Category: News and Politics
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Infertility
Infertility is a huge topic, as large in its own way as the topic of birth control. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to do it justice. I fully recognize that this can be an extremely sensitive issue for couples for many reasons. I absolutely do not judge any patients for making choices in dealing…
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Postfertilization effects of birth control methods
In considering options of which birth control method to use, couples have a variety of factors that they may consider.
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Embryonic stem cell research
The issue of embryonic stem cells has been discussed in this forum before, here, here and here. Ongoing current events, however, make this issue salient for another examination.
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Mormonsploitation!!
That is the name of a film series currently going on at the Pioneer Theater in Manhattan’s East Village.
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Go See “States of Grace”!
Dutcher captures the wrenching beauty of the struggle to follow Christ. “States of Grace: God’s Army 2” is really good. Go.
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Anne comes home
I read and enjoyed Orson Scott Card’s book Sarah. In fact, that book sparked an interest in me to find out more about what exactly we knew of ancient times, both New and Old World.
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Blood on the Doorposts
Let’s call her Sister Jones. We both taught seminary in Northern California a few years ago. I liked her from day one: faithful, funny, and willing to lend out anything from her complete collection of Sunstone back issues. (This was in the days before full Internet access, you see.)
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The 12th Article of Faith and East Germany
“We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.” This statement of our belief never troubled me until I lived in the German Democratic Republic, otherwise known as East Germany.
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A Beautiful Place
This week I spent a few days in Nauvoo, the last place the Latter-day Saints tried to build a temple before being forced to leave the United States.
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An Experiment in Blog Discussion
One thing usually missing from discussion on this blog and, from what I have seen, all others, is extended, thoughtful discussion.
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Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, published last year, is not so much a memoir or autobiography, but rather a series of snapshots, each drenched in cultural references, that together create a approximation of Mr. Zimmerman’s character. One of those snapshots gives us Dylan living in an apartment in Greenwich Village owned by a mysterious autodidact named Ray.…
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Mormons and Markets, III: Strangers and Neighbors
In my last post on this subject, I argued that one of things that markets do well is coordinate dispersed information. Another thing that markets do fairly well is facilitate cooperation among strangers. This is worth thinking about.
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Fat Makes a Comeback
The CDC is airing its dirty laundry this week, as a new report comes out claiming that last year’s CDC report on obesity is basically hogwash. In the old numbers, obesity was this bomb descending on America that was going to wipe us out. It claimed that obesity caused 400,000 deaths/year, making it the number…
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Macrocosm and Microcosm
Every so often, I have one of those horrifying little experiences that leads me to question my firmly held belief that most of Freud’s thought is utter nonsense.
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Getting Down to Brass Tacks: Right to Life, State Responsibility, Family Input
Despite John Welch’s admirable asserted desire to keep the Schiavo thread on the topic of “what does LDS theology tell us about end of life care options?,” much of the discussion has predictably become a political slugfest. So be it. However, it hasn’t been, in my mind, a particularly useful political discussion. And a primary…
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Terry Schiavo and the Good Death
Last weekend at the conference of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology, Richard Sherlock presented a stimulating paper observing and explaining the complete absence of an LDS casuistry of medical ethics–that is, the absence of a body of literature exploring in a careful, ethically- and scripturally-bound way the trade-offs inherent in the excruciating panoply…
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The bankruptcy bill
You may have read about the new bankruptcy bill which is headed for the House. Major provisions include a required means test designed to certain filers from using Chapter 7, as well as added attorney certifications and disclosures. What should we, as church members, think of this?
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Education Funding
Commenting on an earlier post, someone stated that it was tough to get Utah voters worked up about education funding. Though that statement was off the mark, I figured the learned readership of this site would have strong opinions on education funding in the Beehive State and, I hope, even a few ideas. Let me…
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A Legal Primer on Same Sex Marriage
As Kaimi has already pointed out, today the San Francisco County Superior Court declared that Proposition 22, which defines marriage exclusively as a union between a man and a woman, unconstitutional under the California Constitution. My point in this post is not to open up a debate about same sex marriage, but rather to explain…
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Some Wore Red, Some Wore Blue
Thanks for the introduction and the opportunity, Rosalynde. I feel lucky to have a big sister who precedes, exceeds, but includes me in just about every important thing.
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Violating the First Amendment
What I’m about to tell you are two true stories in which public employees clearly violated Supreme Court rulings on the First Amendment. The names and a few other details have been changed to protect the guilty.
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The Millennium will have come by then
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during my first feeble attempts at writing science fiction, I sometimes encountered members of the Church who objected to science fiction about the future because “the Millennium will have come by then.” In their view, for me to write about something happening a hundred years from now…
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Film Festival Musings
Those of you who are more culturally aware probably know that there’s a film festival going on here in Utah. No, not that Sundance thing — I’m talking about the Fourth LDS Film Festival.
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Ads Targeting the LDS Market
Since I often listen to KSL radio on the way to and from work, I tend to hear quite a bit of advertising aimed at members of the Church. Most of it is for products that are of little interest to non-members — LDS novels, for instance. But there are a couple of LDS-targeted ads…
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An Interview with Neil LaBute
Writer, director and playwright Neil LaBute has been producing provocative and critically-acclaimed theater, film and fiction for more than a decade in the US and abroad.
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Prodigal Artists
First, let me say thank you to my hosts. I feel like a celebrity. A couple of weeks ago, the Deseret News ran a column in its Religion & Ethics session about Mormons participating in the arts. The author, Jerry Johnston, put forward the theory that good Mormons will fail at convincingly portraying bad people.
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Hooray for Dialogue! No, not that Dialogue
No, we’re not talking about the journal Dialogue—we’re talking about lines of dialogue from film, television, or books that creep their way into our homes and stick around for years, much like food supplies from the cannery. The lines that resonate with us can reveal a lot about ourselves and our families.