And Also by Works
\nI\u2019m impressed by how much energy goes into this site. All this erudition. All this argument. All this heat and light, even as the entries trail away into some \u201csub-thread.\u201d I keep waiting for one of these discussions to cohere, for the statements to galvanize the group to action. It\u2019s a matter of style, I guess. I like projects. What shall we do about this? is my basic question.
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\nI suppose everyone is too busy by definition to take on a cause, so I am suggesting only three modest projects for this legal powerhouse. <\/p>\n
1. A Mormon Anti-Defamation League. How about defending the Church against the comments no one would ever make about the Blacks and the Jews. An article in an African newspaper today called the Church racist. To simplify this effort, how about limiting the response to letters to the editor when there is cause. Short, articulate responses could begin to make people think twice about their offhand remarks. Why not show the Church how helpful, instead of troublesome, intellectuals can be.<\/p>\n
2. The Times today noted that Bush may champion a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as heterosexual. This politically-motivated possibility seems like a very bad idea to me. As I recall Rex Lee\u2019s arguments against the ERA back in the past, they were mostly that the result could not be known, that it would either make too much difference or not enough. I think the potential for damage is greater here. I\u2019d like to see this possibility debated independently before the Church gets stuck supporting some very difficult position in support of the Christian Right.<\/p>\n
3. I live in an eruv. My urban area on NYC\u2019s Upper West Side is enclosed by a wire or string boundary that I have never seen. This demarcation allows the extension of various symbolic arrangements from the private domain of Jewish households into public areas so that they can take part in activities normally forbidden in public on the Sabbath. I do not begrudge the Jews this eruv, although it encloses my space. I don\u2019t accept the need or efficacy of their boundary, but I do not mind it. How is this different from our doing temple work for the Jews? If they do not accept any meaning in it, how does this impinge on them? Could this case be made? I\u2019d like to see all this fuss about temple records countered in some way.<\/p>\n
I am sure that there are better causes; these are just what occur to me today. Why not go somewhere with all this energy?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And Also by Works I\u2019m impressed by how much energy goes into this site. All this erudition. All this argument. All this heat and light, even as the entries trail away into some \u201csub-thread.\u201d I keep waiting for one of these discussions to cohere, for the statements to galvanize the group to action. It\u2019s a matter of style, I guess. I like projects. What shall we do about this? is my basic question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mormon-life"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6509,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions\/6509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}