Anti-Racism, the Bystander Effect, and BYU

August 29, 2022 by

Friday night, a racist BYU fan harassed a Black women’s volleyball player playing for Duke. Among other things, he threatened her and called her a racial slur that is arguably the most offensive word in the contemporary English language. And nobody—not the students surrounding the racist, not the game officials, not BYU’s athletic director, nobody—took actions to stop it.[fn1] (And it’s not like BYU officials didn’t know—Rachel Richardson, the Duke player at whom the racist invective was aimed, said that BYU’s coaching staff was told what was happening. And I’ve been to volleyball games at the Smith Fieldhouse—you can definitely hear what people shout.)

Utah’s governor expressed his “disgust” and sadness at the story, and rightly pointed out that we need to fix society so that “racist a**holes like this never feel comfortable attacking others.” And Sunday night, BYU’s women’s volleyball coach issued an apology and a promise to do better.

But the thing is, this wasn’t an isolated incident. And it’s going to happen again.

[Read more…]
Filed Under: Current Events, Education, Race, Society & Culture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Homesteading Utah

July 4, 2022 by

My family and I just got back from an extended road trip. And one of our first stops on that road trip was Homestead National Historic Park in Nebraska. It was actually our second time visiting and, seriously, if you get the chance to visit, you absolutely should. (It’s only about an hour and a half from Winter Quarters.)

The Homestead Act was fascinating. Signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, it allowed heads of household or anyone over 21 to claim a 160-acre parcel of land, provided they were, or intended to become, a citizen.[fn1] To get the land, a homesteader had to live on the land for five years, built a home, make improvements to the land, and farm it. At the end of five years, for only the cost of a filing fee, a successful homesteader would own the land.

[Read more…]
Filed Under: Society & Culture Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Church, the State (of Utah), and Welfare

December 5, 2021 by

On Thursday, ProPublica and the Salt Lake Tribune published a fascinating article detailing a link between Utah, the church, and welfare payments. I assume most readers here have already read it. If not, you really need to read it. Maybe before reading this post but, if not before, definitely right after.

The tl;dr of the article is this: since about 2009, Utah has underspent on its social safety net. Also, based on an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) it signed with the church, it has counted volunteer hours performed for the church in calculating how much it has spent.

Reading the article the first time, though, left me with questions. And it turns out I’m not the only one who didn’t entirely understand what was going on: on Friday, the Editorial Board of the Tribune published an unsigned op-ed, the heart of which were these three paragraphs:

[Read more…]
Filed Under: Current Events, Economics, Media, Modern Era, Mormon, Politics, Society & Culture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Did You Know Parsonages Are Taxable in Utah?

March 2, 2020 by

Churches & Parsonage, Antrim, N.H. From the New York Public Library. Public domain.

This week is my week to blog over at the Nonprofit Law Prof Blog. And for today’s post, I did some absolutely blatant self-promotion.

And you know what? That self-promotion may be of some interest to BCC readers, too, so I thought I’d mention it here. I recently posted God Is My Roommate? Tax Exemptions for Parsonages Yesterday, Today, and (if Constitutional) Tomorrow to SSRN. I’ve posted a number of times about Gaylor v. Mnuchin, the case challenging the constitutionality of providing an income tax exclusion for housing allowances paid to clergy. And this paper derives from that decision.

Broadly speaking, I look at the current and historical property tax treatment of parsonages and other clergy housing in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. And that history is absolutely fascinating! And also, that history resonates with Mormonism in two places: Utah and Idaho. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Current Events, Economics, Society & Culture Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Utah’s New Tax Bill

December 16, 2019 by

If your Twitter feed is anything like mine, you’ve probably heard by now that the Utah legislature passed a tax bill last week in a special session. The governor has apparently said he plans to sign the bill.

The bill has been controversial, to say the least. It was even protested by an odd assortment of characters including not only Utah Legislative Watch and Alliance for a Better Utah, but also Santa Claus and the Grinch. A lot of the objections seem to be to process—the bill went from proposed to passed in less than a couple days, and was passed in a special session (though, as a non-Utahn, I don’t actually know what that means). But there has been pushback against the substance, too. A lot of that pushback resonates with me: there have been significant complaints that the changes amount to a more-regressive tax burden on Utahns, with new taxes burdening the poor, while tax cuts redounding to the benefit of the wealthy.  And that, in the words of both of Isaiah and the Twitter feed of the greatest blog in the universe, would be grinding the faces of the poor.

So is that what Utah’s doing? Not entirely, it turns out. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Current Events, Economics, Politics, Society & Culture Tagged With: , , , , , ,

King Brigham! (Also, Dogs)

June 20, 2019 by

A couple taxable nuisances. Photo by ipet photo on Unsplash

Last week, for various reasons that involve research and things, I fell down the rabbit hole of nineteenth-century dog taxes in the U.S. I looked through tons of archival newspapers to see why U.S. cities and states imposed taxes on the ownership of dogs. (Short answer: nineteenth-century Americans often—though not always—considered dogs nuisances. In a lot of cases, the justification was that dogs attacked farmers’ sheep; sometimes it was the risk of rabies (“hydrophobia”). In any event, people believed that a tax on dogs, by raising the price, would reduce the number of dogs in the town.)

In my initial Googling, I learned that the Bloomington, IL, Pantagraph was particularly anti-dog. So I decided to take a look at its dog-related articles. Imagine my surprise when, in the April 1, 1857, edition, I saw an article on Utah. It read: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon, Mormon Studies, Pre-Manifesto Era Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Explainer: Utah Stealthily Raised State Income Taxes

February 20, 2019 by

This morning, I woke up to this Twitter notification. (Turns out that Sheldon does really know me: this was #BrunsonBait in basically its purest form.) I immediately knew I was going to write a BCC explainer, and I figured it would be a quick and easy explainer: Utah’s tax conformity to the federal income tax meant that, when the TCJA reduced personal exemptions to $0, Utah’s personal exemptions fell to the same rate.

It turns out the story is more complicated than a story of the inadvertent loss of a tax benefit: Utah legislators did this deliberately.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. What’s the this that is happening to Utah taxpayers? In short, according to the article, the elimination of personal exemptions meant that Utahns, with their larger-than-average family size, would face a higher tax bill in 2018 than they would have without the federal TCJA.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Current Events, Economics, Politics, Society & Culture Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

A Class Tax: Utah Taxpayers in 1920

December 17, 2018 by

The other day, I did a quick search on the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America site to see if I could find any information about prominent Utah or Mormon taxpayers.

See, today’s tight privacy of tax return information hasn’t always existed. For a couple of years in the 1920s, Congress required taxpayers to publicly disclose their tax payments; apparently, newspapers had a field day publishing the tax payments (and refunds) of the wealthy and the famous.[fn1] I was curious if Utah newspapers did the same.

But I got distracted on my first hit, from the Lehi Sun. It didn’t release the names of taxpayers, or what they paid, but it did give a snapshot of Utah’s taxpaying from 1916-1920.[fn2] [Read more…]

Filed Under: Economics, Society & Culture Tagged With: , , ,

LDS Identity’s Effect on Mental Health

December 9, 2018 by

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Rebekah Perkins Crawford is a visiting professor in Social and Public Health at Ohio University. She has a PhD in Health Communication.

The recent tragic suicide of a BYU student has prompted conversations about the relationship between religiosity and mental health, about whether Latter-day Saints have a problem with suicide, and, if we do, what our response should be.

Experts (especially at BYU) have consistently claimed that LDS religious practice is positively associated with mental health.  Such claims are based on studies that average difference, homogenize experience, and oversimplify a complex issue.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Current Events, Doctrine & Policy, Family, Guest Post, Health & Medicine, Mormon Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Marijuana, Mormon Lobbying, and Tax Exemption

August 22, 2018 by

Scrolling through Twitter this morning, this tweet caught my eye:

Curious, I looked at the replies and, sure enough, the first three I read had some variation of, “Well, the Mormon church has to lose its tax exemption now, right?”[fn1] After replying to them, I decided that it would probably be easier to write an explainer than to reply to each one individually.

So: has the church risked its exemption by lobbying against the legalization of medical marijuana in Utah? Short answer: no. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Current Events, Politics, Society & Culture Tagged With: , , , , ,

Is Pioneer Day too Utah Mormon?

July 27, 2018 by

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Steve Petersen is a lifelong Mormon of pioneer stock.  Having lived in a few different places throughout the US, he’s a big tent Mormon who wishes to make all people feel welcome and comfortable attending church.

Since moving back to Utah several years ago, I’ve come to realize that many people — including Mormons — aren’t that excited about Pioneer Day.  Pioneer Day is an official state holiday in Utah that celebrates the Mormon pioneers’ crucial role in the state’s history.  The lack of enthusiasm has made me wonder if Pioneer Day is too Mormon — particularly, too Utah Mormon?

As a young kid in Utah, Pioneer Day was one of my favorite holidays.  I come from pioneer stock and grew up hearing inspiring stories about my ancestors.  We still sing hymns about pioneers and their experiences are fodder for talks and lessons.  We reenact portions of their travails and cosplay through Trek.  Even as a teenager in Texas, I watched Mormons proudly attend an unrelated patriotic celebration by dressing up as pioneers.  (They were welcomed.)

However, I’ve come to realize how off-putting the way Pioneer Day is celebrated is to non-members, those who have left the Church, indigenous individuals,  and those who are not of “pioneer stock.”  I wish more people — Mormon or not — didn’t treat Pioneer Day as an exclusively Mormon holiday. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Guest Post, Holiday, Mormon, Pre-Manifesto Era Tagged With: , ,

Taxsplainer: How the Utah Legislature Is Raising Taxes By Doing Nothing

April 11, 2018 by

The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting that the Utah legislature has just enacted a large tax increase on many Utah families, in spite of its putative 0.05 percentage-point tax cut. How can that be? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Current Events, Economics, Politics, Society & Culture Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Homestead Act and Me

September 12, 2017 by

Last week, driving home from my brother’s wedding, my family and I stopped at Homestead National Monument of America.[fn1] We didn’t really know what to expect. We only planned on staying for an hour or so, because Nebraska falls halfway into the 21-hour drive from Utah to Chicago, the drive that we needed to do in two days so that we’d be back before our kids had to start school.

We got to Homestead when it opened. And we ended up staying for more than three hours. Because Homestead is amazing; it celebrates the Homestead Act of 1862, which ultimately distributed about 10 percent of U.S. land to successful homesteaders. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Hostile Sexism and LDS Trump Supporters

November 2, 2016 by

An article in Vox showed the statistical correlation between Trump supporters and hostile sexism. One interesting aspect of this analysis was that this is not an issue of Republicans in general being hostile to women, just a correlation between those who are and those who support Trump. The trend was not the same when Romney ran in 2012. Romney appealed to benevolent sexists rather than hostile sexists. The difference, as they say, is yuge. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Gender & Sexuality, Men, Politics, Society & Culture, Women Tagged With: , , , , ,

Book Review: To Mormons with Love

December 20, 2013 by

I was hoping for a little more whoop ass, but the book was very sweet and sincere.

I just finished reading a fascinating book a couple months ago called To Mormons, With Love by Chrisy Ross. She blogs here and gives a quick overview of her book here. You can buy her book on Kindle here. Chrisy and her family are nondenominational Christians who live (voluntarily, not because of Witness Relocation or anything like that) in Utah County – and even enjoy it mostly! I’m not sure I know many Mormons for whom I could say the same, but I might live in the opposite of a Mormon bubble. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Books & Journals, Family, Mormon, Mormons!, Navel-Gazing & Poetic Observation, Religion, Society & Culture Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Your Sunday Brunch (Before-After Church) Special (#4). Utah Artist James T. Harwood, 3: Painting, Marriage and Marriage.

May 15, 2011 by

So far (see parts 1, and 2) I’ve told some of the story of James T. Harwood’s parents and in particular his father, who played a rather large role in the way James T. saw the world, and particularly Mormonism both as institution and proximate realization.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Mormon Tagged With: , ,

Immigration Lolz

March 15, 2011 by

Imagine, if you would, the phrase ‘neener neener neener,’ sung to the tune of the Hallelujah Chorus…
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Filed Under: Current Events, Politics, Race, Society & Culture Tagged With: , ,