Fobsvithing Obediently

Master Fob's thoughts on obedience, as inspired by a discourse delivered in church last week:

Obedience is a valuable tool in raising children. S-Boogie is not quite old enough to understand (despite previous experience) that taking off her own diaper can have disastrous consequences, but she is old enough to understand that she should obey Mommy and Daddy's counsel to not remove her own diaper. Similarly, she is not old enough to understand that running in the street or parking lot could have even more disastrous consequences, but she can understand that obeying her parents when they tell her not to run into the street is a good thing. Therefore, it is in her own and everyone's best interest for her to learn obedience.

This principle extends into adulthood only insofar as God understands consequences that we, like children, do not. I might not understand the full extent of the consequences of killing people I do not like, but I can trust that God does and therefore I obey his commandment that I shall not kill.

This is God telling adults what to do, though, not adults telling other adults. I acknowledge that God often speaks to people through other people. As a self-proclaimed follower of God, it is my responsibility to determine when people are speaking for God and when they are not. Theric, for example, might suggest to me that I eat more raisins. I might not understand why in the world I should eat more raisins, but if I pray about it and I feel that this suggestion, counsel, or commandment comes from God, then I will trust that God knows why I should eat more raisins and act accordingly. If I determine that the counsel is Theric's alone, though, I am under no obligation to follow it and I would appreciate if he would respect that. (The jerk.)

Here's my take on Gordon B. Hinckley's counsel that good Latter-day Saints should not have more than two piercings if female and none at all if male: I honestly have not prayed about it because it doesn't matter to me. I have no desire to pierce my body so I don't need to know whether God considers it a sin. If you have prayed about it and you feel the counsel is from God, please follow it and please ensure that your underage children do so as well. If other adults don't feel that the counsel comes from God, though, and choose not to follow it, I believe it is everyone else's responsibility as decent human beings to respect that. I can't speak for everyone, but I find it annoying when my fellow adults call me to repentance on some counsel or commandment that I honestly do not feel comes from God. Determining what is right and wrong is every human being's right and responsibility and should be respected.

A lot of people explain the piercing thing by saying that it's not really about how many piercings you have but how obedient you are. You are welcome to believe this if you choose to, but it does not fit with my personal understanding of God and the universe. God has plenty of opportunity to teach his children obedience with commandments that really do matter; I can't imagine why he would throw arbitrary commandments at us just to make sure we'll obey the important ones.

So if you are ever speaking at a meeting where the congregation is spread thin and you politely ask everyone to move forward, I probably will comply with your request just because that's the nice thing to do. But please don't try to make a moral issue out of it. I obey God as much as I can, but I feel no obligation to obey people on power trips.

Superman Returns

I should be in bed right now and I'm going to regret it tomorrow morning when S-Boogie wakes me at 7:30, but I couldn't go to bed without blogging about Superman Returns. Foxy and I saw it this afternoon, and I was blown away. And not just because the volume in the theater was turned up ridiculously high--the movie is amazing on a lot of levels. The action sequences and SFX are incredible. To quote the tagline to the 1978 version of Superman, you will believe a man can fly. Sure, Superman does lots of cool stuff, but nothing as cool as flying, and the flying scenes are... wow.

At any rate, my favorite part of the movie is not the flying or the action or Kevin Spacey's superb performance as Lex Luthor or even Brandon Routh in tights. My favorite part is the love story. I like fiction that represents love in a way I find realistic and responsible, and Superman Returns does just that. I won't give too much away, but there's a weird sort of love triangle that results from the fact that Superman has been gone for five years and has come back unexpectedly, and all three parties involved in the triangle act realistically, responsibly, and maturely--like adults, not teenagers, which is how adults in most romantic movies tend to act. In the real world, or at least in any part of the real world that involves any kind of lasting happiness, love is not some raging passionate force that takes complete control of you, but rather it is a raging passionate force that takes complete control of you, balanced by rational decisions of whom and how to love. All three parties in the love triangle in Superman Returns portray both sides of this equation: the passion and the ration (which would be more clever if "ration" meant what I want it to mean here). I've long been a fan of Superman, but now Bryan Singer has made me a fan of Lois Lane.

The Posts I Haven't Been Writing

• What I like about my new job (#1: on the first day they let me ring the bell in the tower)
• Fobsvithe on how I feel about obedience as a principle of spiritual growth (and why the earring thing is about earrings, regardless of what anyone says, and why moving to the front of the congregation when the speaker asks you to is not a moral issue)
• A post inviting people to accompany me and Foxy to Superman Returns tomorrow (Thursday) at 12:30 at Riverwoods.
• A post inviting people to join me and Foxy at a free Michael Franti & Spearhead concert in Salt Lake next Thursday.
• A post about how three different sets of people expect me to be in three different places come September, and I'm not sure which to choose (though one set, the one that expects me to be teaching at UVSC, just needs to be informed that I won't be there)
• How I can breathe now that I'm taking steroids.
• How I was ashamed to learn Monday that I have periodontal disease from not flossing regularly but pleased to learn that I have no cavities from brushing regularly.
• How I'm wondering if having a family life [with the new and improved family and the second job to support them] means I won't have time to have a social life, and how that would be a sucky sacrifice to make but there's no question about whether I'd make it.
• How, despite the fact that I feel tired lately and have basically no free time and I miss my friends, I feel happy because it's good to be Foxy J's husband and S-Boogie and Little Dude's dad.

More Deep Thoughts With Master Fob

As I was in the bathroom just now, Little Dude sleeping snugly in the sling/pouch thingee that hangs over my tummy, it occurred to me: "Now I know why men don't get pregnant. It's hard to aim when you can't see what you're doing."

Reasons Why It's Petty and Ridiculous of Me to Feel My Thunder Has Been Stolen

• Daniel and Jay are cool guys. They are way more articulate than I would be on film, and they are way more involved in gay Mormon issues. I know it's important to them to get people thinking and talking about what it means to be gay and Mormon, and hopefully them being on Nightline will forward that cause.
• Even though I'm sure that when Nightline initially expressed interest in interviewing me and Foxy J, they thought it would be a great idea to interview a real life "Brokeback marriage" (an inaccurate term in several ways), in reality we wouldn't have been very interesting. It would have gone something like this:
• Nightline: What's it like being gay, Mormon, and married?
• Master Fob: Hm. It's, well, it's pretty much like being straight, Mormon, and married. Not much is different about our lives. We're happy. No one persecutes us, no one hates us, no one tells us we're doing the wrong thing. Despite my paranoia, I've never experienced any judging from gays or Mormons. People are pretty happy to let us be. I mean, sure, I'm annoyed by some of the Church's policies and actions toward homosexuals, but it's not like any of that really affects me.
• Foxy J: I like Fobby. We're happy.
• Master Fob: Isn't our baby cute?
• Crickets: Chirp.
• Daniel and Jay are much more representative than Foxy and I, I think, of the conflict of being gay and Mormon.
• What if, while they were interviewing us, Foxy's placenta had ruptured? That would have been embarrassing.

Still, though, they could have used some of the footage from FHEfamily with me and Streetguy whispering rudely in the back. Oh well. At least Streetguy's grandparents won't see him on national television at a gay issues group.

Bi-

Starting some time next week, I will be a bilibrarian. I'm quite happy about this turn of events.

The two libraries I'll be working at are very different. One tends to be more elitist in its philosophy, purchasing not what is popular but that which is determined to be of high quality and lasting value (however they determine that). The other tends to be more populist, purchasing items that the public wants and avoiding other items that, while considered high quality, might be offensive to the general public (however they determine that). I, personally, fall somewhere between these two philosophies. I believe a public library has a duty to provide the public with what they want, but at the same time I feel that catering to the majority's (in this case conservative Mormon) values can easily alienate the minority, who should also have a voice in what their public library should be. I think it will be interesting for me to work at both libraries and figure out the best way to balance these conflicting views of librarianship.

I'm also excited because my new library job, like my current library job, pays $6/hr more than any of the other options I was looking at. Life is good.

Day (and Night) One with Baby Fob at Home in the Fobcave

The nice thing about the second baby is that we've been through this all before so we have a better idea of what we're doing and a clearer view of the light at the end of the tunnel. As Little Dude (aka LD, the newborn formerly known as Baby Fob) alternated between eating for two minutes, sleeping for five, and screeching at us until four o'clock in the morning, it was reassuring to remember that this does not last more than a few months at most. And this specific this won't last more than a couple weeks, as nothing with infants lasts more than a couple weeks before growing into something else.

The frustrating thing about the second baby is that we've already been through all this before and we've gotten past it so it seems a little silly to go through it all again. We're almost (speaking optimistically) past the diaper phase with S-Boogie, and now we're starting all over again. Sigh.

The temporary consolation is that he's quite cute, and the more lasting consolation is that he's a human being--and a potentially wonderful human being at that--and human beings simply don't come into the world without somebody having to endure sleepless nights and dirty diapers. In the end it'll be worth it.