80,000 Blogs

I have a blog.  You are reading it right now.  If you are reading it, you are rare. I probably have a readership that numbers in the tens.  Not that I mind.  My message is shrill.  Only a few could appreciate my carping about this and that.  I'm sure that there are blogs that enjoy a far larger readership.

Recently, the LDS Church has concluded that its customary missionary proselyting tool - tracting - is less than effective.  Maybe people don't want missionaries showing up at their door asking to come in and teach them about honesty and caffeine. With more two-income families than ever, not too many folks are at home during the daytime hours anyway.

So what is to be done?  Well, in an era of pervasive social media, the Church has realized that people are online.  If people want to learn about true Church history, the information is now freely available.  If anti-Mormon views are what you crave, they are there in abundance.  It is not nearly so easy for the Church to pull the wool over people's eyes any more.

News articles are reporting that missionaries are being told to place less emphasis on tracting, and more emphasis on creating blogs to entice new members.  Maybe I should try that.  Through my splendid blog, followers can join the -

CHURCH OF THE DAILY WORD AS RENN SEES IT

You decide.

I'm sorry, I just wonder how fruitful it will be to have 80,000 missionaries sitting in front of computers writing blogposts to get converts.  Silly !!!!!

Another approach fostered by the Church is the "Service" approach.  Two young missionaries came to my door last week, and, after I introduced them to my wives, they asked if they could perform some kind of service for me.  I said they could help me move some heavy furniture, so they agreed to come back later.  They didn't come back.  I think this approach is designed to insinuate the missionaries into the family environment, until such time as they can apply pressure to family members to come to church and learn about caffeine and family home evening.

I went to a protestant church meeting a few months ago.  It was fascinating - a lot of friendly people, loud Christian rock music, and a pastor with a charismatic ego.  His sermon was about two things: 1. Getting more friends to come to the church and join, and: 2. Putting big donations in the collection plate.

I started to see some parallels.

Railway to Heaven

I have struggled for some time now over the LDS Church.  Since it is/was the primary church of the Restoration, I have some bittersweet feelings about it.  I had more of an association with it during my childhood, and it was quite different then.  I often wonder what all of its members will do when the tribulations commence, and they discover that their leaders have been quite fallible.

You often meet people who have given up on organized religion.  Often it is because the parish priest was a jerk or he molested the little girl down the street.  Sometimes it is because the church solicits money, and doesn't necessarily give much in return.  One problem with organized religion is that the organizers thereof are men, and men are often greedy, lecherous and vicious.  I met a guy once whose landlady was asked to evict him and his family by a bishop who had discovered that the guy was a polygamist.  Big corporate religions often have fangs and will brutalize anyone who stands in their way or who voices dissent.

What makes me the most nervous about the Mormon Church now is the self-preservation-at-all-costs approach.  In the early days, the Church bore revolutionary doctrines to the world.  Joseph Smith seemed to many to be a lunatic.  His polygamy must have contributed to his assassination.  He preached utopia, blood atonement, sanctification and a pre-existence.  He produced an ancient book of scripture.  He changed the world.

Nowadays the Church teaches people to build families, to be good, honest and chaste, and not to drink coffee.  It teaches people to embrace all races and creeds (except Fundamentalist Mormons).  It sends 80,000 missionaries into the world to spread the same message - a message that THIS is the church of the restoration, and that 75% of the original doctrines of that restoration were a mistake on the part of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.  Don't let that worry you - those old, obscure, mysterious doctrines were a fleeting aberration, a product of colonial times when men were barbaric.  It teaches the Taiwanese, the Argentines and the Finns to build Zion in their own homelands - to board a train that is going straight to the Celestial Kingdom.

Yes, get baptized, pay your tithing, answer the temple recommend interview questions the right way, get a mortgage and a three-bedroom, two-bath house, send your kids on missions and train them to marry only in the temple, and follow "the Prophet" at all costs and you will go directly to the Celestial Kingdom.

I read an article once that imagined the words of a Soviet-era Russian official.  He insisted that the Soviet Union erred in banishing all religions.  The Soviet Union should have welcomed the Mormon Church - after all, it taught its members to be unquestioningly obedient; to trust in the organization and not so much in God; to turn over their goods to the collective without question; to shun and tattle on defectors in their midst; to scramble for position and favor among the leading elite.  Yes, the Mormon Church fits well in a totalitarian environment.

The Church wants you to think that membership in it is a virtual guarantee of divine glory.  Jump aboard this train and you are on your way.  Stay on this railway to heaven at any cost and you will become a god, despite whatever may happen to others on the outside.  You will be given seven hot wives in the hereafter, so keep your mouth shut, pay your tithing, and comply with everything you are instructed, and all will be well in Zion.

Look out!

It's an IQ thing

Today, a federal district court judge struck down Utah's Amendment 3 (the one that declared nothing but a marriage between a man and a woman to be legally admissible).  Christmas came early this year for both the gays and the polygs.

This is big news.  The judge (Robert Shelby) effectively legalized gay marriages in Utah.  By now, (late evening 12/20/2013) already hundreds of gay Utahns have tied the knot (legally).  Read this Salt Lake Tribune article.

Already opponents of gay marriage have cried out in protest - many of them LDS or Christian believers who see this ruling as the virtual end of the world as we know it.  How could an activist judge trample on the state's rights like this?  Don't these judges understand that marriage has always been between "a man and a woman" and that the Bible condemns homosexuality?  Surely the courts should agree that children are best raised in a home with a mommy and a daddy?

These questions expose a deep IQ deficiency.  These people seem to have damaged brains - perhaps from sniffing too much glue or paint brush solvent.  Why are people so stupid?

Legal marriages are a modern innovation.  Religious nuptials go back as far as Adam and Eve.  Adam and Eve didn't go and apply for a marriage license.  When state governments started issuing licenses to prospective spouses, they created a secular scheme of taxation and control, independent of churches.  A government marriage is no more religious than a hunting license.  You wouldn't dare deny a hunting license to a gay guy, so why would you deny him a government marriage license?  Churches can marry whom they want.  They cannot issue work visas to immigrants.  People seem utterly incapable of distinguishing between a religious rite and a government license.

I have listened to the opponents of gay marriage.  They worry that America's children won't grow up in a two-gender-parent home, and that this will ruin them.  Of all the anti-gay-marriage arguments, this one is the most compelling.  However, it is a worthless argument.  If a lesbian couple has an eight-year-old child (from one of the two women), what will be the harm to that child if the women are granted a state marriage license? NONE !!!

The trend is inexorable. The courts are acknowledging over and over that the 14th Amendment demands "equal protection" (or application) of laws for EVERYONE.  Whether or not you like what the 14th Amendment did to this country (turned it into a corporation), we are stuck with it. Gay marriage is soon to be legal nationwide.   Utah is the last place one might expect to embrace gay marriages, but that ship has now sailed.  The state's chief legal officials are appealing frantically.  The Mormon Church is apoplectic.  The sky has fallen. 

They are wasting their time.  Resisting the inevitable is stupid.  It's an IQ thing.  Some people just have really low IQs, and there's nothing you can do about it.  Perhaps if they wait a couple of months, they might just realize that nothing bad will happen.

Quitcherbitchin !!!

Get Your Story Straight!

I am pasting the entire text of this Salt Lake Tribune article below, so that you can fathom for yourself what makes sense.  I have also highlighted the link to the LDS Church's recent announcement.

What I find interesting is the strategy.  The Church has faced immense criticism for its prior ban on ordaining blacks.  The current position must inevitably be that the ban was wrong and not directed by God.  Choosing to repudiate its earlier doctrine, the Church must blame somebody - Joseph Smith or someone else.  Joseph Smith followed the teachings of the Old Testament which indisputably forbade blacks to hold priesthood or enter the temples, but once the Church pulls the rug out from under its polygamous founder, the Book of Mormon will doubtless be the next thing to go.

So, for now the Church is indicting polygamist, pioneer and governor, Brigham Young, asserting that he was imperfect and misguided (along with all of his successors through Harold B. Lee).  Denouncing a vast body of its own theological underpinnings, I suppose the Church must now rename itself - "The Community of Christ", or "The Church of Latter-day Lemmings", and rename BYU: "Thomas S. Monson University".

Let me tell you what, I believe, is the pathetic fallacy of this latest step.  Brigham Young was not perfect.  Jesus was/is perfect.  Nevertheless, Brigham Young did a great job of preserving and growing the Church.  Without Brigham Young, Salt Lake City and the modern Church would not exist.  This new message says, 

"People, don't put any faith in anything Brigham Young said.  He was a kook - - polygamy, Adam-God, blood atonement, denying the priesthood to blacks, preaching against miscegenation, etc., etc. !!  Put your trust in the modern, current leaders and in the doctrinal revisions they make.  The members of the Church in Brigham Young's day were sorely misguided.  They saw him as a 'prophet', and a prophet he wasn't.  Contrastingly, you modern-day members are utterly safe.  Just follow the utterances of the Kimballs, Hinckleys and Monsons, and you will go straight to the Celestial Kingdom.  Thomas S. Monson is a more legitimate prophet than Brigham Young [even though he has never claimed or published a single revelation]."

 Renn.

---

Mormon church traces black priesthood ban to Brigham Young

Religion • Black LDS praise the move; historian calls it another step in the “maturation” of the Utah-based faith.

By peggy fletcher Stack

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: December 10, 2013 09:39AM

In the past, the LDS Church has said history isn’t clear on why blacks were banned from its all-male priesthood for more than a century.

Apparently, it now is.

The reason, according to a newly released explanation from the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is rooted more in racism than revelation.

“Race and the Priesthood,” posted Friday on the church’s website, lds.org, also jettisons any beliefs developed through the years to defend the prohibition. And those findings are drawing praise from black Mormons and historians.

“Hallelujah,” says Catherine Stokes, a black Mormon who joined the LDS Church in Chicago and now lives in Utah. “I view this as a Christmas gift to each and every member of the church — black, white or whatever ethnicity.”

The ban began under Brigham Young, second LDS president, who was influenced by common beliefs of the time, reports the article. It did not exist during the tenure of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, who opposed slavery and personally ordained several African-Americans.

The essay is part of an ongoing series of “gospel topics pages” published by the LDS Church to give Mormons resources for understanding complex issues such as whether Mormons are Christians and differing, sometimes-contradictory accounts of Smith’s early visionary experiences.

The church-produced article on race argues that “there is no evidence that any black men were denied the priesthood during Joseph Smith’s lifetime.”

But the record clearly shows that, in 1852, Young — Smith’s immediate successor — “publicly announced that men of black African descent could no longer be ordained to the priesthood, though thereafter blacks continued to join the church.”

More than 125 years later, in 1978, the LDS Church, under then-President Spencer W. Kimball, lifted the ban, but some Mormons have continued to promote theories used to defend the former exclusion — “that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else.”

The new statement says the LDS Church “disavows the theories advanced in the past ... [and that ] church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.”

Margaret Young, who teaches English at LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University, believes all Mormons should carry a copy of the statement with them.

“Make three-by-five cards of Friday’s church statement on race. Edit carefully if you need to. Laminate it, and keep it handy —in a purse or wallet,” Young, who co-produced a documentary on blacks in the church, wrote to her Facebook friends. “We are now empowered to answer folks who perpetuate old justifications for the priesthood restriction in ways they won’t argue with. We are the messengers to give wings to the statement.”

What is most important about the statement on race to Mormon historian Richard Bushman is its perspective.

“It is written as a historian might tell the story,” Bushman says from his home in New York, “not as a theological piece, trying to justify the practice.”

By depicting the exclusion as fitting with the common practices of the day, says Bushman, who wrote “Rough Stone Rolling,” a critically acclaimed biography of Smith, “it drains the ban of revelatory significance, makes it something that just grew up and, in time, had to be eliminated.”

But accepting that, Bushman says, “requires a deep reorientation of Mormon thinking.”

Mormons believe that their leaders are in regular communication with God, so if you say Young could make a serious error, he says, “it brings into question all of the prophet’s inspiration.”

Members need to recognize that God can “work through imperfect instruments,” Bushman says. “For many Latter-day Saints, that is going to be a difficult transition. But it is part of our maturation as a church.”

Some top Mormon leaders are already pushing in that direction.

“And, to be perfectly frank, there have been times when members or leaders in the church have simply made mistakes. There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles or doctrine,” Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the faith’s governing First Presidency, said in October’s LDS General Conference. “I suppose the church would be perfect only if it were run by perfect beings. God is perfect, and his doctrine is pure. But he works through us — his imperfect children — and imperfect people make mistakes.”

While Mormons applaud the statement on race, some believe the church needs to go much further. Some want an apology; some just want wider awareness.

“The disavowal says to the church and to the world, ‘Everything we taught you justifying the restriction is wrong,’ ” says Marvin Perkins, a Los Angeles-based Mormon co-author of the DVD series, “Blacks in the Scriptures.” “But what would be ideal would be for every member to be as well-versed regarding the truths of the priesthood ban and scriptural truths regarding skin color and curses as they are with the Joseph Smith story and the First Vision. We need it repeated over and over in church curriculum in manuals and over the pulpit. That’s the way this will be resolved.”

Stokes, though, believes this latest step is worth celebrating.

Indeed, the website states, “in theology and practice, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints embraces the universal human family. Latter-day Saint scripture and teachings affirm that God loves all of his children and makes salvation available to all.”

This essay, Stokes says, “should enable people to move forward in concert with the second great commandment to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

After all, she says, echoing Mormon scripture, “all are alike unto God.”

pstack@sltrib.com

Short Memory

Dallin H. Oaks gives 3 fingers

In this photo, LDS Apostle Dallin H. Oaks is giving three fingers.  I have heard hypocrisies from this guy on other occasions, but he distinguished himself again in last weekend's (October 2013) LDS General Conference. 

I believe that churches should formulate whatever teachings and policies they want to.  The argument over gay legal marriage in America is silly.

Meanwhile, read the following from the AP:
 -------------------------------------
The Mormon church cannot condone same-sex marriage, even if that stance might be misunderstood or prompt accusations of bigotry, a top church leader has said.

No matter what legislation US states or nations passed, human laws could not "make moral what God has declared immoral", Apostle Dallin Oaks told the church's biannual general conference in Salt Lake City on Sunday.

He urged members to remember that their first priority was to serve God, and the policies of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were based on God's decrees, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

The church's eternal perspective did not allow members "to condone such behaviors or to find justification in the laws that permit them", Oaks said. "And unlike other organizations that can change their policies and even their doctrines, our policies are determined by the truths God has declared to be unchangeable."

Associated Press in Salt Lake City 
Sunday 6 October 2013 22.16 EDT
 ---------------------------------------------
I just think Oaks's temerity and gall are breathtaking.  He suggests that the Mormon Church would not dream of changing its "doctrines".  Is his memory so short, that he does not remember the Church changing its doctrines regarding priesthood for African Americans, the taking of plural wives, and the identity of God (Michael/Adam)?  The Church changed its prohibitions against abortion, did away with the Seventies, canceled the gathering, changed the sacred temple garment, gutted the temple ceremony with its penalties and more, etcetera, etcetera. 

I am reminded of an earlier hypocrisy from Oaks when he argued vigorously for freedom of religion in America (despite the Church's vengeful persecution of Fundamentalist Mormons for a hundred years).  What is this guy smoking?

I don't argue for the Mormon Church to solemnize nuptials for gay people, but Oaks does what a lot of stupid people do - he confuses religious matrimony with government marriage contracts - two completely different things.  The Church already drastically changed its own definition of marriage, stripping the New and Everlasting Covenant of its critical plural component.  It has no business telling the states how to dispense secular marriage licenses.

Oaks is an intelligent guy - he was BYU president, a state Supreme Court justice, and a University of Chicago (Illinois) professor.  I wish he would use that intelligence to get the story straight and quit deceiving the millions of faithful with the myth that the Church diligently preserves divine, unchangeable doctrines.

I'm Confused

Race discrimination is a delicate topic in the U.S. (and in other parts of the western world).  If you want to preserve your reputation, you simply do not bash members of non-white races.

Mark E. Petersen

The Mormon Church came under fire in the 1970's because it denied priesthood ordinations to black men.  Its longstanding policy was articulated by Mark E. Petersen in this speech. 

Spencer W. Kimball

The hue and cry reached a fever pitch in 1978, and the Church's Council of the Twelve saw no other option but to surrender to public sentiment and alter its policy.  The Church was facing immense pressure regarding its new temple in Sao Paolo, Brazil.  Church president, Spencer W. Kimball, had been confronting criticism for several years.  In June, of 1978, Kimball announced that through "revelation" he (and the Twelve) had been directed by God to start ordaining negroes.  You can read about these events here, but I have been unable to find a copy of the alleged revelation to Kimball.  Perhaps he considered it too personal and not for general publication.

Last week the Church announced a batch of changes it has recently made to its canon of holy writ - the four "Standard Works" (read this article in the Salt Lake Tribune).  Among the recent edits are "tweaks" to the portions of the scriptures that address race.  Part of Peggy Fletcher Stack's article reads:

 - - - The lead-in to Official Declaration 2, which describes the church’s 1978 announcement to lift its ban on black males holding the faith’s priesthood, makes clear that Mormon founder Joseph Smith had previously ordained several black men.

Subsequent LDS officials "stopped conferring the priesthood on black males of African descent," the new introduction says. "Church records offer no clear insights into the origins of this practice."

The new edition does not dispel any of the theological myths that arose to defend the practice, saying only that Mormon leaders believed it would take a revelation to undo the ban. 

"I am thrilled by the new statement regarding blacks," says Darius Gray, former president of the Genesis Group, a support organization for black Mormons. "The language is more forthcoming than anything we’ve previously had on the past priesthood restriction, so I take great pleasure in seeing the changes." - - -

So, as an external observer, I find my self confused by the mixed arguments made by the Church regarding its policies towards negroes and the priesthood.  The Church's two contrasting explanations can be summed up by the following:

1.  Blacks were denied priesthood throughout and since Bible times.  Joseph Smith eventually came to understand this proscription and retracted the ordination of Elijah Abel (a negro) after having given him the priesthood in error.  Negroes remained ineligible to receive priesthood until 1978, when God deemed them finally worthy (lifting the "Curse of Cain"), and He directed Spencer Kimball to start ordaining them, admitting them to the temples, and sealing them to white people. 

2.  Blacks have been worthy to hold priesthood since the days of their first ancestor.  Joseph Smith ordained them rightfully.  Joseph Smith's successors INEXPLICABLY suspended the ordination of negroes, - - - - and, no matter how hard we look, we cannot find a single treatise in the "records" of the Church to help us understand why blacks were refused priesthood.  So, when we woke up in the 1970's, we realized what a silly oversight this was, and we hurried and corrected it (especially in light of the huge international outcry against our doctrines).

Aren't you just as confused as I am?  Do you get the impression that the Church's doctrines have a half-life of about 20 years, and depend wholly on the prevailing tide of fashion and public sentiment?

All The Marbles

I just heard FOX NEWS's Trace Gallagher say the following:

The Dow is up today on news that Europe may finally be resolving its debt crisis, hopefully thus avoiding a WORLDWIDE FINANCIAL COLLAPSE."

Why is a "worldwide financial collapse" even feasible?  Why do the media even utter such expressions?  What would a "worldwide financial collapse look like?

All of the nations using fiat (paper/electronic-ledger-entry) money are squashing and stretching their "money" supply like pizza dough.  Truth is, a nation's true wealth is not stretchable.  A nation can only gain greater wealth through physical productivity or by plundering another nation's wealth.  Since the paper money supply is stretchable (through printing), it has never been the true index of the size of a nation's treasury.  You cannot print gold and silver, so it represents a more accurate measurement of our wealth - our treasure.  Still, even precious metals are more a token of wealth than the actual wealth itself.  So, if the Mediterranean private bankers have hijacked our printing presses (mint) and snatched all of our gold, have they truly divested us of our wealth?

Let's say they took all the gold and silver and amassed it in an impenetrable fortress on some remote Pacific island, how then are the people and nations of the world crippled financially?  Do we need those bankers and their paper money?  Do we need the gold?  Is it not all a manipulation, a confidence racket?

If a worldwide financial collapse is feasible - and is coming - why is it?  It is feasible because the people and their governments have complacently accepted the boom-and-bust, banking choke-hold foisted upon them for several millennia.  Can those wicked bankers eat all that gold they have stolen?  No.  It is not really even that they need or want all the gold.  What they want is to centralize power - not just nationally, but globally, and a worldwide financial collapse is the only means of achieving that.  They have to fool us all into thinking that there just isn't enough money to go around (partly because we still owe them so much, and we can never get caught up on our late payments).  Why would we be so stupid as to fall for this con game?  There are seven billion people on this planet, and the usurers in control probably number only in the hundreds.  Why do we let such tyranny persist?  Do we remember that almost all of the wars in history have been money driven?  Do we understand that a worldwide financial collapse must inevitably be accompanied by a worldwide war?

Coach Joe Paterno should have spoken out in public indignation when he learned years ago that one of his assistant coaches was sodomizing young boys.  Mormon Church leaders should should have spoken out in public indignation years ago when they realized that their previous no-abortion policy was being changed.  Our nation's presidents should have spoken out long ago in public indignation when they realized that our national sovereignty was being liened away to a pack of foreign bankers.

 - - BUT THEY DIDN'T !!!!!

Well, actually, JFK spoke up (and it got him killed).
-----------------------------------------------
Here's today's quiz question:

Q.  Who holds all the marbles?

     A. The International Bankers
     B. The People
     C. Jesus
-----------------------------------------------

More Insanity

Last week, our nation was perched on the brink of destruction . . . . . NOT !!!!   We fell off that cliff already in 1865 (or earlier).

The debate raged on for weeks, splitting angry hairs over several partisan issues.  The argument hinged on approximately $38.5 billion in deficit cutting measures.  The current (2011) deficit will be larger than last year's regardless, so what did we gain?  In fact, the 2011 deficit is really seventeen hundred billion dollars ($1.7 trillion).  The New York Times blasted the Republicans for jeopardizing the health and welfare of the old and the poor.  The liberals are so hell-bent on running up America's indebtedness, that there can be no doubt that they are determined to crash the economy and bring about a fundamental (new world order) regime change (the inevitable outcome of national insolvency).  Not long ago, the International Monetary Fund announced that in the "new order", capital will need to be driven more by the state than by the market.

I heard politicians from both sides of the aisle today saying that if we do not let the federal debt ceiling be raised next month, the nation will default on its debts and face "cataclysmic" repercussions.  This one hurt my brain, so I pondered on it and realized that what they mean is that we must agree to secure a higher "credit limit" because we need to be able to borrow more money -------- IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO PAY OUR DEBTS BACK !!!!   Go figure !!

Here in Arizona, we waited with bated breath today for a state judge to FINALLY find Brutal Wisass guilty of felony criminal trespass but, lo and behold (and despite promises to the contrary), the ruling did not come today - - - - and what happened instead was that Diseased Lintbag issued a smug ruling and thumbed her nose at the federal district court, forbidding Wisass to turn over the previously ordered documents to the FLDS UEP trust representatives.  One has to wonder if Lintbag and the Arizona judge are colluding somehow, or if quiet money is changing hands.

A wise man pointed something out to me last week - something I was embarrassed not to have realized on my own.  Over the years, a string of abuse allegations have been leveled at the FLDS community.  Every community has its black sheep - a percentage of bad seeds, abusers, cheats and charlatans.  Look at any large or small city or even at the Mormon Church!  It would actually be a bizarre aberration if the FLDS people (the vast majority of whom are humans) DID NOT have a statistically predictable fraction of perpetrators in their midst.  Why, then, must detractors, politicians and reporters focus SO MUCH of their attention on that remarkably small percentage of troubled adherents in a single fundamentalist Mormon congregation and extrapolate from their failings that the ENTIRE community is crooked, perverted and evil - and that it must be eradicated?

This is just more insanity to me.

  7.   Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you, and ye shall be hated of all nations, for my name's sake;
  8.   And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another;
  9.   And many false prophets shall arise, and shall deceive many;
  10.  And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold;
  11.  But he that remaineth steadfast and is not overcome, the same shall be saved. (Matthew 1, [JST])

Rights

Our American society is riddled with myths and false traditions. We ingest and regurgitate lies. We say, "Declaration of Independence", when it should be "Unanimous Declaration". We pronounce 'Congratulations' as if it had a "D" in it. We think that America is supposed to be a DEMOCRACY. We are oblivious to the fact that our cities are corporations, and that, as such, they are not entitled to charge us with crimes (like speeding) and drag us into court. We forget that America has filed bankruptcy three times (1787, 1933, and 1989). We are oblivious to the fact that Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, is not an employee of our country. We are led to believe that Winston Churchill was a wonderful guy. We forget that the Bush family is almost a monarchic dynasty. We think there is a word "inalienable" when there is not. We think that the yellow fringe around the Stars and Stripes is not a problem. We no longer wonder where the water is when we see a sign at the stateline which reads, "PORT OF ENTRY". We think that "between you and I" is good grammar! We accept the idea that this nation was not founded as a CHRISTIAN nation. We are oblivious to the fact that the 13th and 14th Amendments were NEVER properly ratified (by three-fourths of the States). We forget that U.S. dollars (Federal Reserve "Notes") are actually bounced checks. We think that the Constitution is still in force. We think that Barack Obama's position is more powerful than Ben Bernanke's. We think the U.S. gained independence from Great Britain. We think that the territory of Utah gained statehood.

Our Mormon society is not much better. In it, we believe that revelations to the Church continued after 1889. We are told that Joseph Smith had just one wife. We are taught that Jesus Christ is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. We believe that all hands were raised in support at the announcement of the 1890 Manifesto. We think that Jesus Christ was a single man. We think that Joseph Smith penned 13 Articles of Faith, when it was actually 14. We think God spoke to Spencer W. Kimball, when He did not. We think that the fastest route to the Celestial Kingdom is a two-year mission, a temple wedding, a four-bedroom, three-bath house, and a once-a-month temple trip. We swallow the lie that abortion is acceptable to God with the approval of competent medical authority. We accept the fable that the ten lost tribes of Israel are hiding at the North Pole. We are told that the Savior was a Jewish carpenter. We are taught that the priesthood is subordinate to the church, even though, in June of 1829 (when the priesthood was restored) there was no church. We are taught to "Follow the Brethren" rather than Jesus. We think that tithing was supposed to replace consecration.

We have much confusion over what "RIGHTS" are. We hear of God-given rights, Natural rights, Constitutional rights, civil rights, and human rights. Let's look at each. First, we need to understand what a "right" is. If you think about it, in a universe where there is no God, there is no such thing as a right. Without God to uphold it, you wouldn't have a right to anything. I guess you could fight for stuff.

Citizens of a free, complex constitutional republic have rights and duties inherent in life as a fleshly, living, breathing human in society with other people. You are BORN with rights and duties. Any discussion of "privileges" and "immunities" must include the notion that there is a monarch or government official who grants you those privileges and immunities as part of a title of nobility (which is forbidden in the Constitution). See this articulate discussion. He could just as quickly revoke your privileges and immunities (like the "driving" privilege - as contrasted with the Natural right to "travel" the highways).

Without God, people can claim no rights. That is perhaps why our godless, corporate government repudiates and oppresses our rights. Our Natural rights are UN-A-LIEN-ABLE, meaning they cannot be liened away. Try bartering away your right to breathe or to love or to pray. Natural rights are sustained by God. Governments are not entitled to take them from us. There is no such thing as a "Constitutional Right". The Constitution DID NOT BESTOW rights upon us. The Constitution listed a host of restrictions on government. The "Bill of Rights" (the first ten Amendments) simply enumerated more of our Natural (God-honored) rights which the government would not be permitted to abridge.

What are "Civil Rights"? Are they some special, new-fangled, overlooked liberty which we didn't realize we didn't have before? Were they rights that only a "civil" government could bestow? We hear a lot about civil rights from organizations such as the ACLU. Like the "Three-Tiered Framework" of judicial scrutiny, civil rights are a 20th century innovation - a creation of the government. They are not discussed in the Constitution. Can the government "create" rights for us - or can it only create laws to control us more? The development of "modern" civil rights was driven by a desire to take extra precautions, through statutes, to ensure that certain minority classes would not be disadvantaged by the majority class.

What are human rights? We hear a lot about human rights from organizations like Amnesty International. Simply put, human rights encompass the right not to be tortured. If you are fighting for your human rights - things are already pretty bad for you.

Which of these different types of rights are we willing to fight and die for? Is the right to choose a spouse a Natural, God-sustained right?