![\"MMM](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/09\/469px-2011_MMM_Men_and_Boys_Monument_-_30_April_2014.jpg\")
<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph) \u00a0Do you really imagine that we\u2019re not going to address the Mountain Meadows Massacre? \u00a0Really?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
I\u2019ve been seeing complaints in a few circles that our treatment of certain topics in the Becoming Brigham<\/em> series (e.g., of Brigham Young and race, and of Brigham Young and violence) has been woefully, even shamefully, deficient. \u00a0I\u2019m serenely confident, of course, that, for many of those who are leveling such criticisms, our treatment of those topics will always<\/em> be insufficient, no matter how much time and effort we devote to them. \u00a0The only way in which we could ever hope for the approval of those critics would be to declare Brigham an irredeemable racist, a tyrant, and a mass murderer \u2014 which we\u2019re, well, quite unlikely to do.<\/p>\n But I do want people to bear in mind that we\u2019re not done<\/em>. \u00a0The five installments of Becoming Brigham<\/em> that are currently available (here<\/a>) represent only the merest beginning of the effort, which will ultimately, we anticipate, come to somewhere on the order of seventy-five episodes. \u00a0They have been introductory, and the fifth one<\/a> only came out on Monday<\/em>. \u00a0We have miles to go before we sleep.<\/p>\n Sigh. \u00a0I\u2019ve apparently never done a decent thing in my life, nor had a kind or a good thought. \u00a0My statement, yesterday<\/a>, that I never met Tim Guymon, the long-time typesetter for Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship<\/em> who recently passed away, was instantly seized upon at the Peterson Obsession Board as proof that I\u2019m willing to exploit \u201cthe little people\u201d but that I otherwise disdain them and refuse to mix with them.<\/p>\n After all, I\u2019ve visited Florida innumerable times (presumably with all of my travel and lodging and dining expenses covered by the Interpreter Foundation) while poor Brother Guymon slaved for us, year after year, without any compensation and with no expense account. \u00a0Yet, even so, I couldn\u2019t be bothered to grace him with My Presence even when I was right there with him in Florida, practically in his front yard. \u00a0Heck, chimes in one eager chorister, we never even invited him to join our annual birthday party in Utah.<\/p>\n Actually, Brother Guymon worked as Interpreter\u2019s typesetter on a contract basis, and he was paid for his efforts \u2014 one of our very few paid workers. \u00a0 And he was invited to our birthday party every single year, without fail, even though he lived somewhere near Pensacola, at the western end of the Florida panhandle and, thus, nearly nineteen hundred miles away.<\/p>\n My wife and I visited Florida multiple times because a Second-Generation Unit, a Legally-Recognized Second-Generation Unit, and a Third-Generation Unit lived in Orlando at the time. \u00a0(Their names have been redacted to shield them from the tender mercies of the Obsession Board, and, anyway, they\u2019ve since moved from the state.) \u00a0My wife and I paid for those visits to Florida every single time; no Interpreter monies were used for either our transportation, our food, or our lodging. \u00a0(I believe that such family visits are still considered ethically permissible by most people, perhaps even if they involve me<\/em>.)<\/p>\n Florida is a large state. \u00a0 Orlando, where my family members lived, is slightly more than 450 miles from Pensacola, near which Brother Guymon lived. \u00a0I have never visited Pensacola. \u00a0Brother Guymon wasn\u2019t the only person in the Pensacola area whom I haven\u2019t met.<\/p>\n Note: An additional accusation has now been appended to those above. \u00a0Allen Wyatt, who had had by far the longest and most direct interaction with Tim Guymon of any of us at Interpreter, went down to visit Brother Guymon when the latter\u2019s health began to fail. \u00a0According to the Obsession Board, Allen did so at the expense of Interpreter Foundation donors. \u00a0However, the demonstrable fact is that no Interpreter funds were used to pay for any portion of Allen\u2019s trip \u2014 which probably means, then (and, here, I\u2019m offering my own suggestions, though employing the Obsession Board\u2019s typically rigorous standards of evidence), that Allen\u2019s compensation must have been routed through clandestine Interpreter payments to a Mexican drug cartel, or ISIS, or, my personal favorite, The Syndicate. \u00a0(For enjoyable documentary evidence regarding The Syndicate, see Mission: Impossible \u2013 Rogue Nation<\/i> [2015] and Mission: Impossible \u2013 Fallout<\/i> [2018].]<\/p>\n Even after more than twenty years of this kind of nonsense, the malevolent fantasies of the Obsession Board still sometimes astonish me. \u00a0The hatred slumbers not, nor sleeps.<\/p>\n It\u2019s reassuring to know that the future of American journalism continues to be bright. \u00a0See, for example, this brilliant bit of reporting out of The College of New Jersey: \u00a0\u201cMormonism Goes Mainstream.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 It can be paired with this, from Fox News: \u00a0\u201cMormon-born soda craze is replacing coffee and cocktails across America:\u00a0\u2018Modern take on old-fashioned soda shop\u2019 as young people drink less alcohol\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n The recent appointment of Elder Clark G. Gilbert as the newest member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has drawn fire for a number of reasons, among them his lack of the proper ethnicity or skin color, his Ivy League background, and so forth. \u00a0But a major angle of attack has focused on his efforts to ensure that Brigham Young University (along with its sister schools in Idaho and Hawaii) remains aligned with the doctrines and values of its sponsoring institution, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n This is a far more important matter than the recent sputtering of the University\u2019s basketball team, unfortunate as that is, and it deserves serious attention. \u00a0For the record, I completely support Elder Gilbert\u2019s intentions as, until recently, the Church\u2019s Commissioner of Education. \u00a0People can certainly debate this or that measure toward that end, but the end is, in my judgment, non-negotiable. \u00a0If BYU isn\u2019t to be a genuinely Latter-day Saint school then, to me, it loses any particular interest that it might once have had.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>