Ann Coulter Says "Don't Blame Romney"

I don't!  I blame Ann Coulter.

I'm going to give just a tiny bit to Ann Coulter and say that I get it. I do, because I once held her self-proclaimed non-idiot position before I became a "pro-life badass" myself. Having stated that, my compliments stop there. See, for all the sharp-eyed political optics Coulter has (and she's got specs for sure), she and many of the GOP self-aggrandizers have one big, black hell-hole of a blind spot when it comes to the issue of abortion, and that is they become useful idiots of the Left.

The first mistake when it comes to the issue of the rape-conceived person is to pit the unborn child against her mother. The Left loves to divide and conquer along lines that should naturally constitute a bond between two equally important people in this world. By conceding the position that two lives cannot coexist just because the Left says that the one life smaller in size should only exist by the consent of the larger (and not the other way around, curiously enough), plays into the elitist trick that their narrative is the only narrative to which we should all prostrate ourselves. I'd like to know why anyone should hog tie himself at the feet of the Legion of Doom. Only the pro-death Left spins the issue into "requir[ing] a woman to bear the child of her rapist" instead of giving justice to every innocent victim of rape, born and unborn.

The second mistake is to blame GOP candidates for saying what they believe. Nowhere in the manufactured debacles of Akin and Mourdock did either of them say that the reason they were running for office was to fictionalize rape or pass legislation prohibiting abortion under any circumstance. Both men answered the obligatory pro-life questions (asked only to Republicans) by stating their positions, nothing more. It was the Left (again!) who responded in predictable fashion with the microphone that they command (only because the GOP is out looking for a spine), practically telling the public that Akin thinks rape is no big deal, and Mourdock is personally going to hold a baby in a mother's womb to prevent her from aborting. Somehow, these GOP talking heads capitulate to the straw men that the Left likes to contruct for target practice, and they all too willingly run out before the first shot to sink a hatchet into the backs of perfectly good candidates, because God forbid the other party should have to prove its accusations.

Since the finger-pointing has begun in the wake of Mitt Romney's disappointing loss, GOP bigwigs should be ready to take it as well as they can dish it out. From where I and my "badass" pro-life compatriots stand, it's mouthpieces like Coulter, Priebus, Rove, and Perino who became the Lucy to Charlie Brown and pulled the ball away just as our duly elected primary winners were about to kick. They fell, naturally, but spare us the schlepped up line that they were toxic players who poisoned the presidential race as well. Puleez.

For all the complaining about how the other party get stuff wrong all the time, the biggest favor Coulter could do for Republicans now is to quit being the unhappy lap dog of the Left when it comes to the pro-life issue of which she admittedly has a 100% flight risk for only a 1% disagreement. If the talking heads spent half as much time focused on winning seats instead of getting distracted by Obama's "lady parts," the Senate could have well been a lot closer to getting flipped today. Anyone can take losing an election if it's one step forward at a time. But there is no consolation for losing when the Party one belongs to actively pushes candidates two steps back and spits on them.

(This is a response to Ann Coulter's post-2012 Election blogpost blaming Senatorial candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock for causing Mitt Romney to lose the Presidential race.)

Abortion's "Sermon on the Operating Table"

The Visible Conservative:  Christians Unleashed Show
Pro-Life Fridays Monologue - March 16, 2012

For the longest time, I’ve questioned how abortion is sold to the American woman as a “difficult but necessary choice” that women need. Pro-death propagandists sell not the abortion itself (that’s the job of Planned Parenthood) but the right and the so-called need for abortion. This is where, on a certain level, I give credit to Jessica DelBalzo for having the balls to be honest.


In her article called “I Love Abortion,” she points out the problem with standard pro-abortion rhetoric that pro-life people have similarly called pro-deathers out on for a long time now. The Clintonian formula, as I call it, of making abortion “safe, legal, and rare” has always been a point of contention, because if abortion is made safe and legal, why should it ever be made rare?  DelBalzo bites the bullet and says that she doesn’t like how abortion supporters softpedal abortion and assume just what we pro-lifers have said all along that there is something wrong with abortion on demand.

She says,

Safe and legal are concepts I fully support, but rare is something I cannot abide…. there is no need to suggest that abortion be rare. To say so implies a value judgement, promoting the idea that abortion is somehow distasteful or immoral and should be avoided…. we must remember that extenuating circumstances like health, contraceptive failure, and rape mean that abortion will always be a normal, necessary, and reasonable choice for many women. As such, we must avoid stigmatizing it in any way. No woman benefits from even the vaguest insinuation that abortion is an immoral or objectionable option. That's the weak argument made by misogynistic, forced-birth advocates, and it has no place in a dialogue about reproductive freedom. Terminating a pregnancy is not an unethical act, yet suggesting that abortion should be rare implies that there is something undesirable about having one…. Suggesting that abortion be “safe, legal, and rare,” and crowing that “no one likes abortion,” accomplishes nothing for women's rights. Pandering to the anti-choice movement by implying that we all find termination distasteful only fuels the fire against it. What good is common ground if it must be achieved at the expense of women who have had or will have abortions? Those women need advocates like us more than we need support from anti-abortionists. Rather than trying to cozy up to the forced-birth camp, women who value their freedom should be proud to say that they like abortion. In fact, they should venerate it whole-heartedly. Abortion is our last refuge, the one final, definitive instrument that secures our bodily autonomy. What's not to love?

I appreciate this woman’s consistency, but she has done something not even Hillary Clinton was willing to do when she uttered “safe, legal, and rare.” DelBalzo has killed the last vestiges of humanity in the dialogue about whether mothers have a right to kill their children in the womb. In the article she talks about abortion as similar to getting a mammogram or chemotherapy, which, I guess she means are all equivalent to each other (except that all other medical procedures in the world don’t end the life of a living, growing human being or even have the intent to harm or kill another human being).

DelBalzo and others who think like her fail to realize that the mindset she’s promoting is exactly the same mindset behind the gladiatorial games in ancient Rome, Tuol Sleng and the killing fields of Cambodia, and the African slave trade. It is a mindset that says some people have a right by some virtue of superiority to oppress, dismember, and execute human beings for the sake of political ideology, religion, economic gain, or entertainment. Just think what made all these atrocities possible—the idea that there are classes among men, gradations of worth, and rights of some that trump the rights of others either by power or diminishing the humanity of those they have power over. Women are property in most of the Islamic world; slaves are property; political adversaries don’t have the right to have a conflicting opinion, and yes, all this is the mindset of liberals that preach tolerance, compassion, and diversity in society. It amazes me how their heads don’t explode! The inhumanity and cruelty of the pro-death position is breathtaking.

For all the ranting about how religious people are misogynistic, I’ve never known a position as misogynistic as pro-death. It’s right up there with Sharia Law. In order to be pro-abortion, you must look at women as nothing but uteruses with arms and legs. No kidding. It says that a woman is not equal in society unless she gets a specific type of on-demand surgery in her uterus. What kind of message is that for women? Do I tell my daughter that at some point early in her life she wasn’t a person with intrinsic rights and that she wouldn’t have intrinsic rights now if abortion weren’t legal? Well, yeah. DelBalzo is really saying that women have to be given our rights from government, which is saying we don’t really have any rights to begin with.

And let me just say one more thing, especially in light of her line about America being “plagued by anti-feminist, religious conservatism” that shames women’s sexuality. When you say that you venerate abortion wholeheartedly, is this not an admission of devotion of a religious caliber to a death cult known as ultra-liberal feminism that demeans and devalues motherhood and children and looks at pregnancy as some kind of STD? Who’s religious now?

Ouroboros: "Hate Speech" Worse Than Infanticide?

On Monday morning, this blogpost dropped into my facebook News Feed from Wesley J. Smith. Titled “Killing Baby ‘Non-persons’ -- All Grist for the Bioethics Mill,” he had me intrigued, because I am very used to Smith picking up on the latest bioethical movements from the bowels of medical (un)ethicists from around the globe, signifying what kind of world I must prepare myself and my children to face in the coming years. He reports the latest chilling abstract in the Journal of Medical (Un)Ethics calling for the medical community (and I imagine society at large) to give wholesale acceptance of infanticide “after-birth abortion” of any infant, er..after..birth. Strike that strike; it is infanticide.

The abstract says:

Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

In the last 48 hours since this idea hit the online world, there has thankfully been a public outcry of horror and indignation at this trident of death. But before I could put words down to express my own rejection of infanticide, this is what got excreted out onto the world next: the journal editor’s defense of the authors’ approval of infanticide. ‘So what’s the big deal?’ Savulescu seems to ask. He cites that under certain circumstances, infanticide is already legal in the giant cemetery plot of land known as the Netherlands.

The logic of the article is consistent, he says, which goes something like: There is no meaningful distinction between fetuses and infants. If we do not assign moral value to fetuses in the womb, then we should not assign moral value to infants either. Therefore, killing infants (infanticide) is morally indistinct from killing fetuses (abortion). The logic is correct. But Savulescu, Giublini, and Minerva are very wrong. The metaphysics and ontology of a human being encompasses all stages of life—the “who” of a human person never changes from the moment of conception. Therefore, if moral value exists at all, it must exist at the beginning of life in order to have any real meaning thereafter. Killing fetuses and infants is a moral travesty.

The endgame of such a philosophy of death is a right to murder and a right to be murdered--not much different than stripping down to your skivvies and living the rest of your life in the Peruvian rainforest just fighting to survive each day. Civilization, laws, and abiding by the reality of objective moral values are the difference between a truly progressive society and barbarism. It is the reason Susan Smith is serving a life sentence in prison. If Savulescu, Guiblini, and Minerva preach the worldview worth actualizing, we ought to exonerate Susan Smith, laud her the title “Superfrau,” and give her another car to drown more toddlers in a lake, because medical (un)ethicists have decided that there are no reasons despicable enough from which to save their lives.

But it gets better! Liberal is as liberal does, Momma always said. The main reason why Savulescu decided to stick up for his colleagues is not found in the substance of what they wrote but in the way he perceives they were treated on blogs! [Cough] If I knew at the beginning it was this easy to take his family jewels and put them in a thimble, I wouldn’t have bothered reading his defense. So, he reprints and rails against some unflattering ‘misspellings’ of Giublini and Minerva’s names and some visceral adjectives having to do with political progressivism, sprinkled with a few colorful expletives. Then, he sings the song of classic liberal indignation. “Racist!” “Hate speech!” he croons. Sadly for him, Savulescu has argued his way into a lonely solo. Such throaty whine is the symptom of a permanent laryngitis. He sang away his right to moral outrage the moment he believed it is permissible to kill the innocent among us.

My outlook on the human future teeters on the last vestiges of civilization’s ability to recognize objective moral transgressions when it encounters them. With our culture swimming and reveling in the culture of death, I wonder how enterprises such as the efforts to end sex trafficking and slavery will ever gain a moral foothold in any meaningful way. Sure, we are rightfully appalled by the utter depravity of infanticide, but for how long? As Peter Singer slowly becomes a household name, will his ideas also become household ideas? It has happened in a radically relativized society before, somewhere in the neighborhood of Germany in the 1930s. Our postmodern culture parades about like a Caesar, thinking it has conquered the darkness of objectivity for the light of self-directed moralism. All I can say is "beware the Ides of March." Not even Hitler (or even Singer!) would kill his own mother, yet taken to the logical end, these medical (un)ethics mean the death of many mothers and babies, including their own.

Ouroboros.

Playing the Race Rape Card

The Visible Conservative:  Christians Unleashed show
Pro-Life Friday Monologue - February 24, 2012

This week we saw the latest example of how the pro-abort community can only tell lies and make moot arguments about pro-life legislation that threatens to take away all their tools of ignorance. The Virginia state legislature is (or maybe was) about ready to pass a bill that requires women seeking abortions to obtain an ultrasound signed off by a doctor prior to getting an abortion.  And up until Tuesday, the Governor of VA, Bob McDonnell, was going to sign it. That is, until pro-deathers like Dahlia Lithwick started telling the public that ultrasounds are the equivalent of rape.

Honestly, that is the last gasp of a dying argument right there. The type of ultrasound that she is referring to is the kind that is done with an internal probe used for accurately viewing a baby in the womb early on his/her development, as early as 4 1/2 to 5 weeks. This is where Dahlia Lithwick is sounding off about rape--that this procedure is done internally through the vagina. This is a canard like no other. The Bill does not mandate this particular method of ultrasound, so if a woman does not want the transvaginal ultrasound, she doesn't have to have that one.

What is mandated is that a woman have an ultrasound. Period. If the pregnancy is too early, before 4 1/2 weeks, no method of ultrasound tech will give a proper reading. And if she chooses not to have a TVU, all a woman has to do is wait.

Of course, this is where it gets difficult for the pro-deathers to hold their ground, because waiting only means a greater the risk of complications when aborting. That is why abortionists want the best information possible before performing an abortion -- they want to know accurate gestational age, size, and location within the womb. And in order to do that, they need to do an ultrasound.  Redstate.com reports that Commentary Magazine called up the Virginia League of Planned Parenthood's abortion hotline and received this following recording:

“Patients who have a surgical abortion generally come in for two appointments. At the first visit we do a health assessment, perform all the necessary lab work, and do an ultrasound. This visit generally takes about an hour. At the second visit, the procedure takes place. This visit takes about an hour as well. For out of town patients for whom it would be difficult to make two trips to our office, we’re able to schedule both the initial appointment and the procedure on the same day.


Medical abortions generally require three visits. At the first visit, we do a health assessment, perform all the necessary lab work, and do an ultrasound. This visit takes about an hour. At the second visit, the physician gives the first pill and directions for taking two more pills at home. The third visit is required during which you will have an exam and another ultrasound.”

So.....women who want abortions from Planned Parenthood in Virginia get one, possibly two, ultrasounds anyway? Please, just take a moment to let the realization of a sweet little lie wash over you. A VA bill that mandates that women obtain an ultrasound that they are going to have anyway is called rape on account of a method of ultrasound they don't have to get?  Read the Bill.  It's not in there!  Like I said, women can have the transabdominal ultrasound done if they don't want the transvaginal ultrasound; if they are too early in their pregancies, all they have to do is wait. 

This argument that having a TVU is comitting rape is dumber than a bag of hammers. Ms. Lithwick isn't crying rape to try and help women; the pro-death industry wants pregnant women and the public to remain ignorant so that they can continue to make irrelevant arguments like hers.

Let me round this out by pointing out that the lying itself is not the sad part--all I did was expose the lie of Dahlia Lithwick. The sad part is that lying worked and is muddying the waters of a fairly straightforward bill. The pro-abortion industry got all wee-wee'd up calling something rape that isn't rape. And now, Gov. Bob McDonnell, who was supporting this bill, has now as of Wednesday pulled his endorsement and seems to be bowing to the dragonhead of personal political gain, maybe! The speculation is that McDonnell is on Mitt Romney's short list for VP picks, and you know how politicians hate to let the truth get in the way of stepping up in the world. On the Governor's website, you can find his statement calling to amend the bill to state explicitly that doctors may not rape pregnant women with ultrasound machines...seriously!  This is a totally unecessary delay of what should be a slam dunk for the state of Virginia.  As Redstate.com is correct to point out, VA is looking like it will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  You can call Gov. McDonnell at (804) 786-2211.

Rape is a feeling...

The Visible Conservative:  Christians Unleashed show
Pro-Life Friday Monologue - February 17, 2012

I've read and listened to many people say that abortion should be kept legal in the case of rape or incest. About just as many say that abortion should be kept legal for everybody because some women who become pregnant through rape might want to abort.

The beginning of new life is a biological event. The body of a rapist does not know it is committing rape. Psychologists tell us that rape is not about sex, it's about power. Rape, therefore, isn't about the body, it is an intent [of the mind]--an intent to harm.

The body of a woman does not know what rape is--it is the mind and emotions of the woman that determines whether a sexual encounter is consensual or rape. Rape, therefore, is the violation of the mind by using the body.

The body of a child that is conceived does not know it is conceived through rape. Her life began through the union of an egg and sperm, just like any other life that is conceived. Rape, therefore, has no bearing on the life that begins.

So it makes little sense for people to argue about women's bodies and fetuses. What people are arguing about is how to deal with the tragedy, the emotions surrounding an event, and the injustice of abuse. Tragedy, emotions, injustice--that is what rape is, and they are all abstract objects. You can't touch them; you can't destroy them; you can't see them with your eyes. So how does rape--an act of intent on the mind that results in tragedy and injustice and creates a life that doesn't know how she got there--how does rape justify an abortion, which must violate a woman's body a second time to violate the body of a child in the womb to a bodily death? That does not follow.

Rape is an intent, a feeling that is given and received wholly in the mind. The woman's body is an object to a rapist, no different than a womanizer or an abusive boyfriend (and to tell you the truth, there is no real difference between all of them). A woman is an object to harm that leads to the real harm, which is in the mind. Rape is a feeling, so how does aborting a child from rape take away anything about the rape itself? This whole argument that women have the right to abort a child if they are raped rests on nothing but feelings: perceived resentment toward the child and the horror of carrying the rapist's child. Let me tell you something--resentment and horror are feelings. I'm fully compassionate and understanding about resentment and horror. But how compassion leads to death is more horror, and we should be above that as a civilized, enlightened, caring society.

I've said this before, there is no substantive difference between a child conceived unintentionally in consensual sex and one conceived in rape. The only difference I can see is on the faces of the adults talking about it. A child conceived through rape is only by degrees more unwanted compared to a child that is conceived by a woman and her boyfriend, one-night stand, or whatever. So don't tell me, Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, or Women's Media Center...don't tell me there's a meaningful difference between two children in their mother's wombs. That difference exists only in your perception--it exists inside your small, limited minds. Christians are not limited by your definitions of life. It's Christian values that, to be honest, talk about the essential rights of women. You don't get to define my rights; my rights in this world come from God, and so do yours. Remember that the next time you turn your nose up at a child conceived because her mother was raped.  Don't forget to take a quick look at your face in the mirror while you're at it. 'Cause there's the problem right there..in the mirror. Not in the womb.

Ouroboros: Sea Turtle Fetuses > Human Fetuses?

If we can protect sea turtle fetuses from being killed by humans, why can't we protect human fetuses from being killed by humans also?

Westboro Strikes St. Louis Metro Again

I wonder how this group gets around the country so fluidly.  They seem to have no other purpose in life than to protest people out of the blue, people they don't even know.  They are like the college mall preachers I used to encounter in school, and they're just as caustic.

Now you'll see something you will hardly ever see self-styled peaceful Muslims do to the belligerent Muslims: go out and rebuke them, denounce them, and disown them. I have done this to Westboro myself before, and now I get to do it again.

Westboro is neither Baptist nor a church. I should know 'cause I've been, and still am, both Baptist and attend a church. But that's not imortant. What is important is that they neither know Jesus nor know what He loves or doesn't love. These pitiful souls have become that which they hate, which is the sure sign they have no Jesus in them at all. There is no love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self-control with these folks. Degrading people, rather than criticizing their ideas and actions, disrespects the image of God that everyone is created in. As a follower of Jesus, I believe in dealing harshly with sin and injustice (while first recognizing my own sin and sin-potential) but I cannot eclipse the worth and basic humanity of the sinner through insults and put-downs.

Westboro, you've been a naughty bunch. May each of your tortured souls find the real Jesus who will put an end to your God-forsaken pickets.

On the Anniversary of Roe v. Wade - January 22

The Visible Conservative: Christians Unleashed show
Pro-Life Fridays - January 20, 2012

Jan. 22 marks the 39th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. In a 7-2 vote, seven judges ruled to strip equal rights and equal protection for all persons living and growing inside their mothers's wombs. This decision was not rendered for any reasons that most pro-abortion supporters give today. This was not done in the name of medical need. This was not done for as a legal response to things like rape or incest. This was not done to "save" women from dangerous back-alley abortions (which, by the way, is still happening. The only difference now is that it is so much harder to prosecute a back-alley aborionist today because what he is doing is now legal). This was not done even for the excuse of not bringing an inconvenient baby into the world.

No, this decision was made on the basis of a concocted right of a woman to privacy. Under the rule of "privacy," no one is supposed to prohibit what a woman does in the "privacy" of her own domain, which we are to guess means her body. Of course, reasoning like this makes no sense, especially coming from the highest court and the biggest brains in the nation. If you read the Constitution, the 14th Amendment in particular, there is no right to privacy stated or outlined there for pregnant women or for any woman or for anyone. The Justices took creative license to the Constitution to produce such a thing as privacy just so they can make abortion fit into their artificial interpretation. Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a big abortion supporter, agrees that though she believes abortion should be legal, Roe v. Wade was decided in the wrong manner in 1973.

Of course, every abortion that takes place in America today is legalized by Roe v. Wade. To overturn Roe and go back to the drawing board, as it were, would immediately restore the ability of each individual state to make legislation on the issue. The states that had laws banning abortion would automatically have those laws restored while a new effort to legalize it on the federal level would have to take place from the ground up.

But as we know, pro-abortionists, even the ones who disagree with how Roe was decided, would never support overturning it. Why? To go back to the drawing board and build a case for federal legalized abortion would take probably decades in Congress and would certainly lose when all has been said and done. The principle of arguing one's case in the Legislature is conveniently bypassed through keeping Roe just the way it is. It would be just too hard to accomplish it doing it the right way.

So here is my observation. Legalized abortion in the US is built on two things and two things only: legal fiction and expediency.

Pro-abortionists should know that the Court did not consider all the common excuses for legalized abortion as material in their decision. If the Court did not make the usual arguments for legal abortion in its decision, but instead made the 14th Amendment overreach its boundaries and now keeps it there through politics, what does that tell you about the strength of pro-abortion arguments?

It tells me that the only real reason that abortion is still legal in this country is that people in power want it that way. As a result, every baby born today does not have intrinsic rights. Every baby is alive only because someone else didn't want it to be killed. Everybody alive since 1973 is alive today not on the basis of our own intrinsic right to life, equal rights, or equal protection. Beware. Just as it was so easy to strip equal rights and equal protection from those in the womb, it will be just as easy to strip them from those that are outside the womb. It has happened before, it is happening now, and there is a good chance it will happen again. The African-American community in America should be keenly aware of this fact. When one member of the human species has no intrinsic rights, then none of us do.

On "Déjà Jew"

Wednesday, The Jerusalem Post published this article on the resurging Anti-Semitism in some European countries, particularly in France and Belgium.  It cites instances of some Jews masquerading as Muslims in order to escape violence and persecution from Muslims.  As if that weren't troubling enough by itself, the author unfolds an eerie backdrop behind these invidual situations reminiscent of the institutionalized persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany (or, Nazi-Europe as the case became) leading up to the Holocaust.

After WWII, the Western world just about swore that a Jewish Holocaust would never happen again. Indeed, civic organizations were built on the motto "Never Again" to protect all future generations of Jewish people from suffering the kind of Anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust. Unfortunately, in some significant ways it apears that their aims are not being met. In various countries in Europe today, a similar lead-up to the outright persecution of Jews is happening in places with growing Muslim (not Aryan) populations. The hate is the same; the rhetoric is the same; the excuses are the same; the supposed cause is still socio-political.

This is the 21st century. Ignorance of this kind was supposed to be educated out of the masses through mandatory government schooling and national legislation. This great failure of the State is only matched by the failure of morals, ethics, and a consistent belief in the humility found in our human createdness under God. Ye olde libertine maxim that government cannot legislate morality is only correct when you realize that what legislation cannot change is a person's immorality.  Legislation changes only the occassions on which one exhibits it.

I know my Muslim friends may accuse me of fingerpointing that the chief persecutors today of Jews worldwide are Muslims, but I should hope that people would look at the problem itself, not at the finger. Europe burns occassionally from these ethno-religious conflicts that we have come to view at the least as uncivilized. The underlying reality is that Europe is burning invisibly everyday. Our American society must say much more than that such behavior is simply uncivilized. It must say that persecution and violent persecution are objective, irrefutable wrongs. Until we purge our collective minds of this insidious moral relativism that shackles our consciences, we will never be free to "Love your neighbor as yourself," much less "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind." (Matt. 22:37)

(HT: David Wood on Answering Muslims for sharing this article.)

Facts about Mormons, not Mormonism

It’s true what they say about journalists being unable to write accurately about matters of science or religion. This morning, Yahoo! News published an article titled “Will America Get It’s First Mormon President? Five Facts About Mormons.” I’ll just dive right in and tell you what it says, and more importantly, what it doesn’t say.

1. The founder, Joseph Smith, was murdered.

True, he was, but leaving out the details makes it sound like he was a martyr for his beliefs. Smith was so not a martyr, for he was killed in a gun fight while in jail for vandalizing and destroying a newspaper press that was publishing articles critical of him.

2. The Book of Mormon and the Bible are important.

This makes it seem as if both books are placed on equal footing. However, Joseph Smith taught that the Book of Mormon is “the most correct book on earth,” while the Bible has many “plain and precious things” removed from it (according to the Book of Mormon) and only believable “as far as it is translated correctly.” What is important for Mormonism has been to downgrade the moral and spiritual authority of the Bible and to replace it with the Book of Mormon. The Mormon can say with a straight face that the Bible is important, for without it, Mormonism has no basis for claiming that it is the religion that “restores” the true practices of Jesus and the Apostles. In everyday reality, however, the Bible is maligned far more than it is admired in the LDS church.

3. Marriage is forever.

In the article, it says “Marriage is between a man and a woman and should be forever.“ If only it told the truth that in “forever,” marriage is between a man and his women.” Aside from the real fact that Jesus taught that there is no marriage in the age to come, Joseph Smith’s sacred teaching that polygamy is the way of (and the way to) eternal life is still affirmed by their other scriptures in the hereafter (Doctrine & Covenants, Sec. 132).

4. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Really? The author could not come up with a full five facts about Mormons, so she throws in the choir as a “fact?”

5. Fasting.

Now it seems the author has run out of things to write, because neither “The Mormon Tabernacle Choir” nor “Fasting” are even statements. Many Mormons do fast as directed by the LDS church as a religious duty. Failing to participate in all the religious duties as outlined in the directives of the Word of Wisdom is unworthiness to receive further advancement (read: eternal life) within the Temple system of Mormonism.

The real story here is that this so-called list aptly points out facts about Mormons but does nothing to enlighten us about Mormonism (what the LDS church really teaches). I think Mormons would be relieved at this weak and trivial representation of what they believe, because it camouflages Mormonism as an innocuous religion that needs no critical evaluation. That is, of course, helpful in diverting attention away from the LDS church when a Mormon is running for President.