posted
I saw these recently. Not deep, but passingly amusing. I like them because they are Mormon references in an ad that don't try to play on consumer's guilts or obligations, but instead try to show themselves to be part of the community.
posted
Really? 22 days? I mean I can understand the whole wanting to find someone and get married once you get back, but really less than a month? That's quite crazy.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by pfresh85: Really? 22 days? I mean I can understand the whole wanting to find someone and get married once you get back, but really less than a month? That's quite crazy.
Mormonism stresses marriage as an immensely important step that must be taken in every man or woman's life.
So there is the almost paradoxical situation where Mormons believe the decision must be made without mistake, but as soon as reasonably possible.
When I was finishing up my missionary work in Taiwan my mission president said to the effect, "Now Elder Bradford, you need to tend to your education but more importantly you need to find your future eternal companion as soon as possible."
I was 21 at the time, I'm 24 now and I finally took his advice to heart Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Well I understand wanting to do it as soon as possible. It just seems that 22 days is too short. I'm assuming 22 days is the whole thing though (meeting -> love -> marriage). Correct me if I'm wrong.
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posted
I'm 37 and havn't taken my Mission Presidents advice yet. He told me to marry the first woman I find. When I look back then and see what my life could have been had I done that I would have been divorced in 6 months.
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quote:Originally posted by pfresh85: Well I understand wanting to do it as soon as possible. It just seems that 22 days is too short. I'm assuming 22 days is the whole thing though (meeting -> love -> marriage). Correct me if I'm wrong.
Its a parody, so, yeah, its exagerated. I think that 99.9% of Mormons would find this guys attitude on the outrageous side. Unfortunately, 99.9% of Mormons have also known a returned missionary who came too close to that parody. That's why I found these commercials scary. They are a parody of Mormon culture, but not by very far.
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Fahim watched them with me, and his comment on the last was that it sounds a lot like Muslim families. Or, at least, Muslim families of ten or twenty years ago...
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posted
Oh, I assumed it was a parody. I just didn't realize how close it was. I guess I learn something every day though. Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
pfresh, When I was attending a student ward in Seattle, I saw quite a few people who met, got engaged and married in less than 3 months (although none of them were less than 3 months from the day they returned from their missions). Even though I grew up in an active Mormon family, I found these whirlwind romances quite disturbing and even more disturbing when many of them ended in divorce within the first year or two of marriage. I think its too common for young Mormons to confuse the desire for an eternal marriage with raging hormons and that most LDS young people would be better advised to take more time finding a mate rather than less.
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quote:Originally posted by quidscribis: I liked the third one best.
Fahim watched them with me, and his comment on the last was that it sounds a lot like Muslim families. Or, at least, Muslim families of ten or twenty years ago...
Such things were definitely more common among Mormon families 20 years ago as well. Although I will admit that my older sister has a daughter who just turned 24 and a daughter who will be 3 next month. She wasn't pregnant at the older daughters wedding but she was literally nursing a sick baby while sewing beads on the older daughters wedding gown. (In this case, the 3 year old was a surprise child who is 15 years younger than her closest sybling. I have known some families with that sort of 20 year spread where they had one child ever 2 years for 20 years, but those are far less common now than they were a couple decades ago.)
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: pfresh, When I was attending a student ward in Seattle, I saw quite a few people who met, got engaged and married in less than 3 months (although none of them were less than 3 months from the day they returned from their missions). Even though I grew up in an active Mormon family, I found these whirlwind romances quite disturbing and even more disturbing when many of them ended in divorce within the first year or two of marriage. I think its too common for young Mormons to confuse the desire for an eternal marriage with raging hormons and that most LDS young people would be better advised to take more time finding a mate rather than less.
Ah. Yeah, something seems off about that. It seems much too quick for the whole thing. That's not to say it can't work for people. I just think there's a lot of risks with whirlwind romances like that.
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posted
I don't understand the context for these ads. Is this a Mormon-only credit union or something? If so, my reaction is: Can they do that?
If not, my reaction is: What. In. The. World.
Why would a business want to present themselves as being so lopsidedly in favor of half of their potential customers? I think the message non-Mormons would take from this is, "We DON'T share YOUR values". And I think this is the kind of stuff that non-LDS living in Utah hate. There's a sort of winking "in"-club vibe here.
posted
Whatever ever happened to the 'Spend time with your family' commercials that the LDS church used to put out? Those were nice.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
I've been trying to figure out what kind of reception a bank putting forth commercials with a similar kind of vibe, but with the references being to Evangelical Christianity, would get in other parts of the country. I've been thinking about that since I first saw these, and I'm still not sure. I think some people would have a real problem with it, but some would react very favorably to anything that makes them feel like their religion is valued in this way--I'm thinking of those who feel that their religion is "under attack" throughout the country despite the fact that 84% or so of the country shares it. So I can't decide what the net effect would be. Strong pro-Christian fervor swept the president back into office with the highest number of votes in recent memory, so the support for it is there. I think these are the same sort of people who would respond positively to such an ad.
For me, such an ad would turn me off and not want to bank there. I wouldn't be outraged or anything, but I just wouldn't feel like it was for me. The values I associate with people who make a point of proclaiming how very Christian they are are not the same as the values I associate with Christianity per se. The values I associate with the latter are values I don't share, such as "preservation of marriage" (though I am all for the preservation of marriage), changing school curricula to bring them more in line with a particular interpretation of scripture, etc. Therefore, a bank with such a commercial would be making it clear to me that they do not share my values.
I actually appreciate it when people are up-front about stuff like that, though it does cost them my business. In the last elections, there were one or two Republican candidates who were definitely not riding any fences. I appreciate how outspoken they were in advocating for causes that I abhor, because it made my decisions easier. (There have been years in the past where this was not the case.)
I feel kind of the same about Chick-Fil-A. I still eat there from time to time, but I am a little less inclined to because of the overwhelming feeling that they do not share my culture. I particularly did not care for my kids receiving bible quotations in their kids' meals, so I no longer order kids' meals there. But Chik-Fil-A is nowhere near as over-the-top in aligning themselves with a particular subculture as these bank commercials are. I expect it would be more of a turn-off if they were more aggressively Christian.
If I lived in Utah, I would be less likely to bank with this bank. If they were clearly the best bank for some other reason, that would be able to outweigh the commercials, but they would work against them in getting my business. That doesn't mean they are wrong to have them, or that it's a bad business decision. The business they get because of that commercial might be worth the business they turn away.
I have a very different threshhold of what should be allowed from private businesses than for the government (obviously). I believe things like this are market decisions, with benefits and consequences, and the business has to decide if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. For instance, here in Florida, many people are actively offended by businesses that have signs in Spanish. I'm not offended, nor do I feel uncomfortable shopping in such a store. It is my culture, and it's not one that I find threatening. When a store owner puts a sign out front in Spanish, s/he is making a decision to make one group feel welcomed, and taking the risk of making another feel unwelcome. I support a business owner's right to make that decision, whether it makes me feel welcome or not.
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posted
The whirlwind romances are not uncommon. My brother and sister-in-law were engaged five weeks to the day after they met. Everyone was horrified at the time, but nine years later they have three kids, are happily married, and are perfect for each other.
I'm not quite as judgmental as a result of that. It works in all sorts of ways. I think if there is less to reconcile, it helps. If two people come from the same background, same educational status, same religion, same interest and activity in said religion, have the same goals for the future, and share the same expectations for each other's roles present and future, maybe there's less to figure out.
---
quote:Is this a Mormon-only credit union or something?
Yes.
Deseret First is a credit union, which means you have to belong to a certain group in order to open an account there. You can open an account at Deseret Union if you 1) are a member of the LDS church, or 2) work for the LDS church, or 3)are closely related to someone who fits in one of the above categories. The focused advertising makes sense.
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posted
Hmm. It would be interesting to make one of my werewolves a Mormon. He really wants nothing more than to get married and start a family even though he's in his early 20s and raised his brothers and sisters. It would be interesting too... hmm that has nothing to do with anything, but oh, well... The commercials were amusing. Especially the second one. "I'm saving for a wedding ring." "Do you have a fiance?" "Not yet." *Sweatdrop*
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: The whirlwind romances are not uncommon. My brother and sister-in-law were engaged five weeks to the day after they met. Everyone was horrified at the time, but nine years later they have three kids, are happily married, and are perfect for each other.
Five weeks is a long time. In the mid-70s, when I still lived in southern California, I was acquainted with a girl who met a boy at a church dance (ya, Mormon) on a Friday night. They were engaged by Sunday and married in the temple a month later. From what I understand, they only waited that long because they had to get invitations out and plan a reception.
I was uncomfortble with that then, when I was very much Mormon, and I'm even more uncomfortable with that now that I'm no longer active in the church. I just don't think it is good policy to make such weighty decisions...obviously by being married in the temple, they believed that their decision to marry carried eternal consequences...in such a short time-frame. Yeah, maybe it works out sometimes, but I suspect that more often that not it probably doesn't.
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posted
A credit union for members of a particular church? Huh. I can't quite decide how that hits me. Intellectually, I can't really think of an objection, I guess. I don't know a whole lot about credit unions; is it correct to surmise that whatever body you have to belong to must be the organizer of the union? Like, the school district could start a credit union for educators, but Joe Banker, who really likes teachers, could not? Or I could not, say, start a credit union for Cuban-Americans only, even though I'm one, and assuming I were a zillionaire, because being Cuban-American is not an organization, and therefore I don't have the standing to do such a thing?
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posted
I think Farmgirl knows more about credit unions than I do. She'll be able to tell you.
My understanding that because credit unions are subject to different laws, there are other laws limiting their customers to recognizable social groups, usually geographical or institutional.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Credit Unions are EVIL! (remember - I work for a bank!)
*grin*
No really -- the idea of credit unions parallel the idea of Cooperatives -- just like us farmers have.
You have to be a 'member' to join -- that was the way they were originally set up. Then everyone supposedly shares in the success (or failure) of said union.
However, most credit unions today no longer are tied to those restrictions. The Telephone Employees Credit Union now allows anyone in; as does many others. I don't know about Boeing Employees Credit Union -- they may still restrict it to just Boeing Employees. But for most, they have now got regulations passed which allow them to no longer say "you must meet these criteria to be a member". But they do that because it is more profitable to them.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this idea -- basically it is a group of people who want to pool financially to create their own "bank". It is very common. However, it is not nearly as federally regulated as true banks are. Credit Unions have some limitations on which services they can offer, and aren't as scrutinized (via OCC regs) as banks are.
I think each credit union can choose whether to keep their membership restricted, or not. I know of several in our area that are restricted to just employees of whatever company owns the credit union.
Think of it like the way some major companies fund and manage their own health care program, instead of using outside insurance companies. These companies can also fund and create and manage their own financial institution.
posted
As I understand it, Credit Unions are regulated at the state level so many of the things Farmgirl said will vary from state to state.
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posted
But what I'm asking about is who can found one. Like I'm guessing you have to be an existing body of some sort? Or could I really create a credit union for white people?
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quote:Credit union members are a collective group having a common bond:
Occupation -- Employees of the same company. Association -- Members of a professional and trade association, fraternal order, labor or church group. Community -- Residents of the same well-defined neighborhood, community or rural district. Income -- Low-income members can contact the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions.
posted
Icarus has posed an interesting question. Would it be legal to form a credit union for people of only 1 race. The ten steps Katarina list suggests that their are federal guidelines which define what sort of membership requirements are allowable. Does anyone know what this guidelines are?
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posted
Dr. Rabbit, you forgot the "h" in the middle of my name.
It looks like you have to be an association or community already. So I doubt it.
It looks like the credit union follows the association instead of a credit union creating the association. Being a certain race does not mean automatically belonging to a club. Limiting any credit union to only one race would predicate on limiting the original organization to only one race.
I'm not sure that can still happen.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Deseret First is a credit union, which means you have to belong to a certain group in order to open an account there. You can open an account at Deseret Union if you 1) are a member of the LDS church, or 2) work for the LDS church, or 3)are closely related to someone who fits in one of the above categories. The focused advertising makes sense.
Okay, then I'm fine with the ads.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I'm a Deseret First Credit Union member. For the simple reason that I belong to a credit union associated with my place of employment in DC and then moved away, and it really was too far away from any branches to go, say, cash a check. I like credit unions, and wanted to belong to one, but it was no longer practical to use my DC one to do cash transactions, unless I wanted to pay lots of ATM fees.
When a friend of mine came in town to visit me and I learned that she could use a local Educators Credit Union Service Center to do her Deseret First banking, I thought, hmmm. . . . So the next time I was in Utah I opened up an account. I'd never realized prior to that that Deseret First was a credit union for LDS church members--I probably would have joined while I was going to school if I'd known!
Here's something really funny. When I deposit a personal check at a Deseret First CU branch, they put a hold on it until it clears. Since my paychecks are from private clients and not from a payroll account, that can be kinda inconvenient.
However, when I deposit a check in my DF account at my local Credit Union Service Center (or whatever it's called), Deseret First never puts a hold on it, even though the teller invariably warns me that this might happen. Love it!
Anyway, I thought the commercials were cute.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
These are cute. It makes me think about the fact that the Utah population must be so Mormon that these commersials are no big deal. Try showing them in Detroit and most people would have no idea what was going on. But I like how they assume the viewer knows what's up.
My favorite Mormon commersial from way back when is the one when the dad is a workaholic and the mom and kids kidnap dad in the RV and force him to go on vacation with them. Very cool.
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