BrianR wrote:
Most people these days know about the fundamentalists in the desert still doing polygamy,.... but it is NOT openly sanctioned. It was quietly sanctioned until about the 1930's among the church elite, so I wouldn't be surprised if being from the right bloodlines still gets you into the club today.....
Hmm... a ridgidly stratified elite who's rules of peerage are differant than that of the little people. The Irony here being that we shed this 229 years ago, but we still resort to establishing elite classes who's rules are much more relaxed than those of the common prole. --Classic Conservatism in my book.
On the other hand, this was a topic of discussion on a listserv that I used to belong to back in 1999. The topic of polygamy and Mormonism came up, and one of the people on the list was living in SLC. He confirmed that this still went on, and was for the most part quietly tolerated.
BrianR wrote:
My wife was born and raised in Provo, and I believe I know right where the youth detention center is on State Street between Provo and Springville. I moved there (Provo, not the detention center) when I was 15 (in 1979) and it was quite a change from the San Francisco area where I had been living before. I can definitely see that coming from a big city on the East Coast that Provo would seem like some flash back from the 50s on another planet.
To be perfectly honest with you, I have no idea of where this is, but I do remember that I could look out my window and see I-15, and past that, Desert and Mountains.
I'm from Portland. Maine, which isn't really a big city (The Metro area was around 250,000) in 1982. But yeah, the culture is a bit more Urbane, and if you're from a working class neighborhood like the one that I'm from, a LOT more Catholic as well. There are a lot of paralells between East Coast Catholicism and Mormonism as far as Church Hiarchy goes, as well as some of the conformist behavior. However, much as some try to hide from it, Catholics have known and many openly state that their church leadership is corrupt, and generally not worth the price of a golden Goblet. It's been that for about five centuries now, but Catholics still believe in turning out and celebrating the election of a new pope because it's as good a reason as any to have a good time.--Jesus Saves, Jesus Spends!
BrianR wrote:
There is actually a tie-in to AS in all of this. Conformity is much more strongly enforced in the mormon culture than in main stream America (or anywhere else in the modern world). There were some quirks that were OK, like being academically gifted, or having musical talent, or obsessing over you achievements. But thinking for yourself or expecting answers to life's questions that actually make sense were NOT tolerated. So I learned to adapt by either keeping my mouth shut and hiding quietly in my ow corner of the world, or by learning to act out my assigned part.
I watched the special Friday edition of Dateline last week, and one of the stories they had was about a familiy of five kids from Utah, who had more or less learned to play piano from birth. All of them were more or less shoo-ins to Julliard. I don't know what their parents did for a living, but I did notice that they all more or less had their own full Grand Piano to practice on. If the Father of the family was an insurance salesman, I would like to think that the Mormon church either bought them the Pianos, or lent them, as needed.
BrianR wrote:
But the iron grip of mormonism over its people, even in Utah, is beginning to loosen. It should be pretty interesting to see how this plays out as some of my nieces and nephews grow up. I have one nephew who is a classic case of AS / ADHD (just like his dad, who is a closet atheist but terrified to stand up to my sister that he's married to). And I have a teenage niece who's a very butch lesbian (and her mom is is serious denial about it). So "different" was swept under the carpet when I was growing up, but I don't think that's going to go over too well with the next generation.
I currently live in South Carolina, and what's that's somewhat the same as what's happening here with the Southern Baptists. Those who see the light are changing, those who don't are becoming more rabidly vitriolic to the point where many people are really beginning to hate them.
BrianR wrote:
There's actually a lot of geeks and intellectuals in the mormon population who have been taught to keep their mouths shut. You can enforce that sort of expectation when they can be kept in social isolation, but the internet is changing all that so that even those who are hopelessly socially inept can actually find people to communicate with.
Totalitarian regimes are usually so fixed in their way of doing things that a piece of technology as seeming mundane as a fax can hasten their downfall. Look at what happened with the ill fated hardline coup in the USSR in 1991. The resistance organised largely by word of mouth, and Faxmachine. [/quote]
09 Jul 2005, 12:33 am
