No doubt. But what percentage of norm-shaping, leadership-pool-producing, middle-class Mormons live in small town America? A smaller and smaller percentage all the time. (And this is to say nothing of Europe, where the small Mormon population is for the most part even more urban, multicultural, and cosmopolitan than in the U.S.).

Not here in small-town America. Alcohol abuse is extremely prevalent, sex is common, and if you say no, it can be pretty lonely — i.e. the phone rarely rings. My children are working their way through this, and one good friend can make such a difference!

You’re making a good point here, Raymond–obviously a great variety of issues pertaining to sexuality, the value of life, etc., involve a separation of Mormon doctrine and practice from increasingly common American and European norms. However, I think on the whole you’re wrong, or at least you have a narrow view of things. What are “American/European social values” anyway? Surely they are not restricted to how/when/with whom one has sex, or how/to whom one marries, or how/when one dies. There are dozens–if not hundreds–of everyday matters that are relevant here. Do you shop on Sundays? How late do you work? How many children do you have? What TV shows do you watch? Who do you associate with? And so on and so forth. Adding all of this together, looking at basic home economies, basic educational priorities, basic marriage and childbearing patterns, basic work expectations, I see Mormons becoming more and more American/European/Western/modern/what-have-you in the broadest sense. Yes, they are a “moral minority” within the larger modern liberal Western world. But those moral issues which identify them as a minority are hardly always or for all people living in modern Western liberal democratices relevant markers of how such people identify themselves; most of the time, what matters is if you’ve seen these movies or read these books or logged onto these websites or traveled to these places or sent your kids to these schools, etc., etc., etc. And when it comes to those matters, I am simply unaware of any truly significant group of Mormons anywhere who are consciously dropping out of and/or avoiding the modern economic marketplace–or the marketplace of ideas, for that matter. The Amish we ain’t.

While there are certainly plenty of Mormons who think Oprah Winfrey is on a par with Thomas Monson as a source of advice, it is becoming harder and harder to be a Mormon and Homecoming Queen, especially outside of Mormon-dominant areas. I see more and more Mormons fleeing public schools for home schooling, because of the subversive anti-morality being taught by public schools, and which are being reinforced by tyrannical decisions like the one by the California Court of Appeals that it is the teachers and administrators of public schools, not parents, who have control over the morality of the things students are taught, no matter what the Yoder decision of the Supreme Court said about the right of parents to control the education of their own minor children.

I think you’re simply wrong about the homecoming queen crack; if you’re not living in some hotbed of Protestant evangelicalism and in an environment where the Mormons have defined themselves in opposition to those same Protestants–in other words, if you’re like millions of Mormons who live in American suburbs from coast to coast–than, simply put, hardly anyone gives a damn. (Typical high school conversation these days, in my observation: You’re a virgin and don’t drink coffee? Huh, weird. Me, I’m a vegan and only drink mineral water.) But that’s not to say you’re incorrect about the home school thing; it is becoming more common, and I could easily see it becoming an important distinction in the lives of many American Mormons. But home schooling American Mormons have a great distance to go if they want their approach to–their rejection of–certain aspects of American (and European?) socialization to become anything like a majority characteristic amongst their fellow believers…not the least reason for which being that, like their Mormon and European counterparts, most upper- and middle-class Mormon families (which are the ones which get to set these trends) are two-income families, for whom the public school system that will watch the kids, along with all the athletic and cultural and social and academic activities it provides for, is a godsend.

The recent changes to law in California would justify firing a Mormon teacher who spoke in praise of monogamous marriage between a man and a woman as the most beneficial to society, or who objected to someone who claimed to be an incipient “transsexual” genetic male going into the girls restroom or locker room. The one thing that “modern” society cannot tolerate is anyone who does not embrace “anything goes” sexual behavior. They are very puritanical about it p;unishing anyone who thinks there is such a thing as “immoral sexula behavior.” Real sanctions using real government power–up to, potentially, the kinds of disincorporation sanctions that were used in the Edmunds-Tucker Act to destroy the Church–are on the horizon.

So I disagree about the Church becoming “more American.” While there are certainly plenty of Mormons who think Oprah Winfrey is on a par with Thomas Monson as a source of advice, it is becoming harder and harder to be a Mormon and Homecoming Queen, especially outside of Mormon-dominant areas. I see more and more Mormons fleeing public schools for home schooling, because of the subversive anti-morality being taught by public schools, and which are being reinforced by tyrannical decisions like the one by the California Court of Appeals that it is the teachers and administrators of public schools, not parents, who have control over the morality of the things students are taught, no matter what the Yoder decision of the Supreme Court said about the right of parents to control the education of their own minor children. We are moving toward more specific and direct confrontation with the world around us, one that is adopting more and more the “ethics” of the Brave New World, and considers those who insist on objective morality involving self-restraint as repressive, anti-intellectual and primitive.

I was saddened by the failure of the educational vouchers program in Utah, based on the prevalence of the false doctrine that educational funding is the property of public schools, and not of the children who are to be educated, administered by parents as trustees. I would devote all funding for education, local, state and Federal, into vouchers that are used by parents to select the appropriate schools for their children. Public schools as they exist now are institutions that serve primarily the interests of their employees, and secondarily of the unions. They are the precise equivalent of established churches funded through taxation. They are non-responsive to parental desires, but rather assert unique expertise and authority in educational matters–what should be taught and in what manner–that leads to orthodoxy that is enforced against students and parents. We do not allow ourselves to be taxed to support churches we dissagree with; we should no more be taxed to support schools that seek to indoctrinate our children with doctrines we disagree with. The teacher unions operate as an arm of the national Democratic Party, and teachers are seen by the Pasrty as having a duty to inculcate the values that are embraced by the Party, including particular views on sexual morality, the armed forces, free market capitalism, the environment, and religion.

Once parents have the power to contribute or not to a particular school, that school will become more responsive to parental desires. We will not need national standardized tests to measure school performance; parents will vote with their feet to impoverish schools that oppose parental teachings on morality, or that fail to equip students with useful skills. Evaluation services will spring up to assist parents in choosing schools. Any public school that clings to traditional morality and provides education value will be rewarded.

On the other hand, how many others could boast a wife whose nickname was “Bubbles”?

1. Everything from because once having begun to go down this road on is dead accurate and
2. everything from that point on scares me.