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.

I don’t believe that anymore.

I used to believe it because that’s what I was taught. And my own experience confirmed it for me. We didn’t pray, read, or hold family home evening regularly growing up, and all my siblings have left the church at one point (two have been away for decades). Same with Mary.

We were convinced that the two were related. Our families didn’t read, pray, or have family home evening regularly, which didn’t keep our siblings in the church.

As a result, we were determined to be diligent about holding these three things regularly. And being home from my mission for only 6 months when we married, I was still very much in a black-and-white, exact-obedience mindset.

And for the most part, we’ve done it. We’ve missed it here and there, but we’ve had family home evening nearly every week for the last 24 years. We’ve prayed as a family at least once every day, but often twice (more if you include meals). We’ve read scriptures regularly, several times a week, if not daily.

But it didn’t work.

Sure, we have one child just months away from getting the Melchizedek Priesthood, going to the temple, and serving a mission. But, at the same time, half of our children are no longer with the church.

And it’s not just our family. I know lots of families who regularly prayed and read together and had regular family home evening yet who have some children who are disenfranchised from the church. Several of these families even live in our ward, families whose fathers have served in bishoprics and stake presidencies.

Likewise, I know families who rarely read and prayed together and rarely held family home evening, and they still have children who go to church.

Sure, it’s all anecdotal, but it’s enough to convince me that none of it’s a guarantee.

And what do they mean by “family”? Whose family?

The single parent? The grandparents raising their grandchildren? The divorced parents trying to jointly raise their children? The childless couple? The father and mother with adopted children? The parents with foster children? The gay couple with children? The unmarried couple with children? The adult child raising their orphaned siblings?

Let’s be clear, when they say “family”, they mean heteronormative families. The only time anyone raises the family battle cry is whenever the topic of LGBTQ rights arises.

No one writes status updates about spousal abuse destroying the family. No one is creating memes about child abuse destroying the family. Things that actually threaten families.

Gay marriage doesn’t threaten families; it supports the value of the family as a foundational institution that successful societies are based upon. The rights of trans people to use the washroom where they feel safest don’t threaten families. The rights of LGBTQ people to raise their children in the religion of their choice don’t threaten families.

In fact, the people who are actually destroying families are straight people. So let’s clean up our own house first. Let’s take care of the beam in our own eye first.

When will adults learn that our words matter? That our children see how we talk about LGBTQ issues, how we treat LGBTQ people? That how we talk about LGBTQ issues is how we’re talking about our own children? That how we treat LGBTQ people is how we treat our own children?

And then we wonder why our children can’t trust us enough to come out to us? They’re afraid. They’re afraid of rejection. They’re afraid of our anger. They’re afraid of our hate. They’re afraid of homelessness or even death.

When will the church finally realize that the rhetoric they teach their members is forcing parents to choose the church over family? That they are ripping families apart?

It’s not marriage equality or “the gay agenda” that’s destroying families—it’s the church.

I was reading it for the umpteenth time the other day, and I noticed two things:

• It doesn’t say that mothers should stay at home
• It doesn’t say that women should do all the housework

There are some parts where one could extrapolate the assumptions that women should stay home. For example:

“. . . fathers . . . are responsible to provide the necessities of life . . . for their families.”

One could assume that because fathers are singled out here that mothers must not have that responsibility. It’s just that, however: an assumption. Here’s another example of an extrapolation point:

“Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.”

One could assume here that this implies a mother must stay home, especially when combined with the previous sentence. Again, however, this is only implicit and not explicit. Nowhere in the proclamation does it actually say that women must stay at home. Even the responsibility of nurturing the children doesn’t require the parent to be at home 24 hours a day.

Consider the next sentence in the proclamation:

“In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.”

So, if fathers have an obligation to help mothers as equal partners in nurturing children, and they decide (as cultural tradition dictates) to work out of the home, how can they nurture their children? If fathers can nurture their children without having to be home 24 hours per day, certainly mothers can, too.

On my second point, there is just nothing anywhere that can be reasonably extrapolated to support the idea that women must do all the housework. There isn’t much else to say about that.

I remember though, that I am so grateful for these beautiful wonderful children and one day, yes, one day, this overly energetic son and my budding pre-teen daughter (cringe), independent 3 year old and baby coming and any more who will come to us, will be all grown up and I won’t have my babies to cuddle and children to protect and nurture. That will be their job with their children. So learning to enjoy and revel in this time is vitally important. So yes, I am learning patience. At least I hope so.

Let us assume that a large family could be classified as a family with five or more kids. These children, if all births are not multiples, can be born in a period not less than five 40 week intervals plus four 4 week periods to become impregnated again. This works out to 216 weeks or 4 years, 2 months. That’s a pretty tight schedule to keep, but possible I guess if one were motivated enough. The time from the birth of the first child until the exit from the home of the last child would be a period not less than approximately 22 and one half years (assuming a good synchronization with a school schedule or a home schooled family).

The world we live in now changes at an ever-increasing rate. There is evidence of exponential rates of change in industries and technologies used by employees and researchers the world over. The education you receive today may, depending on the field of study, not be useful or meaningful in 5 years time. Especially if you plan to work in a technical industry or in a research position. How much out of touch would you be if you were to cease your studies for 5 years? 10 years? Just imagine how hard it would be to initiate a job search in your field after leaving it for more than 20 years.

The description of a women’s role in the ‘The Family: A Proclamation to the World’ is that “women are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children” while men “are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.” This is familiar territory for many families with Dad being the breadwinner and Mom working in the home with the children. Most devout LDS women who work in the home go so far as to be available through the day for their children even when they are in secondary school or choose to home school their children themselves. Both of these behaviours offer little to no availability (or motivation) for additional work outside the home.

Given that raising a large family can span over two decades and that education now has an ever-decreasing shelf life, does it make sense for a young LDS women to attend a post secondary institution at all?

Let us, for a moment, consider other reasons one might wish one’s LDS daughters to attend a college, trade school or university if their education is not of a primary concern.

One argument is that being out on one’s own is a character building experience. True enough but one does not necessarily need to pay tuition to live outside one’s parent’s home.

Perhaps the argument is that all their friends are going off to school and they don’t want to be left behind or miss out on the shared experiences of their peers. Arguments that ‘everyone else is doing’ lead invariably in my mind to an exercise in bridge-jumping and at their core hold very little weight in regard to the best activities for youth in life experience and development of coping skills. In fact, leaving the pack can often be the child’s first experience of making their own decisions and developing coping strategies of their own.

Another argument is that attendance at one of the private LDS post secondary institutions is the best way for a young LDS lady to meet and be courted by a returned missionary and in time evaluate to what extent he takes his career studies seriously; not to mention the safety of being surrounded by members of one’s own faith during that courtship. This does have some sense to it, but the question remains; would it not be more cost efficient and time saving for the young lady to simply live in Provo or Rexburg until they’ve met the man they feel is ‘the one’? Many a parent may want to keep their daughters busy while they are in search of a life partner and simply enroll them so they have something to do during the search. But is this really an efficient and effective way of facilitating such a search? And what happens when she is wed and wishes to immediately start a family? Does the education she’s started simply be thrown away? Would this not lead to issues with her self esteem and self worth?

Would it not be more fair and effective if LDS parents were to instruct their daughters who have expressed interest in leading life as an observant LDS Mother of a large family, to not bother with post secondary education altogether?

What often isn’t addressed is when family members who leave the church reject those family and friends who stay; cutting off contact and having such a hatred for the church that it transfers to family members who are unwilling to deny their testimonies, and who have to endure the ridicule and condemnation of family who they love who can’t seem to separate their parent, sibling or other extended family from the church. It is all lumped into one big pool of hatred and anger.

There is nothing you can do to fix it except to leave the church and denounce your testimony. That would bring back your loved one. But you can’t do that, because to do so would be to deny who you are, and so you would lose yourself.

I know this doesn’t always happen, but it does sometimes and it is possibly the most painful experience someone can have. It really hurts and you can’t do a thing about it except the most offensive thing to the family member, and that is pray.

Technically, it wasn’t Canada yet, but close enough. Mormons like to point out famous Mormons, and Canadians like to point out famous Canadians. I’m both, so I can’t help it and take what I can get.

My mind has been somewhat taken up with the news of the deaths of these poor baby girls in Saskatchewan, left to freeze and die in the cold snow, in -50 degree weather, this week. My heart breaks for them, for their loved ones, including the young father who left them (and again we don’t know all the details) because in spite of the mistakes he made, in taking them out without proper clothes, and leaving them, because he wasn’t aware of all he was doing, he is suffering for the choices he made. It looks as though something precipitated this, which caused a string of ill advised choices, fueled by alcohol and stress. I am not judging either, but just feeling pain for this family and these poor babies.The comfort is that I know Heavenly Father sent his angels to hold these innocents, to bring them home and maybe maybe to take away the suffering from the cold. Maybe the cold didn’t cause them too much physical anguish? I don’t know much of what freezing to death is like, and I don’t want to find out that they suffered excruciating pain, so young as they are. Children, especially the smallest ones need and are to be protected. So many children for many different reasons are not, and I know this hurts the Lord, I don’t question why He doesn’t always interfere, because He is wiser than I am.

What I feel, as a mother (and even just as a human being) is this urgency, to protect and save the suffering babies. Right now, this is the current one in my mind, these little girls who had little protection from the elements.

I am not thinking (as I know some are) that it is just more evidence of problems on the reserves. No, it is a human problem. The choices made by the father he will regret for the rest of his life. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain and sorrow he is experiencing, and their mother as well, that because of a fight, she was not there to watch over and keep her girls safe. The tragedy just transcends all blame at that end.

I do think there is some responsibility for a government that does not regulate the sale of alcohol better. Yes, this father (and so many other alcoholics) made his own choice to purchase and consume alcohol, but evidence shows that First Nations people are genetically more prevalent to substance addiction. The government makes too much money, though to not control the purchase of alcohol or the accessibility of it, better. Do they think of the victims of alcoholism? The innocents, who because of this freedom to drink yourself into a stupor, suffer, and sometimes pay, as in this case, with their lives.

See, children have a right to be protected, to be cared for. They cannot care for themselves. If a puppy or a kitten had been left out there, that animal may have had a better chance of survival. But if an adult is at risk, then how much more are a 3 year old and a baby barely over the age of a year unable to look after themselves? Especially in the debilitating cold.

But the government does not want to lose the revenue they gain through the suffering of others. Our governments (provincial and federal) who are supposed to do their best for the citizens make poor decisions that affect the lives and well being of those who do not choose to even participate in that. These little girls were not a part of the decision their father made to drink, nor a part of the decision to sell the alcohol, to create easy access to it’s sale, to make it in the first place. Adults, people who are supposed to have the intelligence to make responsible choices designed to promote the well being and safety of those they have stewardship over, were the ones who made the decision that resulted in the suffering and death of two little girls.

All I know is that a loving Saviour held them in His arms, this I know, brought them home and ended their suffering and kept them safe and I am sure, wept tears because of His great love, not only for them, but for all involved.