50 years to perfect the marriage thing, she said.

I got an image. After a long married life the two of us had died and were floating up through clouds to heaven. A glad-handing angel came down to greet us.

Congratulations on finishing freshman orientation, he said.

You are now ready to start your first year of class.

A sacrament meeting on forgiveness, too sacred to recount. A friend in the foyer who thinks he needs legal advice.

A chastity lesson in young men’s. You teach. You wonder if you ever feel more of an ass then when you are saying “sex” over and over. You answer your own question. Yes . . . when you use euphemisms over and over. You catch yourself saying “conjugal relations.” You come to a stop. In the eyes of the priests you see sympathy.

I first encountered Austen in my teens. Through a complex series of events, I found myself on a hideously long bus ride from the south-west corner of Turkey up what used to be called the Ionian coast to Istanbul. The bus was filled with noisy, smoking Turks, the road we traveled was long on traffic jams and short on scenery and I had exhausted my reading material. In extremis, I turned to the one book that was available to me: Pride and Prejudice. I threw a jacket over my head to filter out some of the smoke (the windows as a cruel fate would have it, did not open) and read about the Miss Bennetts and Mr. Darcy, Mr. Wickham, and Mr. Bingley. I was entranced. Needless to say, I fell a little in love with Elizabeth Bennett, although even at the end of the book I couldn’t really figure out what she saw in Mr. Darcy. I can’t think it accidental that in the fullness of time, I did in fact end up marrying a Miss Bennett.

Austen, so I am told, has enjoyed a bit of a renaissance in the last ten or fifteen years, although, needless to say, there has always been a solid core of rugged manly fans like myself. The argument I have heard is that in the romantic chaos of the second or third generation after the sexual revolution, there is a powerful nostalgia for a world like Austen’s where sexual interaction proceeded according to well-defined patterns with well-defined goals, and where participants in the game had a rich vocabulary of social custom with which to negotiate. I can’t help but thinking that there is some truth to this.

My wife’s roommates in college expressed shock that she dated. For them a world in which a young man would ask a young woman out seemed almost as foreign as Netherfield Park and worries about scandal and good society. For myself, I observed the same chaotic social dynamic among my non-Mormon friends. There were periods of hanging out which would then lead to hooking up. In the best case scenario, hooking up resulted in “a relationship,” which imposed some duties of loyalty and order. Since “intimacy” has replaced “fornication” as the description of pre-marital sex my friends seem to find themselves in a world that is both too informal and too formal. They have the undifferentiated situation of “hanging out” or the odd proto-marital (or perhaps sub-marital would be a better term) status of “a serious relationship.” What they lack is a clear system for testing and trying out the possibility of being a couple with others. The decline of dating has destroyed the intermediate phase between friendship and acquaintance on one hand and commitment (of some kind) on the other. This portrait is, of course, overdrawn, but I think there is some truth to the caricature.

The Mormon dating culture is not without its own pathologies, and I have the scars to prove it. Still, I can’t help but feeling that I was in some sense well-served by it. It provided me with a set of social templates that had enough independent content to supplement my own meager social resources. I was able to venture into the jungle despite intense romantic insecurities because the date provided a kind of limited liability, and I knew that what ever train wrecks might come, provided that I stayed within the rules of the convention the damage would be limited. Furthermore, I could place some hope in the institution even if I didn’t place much hope in myself. I had some half-articulated faith in the ability of a tried and true process to carry me through. In a sense, I suppose, that my faith was somewhat misplaced, as the wooing of my Miss Bennett ultimately forced me out of the safety of the conventions. Nevertheless, I think that on the whole they served me well.

It seems to me that we tend to think of chastity in crassly biological terms. Our goal is for the unmarried to avoid unauthorized copulation and undue stimulation of the reptilian bits of our brain where the completely inarticulate instinct to do so lurks with a single-minded determination to insure the survival its genes. Yet it seems to me that chastity should be a social as well as a simply hygienic exercise. It is not simply a matter of suppressing certain glandular tendencies but also of providing a social vocabulary in which they are channeled, endowed with meaning, and properly celebrated. At the end of the day, Austen’s England — even in its hearty, unaffected, country-side instantiation — would have driven me nuts. On the other hand, I do think that the Mozart of her stories provides us with an important insight into a certain aspect of what makes chastity a virtue.

(Originally posted August 10, 2005)

I don’t know if he’s right about the conditions in which Christianity flourishes. Rodney Stark argues that the average convert to early Christianity didn’t have theology on the mind. Instead, Christianity looked good because Christians didn’t practice infanticide, respected women, and took care of each other.

And while its true that African Christianity is very much about the power of Jesus Christ smashing the the felt presence of the devil
–one hymn goes

If Satan troubles us
Jesus Christ
You who are the lion of the grasslands
You whose claws are sharp
Will tear out his entrails
And leave them on the ground
For the flies to eat.

–the African converts are predominantly from the big new cities where people feel their old ethnic ties dissolving and want to be part of something permanent. This fits better with Franz Rosenzweig’s notion that paganism is the religion of a People and Christianity and its new, deathless, universal People replaces paganism when the old particular People is seen to be mortal.

But no matter what theory you pick to explain the rise of Christianity over paganism, its pretty unlikely that neo-paganism will bring back a demon-haunted world, frightened sacrifice and propitiation, or the grim tribe and polis of the old pagans.

Neo-paganism can still spread, though. That recent Wiccan lottery winner reminded me that I’ve seen it spread. In happened in boot camp.

Besides the training battalions, Fort Jackson had holding battalions where new recruits waited a few days until they could be assigned to a training battalion. There was also a holding battalion for recruits who have washed out of basic training, either due to injury or glaring physical, spiritual, or character deficits. New recruits who were considered too hapless to even be sent to training were also put in this battalion. They were supposed to work on their problems until they were well enough to go through basic traning. They were often there for weeks.

Because of scheduling problems, we were held over in our holding battalion for a week. We hated it. But conditions in the wash-out holding battalion were worse. The recruits were confined to their barracks and a smaller area outside and for the most part had nothing to do all day and weren’t allowed to do much anyway. They also had no self-respect. In those conditions a grass roots Wiccanism spread like a weed. It was something to do, a little exciting in a forbidden-fruits kind of way, and it made a lot of the recruits feel better about sex (this holding battalion was disproportionately female) because they could get “married” by jumping a straw or somesuch. The main tenet–”do as thou wilt, an thou harm none”–also helped them feel better about it. Christianity, especially evangelical Christianity, can often help lift people like these but in the military the main function of Christianity seems to be overcoming racial, ethnic, and class antagonisms in forging a brotherhood. These recruits, largely failures and often female, were not interested in that brotherhood.

I don’t know if many of these people remained Wiccan in any sense. My own guess is that in the long term their variety of Wiccanism would be spiritually unsatisfying. Its too adaptable, too customized and customizable, to meet the real human need to find something outside oneself. But if they do remain Wiccans, I hope they start to take their main tenet as more than just an injunction to party. The hedonism of ‘Do as thou wilt’, if taken seriously, should lead to the moderation and restraint of the Epicures. “An thou harm none,” if taken seriously, should lead to begging Someone for guidance and for lifting the burden of guilt.

This past Christmas I heard something that shook my resolve to not think poorly of him to its core: he was taking a trip to Russia for just about the only thing an egotistical lonely old man would go to Russia for, a mail-order bride.

There are some (many?) who would call such an arrangement a marriage of convenience. A man wants companionship, affection, someone to do the housework and (let’s not kid ourselves) sex. A woman wants out of an oppressive nation, US citizenship, and some luxuries too. Some will even point out situations where cold, heartless women, once they are US citizens, summarily divorce the men they married to get here, leaving him alone, heartbroken, and publicly humiliated.

When thought of that way, the situation seems practically harmless because everyone gets what they want, and both parties are vulnerable to abuse of some sort. Then I remember that the abuse of getting your feelings hurt, and being publicly humiliated pale in comparison to the potential abuse that the bride subjects herself to. (Also, I find myself asking, what does such a man expect? When the major selling point of marrying you is your citizenship and money, why be surprised to learn that the woman who took you up on the offer doesn’t care about your feelings at all?)

Is it really fair for a wealthy American man to take advantage of a woman’s lower order needs (Physiological & Safety) to satisfy his own higher order needs (Love & Esteem), especially considering how common it is for the man to keep his bride dependent on him while he ignores her higher order needs altogether. Such a situation is a marriage of convenience on one end and marriage of desperation on the other. Also, while everyone may need love, companionship, and compassion, isn’t the best way to go about it to earn it by being a nice person rather than buying it from someone desperate enough to fake it?

How do we, as a church, deal with such relationships? The idea that romantic love be central to a marriage is a very modern and western concept, as is the idea that a woman is not her husband’s property. The majority of marriages in our own church were like this in the past, and in other cultures many still are like this. It must be compatible with our doctrine to some extent, so why does it still feel so wrong? Does the fact that a legally binding marriage is involved make the strong undercurrent of prostitution okay?

Lastly how do you deal with the real people involved? How do you respond to the young woman he’ll bring with him to church, especially considering that this is probably the first time she’s even heard of the LDS Church at all? What could someone do to ensure that her interaction with the church is positive regardless of what her marriage is like? If you get involved at all what should your goals be? Break them up? Keep them together? Make it into a wholesome arrangement? Send them to the Temple?

Update: Through poor writing on my part I failed to make clear what the main goal of this post is. I want to discuss why or why not the absence of western-style love in a marriage relationship is acceptable among members of the church. What are doctrinally acceptable reasons to marry someone, and how do you treat someone who has entered into an acceptable marriage even if you personally disapprove of it for social or cultural reasons.
I do not really want to discuss the specific brother involved. I mention him and his situation as an illustrative case of a marriage arrangement that makes me uncomfortable. I also want to make it clear that the international nature of this marriage is not what makes me uncomfortable, what does make me uncomfortable is the intrinsic power imbalance in the relationship and the potential for abuse.

People who know more than I do have told me that widespread polygamy was not a response to an imbalance between the numbers of men and women. In Deseret the sexes were in roughly equal ratio.

They also say that polygamy was not an attempt to increase the birth rate. Deseret polygamy, like polygamy generally, seems to have lowered the birth rate at least a little. Neither the birth rate nor the sex imbalance are reasons that work.

Jacob quotes a divine reason in his sermon on concubines and whoredoms: “For if I will . . . raise up seed unto me, I will command my people.” Notice that this isn’t just the discredited concern about birth rates. The Lord says he wants not just to “raise up seed,” but to “raise up seed unto me.”

We cannot be sure that this is the reason for polygamy in Deseret times. Jacob was explaining why Abraham and Isaac practiced polygamy, not why Brigham Young and Brother Joe Blow did. And I’m pretty sure that the reasons Brigham Young and Brother Joe Blow gave for polygamy weren’t that it was a temporary thing necessary to raise up seed (though I could be wrong). On the other hand, D&C 130 does tie polygamy to Abraham, whose polygamy the verse in Jacob is explaining. Its probably worth trying to see if “raising up seed unto me” works as an explanation for polygamy in Utah. If we can.

If “seed being raised up unto me” means a greater number of people who are exalted, we have no way of measuring, unless we assume that there’s some here-and-now statistic that’s correlated with exaltation (children being raised in the church, e.g.) or if we adopt some Jan Shipps -style, double theological rimshot where polygamy makes the Church persecuted which in turn keeps it from dissolving which, long term, results in more members and more exaltation.

On the other hand, “seed being raised up unto me” could just mean (1) children being raised in the church, or (2) children who are in the covenant because both of their parents are faithful. If the modern data showing that women who marry gentiles or inactive saints are less likely to raise their kids Mormon applies to Deseret, then the two would tend to overlap considerably, though the Deseret practice of sealing outside family units might complicate this a little. In any case, either should be measurable in theory. At least in theory we should be able to show that while the birth rates over all may have been lower, the number of children raised in the church or with both parents active was higher than it otherwise would have been.

This leads us to an even greater puzzle. Even if we do establish that polygamy effectively “raised up seed unto me,” the reason why it ended in Deseret in particular is still no mystery. The US government had a gun to the Church’s head. That doesn’t explain why we don’t practice polygamy now, when the gun is largely removed. It also doesn’t explain why Jacob (or the Lord speaking through Jacob) would view polygamy as the exception rather than the rule. We would either have to think that there are other considerations that generally override the need for seed (Jacob suggests that the tender feelings of women are one such consideration), or that polygamy only “raises up seed unto me” under specific circumstances that don’t generally hold. A third explanation–that “raising up seed unto me” was only the purpose of Abraham’s polygamy, not polygamy generally–would work for the Church’s unwillingness to return to polygamy now but not the Book of Mormon refusal to do so.

Man, that’s depressing. I know other people have gone through this and survived and lived full and happy lives (sounds like I’m describing an amputation or something, doesn’t it?) , but I have to say that contemplating my new membership in this group made for a pretty bleak afternoon.

I wonder if I would feel worse or better, if I were a woman in this position? On the one hand, it would be nice to be able to tell myself that it’s not my fault. I don’t know if any women actually do this, but having heard what they tell the unmarried sisters (“Don’t worry. In this life or the next, you will find someone.”) and the unmarried brethren (“What is wrong with you? Get on the ball, you cretins!”), I would not be surprised if some sisters tell themselves this when they are in a funk.

On the other hand, statistically speaking, Mormon men like me stand a better chance of getting married than Mormon women, not to mention Maureen Dowd. And let me tell you, this hardly seems fair, since the women in my ward are better catches than the men.

(How much better? Well, recently I played a question-and-answer game with some friends at my apartment. One of the questions was to name one person in the ward who you just could not believe was not married. All of the answers named women, with no repeats. And all of us agreed with everyone else’s choices. We noted that none of us had chosen a male, but even upon further reflection, we could not come up with a man who fit the criteria. There are better and worse catches, but no one whose continuing singleness is both a mystery and an affront to the justice of the cosmos, as was the case with the women we had chosen. I love going to Elders’ Quorum, and those guys are my friends, but it’s not hard to come up with reasons why we’re still single, myself most definitely included.)

So anyway, maybe I should just shut my big fat mouth and count my blessings.

I go to a singles ward which has no age requirements of which I am aware. We have members whose age I would guess is forty-ish, and I know we have women as young as 21 and men as young as 23. The average age is probably 27 or 28. Most everyone is a college graduate, and a returned missionary (Relief Society included). Personally, I love it.

In most stakes, I would be getting kicked out of the singles ward right about the time I ceased being young single adult. I’m glad that’s not happening. I’m glad that the only change for me is that I get invited to extra activities. But it must be pretty traumatic for folks who aren’t lucky enough to be in a stake like mine. As the median marriage age creeps upward, is it time for the church to think about a policy change? Kicking people out at 30 makes more sense if most Mormons got married at age 20, but this isn’t where we are any more.

Or am I just rationalizing that this change is necessary for the church because it would suit me?

About this time, I was asked to contribute an anonymous advice column for our ward newsletter. So my roommate and I decided to parody an article from the New Era entitled, “How to be a first-rate date” (p34). I wrote it up, and it was published in the December 2004 issue of As the Ward Turns, the newsletter of the Longfellow Park second ward, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is re-printed here without permission from anybody. (It’s been a year or so since the last issue, and no new editor was called when the old one moved out of the ward. I don’t even know who I should ask for permission.)

Why am I reproducing this? (1) I’m lazy and this is already written. (2) I’m vain and I always thought that the column never got the attention it deserved, because it got handed out on a Sunday that half the ward was already home for the holidays. (3) I’ve seen a bit of discussion on this site and others in the Bloggernacle about the problems of unmarried Mormons, but most of the discussing seems to have been done by single women and married folks. Perhaps this post will provide an opportunity for single men to voice their unique perspective. Yay! (4) The guy who helped me think this up came out of the closet and left the church a few months afterward, so if anything offends someone, I can always blame it on him.

Enjoy!

——————————————————

Belly of the Buddha

By The Belly

Some rub the belly of the buddha for good luck, some for inspiration. Let’s see what the Belly has in store for you. Send in your questions or concerns, and you are sure to get a witty, whimsical, and sometimes even wise response.

Dear Belly,
I just finished reading the October New Era, which was a special issue dedicated to the subjects of dating and marriage. Much of the counsel seemed to be geared to children who think Jessica Simpson is a musical genius. Do you have any advice for us twenty-somethings and whatever?
–Lonely Longfellow Parker

Dear Parker,
The Belly has read the same issue, and would be happy to offer some thoughts on dating tailored for our ward’s Not-So-Young Men and Women.

But first of all, let’s get something clear. If you are not happy with your level of social activity, ask someone to go do something with you. The Belly here is speaking to girls as well as boys. Yes, girls can ask boys out! Some people think that this is a violation of Mormon dating customs, but those people also are against running water and the internet. So who cares what they think?

So how do you ask someone out? More importantly, when? At BYU, the rule is to call on Tuesday for a date on Friday. But this is also a foolish tradition. Whatever day you pick to call someone up and ask them out is just fine with the Belly. Calling is better than not calling. The Belly has been told that no woman likes to feel like a second choice. But the Belly has spent a few Friday nights at home feeling like no choice at all, which is worse.

Now, when you pick up your date, you should give him or her a sincere compliment. Not only is this kind and thoughtful, it is prudent. If you have no sincere compliments, give out insincere compliments. This is arguably still kind, and is certainly still prudent.

On your date, you will be presented with many opportunities to open doors. Always remember to open doors! If you do not open these doors, you will find it very difficult to get into restaurants, movie theaters, etc.– not to mention cars. Some people like to open doors for their dates. The Belly thinks this is missing the point. It is not important who opens the doors. But it is imperative that they be opened.

When you are done having fun, you will probably escort your date back to his or her apartment. This is the moment when you say good night and then hug, awkwardly. To avoid uncomfortable doorstep scenes, the Belly recommends making out in the car until speech is no longer necessary (or possible) and then watching your date giddily stumble towards the door.

Or you could stay home and avoid the whole business entirely. You know. Like every other weekend.
–Belly

1) Couples who have infertility are often pressured into believing that their medical options for treatment are much more limited than they actually are. I don’t have any quantitative data on this, but I and my colleagues have heard countless stories from couples who are told that in vitro fertilization (IVF), or related procedures are their only option. In fact, there are few causes of infertility where IVF is the only option. These include tubal blockage that cannot be corrected by surgery, complete ovarian failure (in which case egg donation is required), or extremely low or zero sperm counts. In every other situation, including unexplained infertility, there are other kinds of treatments which have been shown to be effective. Now, they usually do not have as high a pregnancy rate as IVF does per cycle. (Depending on the type of infertility, the live birth rate per cycle of IVF treatment initiated ranges from under 10% to over 50%, on average about 30% per cycle.) But over time, the success rates for other treatments can be comparable, with far less cost and and substantially lower medical risk.

2) New options have been developed for infertility that are based on the principle of seeking to restore natural reproductive function, so that pregnancy occurs in vivo, from a natural act of sexual intercourse. The most advanced system is called natural procreative technology (NaProTechnology, or NPT). NPT was developed based on Creighton Model Fertility Care System (a natural family planning system), and incorporates medications and hormones that are also used in other infertility treatments. A strong foundation of medical evidence has been published for this option, and there are physicians throughout the United States and the world have been trained in this procedure. See http://www.iirrm.org

3) Finally, the mainstream of reproductive medicine has attitudes towards early human life and treatment that I regard as problematic. These include:

a) Treating human embryos as expendable and interchangeable building blocks for life, rather than as individual human entities. Among other things, this is evidenced by the huge number of frozen embryos in this country that have no prospect of being placed in a woman’s body for further development. Also in the current approach to create as many embryos as possible, use (imprecise) criteria to define which ones look like they are most likely to successfully implant, and then freeze or discard the rest.

b) Minimization of the potential risks of assisted reproductive technologies in the pursuit of the distorted goal of a high pregnancy rate per cycle (as opposed to high pregnancy rate over a reasonable period of time). A good example of this is the current craze over intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), in which a single sperm cell is injected into an egg. ICSI was developed as a method to get around severely low sperm counts, but within a few years of its development is now being used in over half of all IVF procedures in the United States, a level of use that goes far beyond its original indication. Some clinics do 100% ICSI, for all patients regardless of their reason for infertility, because ICSI seems to result in a somewhat higher rate of pregnancy per cycle. And we have no data on long-term safety for children born with this procedure. A number of large studies and meta-analyses have been published in the major medical journals indicating that treatment with IVF procedures is associated with higher rates of preterm birth and genetic abnormalities. The absolute rates are still low, but are still of a magnitude that warrants a genuine concern and more caution. See for example the statements near the bottom of this link

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/infertility/DS00310/DSECTION=8

c) In January 2006, an editorial by one of the top journals in the infertility field made the following statements that accurately reflect where the opinion leaders of the field of infertility medicine think the field is going [Fertil Steril 2006;85:12-3]:
“Are we ready to be the genetic engineers of the future?… In just over two decades, IVF has evolved from a laboratory curiosity to a commercialized, industrialized technology responsible for millions of births worldwide. More than 45,000 babies were born in the United States as a result of ART procedures done in 2002, an increase of approximately 10% over 2001. Just as laparoscopy replaced laparotomy, so will all traditional treatments for infertility be rendered obsolete by advanced reproductive technologies. Patient work-up will be minimalized and will be primarily targeted toward whether the couple can produce reproductively competent [sperm and eggs] and then followed immediately by treatment with a course of IVF and ET [embryo transfer]. Frozen eggs, frozen embryos, frozen blastomeres, libraries of genetic stem cells, and embryo genetic engineering will be the tools of the future. Aldous Huxley was clairvoyant when he prophesied, ‘our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.’ But what will be the role of the doctor then in the future? Will patients input their symptoms and their DNA samples into a computer and walk away with a printout of their differential diagnosis and treatment plan? Will procreation involve genetically engineering and choreographing the unification of a desired oocyte and spermatozoan?â€?
Thankfully, not all physicians in the field of infertility treatment would agree with these statements. But enough do that it is of great concern.

This is my last post as a guest blogger to T&S. I want to thank this community and all who have participated. I have worked in these issues for many years, but still your thoughtful comments have helped me explore angles that I had not fully considered before. It has been useful for me, and I hope it has been helpful for some of you.