Dear Congressman Lungren,
Decriminalization of mild recreational drugs is one of the most straightforward economic, foreign policy, and moral solutions available to the US today. This is a no-brainer that would have the following beneficial effects:
1) Reduce drug use. Countries that have legalized drugs and adopted a "tax, regulate, and educate" approach to controlling them have seen either no change or a decline in rates of drug use. The US saw a similar effect in the aftermath of Prohibition.
2) Stabilize Mexico. US drug policies have contributed to incredible instability in neighboring countries, which is spilling over onto US soil in the form of both violence and immigration. The best way to stop illegal immigration is to address the root causes, not to build an ineffectual fence. This is a practical as well as moral imperative.
3) Cut spending and raise revenue. Taxes on drugs would be an additional source of state and federal revenue, and legalization would allow us to reduce enforcement costs and resolve the overcrowding problem in our prisons. Drug criminalization is the quintessential example of wasteful government spending: a scandal far greater than Solyndra, costing taxpayers some $14 billion per year.
Given the clear benefits, I find it incredible that this is not at the top of every politician's policy agenda, Republican or Democrat.
For more information on the benefits of decriminalization, please review the following links: http://norml.org/marijuana/personal/item/marijuana-decriminalization-its-impact-on-use-2
http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/
Thank you,
-Chris Smith
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
2012 Bushman Summer Seminar Announcement
It's time again to start applying to the Bushman Summer Seminar! I did this last year, and it was a total blast. This year's seminar will be picking up the investigation of "the gold plates as a cultural artifact" where we left off last year. If you're a graduate student or junior professor with an interest in Mormon Studies, I HIGHLY recommend applying. It's remarkably well-compensated; there's a $3000 stipend, plus research experience, invaluable memories, and friends for life!
Click here for the details.
Click here for the details.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
New Short Story Published at Bewildering Stories
This is a little late, but better late than never. Recently my short story "Icarus" was published in Issue 443 of the science fiction e-zine Bewildering Stories. "Icarus" is a story about a boy who has his consciousness downloaded into the body of a hawk, and in so doing runs afoul of his family and the law. On the surface, the story is a humorous exploration of a fun sci-fi premise. But at bottom, it's really a story about what it means to be alive. Happy reading!
EDIT #1: Bewildering Stories just published its "editors' choices" for the quarter. "Icarus" was one of the 14 selected (out of 41 total). "Icarus" was also picked as the eighth "most controversial" work published this quarter (out of 93 total).
EDIT #2: "Icarus" was also selected for a Mariner Award in Bewildering Stories' year-end review.
EDIT #1: Bewildering Stories just published its "editors' choices" for the quarter. "Icarus" was one of the 14 selected (out of 41 total). "Icarus" was also picked as the eighth "most controversial" work published this quarter (out of 93 total).
EDIT #2: "Icarus" was also selected for a Mariner Award in Bewildering Stories' year-end review.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Comparative Starbucks: A Case Study
For the past few weeks, I've been living in Provo, Utah. Obviously there's been a bit of culture shock, since Provo is so Mormon.
But actually, one of the weirdest things about living here has been the culture of the local Starbucks coffee shop.
Back home in Sacramento, the Starbucks employees are all very clean-cut, and the clientele are mostly senior citizens and cheery, fashionable young adults. 80% of the conversations I overhear at my local Starbucks there are evangelical Christians talking about religion. (I think there's probably a church that runs some kind of accountability ministry out of there.)
Here in Provo, because of the religious taboo against coffee, Starbucks becomes a kind of hub for rebellious youths. The employees are all sort of surly emo kids. People loiter outside the store drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. I almost never hear any religious conversation there. Today I was sitting and reading, and the people on one side of me were joking about murdering people and robbing banks, and the people on the other side of me were talking about stealing cars and doing acid. I felt like I should call the police or something.
But actually, one of the weirdest things about living here has been the culture of the local Starbucks coffee shop.
Back home in Sacramento, the Starbucks employees are all very clean-cut, and the clientele are mostly senior citizens and cheery, fashionable young adults. 80% of the conversations I overhear at my local Starbucks there are evangelical Christians talking about religion. (I think there's probably a church that runs some kind of accountability ministry out of there.)
Here in Provo, because of the religious taboo against coffee, Starbucks becomes a kind of hub for rebellious youths. The employees are all sort of surly emo kids. People loiter outside the store drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. I almost never hear any religious conversation there. Today I was sitting and reading, and the people on one side of me were joking about murdering people and robbing banks, and the people on the other side of me were talking about stealing cars and doing acid. I felt like I should call the police or something.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Symposium on the Cultural History of the Gold Plates
The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
and the Mormon Scholars Foundation
Invite you to the Annual Summer Symposium on Mormon Culture
THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE GOLD PLATES
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Room B037 Joseph F. Smith Building
9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The program will feature the following papers:
Morning Session:
Stephen Taysom, “Worlds of Discourse, Plates of Gold: Joseph Smith’s Plates as Cultural Catalysts”
Ben Bascom, “Guard the Gold: Didactic Fiction and the Mainstreaming of Moroni”
Jared Halverson, “Fictionalizing Faith: Popular Polemics and the Golden Plates”
Julie Frederick, “Artistic Depictions of the Gold Plates and the Material Cultural Inheritance"
Tyler Gardner, “Possessing the Plates: The Presence and Absence of the Gold Plates”
Rachael Givens, “‘Wagonloads’: The Disappearance of the Book of Mormon's Sealed Portion”
Afternoon Session:
Sarah Reed, “Fantasy, Fraud and Freud: The Uncanny Gold Plates in 19th Century Newspaper Accounts”
Elizabeth Mott, “The Forbidden Gaze: The Veiling of the Gold Plates and Joseph Smith’s Redefintion of Sacred Space”
Michael Reed, “The Notion of Ancient Metal Records in Joseph Smith’s Day”
Caroline Sorensen, “The Metallurgical Plausibility of the Gold Plates”
Christopher Smith, “Rediscovering Joseph Smith’s ‘Discovery Narrative’ in Southern Utah”
Rachel Gostenhofer, “In Consequence of Their Wickedness: The Decline and Fall of Mormon Seership, 1838-1900”
Monday, July 25, 2011
Paul Cheesman and the Lambayeque Gold Plate
Cheesman gathered information on the Lambayeque gold plate for at least twelve years, first as Director of Research for an organization called Theo-Science Amalgamated in Los Angeles, and later as Director of the Institute of Book of Mormon Projects at BYU. During this time, he corresponded with dozens of scholars and paid for metallurgical analyses from several different laboratories.
The scholars' replies to Cheesman's letters were not encouraging. Chemist Adon A. Gordon felt the metallurgical makeup of the plate was a little too close to commercial 22 carat gold. Dr. Junius Bird of the Museum of Natural History pronounced that it "definitely was not old as far as the workmanship was concerned," and was probably created by a well-known circle of forgers associated with one "Sr Bonamiche." He said that the patina had been brushed on, the lines were too straight, and the characters were only half authentic. Robert Sonin, who was present when Bird examined the plate, concurred with his analysis. John H. Rowe of UC Berkeley came independently to a similar conclusion, and Clifford Evans opined that the symbols were not pre-Columbian. One of the funniest replies was from an Egyptologist, who simply seemed bewildered to be asked about a plate that clearly had nothing to do with Egypt.
Cheesman was not to be dissuaded by such cynicism. He carefully compared the symbols on the plate to ancient Cypriot and the Anthon Transcript, and noted the similarities. He also seized upon the optimistic comments of diffusionist scholar Cyrus Gordon and local enthusiast Richard P. Anderson, who noted that characters on the plate bear similarities to a Jewish symbol, the Mason’s square, and Viking cryptograms. Cheesman's summary report describes these similarities at length and opines that the language of the plate may be Cypriot, while omitting the findings of Bird, et al without comment. Cheesman included a photograph of the plate in his book on Ancient Writing on Metal Plates.
Two days ago I walked through an exhibit on metal plates in the Joseph Smith building at BYU, where a replica of the Lambayeque plate still features prominently as an evidence of the truth of the Book of Mormon.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
How Gay Marriage Became Thinkable for a Generation of Young Americans
With the legalization of gay marriage in New York yesterday, I think it's worth reflecting on how we arrived at this point. How did something so unimaginable for the Silent Generation become thinkable for the Boomers and their children?
The answer, in my opinion, is that acceptance of gay marriage is the logical conclusion of a series of changes in the American moral universe. We might refer to this as a change of moral paradigms. This paradigm shift has involved three types of cultural changes: a new view of sex and marriage, a new view of law and morality, and a new view of customs and symbols.
How Americans View Sex and Marriage
There have been two major relevant changes in how Americans view sex and marriage.
The first change came in how Americans view the purposes of sex and marriage. Sex in early America was thought to be strictly for procreation, not for pleasure or romance. As a result, all non-procreative sex, such as anal sex, oral sex, or sex using contraceptives, was considered immoral. Similarly, marriage was considered a political, financial, and reproductive arrangement rather than a primarily romantic one. Of course, there was plenty of erotic romance that went on behind closed doors, but such behavior did not have public moral sanction. This all began to change in the nineteenth century, when the Protestant preacher Henry Ward Beecher helped popularize a romantic view of marriage. Attitudes toward sex didn't change on a large scale until the sexual revolution of the 1960s, when the Supreme Court struck down a ban on contraceptives, and even conservative Christians came to approve of sex-for-pleasure between married heterosexuals. Today, American Christians and non-Christians alike think of marriage as primarily a romantic relationship within which all forms of consensual sex-- including oral and anal-- are permissible. This raises the question: why shouldn't gays get married, if they love each other? And if straight couples can have anal sex, why can't gays do the same?
The second change in Americans' view of sex and marriage is that they came to be seen as expressions of self-determination. In the nineteenth century, marriage for women was a bit like sexual slavery. A woman was literally the property of her husband. She had no possessions of her own, no right to refuse him sex whenever he wanted it, and no control over whether or when to have children. Nor was the single life a viable alternative, since women had not yet really entered the work force. Other minorities experienced a lack of freedom with respect to marriage, as well. Black slaves who married were often separated from their spouses, and even after Emancipation most states enforced anti-miscegenation laws until the 1950s. American attitudes toward sex and marriage changed during the civil rights era, when self-determination in these areas came to be seen as one of the inalienable rights granted in the Constitution. Most famously, Loving v. Virginia in 1967 declared that marriage is a "right". With the widespread acceptance of this view, it has become increasingly difficult to deny self-determination to gay couples who want to be married.
How Americans View Law and Morality
Another fundamental shift in the American moral universe has occurred in our thinking about the relationship between law and morality.
In early America, it was taken for granted that one of the purposes of the law was to maintain a moral society. Moral and religious education were commonplace in the public schools, and the illegality of blasphemy and profanity was taken for granted. The fundamental political divide was between those who felt moral issues should be arbitrated by the federal government and those who felt they should be arbitrated by the state governments. This was a mere jurisdictional dispute, in which the common assumption of both sides was that government is the guardian of moral order.
Today, the political discourse has shifted. The view of government as the guardian of moral order has been increasingly challenged by a view of government as the guardian of individual rights. This can be seen in the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision erecting a “wall of separation between church and state,” as well as in the series of court decisions throughout the twentieth century establishing a “right to privacy” in matters of sexual behavior. For many Americans, it has become axiomatic that you can legislate rights, but “you can’t legislate morality.” Murder can be forbidden because it deprives another person of his right to live, but the private use of contraceptives hurts no one and is therefore off limits to the law. Today, the fundamental political divide is increasingly between proponents of individual moral sovereignty and proponents of collective moral sovereignty rather than the old jurisdictional dispute between the federal government and the states. This means that for an increasing number of young Americans, the gender of someone’s spouse just isn’t any of the government’s business.
How Americans View Customs and Symbols
In some ways, the most radical shift has been in how educated Americans view values, customs, and symbols. Cross-cultural research and the shrinking of the world due to globalization have made us more aware of the extent to which our views and the ways we express them are products of a particular historical moment.
We have learned that Judeo-Christian doctrines and morals, for example, are far from the self-evident truths we once thought. Americans are increasingly conscious of the fact that Christianity dominated Europe at the point of an imperial sword and America at the point of a republican gun, littering both continents with the bodies of pagans and heretics along the way. More impactful even than this historical consciousness is our growing awareness of the billions of good people in the world with religious and moral worldviews different from our own. It is difficult to maintain a moral absolutism on sexual issues in an America where even the majority of evangelical Protestants believe that many religions can lead to eternal life.
Similarly, the ways we conceptualize and categorize things in our environment turn out to be surprisingly relative. Linguists know that words are just social conventions with improvised definitions; no word has just one, true, unchangeable definition. The terms “conservative” and “liberal” have meant so many different things over the course of American history that it would take an entire book to describe them all. In the same way, our concepts of "gender" and "marriage" reflect a particular cultural perspective on the world rather than the way the world really is. The relativity of language means that the “traditional” definitions of these words pose no obstacle to novel uses of them. In this light, the fight over the word “marriage” feels more like a trademark dispute than a conflict over moral values.
A Paradigm Shift
What most intrigues me about the developments I’ve described above is that even conservatives mostly take them for granted. There are vestiges of older ways of thinking in conservative rhetoric on gay marriage, but rarely do they explicitly argue that sex for pleasure is a sin, that marriage isn’t primarily a romantic union, that spouse-selection isn’t a “right”, that words have only one true meaning, or even that they should be able to impose their religious values on others through the law. The paradigm shift in the American moral universe is already too complete, too entrenched in our national culture for conservatives to even try to turn back the clock. Instead, they’re trying to stave off the logical conclusion of the new paradigm through constitutional amendments and emotional appeals.
As historian Timothy Weber has explained, such is only to be expected after a paradigm shift. A new paradigm means that conservative leaders can no longer trust people to draw the right conclusions. “When people start ‘responding to a different world,’ leaders must be certain that followers keep looking in the right places and finding what they are supposed to find.” The old paradigm can be saved only by hedging it in via laws, propaganda, and punitive measures. Frankly, though, it’s a losing battle. The thinkability of gay marriage is here to stay.
The answer, in my opinion, is that acceptance of gay marriage is the logical conclusion of a series of changes in the American moral universe. We might refer to this as a change of moral paradigms. This paradigm shift has involved three types of cultural changes: a new view of sex and marriage, a new view of law and morality, and a new view of customs and symbols.
How Americans View Sex and Marriage
There have been two major relevant changes in how Americans view sex and marriage.
The first change came in how Americans view the purposes of sex and marriage. Sex in early America was thought to be strictly for procreation, not for pleasure or romance. As a result, all non-procreative sex, such as anal sex, oral sex, or sex using contraceptives, was considered immoral. Similarly, marriage was considered a political, financial, and reproductive arrangement rather than a primarily romantic one. Of course, there was plenty of erotic romance that went on behind closed doors, but such behavior did not have public moral sanction. This all began to change in the nineteenth century, when the Protestant preacher Henry Ward Beecher helped popularize a romantic view of marriage. Attitudes toward sex didn't change on a large scale until the sexual revolution of the 1960s, when the Supreme Court struck down a ban on contraceptives, and even conservative Christians came to approve of sex-for-pleasure between married heterosexuals. Today, American Christians and non-Christians alike think of marriage as primarily a romantic relationship within which all forms of consensual sex-- including oral and anal-- are permissible. This raises the question: why shouldn't gays get married, if they love each other? And if straight couples can have anal sex, why can't gays do the same?
The second change in Americans' view of sex and marriage is that they came to be seen as expressions of self-determination. In the nineteenth century, marriage for women was a bit like sexual slavery. A woman was literally the property of her husband. She had no possessions of her own, no right to refuse him sex whenever he wanted it, and no control over whether or when to have children. Nor was the single life a viable alternative, since women had not yet really entered the work force. Other minorities experienced a lack of freedom with respect to marriage, as well. Black slaves who married were often separated from their spouses, and even after Emancipation most states enforced anti-miscegenation laws until the 1950s. American attitudes toward sex and marriage changed during the civil rights era, when self-determination in these areas came to be seen as one of the inalienable rights granted in the Constitution. Most famously, Loving v. Virginia in 1967 declared that marriage is a "right". With the widespread acceptance of this view, it has become increasingly difficult to deny self-determination to gay couples who want to be married.
How Americans View Law and Morality
Another fundamental shift in the American moral universe has occurred in our thinking about the relationship between law and morality.
In early America, it was taken for granted that one of the purposes of the law was to maintain a moral society. Moral and religious education were commonplace in the public schools, and the illegality of blasphemy and profanity was taken for granted. The fundamental political divide was between those who felt moral issues should be arbitrated by the federal government and those who felt they should be arbitrated by the state governments. This was a mere jurisdictional dispute, in which the common assumption of both sides was that government is the guardian of moral order.
Today, the political discourse has shifted. The view of government as the guardian of moral order has been increasingly challenged by a view of government as the guardian of individual rights. This can be seen in the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision erecting a “wall of separation between church and state,” as well as in the series of court decisions throughout the twentieth century establishing a “right to privacy” in matters of sexual behavior. For many Americans, it has become axiomatic that you can legislate rights, but “you can’t legislate morality.” Murder can be forbidden because it deprives another person of his right to live, but the private use of contraceptives hurts no one and is therefore off limits to the law. Today, the fundamental political divide is increasingly between proponents of individual moral sovereignty and proponents of collective moral sovereignty rather than the old jurisdictional dispute between the federal government and the states. This means that for an increasing number of young Americans, the gender of someone’s spouse just isn’t any of the government’s business.
How Americans View Customs and Symbols
In some ways, the most radical shift has been in how educated Americans view values, customs, and symbols. Cross-cultural research and the shrinking of the world due to globalization have made us more aware of the extent to which our views and the ways we express them are products of a particular historical moment.
We have learned that Judeo-Christian doctrines and morals, for example, are far from the self-evident truths we once thought. Americans are increasingly conscious of the fact that Christianity dominated Europe at the point of an imperial sword and America at the point of a republican gun, littering both continents with the bodies of pagans and heretics along the way. More impactful even than this historical consciousness is our growing awareness of the billions of good people in the world with religious and moral worldviews different from our own. It is difficult to maintain a moral absolutism on sexual issues in an America where even the majority of evangelical Protestants believe that many religions can lead to eternal life.
Similarly, the ways we conceptualize and categorize things in our environment turn out to be surprisingly relative. Linguists know that words are just social conventions with improvised definitions; no word has just one, true, unchangeable definition. The terms “conservative” and “liberal” have meant so many different things over the course of American history that it would take an entire book to describe them all. In the same way, our concepts of "gender" and "marriage" reflect a particular cultural perspective on the world rather than the way the world really is. The relativity of language means that the “traditional” definitions of these words pose no obstacle to novel uses of them. In this light, the fight over the word “marriage” feels more like a trademark dispute than a conflict over moral values.
A Paradigm Shift
What most intrigues me about the developments I’ve described above is that even conservatives mostly take them for granted. There are vestiges of older ways of thinking in conservative rhetoric on gay marriage, but rarely do they explicitly argue that sex for pleasure is a sin, that marriage isn’t primarily a romantic union, that spouse-selection isn’t a “right”, that words have only one true meaning, or even that they should be able to impose their religious values on others through the law. The paradigm shift in the American moral universe is already too complete, too entrenched in our national culture for conservatives to even try to turn back the clock. Instead, they’re trying to stave off the logical conclusion of the new paradigm through constitutional amendments and emotional appeals.
As historian Timothy Weber has explained, such is only to be expected after a paradigm shift. A new paradigm means that conservative leaders can no longer trust people to draw the right conclusions. “When people start ‘responding to a different world,’ leaders must be certain that followers keep looking in the right places and finding what they are supposed to find.” The old paradigm can be saved only by hedging it in via laws, propaganda, and punitive measures. Frankly, though, it’s a losing battle. The thinkability of gay marriage is here to stay.
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