Time to go golfing...

Professor Ed Firmage, a local curmudgeon, even terror to the Mormon community and culture in Utah was published in this morning's Tribune. He has been largely silent during the recent political campaigns in Utah. I think the state democratic leadership had him muzzled to some degree wanting to attract more of the faithful to their or our cause. Here is his two cents:

"The last 2-by-4 is a heart-breaker
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Launched: 11/15/2008 06:00:00 PM MST

By Ed Firmage

The Mormon Church, the Republican Party at prayer, wants to run with the fox and bay with the hounds.
The Mormon Church of the 19th century had a tradition of Christian socialism and a pioneering spirit that created much of the best that can still be seen in the Great Basin of the American West. These and many more traditions were obliterated by persecution, indeed the United States declared war on Mormon culture and the feds won.

I have benefited personally by the ministrations of church leaders, truly Christian acts that went far beyond what I had any right to expect. But long ago, Fawn Mckay Brodie, arguably the most famous Mormon historian, noted just prior to her death, that the Mormon Church would begin to draw to its banner a hugely disproportionate number of radical conservatives.
She said that even when she spoke, in the early 1980s, "birds of a feather" were indeed flocking together. Now, the story is complete. The Mormon Church is the most retrograde ecclesiastical body in the United States -- 100 years dated on civil rights for African-Americans (indeed, worldwide), staunchly opposed to First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press (see, e.g., Main Street Plaza, with all its plastic and plaster of paris). The Mormon Church led the powerful opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment that would have allowed women the full civic participation they obviously deserve and opposed the ordination of women to the clergy, since obviously only men can talk to God. Scores of members were excommunicated for writing true history, not the party line, a good example of inverse Darwinism, the survival of the least fit. And now Mormons have largely led and financed a war to deny marriage between gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. For me, this is not the last straw. Indeed, it is the two-by-four. My spine, devastated by surgeries, can take no more.
You have broken my heart."

Ed Firmage is the Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, emeritus, at the University of Utah College of Law.

My online 2 cents in response:

"Professor Firmage why not just walk away and stay out of range of that 2x4? As HBB's grandson I would honestly like to know why you have such angst over the Mormons and their leadership.

Maybe take up golf and swing against dimpled balls rather than the gray heads or the senior bald pates of the Brethren. Why waste your talents blasting them when you could blast out of a sand trap, or inhale deeply from the experience of neatly trimmed fairways and cropped greens? Not up for that intellectual challenge? Just too easy to blast the Mormons and all of their high crimes and misdemeanors?

Get a life and move on before you 'stroke' out."

BTW, HBB is Hugh B. Brown, a former member of the First Presidency of the LDS Church, a noted liberal, and one of the greatest of intellectuals among the Brethren. Fawn Brodie was as bad in her biography of Thomas Jefferson as she was of Joseph Smith. Arguably one of the worst of any American or Mormon historians.