american taliban

February 3, 2003 6:41 AM

american taliban perhaps utah could do some sort of exchange with out of work minders in kandahar? nytimes link
posted by specialk420 (44 comments total)

Sex::bad; war::good.
posted by the fire you left me at 6:52 AM on February 3, 2003

Why do you hate our children so much?
posted by Space Coyote at 6:56 AM on February 3, 2003

In one generation we're going to go from a North American society obsessed with sex . . . to a North American society that doesn't quite understanding what breeding is...
posted by tiamat at 7:20 AM on February 3, 2003

Yeah, because people who oppose pornography are the same as the Taliban.
posted by oissubke at 7:20 AM on February 3, 2003

the question is why do they(she) hate children so much?... i have a number of friends who grew up in the netherlands and sweden where they idea of covering magazines that show a hint of breast, would be as foriegn as much of what taliban had cooking... im sure many would argue, but they are perfectly well adjusted.
posted by specialk420 at 7:21 AM on February 3, 2003

were you to read the article - they are talking about sports illustrated and glamour magazine. not exactly hardcore.
posted by specialk420 at 7:22 AM on February 3, 2003

It's not a surprise to those of us who live here, especially when you see things like the LDS church being consulted on changes to the liquor laws (mentioned briefly in specialk420's linked story).

This state is a theocracy, regardless of what the Mormon church and its members would like you to believe.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:25 AM on February 3, 2003

"Anything that's lewd, like women's busts showing cleavage, or bad remarks, we cover up so only the name shows."

Maybe they could just remove women from Bountiful, Utah.
posted by iamck at 7:28 AM on February 3, 2003

*breaking my newyears resolution* - Can't read the article NYT seems to have forgotten me *sigh *

I grew up in Sweden - and lived in the Netherlands too - back in those days, porn mags were on the bottom shelf. The bottom shelf was the shelf I had at eye-level at the age of seven and the covers of these magazines [ranging from Hustler to deep-porn] really bothered me at that age. They discussed me and made me feel bad and confused.

after much protest at my local mag and candy store they moved the porn mags to the top shelf. These days porn mags in Sweden are on the top shelf *and* have the bottom half of the magazine covered hidden behind a black "holder" that explains you must be an adult to buy said magazines.
In Holland it is much the same in regular magazine shops, only porn shops can leave the covers out.
posted by dabitch at 7:30 AM on February 3, 2003

spellcheck bad - They disgusted me. Really, seeing porn at that age threw me for a loop guys. I didn't want to grow up and become a woman.
posted by dabitch at 7:32 AM on February 3, 2003

So now you're comparing the Taliban, who ruled a country, killed thousands of people and supported terror organisations with some lady in Utah who doesn't want children to see breasts?
posted by sebas at 7:35 AM on February 3, 2003

imposing ones moral views on others for religious (or other) reasons - is wrong (in my view) - whether its kandahar or bountiful, utah.
posted by specialk420 at 7:48 AM on February 3, 2003

Out of wedlock births are becoming normalized in Scandanavia, even among the educated middle class, to the point that one of the crown princes (of Denmark?) married a woman who had another man's illegitimate child.

I'm no LDS theologian or anything, but I'd venture to say that there are many people in Utah who would regard Scandavia as worse for the family structure, as a typical Utahan sees it, than the Afghanistan, particularly in that there is fairly little chance that Americans will start emulating Pashtun tribal customs, but there is a good deal of transport of ideas and influences from Europe back to the US.
posted by MattD at 7:51 AM on February 3, 2003

This state is a theocracy, regardless of what the Mormon church and its members would like you to believe.

Escaping religious intolerance to establish it anew seems wildly disingenuous.
posted by four panels at 7:52 AM on February 3, 2003

Ridiculous comparisons aside, Utah is a pretty odd place. It leads the country in antidepressant use, and it's not doing so bad in suicide.

Repression, anyone?
posted by gottabefunky at 8:03 AM on February 3, 2003

oissubke, mr_crash_davis, any know if The Scarlet Letter is required reading in Mormon schools?
posted by The Jesse Helms at 8:12 AM on February 3, 2003

The Jesse Helms, it was when I was in high school in Utah. Of course, that was so long ago the book was still on the best-seller lists.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:14 AM on February 3, 2003

four panels: escaping religious intolerance to establish it anew is par for the course with any religious movement.
posted by xmutex at 8:22 AM on February 3, 2003

imposing ones moral views on others for religious (or other) reasons - is wrong (in my view) - whether its kandahar or bountiful, utah.

I agree. However, showing porn magazines in plain view of children who walk into the sotre _is_ an imposition of a moral view. And a much more in-your-face one since the lady pushing for the magazines to be covered up isn't preventing anyone from taking the magazine home.
posted by Space Coyote at 8:24 AM on February 3, 2003

Exactly, Space Coyote. While I'm as big a fan of porno as you can get, I don't have an issue with what she's doing. She's just a vocal activist. Porn fiends have it within their power to go to the same stores and request that mags be displayed front and center and visible to all. But they won't bother. She does. Fine for her. And like everybody, including herself said, she's not trying to deny your right to buy it, she just wants it covered.

Comparisons to the Taliban are ridiculous and weaken your stance.
posted by vito90 at 8:33 AM on February 3, 2003

imposing ones moral views on others for religious (or other) reasons - is wrong (in my view) - whether its kandahar or bountiful, utah.

Any individual or group in this country is free to suggest and promote legislation that they feel would best improve their communities, states, and nation. Overall, the general effect is that pretty good laws are made. Not always, but usually.

Why is it that if a group of people who belong to a certain religion and feel a certain way promote a certain legislation, they're accused of trying to turn the state into a theocracy, but if a bunch of, say, liberal atheists promote the opposite legislation nobody cares about it?

Mormons (or members of any other religion) have the right to promote whatever they think would best improve their communities. Those who oppose it have a similar right to do so. They fight it out, argue both sides, and in the end (with any luck) the better viewpoint will succeed.

To impose a New York mentality on Utah doesn't make any more sense than trying to impose a Utah mentality on New York. Let the citizens debate the issues themselves and decide for themselves what they want to do. If most of them happen to be conservative religious types, then in all likelyhood they'll probably have conservative legislation -- that in itself doesn't make them a theocracy, a backwards culture, or anything of the sort.
posted by oissubke at 8:39 AM on February 3, 2003

escaping religious intolerance to establish it anew is par for the course with any religious movement

Xmutex, this is not true. To name but one example, check out the history of Pennsylvania and read about the effect the Quakers had on it, especially that of William Penn, its first governor and a Quaker. Please be careful about such sweeping generalizations.

Comparisons to the Taliban are ridiculous and weaken your stance.

I agree, vito90. There's nothing like cheap rhetorical effects and imprecise analysis to defeat the purpose of any discussion.
posted by orange swan at 8:47 AM on February 3, 2003

mattd - the crown prince of denmark is dating a girl from OZ - it's Mette-Marit in Norway that you are thinking of. She dumped the father of that boy as he abused her [physically].

love the fact that people who can't tell the countries apart have such a firm grasp on our culture....
Out of wedlock children are plenty here - and their parents are usually still together [just a quick look around at my collegues who's ages range from 26 to 35 - with unwed parents]. More than one can say about the 80% fail rate of american marriages.
posted by dabitch at 8:56 AM on February 3, 2003

Out of wedlock children are plenty here - and their parents are usually still together [just a quick look around at my collegues who's ages range from 26 to 35 - with unwed parents].

My understanding is that part of the cause for this (at least according to my German colleagues) is that the low marriage rates have more to do with taxes and similar concerns than with an actual opposition to being socially bound to another person (or, even more absurd, the notion that it's because they're all terrible sinners). Does this hold true for Scandanavia as well?

More than one can say about the 80% fail rate of american marriages.

80%? That sounds like a butt-pulled statistic...
posted by oissubke at 9:16 AM on February 3, 2003

The phrase "four out of five marriages end in failure" is common enough, 80% is just a restatement of the same thing.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:19 AM on February 3, 2003

The phrase "four out of five marriages end in failure" is common enough...

But is it accurate?
posted by oissubke at 9:20 AM on February 3, 2003

dabitch -- US marriages don't have an 80% fail rate. Rather, the statistic is that for every two marriages in a year there is one divorce. Since you have to account for serial divorcers (people who get divorced once are for more likely to get divorced again than the general population), this suggest that the "fail" rate of a conventional first marriage is well under 50%.

And whatever the "fail" rate of US marriages, the rate is much, much higher than the fail rate among LDS couples in Bountiful, UT.

People who are religious conservatives don't believe that marriage has a strictly utilitarian role, so would take no comfort from unwed parents staying together. In that view, the relationships are immoral per se, and their happiness or stability immaterial -- or perhaps even materially worse, as that happiness or stability might make such family structures more attractive to Americans.
posted by MattD at 9:30 AM on February 3, 2003

vito90: "While I'm as big a fan of porno as you can get, I don't have an issue with what she's doing. She's just a vocal activist."

Note that we're not talking about porno mags here. We're not even talking about Playboy (which isn't sold at grocery stores anyway, and is sold from behind the counter at the vanishingly small group of stores in Utah that sell it at all). The article defines her crusade as being against "Anything that's lewd, like women's busts showing cleavage, or bad remarks".

Cleavage. Bad remarks. Yes, these are definitely the signs of the Apocalypse.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:35 AM on February 3, 2003

In terms of protecting the children, isn't the idea to have them grow and adjust to the adult world and not have the adult world bowdlerized into something childish?
posted by pandaharma at 9:46 AM on February 3, 2003

That's a perfectly acceptable view of childraising, pandaharma. So is her's.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 9:56 AM on February 3, 2003

`Swimsuit pictures, stuff like that; sometimes the lingerie section of a catalogue.' For some it began with National Geographic."

Oh great close up the library we native indians in their natural state, whoops I mean pRon.

So teach your children not to look, problem solved. Turning away then moving on seems to solve more than standing around making a big production so every thing is viewed your way. Or do not shop their and even better open your own buisness as an example to your community.

I'm seeing private businesses becoming everyone's business but the proprietor's.
posted by thomcatspike at 10:14 AM on February 3, 2003

oissubke - space coyote et al.

did any of you read the article?

"They include store managers who readily agreed to remove The National Enquirer and other tabloids from checkout counters and to wrap the covers of magazines like Cosmopolitan and Vogue to hide any hint of sexuality."

cosmo, vogue, national enquirer..... for most - i dont think this qualifies a "porn" - it is distressing to see religious fundamentalists attack benign publications like national geographic under the guise of being porn crusaders... when i read the article the first image that came to mind was the taliban - or saudi wahabists - im guessing this self appointed morality cop would prefer to have the women on the magazine covers in question clad in burkas rather than swimsuits.

similar shit and fringe religous zealots are on the march (replace all sex education with "opt in" special classes promoting abstinence instead of giving real information kids need) here in minnesota as well. its distressing.
posted by specialk420 at 10:38 AM on February 3, 2003

This is idiotic. How is displaying Cosmo an 'imposition' on anyone? You don't like it, find another damn store, for crying out loud. Dabitch: get over it. When I was seven I saw a lot of stuff that disgusted me. The surrounding cosmos (due, no doubt, to the universe's absence of third-party cookies) inexplicably failed to customize itself to my particular tastes.

Somehow, I survived.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 11:08 AM on February 3, 2003

How completely amusing and utterly unsurprising that those who dissolve into epileptic knee-jerks over any state interference in an owner's actions on private property positively delight in that same interference when the action becomes as globally sinister and significant as....wait for it.... a magazine cover hinting that adult females do in fact have (whisper) mammary glands.

Such pornography. And here I am perpetuating it. To some of you, I say sincerely that I'm sorry I even had to mention the phrase "mammary glands" for expository purposes ("God's milk delivery units" seemed a little wordy), as I know it will lead many to immediate fantasization, and thence to a life of socialism, vegetarianism, and general debauchery.

Now on this Taliban-Mormon connection thing. Many Mormons and other fundamentalists like the Taliban want to make decision for others based on unquestioning faith in "scripture" or "the Prophet" or the patriarchy that rules their lives. Drawing a veil over a woman's face ain't all that different from making sure her "cleavage" and legs are well camouflaged. The Latter Day Saint ideal (which formerly included polygamy) of keeping women segregated with the kiddies and the vacuum cleaner is from the same page the Taliban use to keep women at home.

Anecdotally, back at the time of the Iranian revolution (when Khomeini took over), scores of my Mormon friends marveled and delighted initially at the establishment of a religious government in Iran. Frightening....and it's worth noting that Mormonisms' (among others') idea of future utopia is that of an absolute theocracy.

Comparisons to the Taliban are ridiculous and weaken your stance.

Nonsense. Accurate parallels exist, which is why a couple of you became so exercised. But of course I have to concede that the Taliban aren't exactly like the Mormons. The Taliban (as far as I know) never systematically excluded those of African descent from full participation in their "church" like the Mormons did until 1978 (and even today one may find writing from the Book of Mormon and Mormon "apostles" like Bruce McConkie on "light skin" versus "dark skin" pretty horrifying). Admittedly, however, the Taliban do seem to have been guilty of their own particular sad forms of bigotry.

Why is it that if a group of people who belong to a certain religion and feel a certain way promote a certain legislation, they're accused of trying to turn the state into a theocracy, but if a bunch of, say, liberal atheists promote the opposite legislation nobody cares about it?

Oh, right. "Nobody cares about it". We never hear over and over again from a certain nauseating crowd about a supposed "liberal" or "atheistic" agenda on issues like abortion or the pledge of allegiance or school prayer prayer or school boards that dare keep the mention of both God and Santa Claus out of their curriculum.

"Nobody cares about it." Sheesh, talk about a butt-pulled statistic....
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 11:30 AM on February 3, 2003

oissubke - tax reasons? there are plenty of reasons not to get married, a lot of people here get engaged and spend their "wedding party money" on a first apartment rather than a big white dress - then stay engaged forever. In scandinavia we witnessed a marriage boom when taxes favoured married people [1990]. so yeah, reasons like that.

it wasn't a buttpulled stat - though i had the rate of divorce and amount of married people admitting to having affairs confused.

Ismael - I dont mind porn like that now that I am an adult - but I really dont think it is apropriate on the bottom shelf in a kid candy store and nothing will make me think it is - especially not your attitude.
Besides, I only mentioned that to alert specialK to the fact that liberal old Sweden and Holland actually cover up porn-mags.
posted by dabitch at 12:14 PM on February 3, 2003

specialk:

Yes, I can assure you I read the article. No one is being forced to do anything here. For a comparison to the Taliban to be justified, the woman would need to be carrying a machine gun and ordering the stores to stop selling said material altogether. This is hardly the case. The store owners simply made a business decision, that keeping the magazines behind a cover won't hurt their sales more than having a (seemingly large) number of customers stop shopping there. Simply a function of the market, and in this particular area of the US, the market likes it boobies covered up. I see no problem with this. Perhaps Utah will catch up with the rest of the US's level of acceptance of pervasive sexuality sooner or later. Perhaps not. But no one's getting hurt here.
posted by Space Coyote at 12:17 PM on February 3, 2003

Er, doesn't this woman's position exclude rather a lot of Christian art, poetry, etc.? Renaissance religious painting, for example, regularly features mammaries and cleavage in prominent locations, among other, ah, human attributes. (See here and here and here and here and here and here and...) And erotic (sometimes homoerotic) imagery has often played a major part in devotional poetry--John Donne being the most famous example.
posted by thomas j wise at 12:18 PM on February 3, 2003

Many Mormons and other fundamentalists like the Taliban want to make decision for others based on unquestioning faith in "scripture" or "the Prophet" or the patriarchy that rules their lives.

*Breeeeet* I call ruminant feculence!

As a woman living in a free country, Mrs. Hamilton is exercising her rights. That's all.

Comparisons to fascist regimes is just so much aggravated nonsense.
posted by hama7 at 3:01 PM on February 3, 2003

Well, in our church the men are advised not to look. You may find that ridiculous, but then I won't hold any of you nonChristians to the same standards I have.

I do miss the times when there wasn't so much flesh on display- I can remember stumbling across my stepgrandfather's girlie mags years ago and the pics in it really weren't that far off from what I can see in many women's magazines now.

Innocence for children is actually a good thing. They grow up soon enough.
posted by konolia at 3:35 PM on February 3, 2003

konolia: "Innocence" is only good if it means 'not guilty'. In the sense you're using it is another word for 'lack of understanding', 'ignorance', or 'naivete'. It implies weakness, helplessness, and lack of understanding. It is a bad thing to be 'innocent', because innocence makes a person vulnerable to harm. They don't "grow up soon enough", it's not something that can be expected to suddenly happen in the future, it's happening now. The child is, right now, having the experiences that will shape their adult personality.

The cultural practices of conflating sex with shame, discouraging (often violently) any childhood sexual activity at all, and keeping children as completely ignorant of sex until as late as possible in their lives is far, far more harmful than any amount of exposure to nude pictures could ever be. Calling the Utah nutjobs a "Taliban" is going a bit far, but it is true that they do pose a social danger. They are harmful to the psychological development of children, especially their own.

Some degree of management of children's exposure to sexual matters is entirely reasonable. A responsible parent should ensure that children are gradually taught, from the time that they are capable of understanding it, what sex is about. Which is not just the mechanics of reproduction, but the importance of sex to society; how it affects the way men and women (including the child's own parents) behave, and influences the things we do, like marriage and family life, and gender behavior. How sex can be a good thing, and how it can be physically or emotionally dangerous. Tell them what they might personally expect to go through as they reach puberty, start forming relationships, and what might be expected of them as a parent themselves. How they should ethically behave, which should naturally follow from the idea of sex being emotionally important.

Similarly a responsible parent should educate their children about religion and politics and money and culture and all the other aspects of life that go into becoming an independent, intelligent, responsible adult. Perhaps we should be grateful that these wackos confine their stupid crusade to burying sexuality, but then I suppose we have other kinds of wackos to plague us in other areas of life.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 4:21 PM on February 3, 2003

You don't get it.

I had a childhood where I just didn't have to think about sex. Freud called it a "latency period".

I did know where babies came from, but it wasn't a big deal. I was too busy climbing trees, catching doodlebugs, and playing jacks to be concerned with that grownup stuff.

My children weren't innocent in the way I described it. It wasn't and isn't safe nowadays. I had to explain a lot of things a lot earlier than I really wanted to simply because they were already hearing about it outside the home. When my youngest daughter was in second grade she came home crying because the other students were saying she "did it" with a boy in the class (not true) and everyone in the class knew what "doing it" was.

Does a seven year old really need to deal with that?
posted by konolia at 5:06 PM on February 3, 2003

Does a seven year old really need to deal with that?
Apparently, yes. Good for you for "explaining a few things". That is responsible parenting. Do you understand that people of JoAnn Hamilton's kind can be expected to react irrationally instead? May well punish the daughter for repeating 'bad words', refuse to explain anything sexual to her at all, and demand the school take harsh action against the other students? Do you "get" that their reactions cause harm in themselves?
posted by aeschenkarnos at 5:39 PM on February 3, 2003

If anyone can't see the similarities between a raving religious wacko declaring a jihad on Cosmo, and the Taliban - you aren't looking close enough.
posted by owillis at 6:02 PM on February 3, 2003

Do you understand that people of JoAnn Hamilton's kind can be expected to react irrationally instead?

Utterly off base, insulting, and vaguely frightening.

Do you "get" that their reactions cause harm in themselves?

No, and please don't make this a pop-psyche shouting match.

This thread is about a woman who doesn't care for porn, and some raving, hysterical comparison of her actions to a murderous Islamist dictatorship.

Next, let's compare Mister Rogers to Joseph Goebbels for some really hilarious fun hijinks, which may devolve into a Bush administration bash-fest!!!!! Hoo Hoo!
posted by hama7 at 10:33 PM on February 3, 2003