More Holland -- this time at Harvard fibbing about Prop. 8

[_Yoda]

The Brethren's involvement was far greater than merely "encouraging" members to vote. It was all the other stuff (i.e., overseeing strategy, sending GA's to CA, satellite broadcast, pressuring wealthy members for money, etc.) that made it "institutional formalization," which means that Holland lied.

I agree. It is unfortunate, and I am disappointed. I do think that Holland was doing his best to CYA for the Church. However, WHY would the Church need this type of covering? That is what I am confused about.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

It could mean a lot of things, but a "Church" does not have a vote -- only individual citizens do.

We already know this, Rollo. The question is whether or not Holland referred specifically to the administrative body as getting a vote, which is a rather silly thing to assume. Your assumption was obviously hasty, and now instead of just admitting that you're trying to sidestep the argument and bark about only citizens getting to vote just so you have something to say in rebuttal. I mentioned sophomoric rhetoric before. Here is another instantiation.

I was only pointing out the absurdity of Holland's statement, as well as my belief that his error was due to his conflation of the concepts of freedom of speech and the right to vote.

The Brethren's involvement was far greater than merely "encouraging" members to vote. It was all the other stuff (i.e., overseeing strategy, sending GA's to CA, satellite broadcast, pressuring wealthy members for money, etc.) that made it "institutional formalization," which means that Holland lied.

A distinction without a difference. I don't see how this is "institutional formalization."

Of course you don't. That's what is preventing you from seeing the obvious.

I honestly don't know any other way to characterize it.

Then you need to take more time to think and less time to bark.

No -- "cowardice" is still the best word to describe Holland's omission of the Brethren's involvement in passing Prop. 8.

True, but I'm quite certain that the "meddling" occurred.

No one is challenging you there. The challenge is that this local meddling was condoned by central leadership, and you simply do not know whether it is or isn't. It certainly helps your rhetoric to believe it was, though, so you're not going to miss the opportunity to just arbitrarily insist that.

We've all heard the many instances of local "meddling" (your word) -- have you heard of one instance in which that meddling was condemned or reversed by the "central leadership"? I haven't. So don't bring up claims that have no basis in fact.

And by omitting material adverse facts, that "position" was based on a lie.

I don't see any "materially adverse facts," I just see some semantic quibbling by someone not very well acquainted with semantics.

If you don't see the Brethren's directing the Prop. 8 fight in CA as a "material fact," then I can't help you.

Are you honestly comparing an apostle of God to lawyers?

Stop acting like such a child. We're talking about a defense of the participation of the church in a legal process in the context of a presentation at Harvard Law School.

Color me an idealist, but I hold an apostle of Christ to a higher standard.

[_3sheets2thewind]

Is William Schryver your idol...count down to Maklelan using "circle jerk".

Oh, please. "Emotional masturbation" absolutely pales in comparison to the sexual rhetoric bandied about this website by critics of the church.

so what you are saying is, that as a Defender of the LDS Church, it is quite appropriate for you to sexualize a conversation so long as your sexualization of the conversation does not exceed the level you accuse your opponents of?

[_Kishkumen]

All we asked in Proposition 8 was the right to exercise OUR vote. We just asked for religious privilege to cast a vote. We did not want to be disenfranchised.

I don't see the shift from individual to church that maklelan sees here. He must be talking about the church the whole time, because there was never any threat that individual members of the LDS Church would in any way be disenfranchised. No one passed a law barring Mormons from going to the polls. No one hindered them from doing so in any way. Holland is using the word "disenfranchise" in much the same way corporations are represented as persons whose rights of speech were somehow hindered before Citizens United. In other words, to use disenfranchize in this sense is a stretch.

Institutionally, not a single dollar, not one red cent, of money from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints went into Proposition 8, or any other comparable proposition that I know of.

I can't see how this is anything other than a bald faced lie. I am much stronger than the title of this thread, which uses the word fib. In my view, it is a bald faced lie. By exaggerating the lack of LDS Church involvement, he makes the Church look much worse.

I’m not dodging the fact that there was a terrific involvement[/b] and a fairly heavy price to pay – people being fired from their jobs, and people being blackballed in services that they had rendered and were no longer asked to render, and so forth, but that’s ok, that’s the price you pay for a lively democracy.

We won't mention the many decades that gay people were fired for their jobs simply for being gay (oh, and still will be, especially if conservatives have their way). Instead we will talk of those few sad martyrs who stood up for the cause of discrimination against gays.

So we choose very carefully what we see those moral issues to be, and we saw that as a moral issue.

I have a moral issue for you, Elder Holland. There are millions of starving people in the world, and yet your Church committed billions of dollars to the building of an upscale shopping mall in downtown Salt Lake City. In my opinion, your institutional morality is horribly skewed. Gay marriage is an apocalyptic crisis, high-end shopping in Salt Lake City in a Church-sponspored mall is a big priority, and the Church still commits only a tiny portion of its massive revenues to caring for the poor.

We saw that not as a political issue, and NEVER, EVER, EVER did we say that somebody could not express his or her vote in a contrary way.[/ Nobody was blocking the ballot box, nobody was slashing tires, you know, as you approach the precinct. I’d really be disappointed if there was some kind of effort to deny somebody their free exercise.

If this is your minimum standard for good behavior in all of this, then we have nothing to congratulate you for. Wow. We are so relieved that Mormons did not threaten people to prevent them from voting their conscience... oh, wait, members of the Church were threatened for speaking their conscience on this issue. I almost forgot.

Furthermore, it is a political issue. How can it not be a political issue when it is being decided at the ballot box? Derp.

But, again, all we we’re asking for is the chance to have our free exercise, and some seem to think that was not right, that we oughta sit down and shut up, and we sit down and shut up quite a bit, but on some things, on that one, we chose to be a little more vocal, a little more visible, and by “we” I just emphasize totally this is a voluntary, lay participation with no money and no formalization institutionally, but something we all cared about, I’m not minimizing that we cared about it. And we’ve taken issues on gambling, we’ve been quite visible when legislation comes along to put casinos in places and various kinds of gambling, we just … that flops over from political to moral for us, and so we’ve been kinda visible on that. We have this quirky -- quirky to you … quirky – we have this health code where we see some of the damage that comes from alcohol and drugs and whatever, so we’re pretty visible about that; that doesn’t tend to get down to legislation as much as we are just kinda vocal about it, we talk about the damage that does to homes and families and parents and kids. So, yeah, there aren’t a lot of them, but where we have them we haven’t been shy, and we hope it’s always appropriate, we hope it’s always allowing everybody else exactly what we’re asking for and that’s the freedom to express an opinion and cast a vote and we’ll all go wherever democracy takes us, but we do feel pretty obligated to stand up for what we believe, and then you kinda let the chips fall where they may.

Yes, Elder Holland, I don't really care too much for any of the LDS Church's attempts to push their unique values on society at the ballot box. Prohibition was a failure, the War on Drugs is a failure, and anti-gay marriage legislation is harmful to society at worst, and at best of no real benefit. If you want to be a political party, though, and do more than preach morality from the pulpit, you can pay taxes. I don't want the taxpayers to implicitly subsidize your efforts to push your views on everyone else.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

All we asked in Proposition 8 was the right to exercise OUR vote. We just asked for religious privilege to cast a vote. We did not want to be disenfranchised.

I don't see the shift from individual to church that maklelan sees here. He must be talking about the church the whole time, because there was never any threat that individual members of the LDS Church would in any way be disenfranchised. No one passed a law barring Mormons from going to the polls. No one hindered them from doing so in any way. Holland is using the word "disenfranchise" in much the same way corporations are represented as persons whose rights of speech were somehow hindered before Citizens United. In other words, to use disenfranchise in this sense is a stretch.

A very excellent point. Thanks, Kish.

[_Yoda]

I understood him to mean that general authorities and resources were not involved beyond expressing the Church's position on gay marriage and telling members to go out and vote (which is essentially what the Church institution has done in other states considering the issue -- reading a letter read in sacrament meeting, and that's it). By the GA's becoming involved in strategy, organization, personal appearances by GA's sent to CA (as well as via satellite from Salt Lake City), as well as area and local leaders putting pressure on members to contribute time and money, there was an institutional formalization that Holland later denied.

So what leads you to believe that Holland intended it this way instead of referring to the formal production of campaign materials, commercials, and other communications aimed at the general voting public? I would see that kind of participation as much more representative of "institutional formalization" than an arbitrary line between sending a letter or sending a live representative, and that would perfectly fit the context of Holland's defense of the church. Why do you reject the possibility of that use of the term?

I don't know, Mak. Institutional formalization to me means formal involvement by the institution. I would certainly consider letters being sent out on Church letterhead and Church leaders publicly speaking out on the issue formal involvement. Simply because they used a different means of publicity (canvassing though lists and letters rather than commercials) doesn't lessen what occurred, at least in my eyes.

Now Bob, who was personally involved in the canvassing, states that there were other churches involved. Again, I don't see how that lessens OUR Church's involvement.

[_Kishkumen]

I would certainly consider letters being sent out on Church letterhead and Church leaders publicly speaking out on the issue formal involvement. Simply because they used a different means of publicity (canvassing though lists and letters rather than commercials) doesn't lessen what occurred, at least in my eyes.

I completely agree.

[_maklelan]

I was only pointing out the absurdity of Holland's statement, as well as my belief that his error was due to his conflation of the concepts of freedom of speech and right to vote.

And I was only pointing out your misunderstanding of his statement. You unquestionably misunderstood, and even you aren't wasting your time trying to suggest otherwise, so grow the hell up.

Of course you don't. That's what is preventing you from seeing the obvious.

That's a bit tautologous.

No -- "cowardice" is still the best word to describe Holland's omission of the Brethren's involvement in passing Prop. 8.

I see. What's the best way to describe your bitching about the fact that you misunderstood the subject of his comment about voting?

We've all heard the many instances of local "meddling" (your word) -- have you heard of one instance in which that meddling was condemned or reversed by the "central leadership"? I haven't. So don't bring up claims that have no basis in fact.

I could just about fill the Grand Canyon with things that the church has done that you don't know about, but your ignorance hardly counts as evidence that they didn't happen. You don't know whether or not the central administration of the church was involved, and you don't know if they stepped in in any way, so stop appealing to those events as evidence of something.

If you don't see the Brethren's directing the Prop. 8 fight in CA as a "material fact," then I can't help you.

You said "material adverse facts," not "material fact." The fact tof their participation in the Prop. 8 discussion is not necessarily adverse to anything he said. If his use of "institutional formalization" was intended to convey the sense you have read into it, then yes, that would count as a "material adverse fact," but since you cannot show that sense was intended, and since the far more likely sense does not produce "material adverse facts," I suggest you stop trying to prop up your argument with these rhetorical slights of hand.

Color me an idealist, but I hold an apostle of Christ to a higher standard.

What an utter waste of my time.

[_lulu]

There was no money contributed to the campaign by the Church.

Complaints were filed by Prop 8 opponents on this subject. California's election commission investigated. As I recall, it found that the church should have disclosed certain donations in kind, which I think were airline tickets for church authorities who flew to California to meet with coalition representatives. The church was fined something less than $6,000.

Vives, Ruben (2010-06-09). "Mormon Church to be fined by state political commission over Proposition 8". Los Angeles Times.

I was involved in Prop 8 as both directing the operations at a local level, having participation in a multistake level, and having some discussions at the Salt Lake level. It is well known that general authorities and area authorities urged priesthood leaders to urge members of the church to get involved with time and money. I attended one satellite broadcast on the subject; apostles spoke. Elder Whitney Clayton was in charge. The message was to spend time and money on the effort.

Up to the point I was asked to contribute money, I had been a Prop 8 opponent.

Canvassing in California was organized along stake levels by the coalition, although because the coalition didn't understand stake organization there was a lot of duplication. I directed canvassing and election night operations at the local level, which included door-to-door operations, placement of signs and telephone calls to get supporters to the polls.

The coalition, at least as I saw at the local level, including lots of Catholics and some Muslims, who participating in fundraising, calls and canvassing. I also observed from our stake's interfaith group that Evangelical pastors were urging cooperation with coalition with time and money, almost identical to the General Authorities' call to priesthood leaders, but after one of these pulpit-pounding experiences with the local Baptists, we noted that there was no follow-up, and the only effort the EVs made was to pound the pulpit. I didn't see how the Catholics and Muslims handled the effort, but they participated physically unlike the EVs.

It was also told to me, but I didn't witness it firsthand, that a Southern California association of black pastors strategized about the way to address Prop 8, and for many weeks on Sundays prior to election pumped their congregations the dual Prop 8 and Barack Obama get out the vote messages. From what I saw from some of the transcripts, the things said in these churches about gays were quite strident.

That's your evidence. Now what do you claim for it?

[_Rollo Tomasi]

I understood him to mean that general authorities and resources were not involved beyond expressing the Church's position on gay marriage and telling members to go out and vote (which is essentially what the Church institution has done in other states considering the issue -- reading a letter read in sacrament meeting, and that's it). By the GA's becoming involved in strategy, organization, personal appearances by GA's sent to CA (as well as via satellite from Salt Lake City), as well as area and local leaders putting pressure on members to contribute time and money, there was an institutional formalization that Holland later denied.

So what leads you to believe that Holland intended it this way instead of referring to the formal production of campaign materials, commercials, and other communications aimed at the general voting public? I would see that kind of participation as much more representative of "institutional formalization" than an arbitrary line between sending a letter or sending a live representative, and that would perfectly fit the context of Holland's defense of the church. Why do you reject the possibility of that use of the term?

Anytime the Brethren get personally involved the way they did, I see it as "institutional formalization." Church authorities took a major lead in this fight. They did not do this as individuals but in their formal, institutional capacity as general authorities of the LDS Church. This is why their involvement carried so much weight and their pronouncements so successful in "motivating" LDS leaders and members in CA to contribute enormous amounts of money and time to the fight to pass Prop. 8. I'm surprised anyone with a straight face could claim that there was not an LDS "institutional formalization" in light of what we now know.