The Mormon Proposition

Just when I though that I had nothing to say I find this on the Yahoo movies homepage.



Obviously this made me a little bit angry. And here are my refutations of the movie without me actually watching it.

1) Mormons were not the only ones pushing proposition 8. In fact, financially speaking Mormons were not the greatest contributors. The Catholics and various other Evangelist Christian organizations also made significant donations.

2) While I do remember letters encouraging donations for Prop 8 there was never, at any time, a requirement for members to do so. I did not donate money or time to Prop 8, and my church membership was never questioned.

3) The LDS church does not hate gays (or any other group with variant sexual orientation). The church DOES believe in a strict code of morality in regards to human sexuality and guess what. . .gay sex is outside of that. It is a sin. But so is adultery, so is sex before marriage. I could go on, but suffice it to say, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is against sin, of any kind, and any time the allowance of sin is legislated in state or national laws the Church will be fiercely opposed to it.

4) Even from the trailer for this film, you can tell that the director is blatantly misrepresenting statements by Church leadership. This is the power of film. And it's easy to forget that context matters very much when an individual makes a statement. Also, it's funny how you can take a film image of say, Elder Ballard, and make it a little grainy, slow down the image a little bit, to make the image seem a little bit creepy. In the same case, the people shouting in the streets against gays aren't necessarily Mormons (some of them could be, but I'd wager most aren't). Also, the guy who said that gays are "the greatest danger to America" was a Utah politician, and in no way related to the leadership of the Church.

Anyway, I'm just mad. This "documentary" is a stupid attempt to attack the Church.

Black Friday

Once again humanity has shocked me with its stupidity.

At the beginning of the season that is supposed to be the least selfish and the most caring time of the year, a time for many of us to remember our Savior, a mob of people killed a temporary Walmart employee. I can see it in my mind, the eager Christmas shoppers, each with a list of things to buy for their special person, a son, a daughter, a wife, or a husband, charging into the store, carelessly trampling the body of the man who opened the door for them. And then, when informed that they have to leave the store because somebody has just died they respond, "but I've waited in line since yesterday!"

I want to karate chop that person in the throat; which is shameful in itself, because I want to revisit violence upon a whole mob of people, most of whom are probably quite innocent alone, just self absorbed and oblivious.

Oh, the irony of the moment. There is such a juxtaposition of images and values here, the values that we should have been feeling at the beginning of this season, and the selfish and careless mob consumerism that turned over 2000 people into accomplices in a murder.

Truly, Black Friday is a fitting name.

Unleashing the Thunder

I'm sitting in the Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska and I'm feeling the need to vent some anger. So I was supposed to fly to Utah today at 2, but when I showed up I was told that my mom--who purchased my ticket--had entered the times wrong so that I was arriving at my destination before I left. I was confused because I had a printed itinerary that made perfect logical sense, which I showed the customer service rep. She then said that somebody must have changed something in the system and then proceeded to book me onto a flight 9 hours later. Grrrrrrrr!!! That's a lot of time to kill. In short, my day, and my parent's day, was ruined. Even shorter, GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Of course, with all my free time I accessed the Internet to check up on BYU's first game of the season and was pleased that they had won. However, this brought up some more bile. The BYU ticket office changed their whole system so that the All Sports pass was sold only online. Then made it all stupid and complex. You have to form stupid groups on the net--which is fine, I want to go to the games with my sister--she formed our group and got hers. But, I was in the field and never got a chance to purchase mine until August 25th, but when I tried I was told the system was arranging the seating. When I got on again, the next day, all the tickets had been sold out. No All Sport pass for me this year. I don't know what happened, but somehow I never was able to access the group that my sister had made; I was never e-mailed of it's creation, and there was no way to access it when I signed in to the BYU ticket website. On top of that, my sister was charged two unexplained fees for her ASP, totalling $19. I'm sure one of them was an online transaction fee but I have no clue about the other. Rip Off! How can they MAKE us buy it online and then charge us an online transaction fee?!? In short, no ASP for me this year. Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!

I am angry.

If I didn't censor my writing, this venting would possibly look more like this: I am angry @&%&%$W! &&%# #$*&(@$%@ @&$** *@@*(2*(*(*( @#^@^%@#$! @%%@$!@%^ @%&!@&@ @%^@ @@ @%&@^%#@#&^*&@#$ !!!!(*&#@^&*!(*^&^$*&(*&(*&*&*&****@^&*(!&@!!!*&^@^#%%^##^@%$$@$@!!!!!!!!!!!!

An observation of Humanity and my resulting Ire

I was sitting by myself at a table in the Terrace (a segement of the food court in the Student Center of Brigham Young University) yesterday working on an application on my laptop, when I was joined by a small group of people. I didn't really think much of it, and for the most part ignored their converstaion. I little while later a girl, whom I know, walked by. She apparently, knew one of the other guys at the table. After a"Heyyyy," he stood up and gave her a big hug. They small talked for a minute or so and then she left and he sat down. I don't think she even noticed me, which isn't surprising; I don't draw attention to myself. I thought about talking to her, but I didn't. Once she was gone the guy she had been talking too turned to his friends at the table and said, "I hate that girl. She's really annoying. I'm only nice to her because I like her friend." My Blood began to boil. How shallow, how thoughtless, and how juvenile. I can't even come up with words descriptive enough to convey the contempt and anger that I began to feel at this point in time. For the whole rest of the day, and well into the night this event was in the back of my mind. The really sad thing is that I didn't say or do anything; I didn't even challenge him to a duel. I just sat at my computer and smoldered.

I don't know where I am going with this. . . I guess what I want to express is a desire for people to be better and more devoted friends, to be less shallow, and more forgiving of things that we consider flaws in other people. That is my moral thought for the good of humanity.

Thanks for listening.