13 minute read
OPINION
The ‘Wrong’ Questions Need to Be Asked
Latter-day Saint leader Brad Wilcox recently addressed controversial topics at a speech in Alpine. In the subsequent barrage of social-media reactions, many found his remarks to be, at best, insensitive and ignorant and, at worst, condescending and bigoted.
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Perhaps the most derogatory remarks dealt with the faith’s former priesthood ban on Black men. “Maybe we’re asking the wrong questions,” Wilcox said. “Maybe instead of saying, why did the Blacks have to wait until 1978, maybe what we should be asking is, why did the whites and other races have to wait until 1829?”
For Wilcox to imply that white church members have experienced a comparable degree of suffering and oppression to Black members is an egregious demonstration of revisionist history. He also tackled the issue of women and the priesthood. “How come women aren’t ordained to the priesthood? Maybe we’re asking the wrong questions. Maybe we should be asking, why don’t they need to be?”
Echoing the sentiments of other leaders, Wilcox reassured women that they possess all priesthood blessings, so it doesn’t matter that they cannot serve in priesthood leadership positions. And it is interesting that questions exposing inequity and oppression are “wrong,” whereas questions that serve to justify church policies are “right.”
“So what is it that sisters are bringing with them from a premortal life that men are trying to learn through ordination,” Wilcox asked. This premise furthers longstanding LDS claims that women are inherently more virtuous than men, and thus do not need the priesthood.
Also eliciting widespread opposition was his statement that other religions are simply “playing church.” “They’re sincere. They want it to count,” Wilcox said. “But they don’t have the authority. They don’t have God’s permission.”
Despite the wounds his remarks inflicted, I credit Wilcox for publicly apologizing, something that LDS leaders sparingly do. “To those I offended, especially my Black friends, I offer my sincere apologies, and ask for your forgiveness,” Wilcox said. “I am committed to doing better.”
Still, many have concerns that his apology was more a response to public scrutiny than a genuine expression of remorse, particularly because Wilcox has presented the same message in previous speeches. In addition, his apology never walked back the racist belief that God was responsible for the priesthood ban to begin with.
As Black LDS author Zandra Vanes put it, “I don’t know why we are more comfortable calling God racist than a man racist.” While it is difficult to speculate on the sincerity of his apology, it is easy to observe the effects of Wilcox’s remarks.
The racist, sexist and condescending ideas Wilcox expressed expose deep-seated prejudices and bigoted ideologies that must be acknowledged and taken seriously.
And most importantly, such harmful rhetoric must no longer be tolerated in a church that aspires toward love, understanding, and acceptance.
KEITH BURNS Mount Vernon, New York
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What do you need help with most often?
Benjamin Wood
I can’t smell very well. I’m constantly asking my wife if the milk has spoiled.
Katharine Biele
I would say my sanity, but I’ll be truthful and say opening jars and bottles. Whoever thought up these “child”-proof caps?
Scott Renshaw
Answering poll questions like this.
Chelsea Neider
Picking up dead animals in the yard. I cry and can’t do it. The birds always like to die in my yard.
Bryan Bale
Transportation. Cars are too expensive, public transit takes too long and my bicycle won’t let me carry very much.
Carolyn Campbell
I admit I need help leaving the house on time.
Eric Granato
Remembering to eat. I rarely get that hungry feeling until it’s too late.
Thomas Crone
Pretty much weekly, I’m given an ad hoc tutorial on the directional street grid. Despite the good will of my teachers, I’m a lost cause.
OPINION Ode to Joy
Joy is an act of resistance.
That line popped up in a Pandora advertisement, bold as a flourish of herald trumpets in the midst of another winter of discontent at the hands of the Utah Legislature. It gave pause. I wondered: If joy is indeed volitional, could it be called upon to forestall the bouts of anger I feel when the legislators return to the Capitol and begin to scheme?
I was still thinking about how joy might be willed when this headline in The New York Times caught my eye: “Yale’s Happiness Professor Says Anxiety Is Destroying Her Students.” The article was about Laurie Santos, a Yale professor whose 10-week, online course—The Science of Well-being—has attracted more than 3 million people. Twenty-five percent of the Yale student body enrolled in Santos’ inclass version, and her “Happiness Lab” podcast has been downloaded 35 million times.
I spent a few minutes Googling Santos before moving on to “Happiness.” I found two types described in the literature—hedonic and eudaemonic. Hedonic is the state of happiness that results from pleasure maximized, pain minimized. Eudaemonic happiness is associated with selfactualization, a subject for another day. Hedonic happiness is subjective. I shrink from sports bars and Twitter, but singing is as pleasurable as a game of pickleball.
I think back to a Sunday crowd of Unitarians gathered to hear Robert Fulghum, a renowned minister, give a sermon. Now in his mid-80s, Fulghum is famous for his bestselling book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. At one point in a spellbinding sermon—to illustrate a point I cannot remember—he began to sing the “Ode to Joy” melody from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—“La La La La… .”
Finishing, he asked the congregation to sing with him and began the ode again. A few people joined in tentatively. Then, more and more began to sing. Soon, most were singing confidently. By the third time through, voices rose in a triumphal crescendo, eyes welled up. It was a joyful moment sourced in iconic, joyful music. Fulghum’s sermon left the Unitarians aglow.
A similarly affecting experience was a concert in Boston in 2004. Peter, Paul and Mary (PP&M) performed for an audience of a few hundred graying Boomers in return for a donation to John Kerry’s presidential campaign. The nostalgia in the theater was palpable. A second encore brought the trio back to the stage, and without any introduction, they strummed the opening chords of “Puff the Magic Dragon.”
The audience took up the lyrics spontaneously and PP&M yielded: They stopped singing but kept playing their guitars. The audience sang every verse and chorus, word for word. Afterward, they left the theater wiping their eyes, having sung a song about lost youth in the company of the no-longer-young. I don’t consider theirs a joyful experience, per se—whereas I think it was for the Unitarians. So, if not joy then, what did the PP&M audience feel? Was it pleasure? Happiness? Contentment? It is an important distinction.
Contentment is the source of joy, the dictionary says, and the denotation of “contentment” describes a hybrid noun derived from satisfaction and happiness. The pursuit of happiness is like peddling a bike into a headwind because of “cultural forces telling us that we are not happy enough,” Santos says. We chase one pleasurable moment after another on a hedonic treadmill.
Our happiness is torqued by external events—a TikTok video, an above-average alpine snowpack or a high-handed scheme by legislators—but the resultant change in the level of our happiness is short-lived. We adapt to the upticks or downturns but soon revert to our pre-event state, back on the treadmill.
A final memory illustrates the point. My wife and I took a hot-air balloon trip along the coast of Maine a few years ago. The treetop flight ended in a rough landing, and we became the ground crew willy-nilly, muscling the deflated balloon across a field to a waiting truck. From launch to load, the balloon’s hedonic cycle was brief. So were the impromptu singing sessions with Fulghum and PP&M. They lifted my hedonic happiness level for no more than a few hours. I conclude that like a flash mob, joy is episodic—a fleeting, orgasmic moment, a shout, a spike on a graph, an exclamation mark, a texted “w00t” or a spasm of groans. All signal an encounter with a hedonic event. Some bring joy; others elbow joy aside.
Utah’s Republican legislators like to meddle in areas congruent with their self-interest. If I could counter the unhappiness they inflict—sweep it aside like a storm clears the pollution from Utah’s air—I surely would. In my own self-interest, I would try to jack up my hedonic happiness level on the Legislature’s first day and keep it aloft like a kite in a steady wind for the following 45. But could my joy also serve as an act of resistance to the legislators’ meddling? It is an attractive idea for these troubled times. I think Santos might argue that if you want to deploy joy defensively, you must first be grounded in a state of contentment. Achieving contentment is what her many students are seeking. Sleep and exercise help, says Santos. So do mindfulness, writing in a gratitude journal and random acts of kindness. One of Fulghum’s kindergarten lessons is: “Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.” But it does take work, Santos says emphatically, “because it is hard.” CW
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MISS: Barrels Loaded
We’re always curious as to why anyone thinks we must “defend” the Second Amendment, but whatever the reason, Utah’s Sen. Mike Lee is all over it. “We write to express our grave concern over the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives’ (ATF) continued pattern of enforcing secret guidance,” he and 19 other Republican senators wrote recently. Apparently, someone somewhere received threatening letters about buying or owning certain firearms accessories, none of which are illegal. It was unclear whether any action had been taken, but the emails seem to reference silencers, which are legal but regulated. Still, it’s comical to think the Second Amendment is in some kind of jeopardy from this “secret” guidance, which seems to be not-so-secret.
HIT: Fueling Flames
Here’s the thing. The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical issue facing Utah and the rest of the nation—how to produce energy when all else goes wrong. President Biden has stopped all Russian imports of oil in another attempt at hobbling Russia’s economy. This, of course, led our Republican delegation to hyperventilate because— gee whiz—we can activate that fossil fuel pipeline in an instant and not look to countries like Venezuela for help, the Deseret News reports. They have a point in that it seems self-defeating to turn away from one dictatorship to another. On the other hand, this could be an opportunity to fund and support clean energy alternatives. At the same time, The Salt Lake Tribune ran a story about preparing for wildfire “season.” That season has been exacerbated by climate change and an unwillingness to look for alternatives to fossil fuels.
MISS: Don’t Fence Me in
Does anyone in the Legislature think before they mess up a good thing? Well, at least we know Rep. Phil Lyman, RBlanding, doesn’t. Listen to this leap of logic: “Who controls the land, controls the economy, they control the people,” said Lyman in a Salt Lake Tribune story. We know Lyman is all about the land— and control. Still, it’s a stunning statement in a time when many people can barely afford an apartment, much less land. This, however, was Lyman’s way of scuttling a land swap deal between the BLM and the state institutional trust lands. It happens all the time in a win-win scenario where land is consolidated, and the proceeds go to Utah schools. Lyman stopped the latest bill because: “If you take these sections … and move them to a more ‘productive place,’ then in 20 years, you can take the kids out of that county and send them to that more productive place to get jobs. It’s not fair.” And so under Lyman logic, children should not be able to seek better opportunities.
Never Say Never
In a salute to Women’s History Month, Striving for Equality & the ERA will show us just how far we haven’t come. Kate Kelly, the Mormon feminist who started Ordain Women, will talk about the century-long battle to put women in the Constitution. Here in Utah, people like to say equality of women is written in the state Constitution. Still, women are second-class citizens, earning 30% less than men. Utah women are right up there with South Korea. Kelly will introduce you to “incredible women like Patsy Mink, the first woman of color ever elected to Congress, and other advocates of the Equal Rights Amendment like Pauli Murray, Barbara Jordan and Sen. Pat Spearman.” If you think the ERA will never pass in Utah, then you don’t understand why ERA bills are filed each and every year with the Legislature. Learn about how close we are to passage.
Virtual, Thursday, March 17, 9 a.m., free. https://bit.ly/3t5bK9q
How About That Energy?
The war in Ukraine has highlighted the challenges behind providing safe, reliable and clean energy to citizens. While the world is focused on gas and oil supplies, the Russians targeted a huge nuclear facility and took over Chenobyl amid fire and anxiety.
Preparing for a Brilliant Future: Renew-
able Energy in Utah is a topic policymakers need to understand because without a plan, Utah is doomed under a failing fossil fuel industry and an untenable nuclear future. Join Thom Carter, executive director of the Governor’s Office of Energy Development and Lisa Romney, economic development and regional business manager at Rocky Mountain Power, for this timely and important discussion. Virtual and at Hinckley Insti-
tute of Politics, 260 S. Central Campus Drive, Room 2018, Wednesday, March 23, noon, free, https://bit.ly/3CzGiD0
Caucus Night for Dems
The state’s Republican caucuses are done, but the embattled Democratic base is about to hold its neighborhood caucus meetings to elect delegates to its convention. If you are a Democrat or unaffiliated, it pays to get involved, especially when big decisions are looming. One big decision is whether to even run a Democratic candidate in the U.S. Senate race. In person, hybrid, virtual, Tues-
day, March 22, 7 p.m., https://bit.ly/3tSpuTS
Youth in the Pandemic
It hasn’t been easy, has it? It’s been especially hard for kids and for young people about to enter adulthood. The pandemic has taken its toll, and then you add in racial animus, the threats to democracy and an inflationary economy for the final blows. Progress in a Time of the Pandemic will be presented by the Utah Division of Multicultural Affairs. “Despite the setbacks … we must not overlook the astonishing progress that humanity has made in health, wealth, happiness, peace, freedom, tolerance and safety,” says Harvard psychologist and New York bestselling author Steven Pinker. Kingsbury
