Halloween Update

This week has been very good. A general authority came, brother Christensen, and spoke to us. The very antithesis of Elder Pearson from last year. He said numbers and systematic bureaucracy were necessary but if they are the goal then the work means very little to the people who teach. He then went on to talk about doing good—not because it will help missionary work—but because it’s the right thing to do. Be motivated by love, not duty and it will forge better relationships with the people you come in contact with. He said of faith, hope, charity, and love; charity is the most important. He then did a question and answer section and I asked him if I could exercise faith and still have doubt. He said that faith is a way to combat doubt…and that answer is something I like. We doubt, but then we do things anyway in good faith, and if it was something good to have faith in then the doubt goes away. Indirectly indicating to me that doubt is part of the process that leads to greater faith and eventually conviction.

The office is crazy. There is no real protocol for anything and the entire system was very messy, but me and my companion are cleaning it up and installing a new system on the computers call iMOS (internet Mission Office System), and that will streamline a lot of work and organize everything so that it’s not just all word of mouth instruction, but protocol so that nothing falls through the cracks. My position as finance officer is very stressful…or rather busy and it makes time fly. I love it. I manage assets of a little under a half of a million dollars for the mission budget. Very cool and a large responsibility.

Also my Sister got into NYU. I am so proud of her. She is such an influence in so many people’s lives and she just emulates happiness and fun! I think that many successes and amazing accomplishments await her in the future!

Tort-Deformity

In an ever increasingly tense atmosphere of health-care reform, the subject of tort reform has found a cozy spot in the heart’s of angry conservatives. In an effort to cut cost of health-care, fiscal caps would be imposed on malpractice law-suits and hinder the ability to collect on wrongful death, pain, and suffering in tort cases related to medical care.

Why not, right? As long as costs are down then the public is better-off, and in that spirit there are a few more actions the public should take. We should implement sweeping pay cuts for all of America’s teachers in order to improve the education system. To eliminate costs in crime-fighting, we will lower the salaries of all patrol-men, detectives, and highway patrol in order to develop and enhance the way we fight crime. And finally, we will immediately stop building stoplights and halt funding of highway improvement projects to make our roads and highways safer.

Yeah, doesn’t make much sense, does it? Funny thing about costs; some of them are definitely worth it. Just like roadways, crime, and education; health-care benefits from responsible spending on oversight (tort law, police, teachers, stop lights all oversee and help regulate their system)are worth the cost. Particularly in torts, which help insure people’s safety by holding people accountable for mistakes or breaches of the standard of care and help correct shattered lives from those actions. Tort law helps victims of negligence or worse, tort reform benefits corporations who can legally shrug their mission of insuring people’s lives. Which side do we want to be on? This change in the tort system seems to be more worried with helping HMO’s manage their costs than it does helping the average Joe. Seems….well…kinda evil.

If health-care wants to reduce costs responsibly—whilst helping doctors, patients, and victims of medical malpractice or abuse—then HMO regulation is the way to go. Making it harder for HMO’s to raise doctor’s premiums for insurance and harder for HMO’s to deny promised coverage to patients, then tort reform will look less like an destruction of victims rights and malpractice law—like it does in states like Texas where wrongful death and malpractice is non-existent now—and more like a plausible solution for everyone.

Studies agree that tort reform correlates with higher mortality rates. Not really helping health care then, is it? No, just helping cut costs.

The new African-American: LDS

Two Dudes kissing each other at Temple Square are arrested and kicked off public property; quickly followed by protests. Prop 8 legislation prohibiting marriage rights to homosexuals passes with considerable support from the LDS church; quickly followed by protests, boycotts, and even vandalism. If you had to assign a 'persecuted' label to either the LDS church or the Gay Rights, which would it be?

According to Elder Oaks, it'd be the church.

In a speech at BYU-I, Elder Oaks compared the treatment of the church to the treatment of blacks in the 1960's. He said that the church's position and experience in Prop 8 echoed that of the African-Americans in that the church is being persecuted for using its first amendment right to freely speak out on issues.

A shaky statement at best, especially given the church's less than ideal stance on blacks in the past (At the time that African-Americans experienced what Elder Oaks is referring to, they also weren't allowed to hold the priesthood in the LDS church). The logic is heard to see. It's the equivalent of the U.S. government complaining of persecution during the civil rights march in D.C. The gay community is seeking rights and the church played a large role in denying them those rights. What follows it a natural backlash. Gay Rights groups are angry and the church gets flack. No Duh. What did they expect to happen?

Elder Oaks is right that the church has every right to say and proclaim whatever they want. But the public has just as much right to boycott and protest (although not vandalize) the church because of what it says. It's seems to be a two way street this free-speech thing. We can say homosexuality is un-natural and un-godly, and they can say we are bigots and homophobic.

The church has been know to play the victim card. Ever since the extermination order was issued back in Missouri, persecution is something of a confirmation of belief for us. But in this particular case, if you had to pick which group is more like the evil galactic empire and which group is the rebellion, then us Mormons are looking an awful lot like storm troopers these days (no matter how much President Kimball looked like Yoda).

I think the real issue is that both sides want respect from the other, which of course is ridiculous. Homosexuals are never going to understand why the church thinks they are an abomination, and the Church is never going to condone homosexuality. Gay Rights groups want the church to let Gays into the temple. The church wants gays to stop fighting for rights and seek help for their 'condition'. Neither is likely, because the two groups vastly disagree and mostly hate each other--which by the way would go against both the church's aim to be Christ-like and the homosexual's claim that they just want more acceptance and higher minded ideals.

But lets look at the bright side. At least Mormons going to conference get to see the rather hilarious sight of gays and evangelicals protesting side by side. Strange anti-Mormon bedfellows indeed.