posted
>> I will never get married without a pre-nup, because unforseeable things happen.
@ irony.
[ramble] I'm happy that everyone who engages in pre-marital sexual relations doesn't wind up with unwanted children. I'm grateful that they use protection to keep from getting diseases, and I think that sexual education should be taught in publically funded schools, at appropriate ages, so that if kids decide to be sexually active, they know how to protect themselves (at least physically).
The terrible thing about this topic is that very few people can look at it objectively. Witness the "I'm sexually active and single, and responsible," lines given by just about everyone who's posted who disagrees with my POV.
I certainly am not objective-- I've taken care of too many babies with no fathers to be objective. I've seen too many single moms run themselves into the ground trying to work to support a baby in a society that has no mercy for child-rearers, married or not.
At this point, objectivity is out the window, along with the idea of responsible sex before marriage-- they flew the coop together.
If everyone who decided to have sex before marriage had a relationship with their partner like AJ reports to have with hers, my secular worries would be significantly eased. I still think it's irresponsible, but that may be prejudice and obstinance, not logical thinking. The problem is, I don't see much of that type of relationship. What I see is people using other people's bodies, and running away quickly when their souls start to get involved. . . or, Heaven forbid, a baby gets involved.
The problem with societal pressure is that it doesn't actually work very well. Sure, it works for those who wish to be fully integrated into that society -- be part of a church for example -- but for those who just want the trappings of society, all they have to do is wear a beard.
You put a lot of pressure on people to conform and the ones who don't want to conform just take on the outward appearance. And, yes, I'll use the unhealthy word. I don't think it equates to "evil." What it equates to is a lot of people living double lives and bowing to an authority they fear rather than one they actually believe in.
It doesn't last.
It's not healthy or stable.
Eventually people throw off the yoke of any repressive external controls that they don't actually believe in.
And that's why it hasn't worked in the past (without things like absolute economic control being vested in the "morality police"). We aren't really talking a change in the overall sum of good and evil here. What I think we're talking about is whether or not the world can be made inoffensive externally to those who don't want to see this "bad behavior" in their environment.
It won't stop it. It'll just make it so you can't see it.
Would it maybe not lead to less of it because there's less enticing "advertising" around? Sure. But what are we really talking about? Do you really think that people won't find ways to go against the approved standards if they could figure out a way to avoid exposure?
And we'll all be horribly shocked and shun the people who do it...right?
Nah.
It's not gonna happen.
And the reason it's not going to happen is because the only way that sort of thing works is if people willingly take on the restrictions they live under. And that's the part that isn't going to occur. Even when it looked like it was the way things worked, it wasn't. How likely would such a move be now when people have experienced the ability to live the life they want to out in the open?
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Besides, of course, there's absolutely no solution to the problem of people disagreeing fundamentally over what the societally-approved standards of behavior ought to be.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Eventually, we moved in together, because we felt we were ready - with the firm intent of getting engaged and, eventually, married. Remember that we were very deeply in love with each other. We discovered, however, that despite our amazing chemistry as people, we just couldn't live together. Things that we had written off as minor differences ended up being too serious to ignore. I'm a very neat person by nature; she's fairly messy, but neither of us thought unlivably so. She's a rapid-fire channel changer and I like watching one thing at a time, but previously this was something that we could laugh and tease about. She's an "under" toilet paper person; I'm an "over." The list of little differences goes on since we are, after all, two different people.
There is some wisdom in this post - and yes, it sounds good when people say "Well, it's better to live together to make sure we really, REALLY like each other enough, and that way avoid a divorce."
It makes sense, it really does. So I'm having a hard time articulating why I find it so distressing.
I think it's because it feels to me, like it's saying "Gee, I know marriage is supposed to be about making a lifetime commitment, but see, I want to try you out first, and make sure that living with you is going to bring me all the satisfaction I want before I make the real commitment." It takes the focus of what should be two people coming together to make a life together and instead saying "it's all about ME, and about what I want from this relationship so I'm going to make sure you can fulfill my desires first before I make a commitment that's harder to break."
I'm not saying everyone who lived together before marriage feels that way, or is thinking that way. But that is why I have a problem with that attitude, I feel like it's taking the true focus away and putting it on selfish needs. It sounds to me like it's painting marriage in a light of something that is supposed to bring this person selfish satisfaction. To go back to the cow thing, this is not buying the cow or even wanting to get milk for free, but wanting to keep the cow for a while with the ability to still return if it you find out later that you don't like the cow as much as you thought you would.
And I'm a hypocrite here - folks, because my husband and I did live together after getting engaged but before marriage. I wish we had not, because with age and experience for me has come the ability to look back and say I made some wrong choices in my life. I believe this is one of them. Even though it turned out all right, even though we've been married for almost 14 years and even though we got no diseases or had no out-of-wedlock children, I still think it was a mistake, because I don't believe we were looking at marriage in the right way. I think both of us were looking at it in that selfish manner I described above. With time we've come to respect marriage more and deepen our commitment and we have what I think is a fantastic marriage.
Many people who live together before marriage have stories like ours, they have become wonderfully strong marriages and the people in those marriages benefit society greatly, I think. But many people have other stories, with serious consequences like women who are trying to raise children on their own. And men, too, incidentally, let's not forget there are men out there raising kids after women decided the whole marriage and motherhood gig wasn't for them and skipped out.
So it then goes back to what Chris and Geoff talked about on the other page. I'm a kid that was warned about the knife, picked it up anyway and didn't get hurt. Does that mean that no one should ever warn kids about knives again, because I turned out okay? Of course not. I do think there are disadvantages to living together before marriage, and I'll continue to say that and believe it and it's what I'll tell my children.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Besides, of course, there's absolutely no solution to the problem of people disagreeing fundamentally over what the societally-approved standards of behavior ought to be.
Yes there is - reason, free speech, and trial & error.
And if we are too impatient for that, there's always war.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:On a completely unrelated note, I just found out I'm a sodomite.
That seems like something you would notice happening to you.
That depends entirely on how many shots of Scotch were involved.
Seriously though, I looked up the definition after someone on another thread wondered if Fred Phelps even knew what it meant. I had thought it only applied to acts between same-sex partners (probably because of the uneven prosecution of most 'sodomy' laws, in practice).
*scampers off to buy "Pervert" t-shirt*
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Eventually, we moved in together, because we felt we were ready - with the firm intent of getting engaged and, eventually, married. Remember that we were very deeply in love with each other. We discovered, however, that despite our amazing chemistry as people, we just couldn't live together. Things that we had written off as minor differences ended up being too serious to ignore. I'm a very neat person by nature; she's fairly messy, but neither of us thought unlivably so. She's a rapid-fire channel changer and I like watching one thing at a time, but previously this was something that we could laugh and tease about. She's an "under" toilet paper person; I'm an "over." The list of little differences goes on since we are, after all, two different people.
Most of my friends lived with their girlfriends before they got married, so I certainly understand this line of thought. And I can't say I won't do the same, once I meet a girl I feel like talking to more than once.
But let's call this scenario A. Allow me to propose a similar, but different, scenario B:
You don't live with your girlfriend. You get married instead. Chemistry is great, and you're deeply in love. All the same problems crop up in the first year of marriage. But instead of letting them drive you both crazy, you know you have to work through them and give your marriage a real shot. You decide you don't care which way the TP rolls. She makes a conscious effort not to drive the remote like she's on a meth bender. You agree to pick up after her if she agrees to really try to keep her messes minimized.
In short, in a marriage, you take away the 'easy out' clause that exists in every relationship. So things that are deal breakers when you're single can be worked around when you're married, because marriage means something. It's this flying without a net aspect that makes people totally commit to each other when married.
I don't think your problems were all that unusual, and you might could have made it work.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:You don't live with your girlfriend. You get married instead. Chemistry is great, and you're deeply in love. All the same problems crop up in the first year of marriage. But instead of letting them drive you both crazy, you know you have to work through them and give your marriage a real shot. You decide you don't care which way the TP rolls. She makes a conscious effort not to drive the remote like she's on a meth bender. You agree to pick up after her if she agrees to really try to keep her messes minimized.
Amen. I am married to someone every bit as "different" a person as me, if not more so. But it is true, when you are married and committed to that marriage, you make it work. When you have no such committment, it is so much easier to decide it isn't worth it and go your separate ways.
Whether or not you think this is a bad thing depends on the person.
I really like what Belle said as well. Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote: So how would you deal with the repression of an urge that you actually believe shouldn't be acted upon? Like the desires of a child molester or a wife-beater?
I think punishment of the actual harm is sufficient.
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quote: We recognized that too many of our little habits were incompatible for a marriage to work - we would have constantly been annoyed with the other person for something or other.
Hm. On a related note, I submit that one of the advantages of marriage as a formal promise of committment is that it gives people a reason to say, "Okay, yeah, the toilet paper thing annoys me, but since I've already promised to spend my whole life with you, we're going to either work it out or get over it." Lacking that kind of formalized agreement, truly petty things like channel-changing frequency can be deal-killers, whereas -- ideally -- they wouldn't be if you had made more permanent promises to each other.
quote: My ex and I made one in thinking we were potential life partners. Does that make us irresponsible people?
IMO, without knowing any more about the situation than you laid out here, what makes you irresponsible is ditching someone you thought you loved well enough to spend your life with because they didn't hang toilet paper correctly. Couples gripe about that kind of thing, but they don't usually gripe about it seriously; actually basing your relationship decisions on that sort of pettiness is a sign of weak character.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
No. No, I don't. If I had ditched Christy six months into living with her because she liked wallpaper borders and I didn't, I would have missed out on the best decision I ever made in my whole freakin' life.
That's not to say that there may not have been more serious reasons behind their breakup, and those might've been good reasons to end it, but the two cited -- channel-changing and toilet paper hanging -- are pretty pathetic.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I see your point, but it could be accurate while still being harsh.
I mean, I still get upset when people remind me of mistakes I recognize that I made during previous relationships. Those sort of "what if" situations are pretty upsetting.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I just read the most recent review by OCS. This always strikes me strange how he keeps saying that people are portraying sex completely wrong. He keeps saying that people don’t just jump into bed with each other with out getting married. It seems that this is exactly how it act. It leads to loads of unwed mothers and fatherless children. I work in management with over 600 people and it’s such a norm for people to have children out of wed lock. I just assume that if a young lady is under 25 and has a child it’s out of wed lock.
I know that’s not what us conservatives want, but still to say this is not an accurate portrayal of life in our time is a mistake. It would be more appropriate to say this type of portrayal of life is what leads to heartache. It’s that heartache that never seems to get the attention it deserves. Or to say it glorifies the action and never really shows the consequences of those actions. I don’t like the fact that this is how life is but I also don’t hide my eyes from it’s reality.
why not say it's reality and the reality is cripling society?
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posted
I don't think he was being deliberately wrong, though. I think he just moves in different circles than many of us. Focus determines reality, as they say.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Yup to Olivet. The majority of my friends, for example, waited until marriage to have sex. They also don't drink or do drugs. In my family, however, there have been prostitutes and children born outside of wedlock (the two not necessarily related), plus there are substance abusers.
Two totally different circles, two totally different sets of behaviors. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Well since I make threads about no-sex abstaining, it's obviously the prostituting substance abusers ones I want. Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I think they are largely Mormon circles, though most of the people I knew growing up believed in waiting for marriage. Or said they did. Not sure how that worked out for most of them in practical terms.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
pfresh, yeah, I should have put the two together.
Yeah, my circles of no-sex friends are primarily LDS. Not to say that it works out for everyone - for some, I'm sure it doesn't. After all, LDS people are no more perfect than the rest of the population.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I think all of OSCs criticizers need to remember that OSC has two strikes against him in writing about American culture: He is older than just about everyone on this board and he is a member of a very conservative subculture. When you add those things up you see that the world OSC lives in may be very different than the one many of you live in- kind of like a time machine.
In the world Orson lives in, one needs to be married in order to be considered a mature adult. That is because for a long time it was a societal responsibility to raise children up as best you could and to support others who were doing the same thing. There are things which parents learn which are simply not available for your average single person to know otherwise, hence the prejudice.
That same bit of cultural understanding carries through in sexual relations too. Why was it common for a long time to have chaperones and limit contact between the sexes etc.? Because they knew exactly how hard it is to control one's sexual urges, especially when one is young and foolish. If the business of people was to develop strong communities and civilized children then all of these things make perfect sense.
However, at some point the business of people started to change into something else. It became more about doing what you like than taking responsibility. Then it became all about doing what you like and avoiding responsibility like the plague, and blaming everyone and everything else for any shortcoming or misfortune you might have.
And that is the world that many of us live in, and from there OSC's world is truly bizarro.
But really, most of us recognize that maybe the world of pure selfishness isn't really very good for us, and so we challenge its values in one area or another, and we live lives which are a sort of odd hybrid of the old way and the new way. But the new way seems to make greater inroads all o fthe time, and many of those who can still see the old way don't think that this is such a great thing.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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quote: However, at some point the business of people started to change into something else. It became more about doing what you like than taking responsibility. Then it became all about doing what you like and avoiding responsibility like the plague, and blaming everyone and everything else for any shortcoming or misfortune you might have.
And that is the world that many of us live in.
Speak for yourself, will you? The world you just described doesn't look even slightly like the world I'm living in.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Tom, cut him some slack. It's like you and me trying to imagine what life is like on Mars, when we've been indoctrinated to believe that there is no life on Mars. Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Speak for yourself, will you? The world you just described doesn't look even slightly like the world I'm living in.
Oh. Then you must be living in some bizarro world unrecognizable to any of the rest of us normal human beings.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
I think some of us object to being lumped in with "Then it became all about doing what you like and avoiding responsibility like the plague, and blaming everyone and everything else for any shortcoming or misfortune you might have" even though we do see that it society at large.
I thought he expressed himself well, as well. But the "my way is like this" and "everyone else is like THIS" is a bit annoying.
Generalizations are often wrong in the specifics.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:I think punishment of the actual harm is sufficient.
So prevention isn't a priority for you, then? Bob makes a point that if you apply social pressure to a person who already wants to do things a certain way, you can easily fail. But if someone grows up in a certain society with certain priorities and rules and expectations that are ingrained in them throughout their youth, they are (in my experience) more likely to adhere to such standards that someone who merely looks on them from the outside, or has them foisted upon them unwillingly later on.
I know a great many young LDS people who have made responsible choices during trying times in their lives, where in another culture, there would have been no reason for those same kids not to drink and sleep around — not because they are particularly irresponsible and self-destructive, but because that behavior is "just what kids do" in some other segments of our society, and that decision is treated as irrelevant to their character.
They made the choices they made because they valued having grown up in this society that expects a certain standard of behavior from them. So even when they themselves were temporarily shortsighted or irresponsible, our culture was a bit of a safety net, encouraging mature, responsible choices, even when they weren't necessarily being made for the "rightest" of reasons. Later, these same folks looked at some of their friends who made different choices, and were grateful they had been encouraged make the more difficult, but responsible decisions.
Of course, there are always people who don't live up to the expectations, or who disagree with them and leave. This happens more often the wider the gap becomes between our subculture and the larger, surrounding culture.
But I've seen this work. That's why I believe in it. I think that if you leave young people completely free, without some kind of structure, guidance, positive expectations, and consequences for early decisions, sure ... they'll like you more, and they'll feel more free. But down the road, you won't have any coming back to you and thanking you for having been tough with them when they needed it most.
Marriage, as an institution, is valuable to me within my subculture, because it says, "When you want to mate with someone, you don't just screw around. You bond yourself to them forever, support them through hardship, and stick around to take care of the children. If you don't want to do this, you're not ready to mate." It doesn't give people, including myself, excuses to be irresponsible.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote: I thought he expressed himself well, as well. But the "my way is like this" and "everyone else is like THIS" is a bit annoying.
Generalizations are often wrong in the specifics.
Maybe you missed where I said "But really, most of us recognize that maybe the world of pure selfishness isn't really very good for us, and so we challenge its values in one area or another, and we live lives which are a sort of odd hybrid of the old way and the new way. But the new way seems to make greater inroads all o fthe time, and many of those who can still see the old way don't think that this is such a great thing.
The pure selfishness, as I view it, is really sort of an abstract "meme" going about trying to infect people. Essentially everyone buys into it to one extent or another. After all, most of us would agree that it isn't a bad thing to want to live a comfortable life. What changes is the definition of "comfortable" and the lengths we are willing to go to in order to secure it. For example, would you be willing to sue a fast food company because you abdicated all responsibility for your child's nutrition and as a result he is obese? Our society has gotten to a point where this scenario is very realistic.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
Oh, yeah, Olivet, I understand what you're saying completely, but I don't think Jacare's statement is an all-or-nothing situation. I do think that it is, in some ways, a pretty fair description for some trends. How accurate is it for the population as a whole? Less than all and more than none. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote: So prevention isn't a priority for you, then?
Only in the same way that the prevention of murder is a priority for me. Saying "we believe this behavior causes clear, direct harm to a human being, and is therefore bad and should be discouraged" is considerably unlike saying "we believe this behavior might inspire other behaviors which in turn might produce other behaviors which could lead to doing something harmful to someone else, and therefore should be discouraged."
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quote: But really, most of us recognize that maybe the world of pure selfishness isn't really very good for us, and so we challenge its values in one area or another, and we live lives which are a sort of odd hybrid of the old way and the new way
What I disagree with, Jacare, is your definition of "the new way." I don't think you understand what that "new way" is at all. In fact, I think selfishness isn't an inherent component of either way, but that it's present in both ways to an equal degree.
posted
I hate to say it, because it's cliche. But from the outside of the LDS faith, many people's gut level reaction to things like Jacare and Puppy are saying is, (and I know I'm generalizing and the culture is different from the religion etc etc)
"Yeah... I know that's how your sub-culture works... But it can't be "healthy" over the long term... for crying out loud why does Utah have the highest rate of anti-depressant use in the country?... if anything it's laughable."
I understand that is the broadest cliche, but I *have* heard it many times in non-LDS circles, as almost a party joke. And yes, correlation is not cause... but at the same time, it is a verifiable fact that Utah does have the highest anti-depressant use in the country. It appears those closest to the spiritual seat of their religion aren't exactly necessarily "healthy" about it.
You could call it a PR problem. But only on Hatrack have I actually seen the dichotomy drawn, between the LDS religion and the LDS culture. It's possible that this board simply attracts more of the sort of statistical outliers that live outside the culture to one degree or another and are forced to make the dichotomy in order to have intellectual consistency in their own lives. The recent General Authorities writings that I've read, do not seem to draw the same distinction in any emphatic matter.
posted
Actually, MY only problem with the whole thing is this line of thought:
1) The "New Way" is all about being selfish. 2) Sleeping with people without being married to them is part of the "New Way." 3) Sleeping with people without being married to them is inherently "selfish." 4) While we're at it, other components of the "New Way" can be similarly assumed to be selfish, too.
Every single one of those points is of course full of fallacy, not least of which is the idea that promiscuity is somehow more common today than it was in the 1800s. But to varying degrees, I've seen all of them expressed or assumed on this thread.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:I understand that is the broadest cliche, but I *have* heard it many times in non-LDS circles, as almost a party joke. And yes, correlation is not cause... but at the same time, it is a verifiable fact that Utah does have the highest anti-depressant use in the country. It appears those closest to the spiritual seat of their religion aren't exactly necessarily "healthy" about it.
This isn't even speculation - I have no opinion about what the true reason is, nor do I actually care much.
But it is certainly possible that the increased use of anti-depressants represents increased use among non-LDS who see a tight-knit community all around them but cannot belong to it.
Again, I'm not saying this is true. But it's at least one plausible hypothesis for the data point "Utah has higher per-capita anti-depressant use than any other state."
Of course, this could be dismissed easily with a study that looked at the rates of anti-depressant use by religion and found no difference between LDS and non-LDS use in Utah (or greater LDS use). I have no idea if such studies have been done already or not.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote: But it is certainly possible that the increased use of anti-depressants represents increased use among non-LDS who see a tight-knit community all around them but cannot belong to it.
Heck, it might just be a consequence of wanting to drown one's sorrows in something other than decaf soda. j/k
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
That's actually what I'm wondering Tom. Did the advent of birth control *actually* increase promiscuity or not?
Did it actually perhaps equalize between the sexes? Prostitution in other times and places was/is a reputable profession. So you had some women who were highly promiscuious and others much, much less, but I'm guessing that the rate among males was basically even across the board.
It's possible it averaged out exactly the same as today, it's just birth control probably brought the extremes on the female side closer together.
quote: What I disagree with, Jacare, is your definition of "the new way." I don't think you understand what that "new way" is at all. In fact, I think selfishness isn't an inherent component of either way, but that it's present of both ways to an equal degree.
Well, I guess we are even then because I don't think that you understand what the new way is either.
Here is a bit more depth into what I think has happened. From the foundation of this nation we enshrined the ideas of "freedom" and "liberty" into our national culture. Most people understand that such ideas can only be meaningful when the ideas of responsibility, consequence and restraint are equally present. The problem is that the latter ideas cannot be legislated- they must be inculcated through culture.
In the United States two related trends have occurred in recent decades have served to undermine the necessary emphasis on responsibility. These are: the greater acceptance of diversity and the greater emphasis on individual freedom. Most people would likely agree that these two concepts are good things. However, here is what the result has been: acceptance of greater diversity means that cultural values are seen as individual choice. This includes values such as the previously dominant Christian morality. Most cultures have a set of social expectations similar to Christian morality, so this greater diversity in itself changes little; however, when coupled with the idea of greater individual freedom things do change. It started out as things like the civil rights movement and movement for equality for women. Then it moved on to things which directly contradicted many previous moral codes like abortion, and now homosexual marriage. But in order to achieve "freedom" in, for example, abortion, a fundamental change in how we view responsibility is required. Abortion for reasons other than rape or health reasons is a fundamentally selfish choice- people having sex seek to evade the natural consequence, and in completely unregulated abortion this decision can come even at the expense of killing an all-but-independent baby.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
Dagonee it is possible, and that had crossed my mind. However, I wasn't looking at it as "hard science" I was looking at it as a meme. If the latter is actually true, it's still a PR problem on the part of the LDS community.
quote: It started out as things like the civil rights movement and movement for equality for women. Then it moved on to things which directly contradicted many previous moral codes like abortion, and now homosexual marriage. But in order to achieve "freedom" in, for example, abortion, a fundamental change in how we view responsibility is required. Abortion for reasons other than rape or health reasons is a fundamentally selfish choice- people having sex seek to evade the natural consequence, and in completely unregulated abortion this decision can come even at the expense of killing an all-but-independent baby.
I'm a little taken aback that you lump civil rights for women in with things you obviously consider negatives, like abortion and gay marriage. Without getting into arguments based on these things, do you really hold the belief that it would be better for women not to have equal rights as men? Do you apply that to all gains made by various civil rights movements (one of the big sources of the push for diversity that you seem to disapprove of)?
posted
No, I think he's saying that a consequence of revisiting certain standards was ultimately the revisiting of ALL standards, and that he doesn't believe that the right choice was made in the case of each standard.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
As a side comment, I've always thought it funny how, even if a "decline in societal responsibility" and an "increase in premarital sex" have a correlation that is causal in nature, people always seem to assume that the increase in premarital sex causes the decline in societal responsibility, instead of the decline in societal responsibility (likely from a number of complex causes) leading to the increase in premarital sex.
Because, y'know, it doesn't exactly make sense to me that there are these people believing in societal responsibility, who start having premarital sex, and then experience a decline in their social responsibility.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
To actually find the studies on LDS/utah and depression, one has to google through tons and tons of pro LDS/ anti LDS stuff that's out there on the web. Since I haven't actually gotten *to* the studies yet, this illustrates my point that regardless of the facts, the meme is more powerful.
posted
I believe the reason for the higher than normal use of antidepressants in Utah is because there is less self medication with other things. Many fewer alcoholics = more peope on whateverdrugitis.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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pfresh, yeah, I should have put the two together. ![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)
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