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.

Mark Morford from the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate writes a mean opinion page.

Gay marriage makes the world shrug

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Argentina, at last check, is not yet writhing in flames. Canada, as far as I can see from my window, is still right up there, stoic and mild, smelling of pine trees and bitumen, watching lots of hockey, shooting guns, being Canadian. The Netherlands? Why, still crisp and clean, efficiently blonde as ever. It’s shocking, really.

After all, you’d think they’d be downright miserable. You’d think they’d be in country-wide group therapy, hating and hurling and spitting, maybe a few riots, some stabbings, panic in the streets, the very fabric of their various shell-shocked societies unraveling like Mel Gibson at a bat mitzvah.

In fact, it would appear that millions of people across a surprisingly large number of dashing, industrious countries all over the world — including Belgium, Spain, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and even adorable little Iceland — are still not yet imploding, not yet suffering the furious wrath of God, not yet dying in unchecked anguish before our very eyes.

What to make of it? After all, in each and every one of these sinful nations, gay people have been happily and legally getting married (and, presumably, divorced, remarried and tossed about on the same socio-emotional rollercoaster as their straight brethren) every single day, for months and years and — in the case of the Netherlands — nearly a decade now.

What the hell is wrong with them? Didn’t they get the newsletter? Don’t they know how very wrong, sinful, sick and perverted they all so obviously are? Haven’t they heard the hoarse wails of the terrified Mormon elders, the raspy screams of the obsolete Vatican, the tightened bowels of confused fundamentalists of nearly every major religion worldwide, all of them absolutely positive that allowing certain kinds of consenting adults who love each other to get married will spell the end of civilization, families, innocence, the military, God’s bitter and judgmental love as we know it? Someone should send them a pamphlet.
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And from today’s Salt Lake Tribune:

Gay-marriage ruling brings split Utah reaction

The LDS Church expressed disappointment at the news from California. Hundreds of jubilant gay-marriage supporters marched around the church’s Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City.On Wednesday, Utahns both panned and praised the decision of a federal judge in San Francisco to overturn Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that eliminated gay marriage in California. Two years ago, the campaign drew intense interest in Utah after the LDS Church urged its members to support Prop 8 with their cash and time. Utahns spent $3.8 million — most of it to defeat gay marriage — in the $83 million fight.

The federal ruling means, for now, gay marriage is legal — again —in the Golden State.
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I know when the LDS church says they were not involved — other than sending out a letter to Argentinean members asking them to read The Family: A Proclamation to the World once again — they really meant it.

Imagine my surprise to see this headline:

LDS official did have role in Argentina gay-marriage battle
By Peggy Fletcher Stack
The Salt Lake Tribune
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Last week, Utah’s Provo Daily Herald editorialized away a proposed increase in school spending thusly:

The reason that Utah spends less per pupil is mainly because there are more pupils per household. Once the equation is corrected to account for that — in other words, assume that Utah had family sizes in line with the national average — the amount of money spent per pupil would rise, and Utah would land in the middle of the pack of states.

Perhaps this same editorial board should go back to school themselves – for remedial mathematics and common sense.