What? Is it possible that Donald Trump has condemned racism and white supremacy? Yes, it is. Just look at the evidence here:

Meanwhile, Joe Biden has been endorsed by leading white supremacist Richard Spencer and has made many racist comments during his long career as a politician.

Look at the links. Yes, Richard Spencer did indeed endorse Joe Biden and did indeed disavow the Republican party, and yes indeed Joe Biden has made many racist comments during his political career.

See how easy it is to smear other people as racists? What is the reality? Both Biden and Trump are white men in their 70s. They grew up in a different America than we live in today regarding racial prejudice. It is likely they both will say things that are not politically correct today. Most readers probably know people in their wards who are like them.

Have some charity for both presidential candidates — and for the old guy in your ward who may say unfortunate things but meanwhile serves at the temple twice a week and is the first guy to show up for service projects. God loves Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and Kamala Harris and Mike Pence — and He also loves the people in your ward who are not politically correct. That is something to ponder as the election comes next week.

Terryl Givens, one of the most prominent LDS intellectuals, has written the best article on abortion I have ever read. Of course it helps that Prof. Givens is a member of our Church and is writing from the perspective we can understand and appreciate as Latter-day Saints. But by any standard, Prof. Givens’ article is well-written and well-argued.

Prof. Givens, who is considered in many circles a “progressive Mormon,” has done an extremely rare and praise-worthy thing: he has gone against orthodoxy among many people in his peer group. It is not brave to do things that will generally win you applause from people who agree with you. It is very brave to “come out” as a conservative on this issue when most academics, entertainers, artists and the media are certain to disagree with you. Prof. Givens has proven himself a brave man.

(I want to make it clear that I don’t know Prof. Givens’ politics, but I do know many, many people who consider him a “progressive Mormon.” I apologize if that description is not accurate).

I cannot do this article justice by extensively quoting from it, but I would like to quote just one section at length because it is so well written and so convincing. The background is that you will often hear people say that they are personally against abortion but not in favor of legislation limiting the act. Prof. Givens destroys that argument:

If abortion is wrong, it is wrong because it involves the intentional destruction of another human being. This is really the heart of the matter. You must ask yourself, why are you personally opposed to abortion? I am not personally opposed to abortion because of religious commitment or precept, because of some abstract principle of “the sanctity of life.” I am personally opposed because my heart and mind, my basic core humanity revolts at the thought of a living sensate human being undergoing vivisection in the womb, being vacuum evacuated, subjected to a salt bath, or, in the “late-term” procedure, having its skull pierced and brain vacuumed out. (I have spared the reader the clinical descriptions of those procedures, although I think those who support abortion rights while willfully avoiding direct confrontation with the specifics of what they countenance are in an indefensible position). According to the Mayo Clinic, an infant in the womb has a beating heart by 5-6 weeks of pregnancy. The first electrical brain activity also appears at this point. Well over two-thirds of abortions are performed at that stage or later. And as we saw above, at a very early, undefined moment in the child’s development, a nervous system responds to the horror of such inflicted suffering. There is no more ethical or logical sense in being “personally opposed, but pro-choice” than in being personally opposed to sex trafficking, slavery, or child abuse, “but” pro-choice regarding the adult’s prerogatives in those cases. Abortion is not like heavy drinking or pornography or blaspheming, where one deplores the action but accords another the right to act immorally. Abortion is of that class of wrongs that entails the willful infliction of pain or killing on another human being.

Ultimately, the pro-life position is not a commitment predicated on sectarian values or God’s precepts. It is the fruit of a more universal commitment to protect the most vulnerable and voiceless. It is a commitment to the most fundamental obligation we have as part of the human family: to defend the defenseless.

As you might imagine, Prof. Givens’ article is being pilloried by his angry progressive friends who seem to think they have been betrayed. I will not link to any of their jeremiads, but Prof. Givens’ son Nathaniel wrote a very good article defending his father that will give you a taste of the battle going on. Nathaniel Givens’ point, which is somehow being ignored by many, is that there IS room for a moderate position in between a total ban on abortion in all cases and current law, which allows abortion up until birth in many states (including my state, Colorado).

If we did away with late term abortion (after 20 or 22 weeks, for example) in most cases, I think the issue would be much less contentious. What pro-choice people seem unwilling to accept is that legal late term abortion is what drives many of us to become activists on this issue. Does a six-week-old fetus have a human soul? Nobody knows for sure, but I think most people believe that a seven-month-old fetus definitely has a human soul. The unwillingness to compromise on late-term abortion is hurting the pro-choice position more than helping.

My stake in Colorado, never involved in politics up to this point, put out a request for Church members to support Proposition 115 this year. This proposition makes most late term abortions (after 22 weeks) illegal. I already voted for Proposition 115. I would also point out that the claim that the Church is somehow pro choice on abortion is contradicted by the Church’s official position on abortion as described here. President Nelson has given several talks about abortion, two of which can be read here and here.

So, I thank Prof. Givens for his excellent article and for his bravery. Bravo!

The Great Barrington Declaration, written by scientists from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, declares that the lockdown strategies used in many countries have failed and instead proposes a more targeted approached called “Focused Protection.”

Many scientists and public health experts have pointed out that the lockdowns, in addition to violating basic freedoms, are creating additional hazards for public health, including increases in suicide, depression, drug use and crime.

Thousands of scientists and medical professionals — as well as tens of thousands of members of the general public — have signed the Declaration.

As the petition states:

Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.

Some public health officials have stated that the lockdowns may have to last until 2022, but the approach of the scientists who signed the Barrington Declaration shows that lockdowns were never the right solution from the beginning.

Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza. 

As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e.  the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity. 

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection. 

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals. 

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.

Lockdowns are not compassionate. They result in many unnecessary deaths. One UN official estimated that 130 million people could die from starvation because of economic disruptions caused by the lockdowns. As the Barrington Declaration states, the best approach to COVID-19 is to protect the most vulnerable, encourage basic common sense health precautions, and allow the less vulnerable to go about their lives as normal. Some of us have been saying that since March.

A federal judge in Pennsylvania decided the state’s lockdowns violate the 1st and 14th amendments of the U.S. Constitution. For many of us who have been concerned about the lockdowns since March, we can celebrate the decision while also being disappointed that it took so long for a judge to overturn the tyrannical actions in one state.

From the article I linked:

In the 66-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania William Stickman struck down Wolf’s limits on indoor and outdoor gatherings of up 25 and 250 people, respectively. The limitations, Stickman wrote, violate “the right of assembly enshrined in the First Amendment.”

Stickman ruled that the governor’s stay-home order and mandatory closure of businesses, which were deemed non-essential to curb the spread of the novel Wuhan coronavirus, infringed on citizen freedoms and discriminated based upon arbitrary “life sustaining” and “non-life sustaining” standards breaching 14th Amendment protections.

In the ruling, Stickman said he “believes that defendants undertook their actions in a well-intentioned effort to protect Pennsylvanians from the virus. However, good intentions toward a laudable end are not alone enough to uphold governmental action against a constitutional challenge. Indeed, the greatest threats to our system of constitutional liberties may arise when the ends are laudable, and the intent is good — especially in a time of emergency.”

Stickman emphasized that once liberties erode under a public emergency, they become difficult to repossess.

“Even a vigilant public may let down its guard over its constitutional liberties only to find that liberties, once relinquished, are hard to recoup,” Stickman wrote.

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If you are at all like me, you may have come to the realization a few years ago that the world appears to be changing in alarming ways. The thing that really drove it home for me was the time in 2015 that a friend argued that any boy who said he was a girl was really a girl.

This friend is very well-intentioned, so I sincerely tried to understand his position.

“Wait, you are saying that any boy who thinks he is a girl really is a girl?” I said.

His answer: “Yes.”

“Well, what about the biological differences between girls and boys?”

“Biology is not as important as the reality that the person feels that he is a girl trapped in a boy’s body.”

“I agree that we should treat these people with love and compassion, but this does not mean that we must deny basic biology.”

“Biology is not as important as the perceptions and lived experiences of these people. If you have real compassion, the only thing you would care about is how they experience life, and you would have charity for their reality.”

To be frank, I was flabbergasted. “Their reality.” Not “reality,” as in things that are real and not real, such as biology. The implication was that there was no objective reality — just feelings and emotions and desires, which are completely subjective and personal. And this friend of mine was arguing that these personal feelings were more important than objective reality.

I said to my friend: “I am not sure you understand the end point of your argument. What you are saying is not just that a boy can say he is a girl. Your argument also means that a boy can say he is a chair or a dog or a horse *as long as he perceives reality that way.*”

My friend would not concede that point — he insisted that we were only talking about gender issues. But I warned him at that time that if society adopted his viewpoint there would be a whole list of repercussions, everything from fights over bathrooms to the end of girls sports. And, today we already witnessing the destruction of girls sports right in front of our eyes.

But that discussion seems harmless and quaint compared to the insanity around us in 2020.

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