Brandon Flowers calls Mitt Romney a bad Mormon

The return of Brandon Flowers brings back to attention the second highest profile Mormon. And he's been having a pop at the highest profile Mormon:

"I think Romney would even admit that he wasn't a great ambassador for [the Mormon Church]," Flowers said in an interview with the Daily Beast. "His answers weren't great, and it made it even worse; it seemed like he was hiding something. But there's really nothing to hide. You can find out what you need to find out! It's all there."

It's true that there's a lot of information that you can find out about Mormonism, because even the anti-Mormon MM Outreach site lists "facts the Mormons won't tell you" while admitting that, erm, it sourced most of these facts that the Mormons won't tell you came from the Mormon Church website.

The Washington Post has some sympathy for Romney:

But in Romney's defense, from 2008 to 2012, the percentage of Americans who said they would not vote for a generally well-qualified candidate their party nominated who happened to be Mormon was between 17 percent and 24 percent, according to Gallup polling. Only gays or lesbians, Muslims, and atheists had a higher percentage on that question.

Actually, if you're less hobbled by your religion than by a rejection of religion, or your sexuality, you might think that you're not that hard done by, but let's just sit that to one side.

Let's just focus on something else, though. Brandon Flowers is proud to be a spokesperson for Mormonism.

If he wants to take that role on, let's ask him about how the time the Mormons of Utah tried to ban same gender marriage in California. Let's ask him about why the church then tried to cover up what it was doing. Let's ask him about the church's support for "religious freedom" laws that are basically legalising discrimination.

If we wants to be the poster boy for Mormonism, let's ask him the difficult questions.

24 Hours from David: 6. A House Is Not A Home

There's a parody version of this by Spongebob Squarepants, but let's go with a faithful rendering by the straight-faced self-proclaimed World's Greatest Singer Rouvaun, who took an astonishing journey from The Mormon Tabernacle Choir to belting out showtunes in Vegas. He's more or less forgotten now, which makes his self-billing have something Ozymadias-like about it.

[Buy: To Rouvaun's The Time For Love]
[Part of 24 Hours from David]

Donny Osmond: It's alright, if you don't touch

With the Mormon church having poured money into getting gay marriage somehow illegal in California, you might be wondering what the highest-profile Mormon celebrity might be feeling. Naturally, Donny Osmond isn't going to upset his church, is he, opening a page on his website to explain his stance on gay people who consider themselves to be married. (Nice to see him approaching the question with an open mind.)

Don't run away with the idea that just because he feels he has the right to tell them what to do, he's in any way homophobic:

There are many gay individuals that are members of our church. I know many of them. In fact, some of my best friends are gay.

Of course some of your best friends are gay, Donny. We all know you're not having a go at individual people, just an amorphous 'other', right?

But how can you have gay people in church: doesn't that somehow threaten all that is holy?

You ask how I react regarding their marriages. Well, I do support our Church leaders who say that we can accept those with gay tendencies in our church as long as they do not act upon their temptations.

Aha! How generous. Providing you don't actually be gay, you're fine.

Everyone has tenancies to succumb to temptation, but we all have the same standard given to us by our Father in Heaven. Whether we may be tempted to be immoral with members of our own sex or of the opposite sex, we are expected to live chaste lives. This is very well explained not only in the Book of Mormon, but in the Bible as well.

Right. But let's say that someone chooses to live their lives by their own moral code, rather than a book that you might find in a drawer in a Courtyard by Marriott; what then, Donny?

We all determine for ourselves what is right and what is not right for our own lives and how we live God's commandments. I am not a judge and I will never judge anyone for the decisions they make unless they are causing harm to another individual. I love my friends, including my gay friends. We are all God's children. It is their choice, not mine on how they conduct their lives and choose to live the commandments according to the dictates of their own conscience.

That - although not actually answering the question about gay marriage - seems fair enough. Except Donny arrives at this conclusion after running this extract from a Mormon executive:

We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.

So he seems to be saying if people want to get married, that's great, it's up to them, providing nobody else gets hurt... oh, which they will, because it will bring down calamities on the nations.

It's not so much that Osmond is happy to pretend he's friends with gays while actually suggesting that for them to fall in love is a security risk, it's that he tries to seem like he's reasonable while doing the equivalent of writing a post that says 'up to you' underneath a photo of a man holding a 'sodomites will kill us all'.

Elton John shares his views on Proposition 8

Elton John seems to be a little confused by the question of Proposition 8, which he seems to think is somehow about him. Apparently gays "only have themselves to blame":

"I don't want to be married," he says. "David and I are not married. Let's get that right. We have a civil partnership. What is wrong with Proposition 8 is that they went for marriage. Marriage is going to put a lot of people off. It's the word marriage."

The 61-year-old pop star believes that same-sex couples should be happy with a civil partnership as it gives them the same legal rights and protection as straight couples. "I'm very happy with a civil partnership," he adds. "If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership."

Yes, of course you don't want to be married, do you Elton? Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and his recording engineer, and not to be entered into lightly.

Now, if Elton doesn't want to get married to David Furnish, great. Nobody should force him to. But just because that's right for him doesn't mean he should support a nasty attempt to stop gay people for whom a civil partnership isn't the statement they choose to make.

And, to be blunt, John is deluded if the thinks the homophobes who funded Proposition 8 were doing so simply because they object to the idea of gay people being 'married'. The Mormon Church, whose members lavishly funded the campaign to withdraw rights from gay people [Google Doc] in California, are pretty clear that homosexuality is immoral:

The Church has a single, undeviating standard of sexual morality: intimate relations are proper only between a husband and a wife united in the bonds of matrimony.

Is Elton really so stupid he thinks that a group so committed to pouring cash into removing marriage rights simply because it's the word they object to? Does he really think that a group who are so busily organising themselves, driven by a belief that they should be arbiters of sexual morality for world, are going to meet each other at Temple and say "so long as they only have a civil partnership when they shag each other, that'll be alright"?

Elton John has always seemed a little selfish, and a little self-obsessed, but to not fight for a right simply because you yourself are happy without it is a step beyond. John didn't really do that much to help with the struggle for gay equality; you would have thought the least he could do was try and be a bit more careful with the gifts others bled for.

Yes on 8? No to taxes, concludes Mel Etheridge

Following on from the Mormon church buying a slice of repression in California, Melissa Etheridge has decided that if the state doesn't recognise her love, she won't recongise its demands for taxation:

So Prop 8 passed. Alright, I get it. 51% of you think that I am a second class citizen. Alright then. So my wife, uh I mean, roommate? Girlfriend? Special lady friend? You are gonna have to help me here because I am not sure what to call her now. Anyways, she and I are not allowed the same right under the state constitution as any other citizen. Okay, so I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes because I am not a full citizen. I mean that would just be wrong, to make someone pay taxes and not give them the same rights, sounds sort of like that taxation without representation thing from the history books.

In her piece for the Daily Beast, Etheridge reveals that not paying taxes will save her about half a million dollars a year, which means in laying her heart on the line, she's also shown us how much she earns.

Now, witholding taxes is good - but wouldn't it be more fun if she took the half million and funded a tit-for-tat measure in Utah come the next election? Perhaps a ballot on Mark Steel's proposal that everyone has to do a gay National Service of two year's homosexuality?

Flowers plants seeds

Brandon Flowers has completed the successful impregnation of his wife Tana and, currently, a foetus is gestating inside her womb.

We thought we'd stick to the facts, rather than copy Victoria Newton's strange tone:

I hear the happy couple, who married in Hawaii two years ago and have been desperate for a little soldier, are thrilled.

Desperate for a little soldier? What, because they feel the need to help out with the Iraq surge?

This could, though, mean the end for the band, to judge by an interview Flowers gave to Craig McLean for the Observer last year:

He's desperate to have a baby, 'a little Flower child', but Mormonism places an exalted premium on the solidity of family life; one of his cousins gave up a place on the PGA golf circuit because it would mean being away from home too much. Flowers sees how difficult it is for (non-Mormon) Dave Keuning, whose son is one year old; he couldn't countenance being on the road and not being around his own kid.

Hmmm.

Mormonism: A clarification

It's been pointed out to us that the analogy we use to try and grasp Joan jett's objections to Pink - that it's like Mormonism, because you have to be born into it, doesn't actually stack up. Which we suppose is actually true, but we were stretching the point that you get your ancestors reverse-baptised. But, no, it doesn't really work. So, instead, we'll suggest that Joan Jett is trying for a version of the 1970's closed shop - where it is not enough to be competent, but you have to have served years as an apprentice and be a member of the right Union. Apologies to the Latter-Day Saints for our earlier sloppiness.