Final Post: Why So Long, and Some Parting Statements

To the readers of the Mormons for Obama Blog:

No doubt my long silence has caused some concern and engendered some questions. My absence from the blog arose for a simple but sad reason: During the summer, my mother became very ill, and I went across the country to care for her. Regrettably, my best efforts were unavailing, and my mother passed away a little over two weeks ago.

I realize that this kind of story sounds like a more maudlin version of "the dog ate my homework." This is why I have made the difficult decision to drop my anonymity, so that if necessary people can verify the truth regarding the reason for my silence. My mother, Sophie Koltko, passed away at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City on October 19; her death notice appeared in the issue of the New York Daily News appearing on Wednesday October 22. I am the son mentioned in that death notice: Mark Koltko-Rivera. I served a full-time LDS mission honorably, and have served in two LDS bishoprics and an LDS stake high council. I am an active, faithful, temple-attending member of the LDS Church (although of course I speak only for myself, not for the Church).


Putting my own private sorrow aside, let me address the current situation. As I write this, it is a few hours before dawn on election day. Can there be any good in my making a few more points regarding the campaign of Senator Obama? I think there is. I was stunned this evening to find that my e-mail account for this blog has hundreds of e-mails, many of them urging me to post further. Perhaps what I write here will make the tiniest of differences in this election; perhaps not even that. However, I have always strongly felt that what one can do to further the most important causes, one must do. Consequently, I will write a bit about the topics I had promised in my first post that I would address. Each topic will get just a few sentences rather than a full post, but even this might provoke some thought before a ballot is cast. So, below, I respond to some statements that I imagine a Latter-day Saint might say, in opposition to Senator Obama's candidacy.

“The Latter-day Saints, at least in Utah, have voted Republican for over half a century, partly for reasons of fiscal policy. How can Latter-day Saints vote for a tax-and-spend Democrat now?”

The Latter-day Saints have long had a tradition of frugality and living within our means. This is a good thing, and the result of prophetic inspiration and teaching. (Frankly, if everyone had listened to the advice of the prophets in this regard, we would likely not be facing the national mortgage and credit crises, and the international economic crisis that has resulted from those crises.) However, some politicians have manipulated the Latter-day Saints around the issue of frugality and living within our means. Two points should be made in this regard:

1) The fact of the matter is that we live in a complicated society with serious problems. It is not responsible for a Saint to say, "Well, what needs to happen is that everyone should live the gospel, and that would solve our problems." We must address the problems of our society today, not during the Millenium. Our society's problems are serious: the relatively poor educational achievement of our children in mathematics and science; our disastrous environmental situation; the need to retool our workforce for the 21st century; the 20% or so of our armed forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan who have experienced a traumatic brain injury and/or clinical depression; the grim situation facing our homeless citizens, and families living in poverty -- this list could go on for some time. Addressing these issues is going to require serious money. Ignoring our problems will not make them go away. It is not a matter of 'tax and spend'; it is a matter of spending to address our problems in a responsible way.

2) The Republican Party, during the eight years of the current Presidential administration, has shown nothing in the way of frugality or financial restraint. It is worth remembering that President George W. Bush came into office after the national debt had been essentially erased during the Clinton administration. We now have the largest national debt in American history, a debt so large that it could not fit on the National Debt Clock. And what have we got for this expense? A stagnant war in Iraq that was started under false pretenses, a bottomless hole of a conflict that our children's children will be paying for; a national and international economic crisis, created in part by the loosening of government regulation over shady financial dealings in the mortgage industry and the world of investment banking. The Republican candidate for President has said nothing that indicates he disowns the policies that created these problems.

Senator McCain largely supported, and apparently still stands for, the presidential policies that got us into our problems. Senator Obama will take the measures necessary to get us out of these problems. We'll wind up spending money either way; it's a matter of who will spend the money productively.

“How about the oft-quoted comment by a now-deceased LDS General Authority, to the effect that no Latter-day Saint could, in good conscience, be a Democrat?”

Yes, we've all heard that, I'm sure. You will note that the current and immediately preceding First Presidency -- the living prophets of this generation -- have been trying to clean up that mess for many years, frequently stating that the LDS Church is strictly neutral in matters of partisan politics (with the exception of matters that are clearly moral in nature).

We forget too easily that General Authorities, being just human, have their own personal opinions; it is unfortunate that the Saints sometimes elevate these personal opinions to the status of doctrine -- a doctrinally unsound practice, I might add. Joseph Smith himself said that he was only a prophet when he was acting as such. The same applies to all the General Authorities who have followed him.

The LDS General Authorities are not known for being timid. You may be absolutely confident that if the First Presidency were to conclude that membership in a particular political party were a doctrinal or moral problem, they would be very clear about it, despite any other consideration. The fact that the First Presidency has not said anything remotely like this indicates that there is no impediment to a member of the LDS Church either being a Democrat or voting for one.

“The Democratic Party supports abortion rights, while the Republican Party favors greater legal restrictions on abortion. How can Latter-day Saints vote for a Democratic candidate, rather than a Republican one?”

Of all people, Latter-day Saints should have a vivid understanding of the dangers involved in compulsion, that is compelling others to behave in a way that we think to be good. After all, in our own uniquely LDS scriptures, we learn that there was a plan proposed before the world was created, wherein no one would be permitted to make a wrong choice; of course, this plan was proposed by Lucifer. (See, in the Pearl of Great Price, Moses 4:1.)

We live in a pluralistic society where people have very different ideas about when life begins. In this kind of situation, it would be wrong for us to compel others to follow the teachings of the prophets regarding abortion (or anything else, for that matter). We are to teach and persuade, but not to compel the human mind.

I note that the First Presidency has not made the matter of abortion rights a litmus test for electability. I would also note that single issue politics is, generally, bad politics.

Are there limits to this? Of course there are. Slavery is a good example of something that is way over the line of acceptability. The issue of when it is appropriate to compel behavior is a complex one that goes beyond what I can address here. However, abortion rights--an issue about which there are good people on both sides of the debate--does not seem to me to be within the circle of issues where compulsion is acceptable.

“The Democratic Party supports gay rights, while the Republican Party does not. How can Latter-day Saints vote for a Democratic candidate, rather than a Republican one?”

The same arguments apply here as in the preceding topic. We live in a pluralistic society. It is counterproductive and doctrinally perilous to try to compel people to live according to LDS standards.

"School prayer: the Republicans are for it, the Democrats against it. Doesn't that make it obvious, regarding for whom the Saints should vote?"

This issue -- prayer in public schools -- has been around for half a century. Here again, I think that the Latter-day Saints have been suckered into making this a litmus test for electability.

At the risk of repeating myself, we live in a pluralistic, even multicultural society. The United States was founded specifically in contrast to the European nations of the 18th century, most or all of which had state-sponsored churches. The United States was founded as a place with full freedom of religion (which of course includes freedom from religion). The United States was emphatically not founded as a specifically Christian nation, as any careful reading of the Constitution will demonstrate.

In this kind of situation, prayer in public schools will almost certainly violate someone's religious convictions, as well as the guiding principles of American democracy.

Understand, I am all for prayer. What I am not for is compelling someone to follow my religion. The kind of compulsion that is implicit in the notion of school prayer is really against the Latter-day Saint ethic of friendly persuasion, rather than the exploitation of a captive audience of schoolchildren.

"Some Republicans are in favor of teaching 'intelligent design' in public schools as an alternative to evolution. Democrats generally oppose this. Here again, is not the Saint's electoral choice clear?"

Various individuals in the Republican Party (notably President Bush) have called for the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. Some hope that this would become easier to do nationally or locally, under a Republican President. Here again, it appears that many Latter-day Saints have been enticed into thinking that teaching intelligent design in public schools is consistent with LDS doctrine. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The issue here is not whether one believes that God created the heavens and the earth. The issue is, do we impress our beliefs on others? To do that would be to violate central tenets of LDS belief and philosophy.

Beyond this, the matter of evolution is a false problem. The fact of the matter is that many LDS scientists and thinkers have long recognized that there is no conflict between evolutionary theory and the Gospel. (Consider, for example, James E. Talmadge, B.H. Roberts, and John A. Widtsoe.)

Like anything in science, scientific theory is an attempt to explain the phenomena we encounter, but it is not an attempt to get at ultimate origins -- because ultimate origins lie outside the realm of science. Consider the statements that God stepped in and created the universe, formed the earth, created living things -- these are all religious statements, not statements that science can confirm or deny. And it should be this way, from an LDS point of view: God wants us to gain personal spiritual testimonies of the truth, which of course is outside the realm of science.

Here again, evolution is something on which good people -- including LDS General Authorities -- have long disagreed. However, what I think we can agree on is that we keep science for science class, and religion for religion class. This is all more likely under a Democratic administration than a Republican one.

"How can a Latter-day Saint in good conscience vote for a Muslim?"

This very question is so wrong on so many levels, it is hard to know where to begin. Let me keep this to two simple points.

First, Senator Obama is not a Muslim! He is a Christian who attends a Christian church! Yes, of course the name -- including his middle name, Hussein -- sounds Muslim. Yes, his father was Muslim. However, Senator Obama himself was raised a Christian, and as an adult attends a Christian church, as the responsible newspapers of this country have long reported. Do not be taken in by Internet rumors.

Second, people like the Latter-day Saints, who have been long persecuted for their religion, should not in turn persecute others for their religion. And, make no mistake about it, when someone implies that a Muslim is not good enough to be President, that is just what is happening: religious bias, religious persecution.

How odd it is that so many Latter-day Saints forget that on two occasions the American Congress refused to allow duly elected legislators to take their seats in Congress, simply because these legislators were Latter-day Saints. (Elder Smoot of the Twelve was ultimately seated in the Senate.) We who have been persecuted must not turn persecutors ourselves; to do so would be untrue to our faith.

Conclusion

I wish that the circumstances of my life had been different, and that I had been able to address these and other matters at greater length. Perhaps this offering will help make the difference, even at this late hour. In any case, I encourage all readers of this blog to vote for Senator Barack Obama as our next President.