Reid gets warm reception at BYU

PROVO — Some past prominent LDS Church leaders wrongly pressed conservatism on church members, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday during a press conference at Brigham Young University.

The Nevada senator attacked President Bush and evangelical Christians while saying members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints need to worry less about abortion and gay marriage and more about health care, global warming, education and jobs.

Reid first spent 40 minutes delivering a well-received and sometimes tender BYU forum speech in the Marriott Center to 4,091 students, faculty, staff and visitors. He described a journey from an underprivileged, non-religious childhood in tiny Searchlight, Nev., to his position as the highest-ranking Mormon in American government.

"Democrats have not always been in the (church's) minority, and I believe we won't be for too long," he said.

He elaborated during a harder-hitting, 12-minute press conference. "The best missionary we have for that is George Bush," he said. "People are switching parties all over the country."

Reid said Ezra Taft Benson, active in very conservative politics before he became a president of the LDS Church, and Ernest L. Wilkinson, the president of BYU from 1951-71, were among past church leaders "who were very right-wing people politically."

Never mind. I found a quote. However, where is the part where Hugh Nibley tells the BYU students to dress like hippies?

Professor of Ancient Scripture Hugh Nibley, for instance, found dress and grooming standards (at BYU) a superficial annoyance. "The haircut becomes the test of virtue in a world where Satan deceives and rules by appearances," he commented in a 1973 campus address.

I had several professors who told us upfront to just obey the dress code. They weren't going to babysit us, we were reminded we had signed it. I'd much rather be treated that way than have the fashion police after me. And I guess it was a wonderful day when they allowed women to wear pants made of denim.

A statement in the dress code forbidding women from wearing "levis" met with opposition in 1978 from the Levi Strauss Company. Administrators consequently substituted the word "jeans" for "levis." Three months later in November 1978, a coed who was refused entrance to the BYU testing center because she was "wearing pants of denim material" left the center, removed her pants, buttoned up her overcoat, and was admitted, pantless, without question. In a letter to the editor of the Universe, she added, "There is something strangely perverse and incongruous about a dress code which demands that a girl dressed in nice denim pants [be] rejected from a campus facility, while a girl in underpants and a coat is acceptable. Is it that vital that we expose the lower half of our legs?" (DU, 14 Nov. 1978). This event, which received national attention, may have contributed to BYU's eventual capitulation on the jeans issue less than three years later. Addressing students in the fall of 1981, President Jeffrey Holland suggested that modesty and cleanliness should "govern women's dress on the campus rather than endless debate as to whether a `designer jean' is also a slack, or whether the fabric is cotton, polyester, or denim, or whether it is colored red, white, or blue."

AH... the old get around for the liquor laws of UTAH!

The best comedy in SLC is to sit in one of these "private" clubs where you can actually get a strictly measured mixed drink. The bar owners get shopped very frequently by undercover agents of the "State Liquor Control".

One afternoon, Murphy's was filled with a group of locals disguised as serious drinkers. First clue should have been they were all drinking diet coke. Anyway, the owner had been sitting at the bar having a glass of wine. His bartender was short handed so he got up to help carry glasses behind the bar. They closed him down for a month for this serious "infraction". You can't go behind the bar if you've had a drink. Even if you own the joint.

The last year I held a temple recommend was 1993. It's a very high standard of behavior to maintain. I'm won't even bother with making a recommend appointment with the Bishop if I'm not prepared to answer all the questions honestly and in a manner satisfactory to obtain the recommend. That said, I'm fairly certain that Harry Reid doesn't have the level of personal integrity. When a slime ball like Harry says he has a temple recommend, it cheapens the value of a recommend. It leaves me wondering how many others of dubious integrity are carrying a recommend in spite of not living to that standard.

I'm going to have a real hard time with even more of those recommend questions if the church leaders ever start uttering the kind of socialist crap that oozes from the lips of Harry Reid. I won't support that from anyone.

The Democrat and LDS mayor of Pocatello invited Harry Reid to campaign for him before the last election. To my dismay, the LDS ward building closest to city hall was adorned with balloons and banners welcoming Reid to town. So much for the standard of keeping political activity separated from church activities and facilities. We were very careful about that standard in the San Diego LDS wards. In Idaho, politics and religion are mixed like sugar and flour in cookie dough.

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