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“Utah ranked 50th in US gender equality, including last in education, health”

“Utah ranked 50th in US gender equality, including last in education, health”

Last updated on: August 24, 2017 at 4:41 pm by Dan Peterson

“Utah ranked 50th in US gender equality, including last in education, health” 2017-08-24T16:41:34-06:00 Dan Peterson

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We won’t make it this time, but, someday, I would like to make it across the border to visit the Tijuana Mexico Temple, which was dedicated in late 2015. (LDS Media Library)

Once again, the Deseret News opens its pages to permit me to express my never-ending volcanic rage and to smear and verbally assault all those who disagree with me:

“‘Archaeology, Relics and Book of Mormon Belief'”

***

We’re just back from an excellent lunch with the daughter of some former neighbors. Cucina urbana is in the Banker’s Hill section of San Diego, on the corner of Fifth and Laurel, not too far from Balboa Park and a reasonable walk — we walked it — from where we’re staying. It’s a bit pricey for Italian food, but then, it’s not your usual Italian food. I thought it was extraordinarily good, and I recommend it very highly.

***

Here’s a small but nice collection of photographs that you might enjoy, taken in my adopted home state:

“Believe your eyes: 9 (un)real photos taken in Utah this summer”

***

I found this interesting:

“LDS Leaders Open to Progression after Judgement”

I myself lean toward a cautious (and very long-term) near-universalism. I don’t know that it’s true, but I’m rooting for it.

I’ve quoted a line here before from the late great Pope St. John Paul II, whom I greatly admired and whom I had the privilege of seeing at rather close quarters during a relatively small meeting in Rome not long before his death:

When asked if a Christian must believe in Hell, he responded: “Yes, but we can hope that it will be empty.”

I like that.

***

Here’s a blog entry from Ken Gourdin that’s related to the subject of my little note of yesterday that was titled “Some Thoughts about the Temple”:

“You Breathed My Name Aloud”

***

Finally, there’s this:

“Utah ranked 50th in US gender equality, including last in education, health”

I look forward to a serious discussion of what, if anything, this ranking really means. (I realize that I’m probably looking forward in vain.)

I wonder whether the metrics used in the rankings are necessarily the best, whether there might be others at least as valuable if not better. I would like to see some reflection on whether or not the measurements used are (perhaps unjustifiably) skewed against traditional family arrangements, and whether or not they unfairly privilege certain sociopolitical policy stances and results (e.g., on health care). Do they ignore, or minimize, divorce rates and abandoned families and impoverished female-headed households? Overall, is Utah really the worst state in the Union for women? That seems fairly doubtful to me. Are the United States really 45th out of the world’s 144 nations in terms of quality of life for women? Again, I doubt it very much.

Is the study on which the ranking is based biased, wittingly or unwittingly, against the (free) choices (voluntarily) made by many Utah women to marry, to withdraw from the workforce (and from politics) for greater or lesser periods of time, and to raise unusually large families? Does it, in other words, penalize those who deviate from an approved model of an ideal woman’s life cycle?

Does the quality of ordinary women’s lives really depend, in any direct and obvious way, on the proportion of them who are represented by women in the United States Senate and House of Representatives and in their state legislatures? My wife and I are represented in the Utah Senate by a woman who happens to be a very good friend. We like her a lot. But I somehow doubt that my wife’s existence would be seriously marred should our friend choose to retire and be replaced by a man of similar views.

Such headline-grabbing studies as this should never be taken simply at face value. Perhaps this ranking points to serious issues. Perhaps it doesn’t. Perhaps it points to almost nothing at all. Anyway, although it will certainly be weaponized for deployment against Mormonism — indeed, it already has been — it shouldn’t be used or abused in that way without serious thought. (Don’t hold your breath.)

Anyway, I find myself thinking of the very well-received 2014 FairMormon remarks of our friend Sharon Eubank:

“This is a Woman’s Church”

Posted from San Diego, California

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“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” (George Orwell, "1984")

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