Amy's Husband

When I was Twelve the girls of my ward had a Beehive Teacher who we adored whose husband was at one time an athiest . He returned to the Church to marry Amy and have a family with her. He taught Mathmatics at the College of Holy Names in Oakland and may have worked at Hanford--it was not uncommon for physicists to lose their religion in the face of how precipitously we have used our knowledge of the Atom.

In my late grade school and teenage years each age group had an apellation which was used to express a goal or express a characteristic that expressed who we were, or might hope to be. I guess they gave up on the 12 year olds, though the Beehive was a symbol of Cooperation in early
Mormonism. Since Kent was married to Amy, we all wanted to marry a man just like him.

A very disturbing thing happened when I was 16. This was at the height of the Civil Rights movement and we had numerous student teachers from Santa Cruz and UC Berkley.
Kent substituted for our Sunday School Teacher and gave a lesson that angered me so much that I spoke my mind.

During the Pre Vietnam Era, the belief was very common that the seed of Ham were dark, and that this justified some denial of Civil Rights or persecution. That this is true is undeniable, but generally it was defacto, segregation was
so common that our Homes Association Charter, which all
residents had to sign, excluded blacks.

The Navy owned an enormous block of homes but it did so only on the condition that both black and white Seaman would receive Navy rentals on an equal basis. There was an attempt to change the Charter. Meetings were held, and there was even violence at these meetings.

Well, Kent got chalk and blackboard and gave the lineage and posterity of Ham. He didn't need to do this, and that he did shocked me to the core.

Now I had read statements from the pulpit by Brigham Young from the Newly minted Journal of Discourses for which my father had horse traded a first edition of the Doctrine of Covenants that he'd gotten from Sam Weiler ,
who had a sort of following immedietly after WWII. My
father was in Salt Lake courting the secretaries who lived
in the Beehive House--a former dwelling of Brigham
Young's wives and children--and working at Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution. There were 3 young
men in the ward and only one had a car.

I had even read a long sermon by Brigham Young that
made me as angry as Kent did that Sunday. My father
had traded Sam Weiler for that 21-7 book set exactly
because he thought if I was going to hear it, I should
hear it at home. Actually, my father moved to Oakland's
German Town at 3 or four and when blacks flooded in
to do war work it was time for white flight.

I turned red at Kent's lesson, steam emitted from my ears
and finally, after a fierce argument with him I walked out.

It was a small branch of Black members in Salt Lake who put
successful pressure on the First Presidency and Quorum of
the Twelve to allow Temple marriages between American Blacks and other members. The Mormon Church plays the same role for Polynesians as the Black Church does for
Blacks (Pacific Asian Express, KPFA, Berkeley). Since Polynesians resemble American Blacks and are, if anything
darker with "worse hair" there were families Associated with
the Genesis Group in Salt Lake.

These asked various General Authorities to administer the
bread and little cups of water normally passed to the
Ward by Sixteen year olds. The purpose was to make the
Brethren as uncomfortable as everybody else was--or most of us.

I heard the first account of the Brethren's prayer in the Temple, asking the Lord if there wasn't something he could do, and an account of President Kimble's yes vote from the Lord, on--guess where. Mormonism Exposed. You can find
it on Google.

It's distorted History, but if your Mormonism is firm it is not
hard to pick some precious pearls from the slime. There is a long history of among the Mormon faithful of reading anti-Mormon literature, generally for amusement. If
there is to be any real dialogue between faiths, absurdities
will never get us there.

There are non-Mormon "authorities" arising in the anti-Mormon literature who are prey to such error. Like the fellow who did the Mountain Meadows Massacre. He talked
about the association of the Red Rock Country with Hell.
Now there is no view of red rock of any kind along the
California trail from 1947-57, after this it fell into disuse and the current road through Cedar City was used until
the real estate boom of the last few decades.

Whatever you think of Hinkley, who became the the power behind the throne during the Salamander Crisis--Benson was a below the belt progandist--but what to do with a
prophet capable of taking enormous bribes, and unable
to fore see a double murder when he was solicited by one.
Monson is widely dreaded.

Puzzled? Since I'm not particularly, I'll try to post here a few times a month. And again, the Mountain Meadows material was posted in July, when I left the hospital without my kidney after an on and off stay. Valentines dat is just two days after my ride in the Ambulance.