get that involved in that series events, maybe he could have gotten involved just a tad sooner and actually saved Smith’s life?

Or maybe there’s some anti-decapitation dictum I am unfamiliar with.

We had the graduation party for the third-year residents that are now either going off into private practice, working for the government, or moving from student to faculty. The head of the program gave an interesting speech on ethics and values. Family values and sexual freedom, he noted, were set to be the big conflict of the next several decades. He mentioned abortion, but talked more about homosexuality.

Judging by both 2000 and 2004 poll numbers, Deseret is one of the two most conservative states in the nation. For a variety of reasons, the medical profession veers noticeably to the right politically. But the subject of politics had me looking around and looking at how unorthodox this program – and the town that houses it – is.

Clancy works for Beck State University at Beck County Medical Center. The town we live in used to be called Fort Beck, named after an early military settlement by that name. Fort Beck was the civil outpost – the only town in Deseret that was created by the federal government rather than mineral/fur prospectors or Mormon settlers. When the federal government and Brigham Young’s boys got into some military scuffles, Fort Beck was on the other side of that.

When all was settled, the Fort was closed and the university was put in its place. The township was dissolved and merged with Zarahemla so that it could be administered by good, elected LDS folk. Even so, Fort Beck remains something of a liberal oasis in the conservative suburbs of one of the nation’s most conservative states. It’s a hub for those that don’t want to leave the area, don’t want to live in the capital city, and don’t want to convert religiously or politically. Incoincidentally, it has a pretty nasty reputation outside of the area. The Butt-crack of Deseret, it is called.

The residency program itself has become something of an anomaly as well. Clancy’s class became the first without a single Mormon and with that the residency as a whole became non-majority LDS for the first time since its inception. The incoming class is 2/3 female making it now a female-majority residency. In Deseret.

But this is Deseret. Fort Beck is split about 50/50 religiously (between LDS and not-LDS, putting Christians and atheists in the same category for the first time in their lives). But just the balance makes Fort Beck the most tolerable place in Deseret.

I work in a town called Mocum that’s about a 50-minute drive. Mocum is a reasonably educated place with a couple colleges all its own, though a lot of them have to go down to BSU to get the four-year-degree of their preference. There’s a county hospital near FalStaff, though they don’t have a residency of their own. One of the thoughts that occured to me during the residency director’s speech was that even if Mocum did have one, I’m not sure it would even occur to them to discuss issues like sexuality.

There is so much assumed here. Just as church is considered a good place to meet a prospective mate down south, it’s considered a good place to find employees up here. Not entirely legal, but pretty widespread. Though it hasn’t happened to me, it’s not uncommon to be asked what ward (religious jurisdiction in the LDS church) you belong to. It’s not even necessarily an effort to weed out non-LDS members. Around here that’s like asking a high school kid what school they go to. Yeah, some might be homeschooled, but you assume not unless otherwise informed. Of course, once they find out you’re not a member of the Brethren, your chances of getting hired go down.

Though I certainly can’t wait to get out, I live in a pretty impressive part of the country. A religious group that is very much a minority across the country have created a bubble for itself. While it’s frustrating to outsiders like me, the homogeny here provides a commonality that makes things considered out of bounds morally also out-of-bounds conversationally. As one who supports gay rights, gay marriage, and so on, this can be quite frustrating. But looking at it from the perspective of someone that disapproves of homosexuality and wants those issues to be introduced later in life, it’s impressive. Deseret has even touched on a national nerve, setting up a handful of companies that – with great controversy – edit VHS tapes to strip them of objectionable content.

And I think that’s a laudable goal. I also think that the modesty displayed in dress around here is not a bad thing, either. The education system is one of the best in the country. Government waste is kept to as minimum as government waste ever can be. The cultural homogeny is to credit for a lot of this. I’m not sure why any of the Brethren would ever want to leave her. Nor am I sure why Fort Beck exists because I’m not sure why any non-Mormon would ever want to stay here.

Back in Fort Beck, Clancy and I attended a community theater production. There were a couple of questionably-dressed young ladies in their young twenties (if that, probably not even). One of them had a stroller. Her provocative clothing was betrayed the charactistic underwear that Mormons wear in order to repel evil spirits. To repeat, she was wearing the characteristic underwear that Mormons wear in order to repel evil spirits. Back in Colosse, such a young lady would almost certainly be doing the club scene until her early thirties, when she would scramble to find someone that’ll do and start a family in the pristine suburbs. But the timeline is different here than it is anywhere else. And there’s no evil-repellant underwear.

I leaned over to Clancy and asked, “Do you ever get the feeling sometimes that we live in a foreign country?”

She did.

Barry’s comments about southern Baptist hypocrisy reminds me an interesting story about the Southern Cross University, a conservative Christian university in Delosa. While this story doesn’t concern Baptists, per se, but another denomination known for its conservative membership.

Delosa doesn’t have an unofficial official religion like Deseret does, but charismatic conservative denominations run rampant throughout the south and Delosa is no different. One of the peculiarities of southern-style religion is how often it can break down into one-upsman-ship to faith amplification.

“I love Jesus so much!”

“But I love Him more!”

“No way. I totally love Jesus more! I’ve been Saved like six times!”

Coming from a more liturgical background, I’m not as impressed by it all as they seem to be. But to each their own. It’s only when it becomes moral, rather than religious, posturing that I start getting annoyed. While I hate to sound like a relativist, morality can be a somewhat sketchy thing, everyone is a sinner in someone’s eyes, one of the points of the Bible is accepting this fact and moving on, and even those that do walk the straight and narrow are guilty of excessive pride when they can’t shut up about it, which is a sin all its own.

At lot of this attitude is exemplified by the SCU. My best friend went there for seven years or so. He went in a Jesus-loving Christian and came out an annoyed atheist. I visited him regularly up there and got a good feel for Cross and Gilead, the town that houses it.

-{Southern Crosshairs}-

My ex-girlfriend Evangeline’s former best friend Tara got pregnant in high school by a boy named Cody. Since she and Cody were on the outs at that point, she was by nearly everyone to have an abortion or put the baby up for adoption. Seeing the child as an opportunity to mend fences with Cody, she elected to keep the child.

Cody, meanwhile won a scholarship at Cross. Interested in a new life, he left Colosse and found Jesus.

There was one little problem: His son back in Colosse. The whole ‘child out of wedlock’ thing didn’t particularly fly with his Super-Christian peers, so he decided that in order to be a good Christian kid he would have to pretend that his son didn’t exist, which he did.

It took Tara a while to figure out what was going on. Whenever she’d go up to Gilead, he’d meet her out of town. Generally he’d take trips to Colosse instead. This was mostly a tapering off mechanism to stop seeing his son entirely so that he could get a new start with his Born-Again status.

Neither Tara nor Evangeline are particularly religious, so they were not particularly understanding when they put the pieces together. Rather, they wanted blood.

And they got it.

The next weekend they drove up to Gilead armed with 100 flyers. Everywhere they could they put flyers containing a picture of Cody, a picture of Cody’s son (the resemblence obvious), and below it the words “Have you seen my Daddy? I haven’t seen him in six months.”

Cody stopped speaking to them for a while after that, so they never found out how that went over with his peers.

The missionaries stopped by again tonight. Each time it seems to be a different set. I think I might have been too rude to the last set. They never should have changed sets to begin with. I had a cordial relationship with the first ones and a sorta understanding (to the extent that a missionary can graph the concept of someone being somewhat interested in learning about the religion but very much not interested in converting). But since those two were pulled in favor of the others I’ve been a little more rude.

But even so, I can’t be too rude even when I need to be. I am also sympathetic to the fact that being a missionary isn’t easy (though it’s gotta be easier in Deseret than Somalia).

Right now I just need to buy a little bit of time. They often don’t take “I’m busy right now” for an answer (last time I was clearly on the phone). But how can they not take “It’s April 15th and I haven’t finished my taxes!” for an answer?

Quite possibly the best excuse to weasel out of anything that I’ve ever come up with in my entire life. Ever. In my whole life.

Clem, a coworker in our sister department, is apparently getting married. It seems like it was just yesterday that he had a moderate crush on Mouse and was lamenting how difficult it was to meet girls around here.

It wasn’t yesterday, but it was less than six weeks ago.

For the record, Clem is 21 years old.

One of my coworker Marcel’s friends also announced his engagement, three weeks after Marcel introduced to two of them.

The Cranstons, the family we live with, have four daughters. I’ve mentioned Becki, the youngest and only unmarried and childless Cranston. The oldest, about my age (29), is married with four children. The other two have three or four kids between them (or will, hopefully, once her/their pregnancy/pregnancies lapse).

Many moons ago I very much loved a girl named Julie. She and I dated for almost five years when I started considering popping the question. The reaction among those I told was uniform: You’re too young, don’t do it!

I was 23.

Of all the differences between the southern metropolis of Colosse and Mocum here in the Deseret ‘burbs, the most apparent to me (in part because I work with young people, mostly) is the timetable. In Colosse, as with most big cities outside of Deseret, you’re expected to date through most of your twenties, start thinking about marriage at 25 at the earliest, try to be married by thirty, then have kids a few years after that.

Not that I believe in the big city model. It underestimates a woman’s decline in fertility after thirty and (subjectively) it causes problems down the line when the parents can’t see their grandkids graduate from high school.

I discussed the issue with Clancy last night and we both reminisced about how little we knew of ourselves at 21 and how much we had to learn about life in general. On the other hand, a good argument could be made that if you fully form by yourself, sacrificing the “me” for the “we” becomes much harder.

Nationally, the average first-time groom is 27 and first-time bride is 24. Most urban centers like Colosse pull that number up while rural areas pull that number back down. Deseret is somewhat unique in that even in Gazelem, our urban capitol city, that number is probably being pulled down.

In a state-by-state comparison of divorces per capita (“Divorce Rate”), for all it’s religiosity Deseret is actually midling (#27). The reason that it’s not higher is probably because of the church that so emphasizes family and marriage. Or perhaps I should say encourages young marriage and strongly, strongly discourages premarital sex. From what I understand, they actually “check” to see if you’re a virgin before allowing you to marry in a temple. Though that could be urban legend, a couple LDS coworkers recently discussed a particular GYN whose job it was to check. So I don’t know.

But in any case, the cultural pressure to get married young coupled with a biological pressure to have sex doubling back to a cultural pressure not to have sex (in any manifestation, including masterbation I think) before marriage undoubtedly leads to more than a couple of ill-advised marriages. It certainly leads to a lot more marriages, young or old, wise or dumb.

Viewed in that context, Deseret’s midling divorce rate actually becomes somewhat impressive. Southern states (including my own) that have large rural tracts where people marry young and get married more don’t do nearly as well as Deseret does.

In fact, if one were able to come up with a marriage/divorce ratio (“Marriage Success Rate”), I’d imagine that Deseret would do pretty well. The south would probably do a lot better as well. Most of the states with the lowest Divorce Rates (most located in the northeast) would probably not have as good looking Marriage Success Rate.

So the question is whether or not it’s acceptable to have more failed marriages for even more successful ones or whether it is not, in fact, better to have married and lost than never to have married at all.

Becky has an inquiring post about a niece of hers that is debating whether or not to give up her virginity sooner than planned (plan was marriage). Most of the advice seems about the same (If something is “right” then go for it, but not for the reasons she gave).

Barry of Inn of the Last Home had an interesting question in the comments section:

I’m curious as to what kind of articulation people can put on the reasons why it’s a moral decision in the first place?

That is, taking out the religious tenet of “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery”…where does the moral question come into play to those who either aren’t religious or don’t follow the 10 commandments that closely?

In other words, we hear all the time that it’s a moral and upright decision to wait until you’re married, or at least in a stable, loving relationship and not just sleep with everyone you know.

Why?

I’m not a particularly religious person. Nor did I wait for marriage and I don’t have any real regrets about not waiting. But I do think that a case can be made against premarital sex or sex outside of a serious relationship without relying on religious precepts.

It does, however, require the belief in some or all of the following:
1. When possible, it’s better that children are raised with two parents instead of one.
2. When possible, it’s better that a child’s parents are in love or at least have an amicable relationship.
3. It’s better that no one (male or female) has a child that they do not want.
4. Abortion, even if it should remain legally permissable, is not a better thing than not being in a position to want one.

Imagine a 100-barrel gun were possible. If you stick a bullet in one chamber and spin it (“Russian Roulette”), aim it at someone and pull the trigger, you are taking a 1/100 change of killing someone. Whether it kills that person or not, you’ve arguably committed a “sin” because you pulled the trigger knowing that there was a chance (however small) that someone would get hurt.

Now we take the chance of killing someone every time we step in to a car. But the difference between the gun and the car is that the latter is necessary (or there will be consequences if you don’t go to work or the store or whatnot) while the former carries no negative consequence for not doing it.

Which brings me to sex. Every time two people have sex, they run the risk of concieving. Contraception fails even when properly applied and it’s often not property applied even when the people having sex think that it is.

An unexpected pregnancy within a loving relationship can be a wonderful thing. For instance, I came a couple years after my mother said she was done. But outside the level of trust that a marriage or serious monogamous relationship can provide, unplanned pregnancies are rarely wonderful things.

If both parties agree that the baby should be put up for adoption or the fetus aborted (if you believe that abortion is not morally wrong), then it can at best be neutral. But generally speaking, things aren’t usually that simple. Either he wants to keep it or she does. Women that have had abortions have not (in my second-hand observations) been able to keep a complete emotional distance (even when they still believe it was te right thing to do).

If she wants the child and he doesn’t, he has to pay child support for a kid that he doesn’t want and the kid grows up without a father, with a resentful father, or at least with a reluctant father. However you stack it, the kid is not going to grow up in an ideal home.

And every time two people have sex, they run the risk of this happening. It’s another chamber of the 100-barrel gun. Both participants know that they’re doing it. And like the gun and unlike the car, it doesn’t have to be done.

So what if one party or the other is completely sterile? That’s a tougher question. A solid argument could still be made that they’re contributing to a culture of promiscuity that encourages fertile people (like April’s niece) to question their moral judgment. There’s also the matter of STDs, which may be an even better gun metaphor than unintended pregnancy.

Now having said all this, I did not practice abstinence in my younger years and I wouldn’t expect it of the younger set today. However, I do think that discretion (going through as few chambers in the gun as possible), and saving yourself for someone that you have enough a degree of trust to confront the parenthood issue, is on some level a moral decision.

I haven’t really dug in to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints all that much yet, though there’s certainly more to come. I don’t view the Church is being particularly evil or anything of that sort, but some of the resentment and frustration I do have is summed up pretty well in this article from the Washington Monthly:

Until I attended one, I didn’t fully realize that [the] public schools are essentially an extension of the LDS church. All junior high and high schools in the state […] are arranged so that there is a Mormon seminary building either right next door or across the street. Grade-school kids don’t go to seminary, but they do go to “primary,” a similar after-school program. Mormon students are allowed to take religious classes as part of their public education in these buildings.

There’s been a great deal of litigation over this school set-up, dating as far back as the 1930s, but so long as the seminaries are on private land, there’s nothing illegal about it. Allowing kids out for religious education during the school day has a pernicious effect on public-school life. So many kids leave for these classes that it automatically singles out the few non-Mormons who don’t participate. For one year, I attended a public high school and frequently found myself abandoned in class along with a few Hispanic kids while everyone else trekked over to seminary.

The church stretched into public school life in other ways, too. In high school, I had Mormon bishops as teachers who never missed an opportunity to bring the church into class lectures. Prayers before every event were common and coaches often blessed athletes before sporting events. My swim team would collapse into a crisis if we were expected to compete in meets in [bordering states] on a Sunday. Many of the Mormon kids on my team honestly believed that if they swam on Sunday, the devil would create an undertow that would drown them. Graduation ceremonies were held in Mormon tabernacles, and school choirs sang Mormon religious songs.

Until fairly recently, many public schools annually celebrated “Missionary Week,” when Mormon kids were supposed to come to school dressed up in the uniform of the LDS missionary—which they were all aspiring to be. Non-Mormons might as well have put big signs on their heads that read, “Convert Me.”

The author accurately describes the area as “Unspeakably beautiful.” Driving around today reminded me of that. Clancy is a real nature lover and it’s not hard to see why she fell in love with this place (if not its people). It’s also, by all accounts, an outstanding place to raise a family… if you’re LDS.

When residency is up, we won’t be staying in Deseret. It’s not because we dislike the Mormons or even because of some of the states policies (some of which do an extraordinary job of helping folks walk the straight-and-narrow). We don’t have access to a number of “public” parks because they’re private parks for public use and we’re not the public they have in mind. I we have kids here, they won’t be able to play little league. They’ll be on the team, but they won’t play. Once it becomes obvious that they aren’t going to convert (assuming they wouldn’t), they’ll also disappear from social circles. There was a “super-Christian” social circle back in Delosa, but out here it’s so much more far reaching.

It’s not cause they’re jerks. Almost all of my coworkers are LDS to one degree or another and we get along fine. So are our landlords. But their social life is built around a club that we’re not a part of. The social norms and laws are set up for believers of a faith that is not ours. This state was founded by Mormons and for Mormons. We’re just tourists.

We knew that, of course, before we came here. And we’re happy here. But maybe you just have to see the snowcapped mountains and green fields to understand what a tragedy it is that we’ve no stake to claim here personally, culturally, or religiously.