The Failures of Mormon Social and Political Conservatism?

Taylor Petrey (who, like me, was among the nineteen signers of a recent amicus brief regarding President Trump’s executive orders on immigration) offers a challenging point of view in the Deseret News:

“The failures of Mormon conservatism”

Let me say, first of all, that I’ve defended political diversity in the Church.  I have no desire to drive Democrats or even socialists from membership in the Kingdom.  I’ve drawn considerable flak, to choose just one example, for my defenses — even while strongly disagreeing with him — of the Mormonism of former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid.  (See, for instance, “My brother Harry Reid.”)

I agree with Professor Petrey that we’ve lost a number of people over social issues, and specifically over matters relating to gender and sexuality.  And I’m distressed by those losses.  But I also think, when I consider those who seem to reject the Gospel in order to follow a political ideology, of a remark from the heroic Rev. William Law (d. 1761) of which Elder Neal A. Maxwell was very fond:  “If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.”  And I can’t help but be reminded of the prophecy recorded in Matthew 24:24 about how “false Christs, and false prophets, . . . shall deceive the very elect,” as well as of the description given in Doctrine and Covenants 1:16:

“They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall.”

I disagree with Professor Petrey’s notion that conservative Latter-day Saints favor “strong government oversight of sex and gender.”  Nobody among the opponents of same-sex marriage of whom I’m aware was calling for government intrusions into private homes and bedrooms.  We opposed redefinition of the term marriage by government (i.e., judicial) fiat.  We didn’t favor state-certification of same-sex relationships using that term.  In fact, we were (in this and in other respects) opposed to strong government action in such areas.

I also disagree with what I see — ironically, given his own claims in the article — as his sexualization of conservatism.  It’s concerned with a great many issues that are quite unrelated to gender and sexuality.

And when he declares that “Conservatism . . . turned moral analysis of wealth and poverty over to the amorality of libertarian economics,” I respond that I would much rather have free markets regulating the production and distribution of economic value than coercion by bureaucratic state functionaries.  I see no reason whatever to believe them wiser than, or morally superior to, free economic agents.  Free markets have produced far more wealth and well-being for far wider classes of humanity than have statist economies, and governments have killed vastly more people — both in wars against others and in the oppression of their own citizens — than have non-governmental agents.

Finally, when Professor Petrey laments Mormon conservatives’ “libertarian free-market approach to . . . economic problems” and their supposed “nationalist protectionism,” I can’t even see a coherent complaint.  As someone who leans very libertarian on economic issues, I oppose “nationalist protectionism.”  (Readers of this blog over the past year or two will be well aware of my early and consistent opposition to the presidential ambitions of Donald J. Trump, which partly rested on his protectionist rhetoric.)  Libertarianism and “nationalist protectionism” are not only quite distinct things, they’re contradictory.  Free trade and protective tariffs are incompatible with one another.

I don’t have the time or the energy right now to respond as completely as I would like to Professor Petrey’s column.  But I call your attention to these three replies:

“The Case for Mormon Conservatism, a reply to Taylor Petrey”

“Mormons, conservatives beware, a response to Taylor Petrey”

“The true relationship between LDS and conservatism, a response to Taylor Petrey”

Posted from Jerusalem