COINCIDENCE, RELIGION, SAME SEX MARRIAGE AND POLITICS
PROVOKE HEADACHES FOR MASSACHUSETTS MORMONS

By R.B. Scott

BOSTON, MASS. (May 14, 2006) -- Circumstance and coincidence often combine to create conflicts that can be easily misconstrued, especially in election seasons super charged by passionate disagreements over how pious teachings should influence public policy.

Liberal Massachusetts is a harbinger for 2008 because it permits same sex marriage and its religious governor -- a Mormon and born-again conservative Republican -- wants to be President in 2008. Consequently, there seem to be more political, religious and moral activists, sleuths and operatives encamped here than you can shake a stick at.

A few weeks back some of them banged the drum loudly when the Mormon Church - the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - "announced" it supported the concept of a constitutional amendment defining marriage. Is there any reader on the planet unaware that the Mormon Church opposes same sex marriage? The "announcement," such as it was, only restated its position. Kill the drum roll.

Moreover, it was tied to a rather pedestrian event: a Mormon apostle and other religious leaders signing a document endorsing the need for a marriage amendment. Mute the trumpets.

My sources insisted that apostle's action was simply a careful restatement of principle, not a commitment to tactics. Neither was it an effort to tell members how to act nor should anyone assume the church will do anything more than express its position, as a matter or principle.

Although the church does not consider Same Sex Marriage a "wedge" issue, some members do. Last Fall as the church was advising its leaders in Massachusetts to avoid getting involved in marriage amendment activities, The Legacy Law Foundation - founded and run by Mormons - was recruiting the faithful to collect signatures in support of a ballot initiative. Foundation director Elizabeth Harmer-Dionne, a well-educated attorney, exploited her Mormon connections in an e-mail message:

"Later today, I will copy … you on an e-mail … giving final times and places for the two meetings … information as to wards [a "ward" is the Mormon equivalent of "parish"] where we have representatives and wards where we still need them…"

"A brief introduction … I hold degrees from Wellesley College, the University of Cambridge, and Stanford Law School. My husband … serves as bishop of the Cambridge 1st Ward. .."

Reacting to complaints from other Mormons, the organization dropped language implying a church connection. Dionne's Utah-based organization is only one of several advocacy groups - like Family Leader Network and its parent Meridian Magazine -- that play-up church connections.

But, back to Temple Square's "statement of principle:" it implies that the state-by-state campaigns were unnecessary because same sex marriage is not forbidden by the Constitution, which is what many serious constitutional scholars have argued for years.

Incidentally: if the Constitution permits same sex marriage, then all the hoo-haw about the twisted, agenda-laden activist judges of Massachusetts and California amounts to a rubbish heap of demagoguery and partisan politicking.

The "amendment solution" creates a few ironies, which may explain why the church regards it as statement of principle only. Long ago the church argued that plural marriage was protected. It relinquished to save itself from dissolution, free its men from prison and win statehood for Utah.

The church proudly proclaims the Constitution was divinely inspired. True, the diviners built-in the arduous amendment process for fixing what they overlooked. It is disingenuous to argue they overlooked marriage - after all, most were husbands.

Thirty years ago the church argued that passage of the Equal Rights Amendment could unintentionally curtail important protections for mothers and children. Likewise, DOMA may inadvertently eliminate crucial marriage benefits.

More on point: the church is quite good at counting noses. It must realize an amendment will not win Congressional support. It has to be developing compromises that will not provoke people of goodwill to behave badly.

David Parker spent a night in the Lexington, Massachusetts town jail last year ago after he staged a one-man sit-in demanding prior notification before his son's kindergarten class was taught about homosexuality. Since same sex marriage is legal in the state, the school said it would not comply.
A year later, the same school dismissed a similar request from Joseph Robert (Robb) and Robin Wirthlin, whose second grader was read a fairy tale - not part of the curriculum -- about a young prince in search of a princess who falls for her brother.

Although the Wirthlins joined the Parkers in what could be a precedent-setting Federal lawsuit, "all we wanted was to have the teacher notify us before she teaches this theme," said Wirthlin, a graduate student working on his Ph.D.

The story should end there. But, the 2008 Presidential campaign has already begun. Someone is bound to make something of the fact that the Wirthlins are devout Mormons, in fact Robb is the namesake grandson of Elder Joseph Wirthlin, an apostle of the church. He is also the grand-nephew of Richard (Dick) Wirthlin, the media-savvy Washington opinion pollster who served Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party, Massachusetts Governor and likely Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the Mormon Church, and had a hand in founding organizations that oppose same sex marriage.

Coincidentally, Romney is on a mission to convince the Christian Right he's really one of them (mercifully he's not). A press agent could not have concocted a more compelling way to demonstrate Romney's change of heart on same sex unions than to stage a shootout on Mitt's home turf between arrogant radical-chic school officials and a principled, guileless grad student trying to be a good dad.

Even though Wirthlin says "it's been years" since he talked to his celebrated grand uncle and that he's never met Mitt Romney, he concedes the coincidences are enough to make a grad student's head hurt all the way to November, 2008.

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Faux Pas Abound: Fox News' Chris Wallace Hounds Romney on Mormonism;
Boston Globe Lifts Unchecked, Non-attributed and Out-of-date quotes;
On Cue BYU Abandons Troublesome African-American Professor

By RB Scott

ADVISORY: Parts of this story were published Friday evening 3/3/2006 and updated on Saturday (3/4/2006) and Sunday (3/5/2006). A version was published by the Salt Lake Tribune.)

Last Sunday, when Fox Television anchor Chris Wallace attempted to plumb the depths of Mitt Romney's Mormon beliefs, the prospective Presidential candidate was plainly edgy, as he often is when pressed about his religion. This time he parried with a deflective line worthy of Jack Kennedy.

"America has a political religion and that people who are elected to office subscribe to this political religion, which is to place the oath of office, an oath to abide by a nation of laws and the Constitution, above all others."

Romney needs to "gird up" his loins, as the inspiring Mormon hymn "Come, Come Ye Saints" exhorts, and steel himself for intense hectoring down the road. Like it or not, questions about Mormon dogma will hound him wherever he goes, as they did in 1994 when he ran against Senator Ted Kennedy and preferred not to delve into religious matters.

His church, directly or indirectly, is not making his life any easier.

On Saturday, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, flagship of the six-college Mormon education system, had not reviewed the contract of Darron Smith, an African-American Smith diversity counselor and adjunct professor of sociology. Smith says he was told he had been terminated because of his outspoken view that "happy face" kind of racism still exists in the church, nearly 40 years after the policy prohibiting black members from being ordained to the priesthood was forsaken. For more than a decade, he and many others have been encouraging the church to formally renounce the "folk doctrines" that were once offered as justification for the abandoned policy.

More on that increasingly troublesome matter later.

The problem for Mitt Romney is that he and Mormonism are inextricably linked, for better and worse. Perhaps the intense scrutiny is warranted, given Romney's long service as a local and regional ecclesiastical leader of his church, where service is unpaid, even if time-consuming. In this regard, he is not your "ordinary" believer like Kennedy was.

It is nonetheless odd that reporters like Wallace, Jewish by heritage, seem unashamed to badger Mormon candidates about arcane religious doctrines over which they have no control. Such reporters seem fixated on teachings that nettle various mainline Christians and evangelicals. The chief beef is Mormonism's claim to being the "one true religion," and a close second and third are the church's non-traditional-Trinitarian definition of God and the abandoned practice of polygamy.

Now the once divisive issue of racism, which Mormons thought they'd put behind them in 1978, resurrects itself just in time to undercut the Presidential aspirations of favorite son Mitt Romney.

The Sunday before his testy interview with Wallace, Romney had no opportunity to comment on an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe that lifted information and verbatim quotes without attribution from a Los Angeles Times story written nine years earlier (the Times included statements from a book written nearly 50 years ago, since, disavowed and apologized for by it's author.) that raised the once exclusionary priesthood policy forsaken by the church nearly three decades ago.

The writer of the op-ed was the estimable John H. Bunzel, past president of San Jose State University and a senior research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Bunzel argued the policy the church abandoned in 1978, one that once prevented black members from being ordained to the priesthood, could come back to undermine Romney's Presidential aspirations.

The troublesome excerpt reads: "However, critics of the church maintain that although the ban has been removed, the doctrine has not changed. 'It's the linkage to Cain that so distresses Mormon African-Americans today,' says California attorney Dennis Gladwell, who has been working with church leaders calling for change. 'It places their spiritual lineage in shambles, since they are alleged descendants of a man who has come to symbolize evil on the same level as Lucifer himself." These are precisely the points made by BYU's Smith.

The only problem with the Gladwell quotes is that they are old. They reflected his opinion nine years ago. Since then, "California Attorney" Gladwell, once a senior partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Irvine, California, has retired and is now living in Utah. "I haven't visited this issue in nearly a decade," Gladwell said in a telephone interview from his home near Ogden, Utah where he too, like Romney once did, serves in the bishopric of his ward (parish).

"I have not talked with Mr. Bunzel or The Boston Globe," he said. "For me, the matter was fully resolved when President (Gordon B.) Hinckley told CBS' Mike Wallace on network television that the practice and various doctrinal explanations were misinterpretations of the scriptures by early leaders of the church."

"No, I have never talked to Gladwell," Bunzel acknowledged in a telephone interview. "When we were cutting the piece to 800 words, The Globe asked me about the Gladwell quote and I said: 'Well, I can't find the source offhand, but I know I didn't make it up."

For its part, The Globe said it does not have the resources to fact check op-ed pieces that are submitted. "They represent the opinions of the authors" said Nick King, the editor who handled the Bunzel piece. "We assume the authors - especially a former president of a major university - would understand the importance of fact checking. Sometimes we get burned."

Temple Square, while denying that the matter was being studied and dismissing even the need for a fresh renouncement , cautioned that President Gordon B. Hinckley was an "out-of-the-box thinker who has surprised us all before."

This may come as a surprise to Armand Mauss, professor emeritus of sociology at Washington State University and author of All Abraham's Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Lineage and Race," who told the Salt Lake Tribune: I know that some of the [LDS apostles] would like to see such a statement issued, but I don't know how many of them," he says. "President [Gordon B.] Hinckley clearly believes that it is not necessary, for the 1978 revelation and policy change 'speaks for itself,' as he has said." Mauss told The Tribune he doesn't expect such a statement as long as Hinckley lives, "even though his administration has been otherwise very sincere in its outreach to black people."

The leadership of the church is fully aware of the fact that while the policy that prevented African Americans from holding the priesthood was terminated years ago, some Latter-day Saints persist in believing the original policy was imposed by God and was not the result of a misinterpretation of scripture. Some of those prophets - most notably Brigham Young, the Mormon Moses - proclaimed that black skin and no access to the priesthood was the "mark" placed on all descendants of fratricidal Cain.

Others speculated the restriction was the penalty for being less valiant in the war in heaven. Worse, Young's harsh sidebar comments - one sanctions death as a punishment for both participants in an interracial sexual relationship - are quite troubling, never mind they were uttered in the 1860s.

A perusal of any Mormon-oriented Internet discussion group would reveal that the original theological premise for the ban lives on in the minds of some Mormons, despite the 1978 renouncement of the policy and its collateral teachings, as well as the on-the-fly renouncement in the Hinckley-Wallace interview of the late 90s. If not corrected explicitly, it's possible the forsaken policy and the supporting folk doctrines could come back to bite the church and severely wound Mitt Romney, perhaps mortally.

Just two years after the passing of Marjorie Pay Hinckley, wife of 67 years and constant companion to the energetic, "out-of-the-box"-thinking Mormon prophet, Gordon Bitner Hinckley is now bearing down on his 97th birthday. He has been in remarkably robust health; but, his recovery from recent laparoscopic surgery to excise a cancerous blockage from his colon is not going as well as expected.

Romney may be but one of many Mormons hoping for at least one more surprise from the change agent who has led the church for the past 11 years. To them, another Hinckley surprise is critical and can not come soon enough.

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Shirtsleeves Spin A Message

By RB Scott

BOSTON, Mass. -- Marsha, a high school friend in Salt Lake City designs costumes for the big screen. Obviously, she knows a thing or two about how to dress stars to keep them in character and on message.

So I listen-up whenever she says something about why ordinary people pick the clothes they do, and the subtle messages they reveal about the wearer's true nature, inner self, not to mention net worth.

She has been weighing-in on such heady matters since 1960-something when she anointed a brass uncoiling Cobra arm bracelet her signature piece of jewelry (I have no idea what a snake wrapping around her left arm portends. Frankly, I'm afraid to ask.).

This is why I paid particular attention when she noted that President George W. Bush prefers rolled-up long sleeved shirts whenever he descends to mingle with the hoi polloi, as he did recently in Louisiana, Texas and Colorado.

"Think he was hoping to carry hod down there in the N'Arlins mud?" Marsha hissed sarcastically (being a Hollywood type, she lists toward John Kerry, well, Bill Clinton). "If he's really going to work up a big sweat, don'tcha think he ought to do it in short sleeves, like a real man?"

I couldn't IM a terse, smart answer - "How would I know? Do I look like his mother?"-- because she was ranting at me in the old fashioned way: by e-mail. She had the floor, as it were, and so she raved on: Frankly, I'm certain he's got a wardrobe spin stylist on payroll. It's a stupid waste of taxpayer dollars. What do you think?"

From New England, which became my home shortly after Marsha acquired that trademark Cobra, I responded circumspectly and respectfully because I didn’t want to rattle her, her snake, or, for that matter, any of my pals in Utah who proudly strut short sleeves year round. So here's what I wrote.

“Hey Marsha,

“Because I live in Massachusetts, you probably assume I'm no big fan of George Bush. Nevertheless, I am compelled to defend the way he wears his shirts. Trust me on this: shirtsleeves rolled-up is not just a Republican thing.

“If you can find a picture of John Kerry in short sleeves (golf, tennis and Hawaiian shirts don't count), e-mail it and maybe I'll back off. Until then, stop with the eye-rolling and pay attention.

“Remember, George's DNA is very bluish. If Bushes didn't get off The Boat - that would be The Mayflower -they may as well have.

Ditto the Forbes- Kerrys. As you live in a region of the country where everyone knows they are related to everyone else, it shouldn't surprise you one little bit that George and John are distant cousins literally, connected by regal blood and shirtsleeves.

"Texas may be George's legal home, but he spent his formative years in Washington, or hanging with uppity expatriate brats in China, or prepping at Andover just north of here, and studying (loose application of the word, I know) at Yale with those conspirators in the Skull and Bones tomb, and summering at the family's weather-beaten rambling shake shingle seaside shack in Kennebunkport.

“You get the picture.

“And, the backgrounder on John Kerry is quite similar, right down to the loose application of the word studying. Here's the point, Marsha: no Bush or Kerry or cousin worth his salt etched Topsiders and martini shaker would dream of wearing short sleeves in good company. It just wouldn't be proper.

“Check out Boca Grande - the shabby chic village on a barrier island off the WASP, er West Coast of Florida where the Bushes and, blush, blush, I vacation from time to time. Regardless of the heat and humidity, you'll see plenty of long-sleeved casual shirts, rolled to their owners bending-elbows down at the Dolphin Cove or Pink Elephant. George would join them were he not on the wagon.

“To give you credit where credit is due: As you suspected, the president was coached. No doubt about it. Any reasonably savvy media consultant, not to mention Dress For Success guru John Molloy, would counsel: don't dress down. It's patronizing and, in the end, you won't get it right. So he wore the kind of casual long-sleeved shirt he would normally wear, and rolled-up the sleeves to signal he was ready for action even if he wasn't.

“Consider the silliness of wannabe cowboys from Manhattan's upper east side arriving at a Montana ranch in freshly laundered and creased Calvin Klein blue jeans. Almost brand new blue jeans at that, not weather-beaten saddle-softened Levis. “Killer snickers would resound for weeks. Lifetimes, perhaps. Better to come as you are and let the locals teach you a thing or two. They may even forgive you your Calvins.

“Bill Clinton and Al Gore are roll-em-up kinda guys too. Bill may speak Arkansan and Gore may like hanging out at the Pickin' Parlor in Nashville, but film from any photo op will prove they know the tell-tales of shirtsleeves.

“Which gets me to the penultimate lab: The Yard off Harvard Square on any balmy September day. Guaranteed, the few short sleeved shirts will be on the backs of freshmen from Iowa, Nebraska or Utah.

“By Halloween those future masters of the universe will be eagerly rolling the cuffs of their 100 percent cotton oxford cloth button downs from LL Bean and J. Press.

“You see, I know it is quite possible to squeeze most of the Nebraska, Iowa and Utah out of the boy. I just checked out my own closet and discovered but one short sleeve collared shirt. And it was a Christmas gift from my sister in Salt Lake.

“Glory be, Marsha, I have become a snoot!”

"Snoot? Not quite," Marsha and her Cobra fired back, wrinkling her nose in an e-coded (;~|) sneer.

“Lose the extra "o."

© 2006 RB Scott All Rights Reserved
For permission to publish or reprint this column
contact rbscott@themuss.net or call 508.254-9900

MITT, MUSLIMS AND MORMONS:
A TIME FOR CALM, A PLEA TO LEAD

ADVISORY: A version of this piece was published by the Salt Lake Tribune

RB Scott

BOSTON, Mass. -- Inevitable presidential candidate and current Massachusetts Gov. W. Mitt Romney's threat to wiretap mosques and monitor Muslims won support from his party's right wing. But it left some fellow Latter-day Saints and others wondering if he had lost his grasp of constitutional law not to mention the history of his own church's frightful encounters with government informants and harassment.

Because Romney once led a Mormon ecclesiastical precinct, roughly equivalent to a Catholic diocese, some worried he spoke for the church, too. By all accounts, he did not. The relationship between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the 30,000-strong Muslim community in Utah is solid -- empathetic, cooperative and respectful.

On Sept. 14, he said, "How about people who are in settings -- mosques, for instance -- that may be teaching doctrines of hate and terror? Are we monitoring that? Are we wiretapping?"

Not long before Romney's explosive comments to the conservative Heritage Foundation, the Mormon stake he once led hosted an interfaith dinner intended to strengthen ties between Muslims, Jews and Christians. Because of the goodwill generated that night, Dr. Sepi Gilani, a surgeon and former board member of The Islamic Center of Boston, was particularly dismayed when she read reports of Romney's alarming words a few weeks later.

"Either they show the depths of his ignorance about us, or his willingness to use fear to polarize people," she said.

Wary moderate supporters see Romney's "expedient" side re-emerging as he nears announcing what everyone knows: He wants to be president in 2008. Currying favor with powerful neo-conservatives led him to flip-flop on "choice," "same-sex civil unions" and stem-cell research, and to veto a bill approving the so-called "morning-after pill" (his veto was overridden by a unanimous vote of the legislature).

Romney's expedient side surfaced back in 1994 when he skirted the abortion issue as deftly as Bill Clinton: "Not my choice, but every woman has the right to choose."

Sympathetic Mormons supported his muse then that the "morning-after pill" might be balm for abortion war wounds. They even understood when he claimed "civil unions" would ensure rights for gay citizens while protecting traditional marriage. But, they muttered "oh, please" when he unnecessarily supported building Native American-owned casinos near Cape Cod.

While the polls made it plain -- no candidate who opposed abortion could win in Massachusetts -- some sympathizers thought Romney was just a little too eager to compromise. A Catholic father of eight groused: "I'll vote for Romney, no matter what. But, I wish he would drive a stake in the ground and be himself. I know what Mormons believe. But, I have no idea what Romney stands for."

Illusive, evasive and virtually unknown Mitt Romney gave Sen. Edward Kennedy the scare of his political life in 1994.

Eight years later, hailed nationwide as the savior of the 2002 Winter Olympics, he undermined incumbent Republican Gov. Jane Swift's candidacy so decisively that she scratched before the convention.

Now Romney crassly plays to fearful Americans who fret that home-grown terrorists are religious fanatics praying at the mosque rather than the dispirited, irreligious angry young men they often are, drinking whiskey in a strip club on the "cheatin' side of town."

That's why the governor's rhetoric confounds another Salt Lake native, Dr. Christopher Blakesley, who went to church with Romney when they were students in Boston. Now an expert in international criminal law and terrorism, he holds a professorship at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and is the J.Y. Sanders Professor Emeritus at Louisiana State University Law Center.

Blakesley wonders "Is wiretapping mosques really what Mitt believes, or is he willing to prostitute his beliefs for the nomination?"

A professor at a prominent university near Boston, a former Utahn who has known Romney for years warns: "Mitt's recent flip-flops on key issues are foolish pandering. He seriously overestimates the support he or any Mormon would ultimately receive from ultra-right Christians."

Thomas Duncan of Provo, who served with Romney when the two were missionaries in France, worries, "If Mitt gets serious about wiretapping mosques, how long will it be before the press figures out that Mormons were once at odds with the government and swore oaths in church that outsiders thought promoted terrorism?"

Duncan refers, in part, to a series of distorted dispatches from adversaries and paid informants that persuaded President James Buchanan to send federal troops to Utah in 1857.

Before siccing snoops on Muslims, like they once were turned on Mormons, the governor should listen to Mahmud Jafri, a member of the Dover (a wealthy Boston suburb) Republican Committee, contributor to both Romney campaigns and founding member of the Islamic Masumeen Center of New England: "His comments saddened Muslim leaders. Why wiretap and spy while we pray? We've already pledged to submit transcripts of all our services and proceedings in our mosques and centers."

Like the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee, America needs a uniter, not a divider. It would be refreshing if the governor divined what polls will eventually tell him and decided right now, on his own, to stand for something.

© 2006 RB Scott All Rights Reserved
For permission to publish or reprint this column
contact rbscott@themuss.net or call 508.254-9900

 

A Yarn About God, Golf, Sunday School and One Irons

By RB Scott

Dear cousin:

I am sure there is meaning and purpose to your Sunday routine -trundling off to your local meetinghouse to absorb quaint homilies from one parochial dignitary or another and sing loudly, if flat, for your salvation.

I prefer golf.

Titillating photography -- enhanced by smoky filters, stop action and slow mo -- is supposed to race your engine and make you feel warm and fuzzy all over. Over the course of my life I've seen enough racy flicks and magazines to choke a ... well, forget that metaphor.

I prefer golf!

If you learn to play, you'll understand why. On a long par five take out a three wood for your second shot and launch one dead-on the flagstick that leaves you within tap-in length for eagle. Your engine will race and you'll feel warm and fuzzy for days. Weeks. Even years.Guaranteed. And, you won't to have hide the font of this pleasure in your old socks drawer.

Sermons at church are supposed to lift your spirit, teach you new moral truths, and persuade you to be more honest with yourself. So to be honest with myself (and you), the last regular Sunday sermon I enjoyed was back in 1960- something. By contrast, golf builds spirituality: over the course of 18 holes I am called to prayer about 90 times. Even a hepped-up missionary conference couldn't produce so many fervent entreaties.

Out on the golf course --especially when I am playing alone, which is my wont -- damn if I'm not encouraged to be more honest with myself. For instance, hackers like me are known for our Mulligans. Mulligan is a pleasant synonym for "do over" without taking a penalty. To true believers like me, Mulligans are, in a word, "cheating."

Of course, if you're playing alone (one of the true pleasures of golf) you can take as many Mulligans as you like. No one will notice or care. I used to think that fudging a little -taking a Mulligan here and there - made very little difference, even when playing in a group, for money or just for pride. "I shot an eightytwo," I boasted one Sunday, for this is truly was a nice score for a fourteen handicapper like me. My companion is dubious, he's remembering the Mulligans I took at critical points. "I'll bet you had the SATs memorized before you stopped retaking them," he chided.

No matter. I continued to take Mulligans all the time. From everywhere on the golf course. Everyone knew it. And, then one Sunday on an uphill, one hundred and sixty-yard par three, I hit one of the worst six irons of my life. I was glad to be playing alone. The ball fairly screamed up the hill, about three feet above the turf. This kind of out-of-control shot is called a shank, a screamer. It caught a ridge of long grass in front of the green, bent right as it scooted across the green. Miraculously, it banged dead center into the flagstick and dropped in the hole. An ace. The first and only one of my life. The foursome on the tee ahead cheered. A greenskeeper working nearby tipped his hat respectfully.

When I told my friends about the accomplishment, one snipped: "was it your first shot off the tee or your second…or third." My Mulligan days were over. Nowadays I play every shot as it lies. Which is sort of the way God has us approach life, don't you think?

Other eternal lessons can be learned from the game. For instance: make the best out of what you've got. Let's suppose that, like me, you aren't physically capable of playing scratch (even par) golf. The game accounts for such deficiencies. This is the fair thing to do, I think. You can't help it if God didn't give you the stuff to be a golf champion. Maybe He had different mission in mind for you -- like teaching a Sunday School class. That's where handicaps come in. They level the playing field, as they say. Here's how it works.

Let's suppose you're only capable of playing bogey golf (one over par per hole). After playing a few rounds, you establish a handicap, which is calculated based on what your scores reveal to be your golf deficiencies. As a result, you establish bogey as your par, which means that you are expected to take about eighteen more strokes more per round than a scratch golfer, one whose handicap is zero. Assuming the scratch golfer plays to his potential, all you have to do to beat him and the course is to play one stroke better than your potential.

See how fair and just and God-like golf is? The game also teaches you not to mess around too much with the mysteries and riddles of life. For instance, it is accepted golf doctrine that only God can hit a one iron. To avoid blasphemy, many weekend golfers refuse to carry a one iron in their bag. Every once in a while a wiseguy tempts fate.

As a caddie I was paid well and not infrequently to fetch an entire set of exquisite golf clubs out of the pond in front of the eighteenth hole at The Country Club (as in The One And Only) in Salt Lake City. On such occasions, my employer was always the mercurial Joe Bamberger, a scratch golfer whose pocketbook was as large as his temper. On this day he ignored my counsel (forgetting that he never used fairway woods, I recommended a three wood, then lamely a two-iron).

"Why not a one-iron?" he challenged heretically.

"You know what they say about one irons," I said meekly.

"It's Sunday and damned if God's not with me even if he's not with you," he blasphemed, knowing that I had bolted Sunday School early to make his tee time. Joe was Jewish, so playing on Sunday was no special mishuggunah to him.

And, few minutes later there I was earning an extra twenty bucks, rescuing his bag and clubs from the water his ball had entered only moments before while Joe cursed the heavens.

I was a very diligent caddy. Not only did I find the ball he hit, but the bag and every single club...except the one iron. Truth be told, I stumbled across it too, but thinking his life and mine would be a lot saner if he never saw that blasted club again, I scrunched it deep into the mud with my bare feet.

He was a persistent man and, as I said, he was also quite generous. So, a few hours later he asked me to take another look, for another twenty bucks. Naturally, I obliged. Locating the iron with my feet, I pushed it deeper into the mucky bottom, where it probably lies mired to this day. Maybe it's a fossil by now. It was a long, long time ago.

"What am I going to do without my one iron," he wailed, as I waded out of the water, empty-handed, smelling like a dead carp.

"Try church," I said.

There may have been something to my advice.

A few years later, I wrote several magazine pieces about young guy who could work miracles with a one iron. His name was Johnny Miller. He never ever missed his weekly church meetings. After Sunday School in June of 1973, for the final round of the U.S. Open at Oakmont, he played better than anyone thought God could.

© 2006 RB Scott All Rights Reserved
For permission to publish or reprint this column
contact rbscott@themuss.net or call 508.254-9900