Kirby: Heaven or hell: voter turnout

I always vote. I could say it's because I am a responsible citizen who believes wholeheartedly in the democratic process, but I'd be lying.

It probably has more to do with being naturally contrary. Voting is the one sure way in Utah to prove you're different. Almost nobody around here does it.

On Tuesday, voter turnout in Salt Lake County was only 18 percent of registered voters. That's pathetic given the fact that most eligible voters don't even bother to register.

Last year, the "Behind State" had the lowest voter turnout in America. Demographically, Utahns made it to the polls in numbers just ahead of death-row inmates and right behind squirrels.

It's ironic considering how big Mormons are on voting. LDS women were the first women to vote in the United States (1869). In 1933, Utah was the 36th (and deciding) state to vote in favor of the 21st Amendment, which ended prohibition.

Mormons also vote a lot in church. Nearly every Sunday, we're asked to vote on someone's new church job.

Bishop: "All those who can support/sustain Brother Flapsaddle in his new calling as assistant ward coot, please do so by a show of hands."

Clearly, it's not a real vote. We've been doing this in church for so long that the congregation raises its hands automatically, including -- and I've seen them -- little kids and people who are sound asleep.

Besides, casting a vote of opposition does no good. I've tried. Earlier this year, I voted against my neighbor Sheldon Woods when he was called as the new High Priest Group leader. Here's what happened: nothing.

Mormons should be ashamed of themselves. Voting is a fundamental tenet of our theology. We've been doing since before we were born.

According to LDS theology, God's spirit children were asked to choose between two distinctively different plans of salvation offered by Jesus and Satan. Call them Prop J and Prop S.

Prop J offered free will. The Lord would persuade people to obey God. Returning to heaven was entirely voluntary, for which God would get all the glory.

Prop S called for mandatory obedience. Everyone would go to heaven because we wouldn't have a choice. Conversely, the devil would get all credit.

Turnout was understandably heavy. Thirty-three percent opted for Prop S. They were summarily kicked out of God's presence. Everyone else -- including you and me -- reportedly went with Prop J. That's why we're here.

I wonder. With its attendant suffering, pain, mistakes and tough love, free will does not sound like the sort of political platform I would have supported. I see myself more as a get-dragged-there kind of a guy. Maybe I wasn't registered.

From the column: Mormons should be ashamed of themselves. Voting is a fundamental tenet of our theology. We've been doing since before we were born.

Although Kirby injects humor into most of what he writes, he's being serious here.

From the column: According to LDS theology, God's spirit children were asked to choose between two distinctively different plans of salvation offered by Jesus and Satan. Call them Prop J and Prop S.

Lds like Kirby get this "perspective" from Mormon "scripture" -- an Egyptian funeral document that Lds "prophet" Joseph Smith said he had the ability to "translate": And the Lord said: Whom shall I send? And one answered like unto the Son of Man: Here am I, send me. And another answered and said: Here am I, send me. And the Lord said: I will send the first. And the second was angry, and kept not his first estate; and, at that day, many followed after him. (Abraham 3:27-28)

[Keep in mind, now that Abraham 3, vv. 2-9, is the very same chapter of Lds "scripture" claiming that God lives on a distant star called "Kolob" and dwells & rules from there...hence, you might as well call this "Smith's Fairy Tales"]

(Go ahead: ask your Mormon neighbor or co-worker a direct question: "Do you believe God lives on a star called 'Kolob'?")

From the column: Turnout was understandably heavy. Thirty-three percent opted for Prop S. They were summarily kicked out of God's presence. Everyone else -- including you and me -- reportedly went with Prop J. That's why we're here.

Well, even the Bible hints at 1/3rd of the angels rebelling against God kicking Satan out of heaven for his pride. And Jesus said, "I saw Satan fall like lightning." But these were angels -- not "pre-existent spirits" of you and me as Smith's fairy tales have come down to writers like Kirby.

Besides, Kirby leaves out describing the third voting block according to Mormon tradition. And that is, Mormon doctrinal tradition has been to conclude that blacks were "cursed" with dark skin because their alleged "pre-existent spirits" tried to be "neutral" or, as the Mormons have like to call it, "less valiant" in the "vote" Kirby references.

Don't believe me? Read it yourself: LDS Mormon Apostle Bruce R. McConkie: "Those who were less valiant in the pre-existence and who thereby had certain spiritual restrictions imposed upon them during mortality are known to us as the negroes. Such spirits are sent to earth through the lineage of Cain, the mark put upon him for his rebellion against God and his murder of Abel being a black skin.... Noah's son Ham married Egyptus, a descendant of Cain, thus preserving the negro lineage through the flood....The negroes are not equal with other races when the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concerned, particularly the priesthood and the temple blessings that flow therefrom, but this inequality is not of man's origin. It is the Lord's doing, based on His eternal laws of justice, and grows out of the lack of spiritual valiance of those concerned in their first estate." (McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 1972, 10th printing, pages 527-528...please note that this book was published by Bookcraft in Salt Lake City and was carefully revised in the mid-1960s under the tutelage of a future Lds "prophet" -- Spencer Kimball -- and was approved by the then Lds "prophet" Harold B. Lee...and Bookcraft was eventually acquired by the Lds church)

All during the 1960s, the president of the quorum of McConkie & other Lds apostles was Joseph Fielding Smith, grandnephew of Joseph Smith; seven years after he wrote the following letter became the Lds "prophet":

"According to the doctrine of the Church, the Negro, because of some condition of unfaithfulness in the spirit--or pre-existence, was not valiant and hence was not denied the mortal probation, but was denied the blessings of the Priesthood." (JFS Letter to Joseph H. Henderson, April 10, 1963...to see this letter excerpt, go to: JFSmith1963Letter )

Darron Smith, a black Lds convert, wrote: "...even though the priesthood ban was repealed in 1978, the discourse that constructs what blackness means is still very much intact today...Hence there are Church members today who continue to summon and teach at every level of Church education the racial discourse that blacks are descendants of Cain, that they merited lesser earthly privilege because they were 'fence-sitters' in the War in Heaven, and that, science and climatic factors aside, there is a link between skin color and righteousness...("The Persistence of Racialized Discourse in Mormonism," by Darron Smith, Sunstone, March 2003, pp. 31-33).

Even the Bible dictionary in the LDS version of the KJV Bible intones at this: The warfare is continued in mortality in the conflict between right and wrong; between the gospel and false principles, etc. The same contestants and the same issues are doing battle, and the same salvation is at stake. Although one-third of the spirits became devils, the remaining two-thirds were not all equally valiant, there being every degree of devotion to Christ and the Father among them. The most diligent were chosen to be rulers in the kingdom (Abraham 3:22-23). The nature of the conflict, however, is such that there could be no neutrals...

Darron Smith, the Lds black convert, added in that Sunstone magazine: Further anchoring the early LDS appropriation of negative notions concerning blackness are several Book of Mormon teachings that associate dark skin with that which is vile, filthy, and evil, and white skin with that which is delightsome, pure, and good...I did not find out about the priesthood ban on blacks until after I had joined the Church, and, sadly, I passed on much of the folklore while serving an LDS mission in Michigan. Looking back on that experience, I venture to say that had I known about such teachings in the Church, I might not have joined

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