I came across an old mission buddy on Facebook this week and we’ve been reminiscing since. He reminded me that when we were working together in the mission office (he was Assistant to the President and I, the financial secretary), that a 17-year-old new convert (“…the boy with the long hair”) had come to us and asked us to teach his attorney uncle about the church because he was getting a lot of flack at home. My friend remembers it this way:

Carlos came back after we gave that discussion, so excited that his uncle was telling the family to lay off Carlos, that the Church wasn’t a bad thing. He went on and on about how impressed his uncle was with you. Then he suddenly stopped and looked embarrassed. “Uh, my uncle was impressed with you too,” he stammered. I just started laughing. I didn’t need his uncle to be impressed with me. I tried to tell him it was okay, but he was determined to remember some good thing his uncle had said about me. Finally, he looked up grinning with an “I got it!” look on his face. “You know what really impressed my uncle about you? Your shoe size! He said he never saw feet that big in his life!”

So you were the reason the heat came off Carlos, allowing him to stay active, go on a mission, marry Monica, be a bishop, stake president, mission president, and now the First Quorum of the Seventy. Steve! You made a GA!

He’s referring to Carlos Godoy of the First Quorum of Seventy.

The Huffington Post reports the latest from the premier scientist/thinker of our age:

Stephen Hawking: God NOT Needed For Creation

LONDON — Physicist Stephen Hawking says God wasn’t necessary for the creation of the universe.
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My friend Mike pointed out this CNN article as a legal balance to the religious argument in my previous post.

On Prop 8, it’s the evidence, stupid

Editor’s note: Lisa Bloom is the managing partner of The Bloom Firm, where she practices civil and criminal law.

(CNN) — There’s a big difference between a political debate about same-sex marriage and the recent hard-fought court challenge to the California ban, Proposition 8.

In politics, anything goes: Vague, sinister comments about same-sex marriage threatening children or undermining the sanctity of heterosexual marriage were prevalent during the Prop 8 campaign. In court, same-sex marriage opponents needed solid evidence to back up these and other claims.

Despite “able and energetic counsel,” they never produced it. That’s why they lost, resoundingly, in the federal district court. And that lack of evidence should dog opponents up through the chain of appeals that is now beginning, because appellate courts are required to review only the evidence in the court record and to give great deference to Judge Vaughn Walker’s findings of fact. He was there, after all, presiding over the trial, and the appellate judges weren’t.

And what a lopsided trial he presided over. All the anti-same-sex marriage arguments imploded when subjected to the rules of evidence.
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This exposition by Rita Nakashima Brock was published in today’s Huffington Post. It’s worth a read.

Prop 8, Judge Walker and the Biblical View of Marriage Equality

Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision Thursday to allow resumption of legal same-sex weddings in California has right-wing Christians claiming his ruling against Proposition 8 threatens “Bible believing Christians.” I’ve read the Bible pretty carefully myself (I read it cover to cover when I was in high school) and even taught it as a college professor. It is not a source I’d turn to in order to defend traditional marriage, but I think it does offer ways to think about ethical marriage.

The Bible presents multiple views of marriage, and most actual marriages it depicts are terrible by modern standards. “Traditional marriages” in ancient biblical times were arranged as transfers of the ownership of daughters. The tenth commandment lists wives among properties like houses and slaves: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17, also found in Deuteronomy 5:21). Marriages occurred via deception, kidnapping, adulterous seductions, theft, rape, and murder, and were often in multiples so that the pater familias could amass land, flocks, and progeny and cement political alliances. Abraham, David, and Solomon had marriages that would be illegal today. The book of Hosea likens the mercy of God to a husband who has the right to beat or kill his adulterous wife, but spares her — for this, she was supposed to be grateful. When women seek marriages, such as Naomi arranged for Ruth, it was to avoid an even worse fate such as destitution.
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If you haven’t read it, take a few minutes and get a feel for how the judicial system in this country is supposed to work.

Tyranny over the minority was what our forefathers fought against.

Because Proposition 8 is unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, the court orders entry of judgment permanently enjoining its enforcement; prohibiting the official defendants from applying or enforcing Proposition 8 and directing the official defendants that all persons under their control or supervision shall not apply or enforce Proposition 8.

FF_CL_Final (Prop 8 Ruling)