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Guest opinion by Rich Rogers
In 1965, mathematics professor and musical satirist Tom Lehrer released a comedy album titled “That Was the Year that Was?” In it, he satirized many news stories, political and social issues from recent years. Among those were racial issues in the song “National Brotherhood Week,” nuclear proliferation in “Who’s Next?” and reformations in the Catholic Church from the Vatican II Council with “The Vatican Rag.” The late actor Ricardo Montalban was in the audience at San Francisco’s Hungry I that night and shouted at Lehrer from the audience “How dare you make fun of my religion? I’d die for my religion.” To which Lehrer answered, “Fine, as long as you don’t do it here.” One of its more infamous lines is “Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate,” mocking the Catholic belief that the wafer and wine of the Catholic communion literally become the flesh and blood of Christ, through transubstantiation.
I used to think the song was funny, and I shared it with my mom, who grew up in the small town of Castle Dale, Utah. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must say that she held some racist views right up to her death two years ago—mainly that interracial dating is always a bad idea. After hearing “The Vatican Rag,” Mom—who was born and bred Mormon with family ties directly to July 24, 1847—said, “I don’t think that’s a very funny song.” I asked why and she said because it was mocking something Catholics hold sacred. At the time I disagreed with her. Now at 53, I agree with her.
And that brings us to recent times and The Independent’s garment controversy.
The flap over this has led to a long-time regular columnist to end her association with The Independent.
I came in the middle of it all. I was on Facebook last weekend when the conversation thread for Indy contributors was going crazy, with Dr. G–Gretchen Lambert–demanding the photo accompanying her column be removed. A lot of four letter words were flying. I went to the Indy site and saw what happening and understood it all. And I agreed with Gretchen.
For those of you who don’t know, the column dealt with a woman talking about her being on a date with an LDS man who wore the temple garments and yet wanted to have premarital sex with her, a definite contradiction of LDS doctrine and temple standards. Gretchen’s response to the reader was clear and rational—not attacking the church but laying the responsibility on the man’s shoulders.
I’ve done hard time in the LDS singles scene–decades, in fact–and unfortunately, the situation described by the reader happens more often that it should, and it’s done by both genders. (I left the scene in February 2014, when I was sealed in the Jordan River Temple.)
But the problem was the picture, showing people modeling temple garments. It’s a neutral picture in general, but for me as a garment wearing Mormon, it was a little too much. The one accompanying Jason Gottfried’s piece is more in line with what I would have liked to see. That one came from a church website and displays the garments in an even more neutral manner. The church produced a video on YouTube explaining garments.
Indy contributor George Scott has noted that Gretchen herself is no fan of the LDS Church and has taken them to task in the Indy on more than one occasion. Yet even she was upset by the use of the photo, and that has led to her no longer being associated with the paper.
For those of you who don’t have good friends who are LDS or haven’t taken the time to get to know them better, let me clarify things a little. Garments are no secret. We don’t hide them and make no secret about wearing them. But we don’t make them a fashion accessory the way so many people have done with underwear these days.
To those of us who are active, faithful Mormons, garments are more than just underwear. Much more. We wear them to remind ourselves of covenants we make in the temple. (To be sure, there are people who don’t live up to those covenants, but that’s an issue for another column.)
It should have been a major red-light to the editorial board when a writer who is no friend—in print anyway—of the LDS church asks to have a picture removed. Yes, they had the right to leave the picture up. But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it.
If The Independent were something along the lines of National Lampoon, or say Charlie Hebdo, this might have worked better, but it’s not. At least not now. The Lampoon and Hebdo are complete satire, and in this issue, it doesn’t work.
As [Independent publisher] Josh Warburton and I discussed this issue via Facebook, I was surprised—and a little bothered—that despite spending 34 years in St. George, he knows so little about the city’s dominant population and religion. (As the publisher, Josh told me the final decision to keep the picture was his.) No, we Mormons don’t talk about temple ceremonies, but that doesn’t mean we don’t answer questions about the things we can talk about. Garments are one of those things we’ll talk about.
Running a paper that covers a wide area with a majority LDS population requires an understanding of whom you’re dealing with.
Maybe Mormons have been too insular in responding to St. George’s population boom, but Josh has been here long before that and should have gotten to know a little more about where he lives. And the editorial board is made up of responsible adults, and when everything hit the fan, it seems they didn’t stop to ask themselves if what they had done makes for good neighbors.
When my family first moved back to Wisconsin when I was a wee lad of six, my mom baked bread and took it to all our new neighbors.
Talk to your Mormon friends and neighbors, even though they don’t have multiple piercings tattoos, and you’ll find you have more in common with them than you think. Trust me on this. You may find out that in some cases, you even like the same music, movies, books, and who knows what else?
I’ve written for The Independent for about eighteen years now, and I’ve been happy to be associated with this paper. I’m hoping in the future, the editorial board and publisher will make the effort to be respectful of their friends and neighbors.
In the end, isn’t getting to know the world around you what a paper like The Independent is all about? And my mom was right–”The Vatican Rag” isn’t as funny and clever as I once thought it was.
