Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Latter-day Saint
Of Rainbow Flags and Anarchy

Of Rainbow Flags and Anarchy

Last updated on: June 29, 2022 at 10:01 pm by Dan Peterson

Of Rainbow Flags and Anarchy 2022-06-29T22:01:17-06:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A 2013 photograph of the United States Supreme Court building, taken from the dome of the U.S. Capitol in Washington DC
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

***

Interpreter Radio Show — June 5, 2022

In the first hour of the 5 June 2022 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show, Neal Rappleye, Jasmin Rappleye, Hales Swift, and Stephen Smoot discussed the Mormon History Association and ancient trans-oceanic crossings. The second portion of the Show was devoted to a roundtable discussing the upcoming Come Follow Me lesson #29 (2 Kings 17–25). The weekly Interpreter Radio Show can be heard live on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640. Alternatively, you can listen to it live, uncensored, and without a safety net on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.

***

Owing to the fatal illness of a long-time friend, Michael Lyon, who was a hospice patient there, my wife and I visited Utah Valley Hospital yesterday afternoon. Obviously, the most important thing that weighed on our minds was the condition of our friend. (I received word just minutes ago that Michael has now passed away, as was anticipated.) Still, I couldn’t help but notice a couple of rainbow flags festooning the pedestrian bridge that links the hospital campus to other medical buildings across Fifth West and, even more, the trio of flags — American, Utah, and rainbow — atop the flag poles at the main southern entrance to the hospital complex. (There may well be other rainbow flags elsewhere but, if so, I didn’t see them.)

I was struck by the presence of these flags, and I wondered, frankly, why they were there. Yes, I know it’s “Pride Month” — doesn’t everybody? see “Explorers Discover Remote Island Untouched By Pride Month” — but still I wondered. (Wondering is, I believe, still legally and ethically permissible.)

If the rainbow flag is taken simply as affirming the value of treating all people (including those who experience same-sex attraction, gender dysphoria, and related matters) with kindness and respect — and I assume that many take it in much that way — then I see no problem with its display on government and quasi-government buildings such as Utah Valley Hospital. Notwithstanding the strenuous daily efforts of a tiny group of anonymous online detractors over the past fifteen years or so, I’m very much in favor of charity and mutual respect. But I’m not sure that that is all that the rainbow flag represents. I may be mistaken, and I’m certainly open to re-education on the matter, but it seems to me that the flag frequently and perhaps, in a sense, primarily represents a particular ideology or complex of ideologies and a broad but specific and insistent political agenda. In which case, I think it quite inappropriate for the rainbow flag to be displayed on any government or quasi-government building. State institutions should not be publicly taking partisan, political, or ideological stands.

In that light and with the heightened awareness induced by my having seen those flags yesterday, I found this article of considerable interest:

“Draping Yourself in a Rainbow Flag Doesn’t Help Me Feel Loved”

***

I’ve been remiss in calling your attention to new entries on the sadly necessary Neville-Neville Land blog. So here are links to the most recent articles there:

“Heartlanders expect the apostles’ views to change”

“Elder Quentin L. Cook is a member of the citation cartel”

“Spencer Kraus’s devastating review of Jonathan Neville’s A Man that Can Translate”

“Spencer Kraus’s trenchant review of Jonathan Neville’s Infinite Goodness”

***

Finally, I hereby designate the comments section for this blog entry as a preserve in which the reader who calls himself “The Last Danite” should feel himself completely at liberty to post his notions about democracy being merely a tyranny of the majority, about disdaining the Constitution of the United States, and about how everything would be wonderful if we just lived under stateless anarchy. “The Last Danite” should not feel free, however, to take other threads over for such, umm, ideas. I will try to resist the urge to interact with him here regarding his curious views — I’ve wasted too much time on them already — but any others who care to engage with him should feel entirely free to do so in comments appended to this specific blog entry.

I’ll get things started here by saying that there has never been a society in human history in which nobody has exercised authority over anybody else. Moreover, pending the Millennium and the Second Coming, if even then, there will never be such a society. In my view, the wholly voluntary society that TLD affects to favor — that is to say, an anarchic society — would very soon resemble that described by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan: “No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Or, as Sir Isaiah Berlin put it, “Freedom for the wolves has often meant death for the sheep.” Seriously advocated anarchism is, in my judgment, quite unserious fatuous utopianism.

TLD points out that much of my life — within my family, among my friends, and in the Church, to choose three areas that are vitally important to me — is actually lived, right now, under conditions of “anarchy.” (I would prefer to say that I live within networks of voluntary relations.) And, of course, most of my financial or economic life is also, happily, a matter of freely entered transactions. As a free-market-oriented, limited government, federalist conservative, this is as I think it should be. (I like the great George Will’s response when he was asked whether he is a libertarian. “Libertarianish,” he replied.) But my largely voluntary and free life is lived within, and to at least some degree structured and made possible by, a framework of laws backed by the state. When I sign contracts, I expect them to be enforced — if need be — by the law. I rely on the fact that, should my property rights be infringed, the courts will defend them. Should I be threatened, the police power of the state will be there, in principle and I hope in reality, to protect me, to deter the person making the threat or to punish the offender after the fact. I’m especially happy at this time that abortion is not a matter of lawless anarchy, and that, to some degree or another in the fifty United States, the lives of unborn children will be protected rather than be exposed to the untrammeled free choices of people who don’t value such lives.

I recognize that, as Mao famously said, “political power flows from the barrel of a gun.” In other words, government power rests, ultimately, on the power to coerce. That’s what distinguishes state power, ideally, from the power of Microsoft or that of the American Federation of Teachers: The state claims a legal monopoly on force. That is why I firmly believe that the scope of government should be strictly limited. Force should be minimized in human life. But force cannot realistically be expected to simply go away. I cannot agree with the notion that there should be no government at all. For, if there is no state at all to exercise force through its police, military, and judicial functions, force will nevertheless be employed within a society. I would far rather have a government that seeks to prevent and to punish rape, for example, than a state of anarchy in which the powerful freely rape the weak when and if they choose. The state should never have enforced slavery or segregated buses. But it needs to exist in order to protect against lynch mobs.

Nor can I see how an American Latter-day Saint can disdain the Constitution of the United States while apparently claiming to be in harmony with the scriptures. For, in Doctrine and Covenants 101: 77-78, 80, given in mid-December 1833 in Kirtland, Ohio, the Lord himself speaks of

the laws and constitution of the people, which I have suffered to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles; that every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment. . . . And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose.

There. That should be enough bait to bring “The Last Danite” to this blog entry’s comment section. And, as I say, anybody who wants to engage him here should freely jump in. I myself hope not to do so.

Previous Post

June 28, 2022

An experience with Hugh Nibley

Next Post

June 30, 2022 Vladimir Kara-Murza and a Friend

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 March 2014 August 2013 February 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Deuteronomy" mean in Greek?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Great Journey Many Stories Sacred Song Second Law