The Church News recently ran an op-ed by Tad Callister, which has this as its opening paragraph:
If you were asked, “What is the greatest challenge facing our nation today?” how would you respond? The economy, national security, immigration, gun control, poverty, racism, crime, pandemics, climate change? While each of these is a valid concern and deserves attention, I do not believe that any of them strikes at the heart of our greatest challenge — a return to family and moral values.
Anytime an essay starts off talking about the lack of family values, you know that as a queer, leftist, active Mormon, there are going to be some statements you’re going to have an issue with.
So, here we go.
Callister used to be a general authority, but was released in 2014. However, he immediately went on to serve as general Sunday school president, which he finished in 2019.
So, the first big thing that sticks out is a quote from William Barr, who served as US attorney general under the older George Bush, as well as under Donald Trump. At one point, he called for higher incarceration rates.
Here’s the quote from Barr’s 2019 address to the Law School and the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame:
“Instead of addressing the underlying cause, we have the state in the role of alleviator of bad consequences. So the reaction to growing illegitimacy is not sexual responsibility, but abortion. The reaction to drug addiction is safe injection sites. The solution to the breakdown of the family is for the state to set itself up as the ersatz husband for single mothers and the ersatz father to their children. The call comes for more and more social programs to deal with the wreckage. While we think we are solving problems, we are underwriting them.”
Barr goes on in his remarks to opine about personal responsibility and what he calls an “attack” on religious freedom.
The thing is that Barr doesn’t provide solutions for the problems he lists in that quote.
To be fair, he complains that abortion is the reaction to illegitimacy, but suggests that sexual responsibility should be instead. That being said, as long as contraceptives remain financially inaccessible to people and the right continues to fight against comprehensive sex education, it’s going to be difficult for people to be fully responsible for the sex they have.
If someone has sex but doesn’t realize that they can get pregnant from it—or at least believes that they can’t get pregnant right away—can they truly be held responsible if they end up pregnant?
If someone wants to have sex but can’t afford birth control, can they truly be held responsible if they end up pregnant? Only the well off are allowed to have sex?
If a woman is pressured into having unprotected sex—whether emotionally, physically, or through deception—and ends up pregnant, can she truly be held responsible for the pregnancy?
Outlawing abortions won’t prevent abortions. People will still terminate pregnancies they never wanted. They’d just do it illegally.
Barr’s framing of sexual choice—and Callister’s quoting of it—is simplistic and completely ignores the complex set of factors behind every choice to have sex and ability to prevent pregnancy.
On the second point of addiction, supervised consumption sites don’t “alleviate bad consequences”. Well, unless Barr is suggesting that the bad consequence to addiction is death or disease and that the state shouldn’t be mitigating risk of death and disease among those who use drugs. Is that what he’s suggesting? People who are addicted to drugs deserve death or disease connected to that drug usage? Because if so, then yes, the state does alleviate death and disease among those who use drugs.
Outlawing supervising consumption won’t prevent addiction. People will still use, and they’ll continue to die. The fact that a general authority who claims to be a follower of Christ is literally advocating for the reduction of practices that prevent death and disease is mind boggling.
Regarding his third point—the one on the breakdown of the family—Barr suggests the state attempts to be a surrogate husband and father to single mothers and fatherless children. He never suggests an alternative.
I find this wording interesting. Why does he seem concerned with only single mothers and fatherless children? Why does he not mention single fathers and motherless children?
And even so, it’s odd that he complains about the reaction to broken families being the state providing support for those parents and children. Yet he never talks about the causes of breakdown of these families. He never mentions the overpolicing (and subsequent overincarceration) of poor people, particularly young men. He never mentions the role toxic masculinity and the patriarchy in convincing men they can abandon their families. He never mentions the influence capitalism has in creating broken families by forcing parents to spend more time making money (because 1 9–to-5 minimum wage job isn’t enough) than with their children. He never mentions how police violence literally creates widows.
George Floyd’s five children aren’t fatherless because their family was broken; they’re fatherless because cops murdered him. Eric Garner’s two children aren’t fatherless because their family was broken; they’re fatherless because cops murdered him.
Again, Barr’s framing of these three issues is deeply problematic, trying to reduce every societal issue to a matter of personal choice and completely ignoring societal forces—such as racism, classism, sexism, and greed—that help perpetuate, if not create, the very problems he complains about.
And Callister is being irresponsible in advancing this rhetoric when he once claimed to be a follower of Christ, whose 3-year ministry was spent advocating for and ministering to those who society rejected for lacking personal responsibility.
But Barr’s quote wasn’t the only issue with Callister’s op-ed.
How right he is. How often we choose worldly solutions that nurture rather than nullify existing issues of immorality. How often we adopt a new sin in an effort to cover or hide an existing one and in the process compound rather than resolve the problem at hand.
You want to know what “compounds the problem at hand”? Ignoring the problem.
You don’t want to unwanted pregnancies? Then advocate for free birth control and comprehensive sex education instead of saying, “Y’all just need to be virgins”. You don’t want to drug addiction? Then advocate for better education programmes and healthcare options instead of pretending you’re Barbara Bush. You don’t want broken families? Then abolish capitalism, defund the police, and topple the patriarchy.
[Satan’s] plan is in direct opposition to the family proclamation. It is an insidious attempt to destroy the nuclear family and God’s moral values. He disguises his plan of attack with alluring labels such as “pro-choice” for abortion, “love and compassion” for endorsement of same-sex marriage, and “environmental emergency” for promotion of a zero-growth population agenda. Each of these proposals, however, constitutes a frontal attack on the family unit and its survival.
Okay. I’ll give him the zero-growth population agenda one. I mean, that won’t destroy my own family or any other existing families, but it’ll result in fewer families in general over time.
Except Callister’s problem isn’t with families in general being destroyed, but one type of family in particular: the nuclear family—one mum, one dad, and some kids, all living in the same house.
“Pro-choice” isn’t a disguise for abortion; it’s not a synonym of it. “Pro-choice” means that it’s up to a woman when she gets pregnant, if at all. She gets to choose when she gets pregnant. It’s not up to her partner. It’s not up to her parents. It’s not up to her church. And it’s not up to the state. People who are pro-choice are in favour of women being able to make that choice, not have others make it for them, whether that’s allowing them to embrace, prevent, or terminate pregnancy. It’s unethical to force a woman to continue a pregnancy she doesn’t want to take.
Creating an environment that promotes and encourages full autonomy of women over their reproductive health would mean fewer unwanted children, not more.
The fact that he thinks “love and compassion” are alluring labels of disguise for “endorsing” marriage equality just blows my mind. How does he think we should refer to the endorsement of marriage equality? We shouldn’t love people who want to marry someone of the same sex? We shouldn’t have compassion for their desire to marry that person?
However, “love and compassion” aren’t the only reason to support marriage equality. A desire for equality of civil rights purely on grounds of embracing liberty is another reason. All people should enjoy the same freedoms. Allowing more people to marry doesn’t mean that people currently allowed to marry no longer can marry. More rights for the oppressed doesn’t result fewer rights for the already privileged.
Also, marriage equality is neither a frontal attack on the family unit nor on its survival. Allowing more people to marry creates more potential family units within which children can be born and nurtured, being raised in stable, loving homes. Marriage equality strengthens the family unit and prolongs its survival.
Even so, you want to know something that is actually destroying families? Homophobic rhetoric within the church. Language over the pulpit and in common discourse encourages members to reject their queer children, through being emotionally distant as parents or even literally throwing them out of the house.
The church’s rhetoric around queer issues harms more families than allowing gay people to get married does. I mean, the church literally said in November 2015 that people children of gay parents couldn’t get baptized unless they disavowed their parents’ marriage.
One cannot circumvent God’s commands and expect to escape the divine consequences, regardless of how decorated the package may be or how cosmetically appealing the language may sound.
Here’s the thing though. Gays marrying doesn’t circumvent God’s commands, because there is literally zero scriptural support for the idea that gay people can’t marry. Same goes for abortion, supervised consumption sites, and state welfare for the husbandless and fatherless.
In fact, there is literally a scripture that states taking care of the widows and fatherless is actually pure religion.
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
James 1:27
If you want to talk about who’s trying to circumvent God’s commands, maybe look at those saying we shouldn’t be taking care of the widows and fatherless, that we should just leave them to the natural consequences of personal responsibility.
If our prime focus is to promote family and moral values, then we will experience the consequences that flow from such efforts — less crime and drug abuse, less fraud and abuse, fewer divorces and lawsuits, fewer babies born out of wedlock, more ethical employees and employers, a reduction in welfare cases, less contention and hate, and a resurgence of faith in God.
Dude, if you eat the rich, you’d get rid of nearly every one of those “consequences”.
Inequality is at the root of our social ills—capitalism, racism, sexism, colonialism. Telling people to pray and read their scriptures more won’t change any of that.
If you want to change society, we need to follow the example of Jesus.
Jesus never protested a gay marriage or an abortion clinic. He never threw widows onto the street. He never dismissed people with vices.
Instead, Jesus fed the poor, healed the sick, and whipped a few bankers.
