Renaissance

Spring is a time for rebirth!

Clunker

This is a story that begins at the DMV and ends with my getting all nostalgic. (There is also no mention of Mormonism for all of you who are getting bored or irritated with the topic.)

Last week, the day before my twenty-ninth birthday, I formally became a Texan. Previously I had voted, purchased a house, and registered my car here, but I defiantly held on to my Washington state driver's license. Sadly, it was due to expire on my birthday, so with an entire day to spare I trudged my way over to the DMV in order to fully subscribe myself to the Lone Star State. It was an altogether unpleasant excursion. In addition to confronting the acidulousness incident to aligning oneself with the union's most insecure state, I couldn't find one of the necessary documents in the glove compartment, which necessitated a rather stupid adventure around Houston.

I drive a 1988 Toyota Camry. It was a gift, of sorts, from my grandparents. They had both gotten too old to drive safely, and as a poor undergraduate I was more than grateful to have even an old grandma car to drive. Since I got the car my grandfather has died and my grandmother has been stricken with Alzheimer's, but their car is alive and healthy—or, at least, as healthy as a 23-year-old car has any business being.

A few emotions keep me driving that car: pragmatism (read: cheapness), complacency, even stubbornness. But I also feel a sense of nostalgia for the old Camry. My grandparents were generous, loving people—my grandfather in particular was a seriously classy dude—and visiting them over summers is a fond childhood memory.

So when I got the car, I didn't take much out of it. The glove box was full of old receipts, insurance cards, and maps, but I left them in place. Occasionally, as I rummage around the car looking for something, I'll happen upon something—directions to the store?—written in my grandfather's nearly illegible scrawl. I appreciate the occasional opportunity to remember him through something done by his hand. It's almost stupid, really—if I want to keep them, I should take these mementos and put them somewhere safer and more permanent than my car. But there really is nowhere else for them to go.

Unfortunately, after the debacle with the DMV I decided that, memories or no, the time had come to clean out the glove compartment. Last night Amanda and I went through the pile of stuff, deciding what to keep. Initially I was determined to keep whatever I could, or at least anything with their handwriting on it, but it didn't take long to concede to the practical: if I can't keep this stuff in the car, what am I going to do with it? Am I going to set up a scrapbook of old tire warranties and road atlases? Fortunately very little in the glove box had anyone's handwriting on it, so virtually everything was scrapped.

Before we threw everything away, however, Amanda spotted this certificate, which she expertly photographed:

Amanda loved it in an 80s-vintage sort of way—an old document showcasing the aesthetics of its age—but I decided to keep it as a token of all the things we threw away. A representative of the Les Schwab Tire reciepts and Nationwide Insurance cards that we couldn't keep. A tribute to Jack B. Stout, the salesman who sold my grandparents this car more than two decades ago. And a link to the past. After Amanda photographed it, I took the certificate, put it into the envelope provided by Peterson Toyota, and stuck it back in the glove compartment.

It... belongs there. Is that weird?

By Popular Demand

Two people called me out today for a lack of blogging. Two completely unrelated people. It's a mandate if I ever saw one.

The truth is, I'm at a bit of a crossroads blogging-wise. So far, I've used this blog as a venue for hashing out arguments about whatever issue—political, artistic, philosophical—I happen to feel strongly about at the time. And you, my faithful readers, have been good sports about arguing with me about them. It gives me no small pleasure to connect with old friends and indirect acquaintances through well-meaning debate.

Now that I'm out of the apostate closet, however, everything has changed. I'm no fool. I know that most of my regular readers are believing Mormons. And while I consider you a pretty open-minded bunch, I'm not sure how well my musings of late will go down. I'm still undecided about posting the story of my departure from Mormonism, which contains arguments that many of you will likely be predisposed to reject as anti-Mormon lies. Reflections on putting my post-Mormon world together are as likely to alienate my audience as they are to enlighten. And let's be honest: a blog with no readers (and no comments!) is no blog at all. So, not wanting to destroy my blog with overzealous apostasy, I have not blogged at all. (It is a Catch-22, you guys!)

Inspired by the statistical unlikelihood of coincident requests for posts, however, I am breaking the cycle of blog paucity. Brace yourselves.

Secularism is heady wine. I doubt that I can fully communicate it to my LDS friends, but I find not being chained to any system of belief intoxicating and empowering. I relish in the intellectual and moral freedom I have claimed since leaving Mormonism. I no longer have to worry about twisting myself into a belief in self-contradictory or unsupported truth claims. If evidence is lacking, I can discard at will from my epistemological deck. Similarly, I am free to follow my moral compass without compromise. I no longer need dissemble in defense of any creed. I no longer need condemn something as sinful merely because a religious leader commands it. If I cannot see the evil in a particular practice, I am under no obligation to regard that practice as immoral.

This moral freedom, I argue, dismantles one of the few truly evil components of religion. Let me illustrate with an example. In New Jersey, a lesbian couple sought to rent a pavilion, owned by the Methodist-affiliated Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, for their civil union ceremony. The OGCMA refused, citing a religious objection to same-sex unions. The couple successfully sued the OGCMA for discrimination, but I don't want to talk about the court case. I want to focus on the following quote, by OGCMA administrator Rev. Scott Hoffman:

The principle was a strongly held religious belief that a marriage is between a man and a woman. We're not casting any aspersions or making any judgments. It's just, that's where we stand, and we've always stood that way, and that's why we said no.

I take Hoffman at his word. He probably isn't trying to judge anyone. He probably doesn't even feel that the couple are bad people. I'll go even so far as to conjecture that, in his bones, he finds nothing particularly evil in this couple's desire to formalize their commitment. (If I am wrong about Hoffman, I am not wrong about some of you; I have witnessed firsthand the widespread moral ambivalence over homosexuality in my generation of Mormons.) But his religious convictions tell him that he cannot support same-sex unions, and he does not permit himself the freedom to disagree.

There will always be homophobes, just like there will always be racists and there will always be misopogonists. Such people don't need to be told to condemn; they will always find justification for their cruel and intolerant behaviors. But to make a decent person like Hoffman commit to those same prejudices requires something more. It requires dogma, which religion all too often is willing to provide. At its worst, religion puts a divine seal of approval on the prejudices of the previous generation, compelling the believer to reject even when, left to his own conscience, he would prefer to accept.

Leaving Mormonism has exacted costs both practical and emotional. I can't avoid that. But the freedom from institutional prejudice, the freedom to be as good a person as I make up my mind to be, has made it worth every penny.