Where the Bodies are Buried.
The Ugly Underbelly of “Peacemaking” is a narrative about how prominent Latter-day Saints have used their authority and stature to compromise, or accommodate, on gay rights and same-sex marriage. This narrative is true.
Part 1 dived into the evolution of Dallin H. Oaks (i.e., President Oaks) from a contender for religious freedom to accepting trade-offs through compromise and accommodation for gay rights and same-sex marriage – specifically through his rigorous defense of the 2015 “Utah Compromise” and the 2022 federal legislation, the Respect of Marriage Act. This new view of these rights has grown to a full-throated campaign from President Oaks. He has named this campaign to compromise on and accommodate gay rights and same-sex marriage, “Fairness for All.” The concept of his campaign is simple: Rights of religious freedom should not be a zero-sum game – they must be shared with gay rights and same-sex marriage.
Part 1 also introduced an essay by the esteemed Judge Thomas Griffith (“Promise and Peril at 250,” Y Magazine, Summer 2026, BYU’s alumni magazine). Judge Griffith extols the legal mind of Lawyer Oaks in establishing the campaign of “Fairness for All” and glorifies President Oaks for his prophetic vision, presumably if the brilliance of Lawyer Oaks was unconvincing. After all, who feels comfortable arguing with the wisdom of a prophet of God? Talking to President Oaks about religious freedom is equal to talking with Russell M. Nelson about heart surgery. I am humbled.
In Part 1, I summarized,
- There does not exist an existential constitutional crisis that requires preemptive compromising.
- Public debate is not more toxic now than at any other time in U.S. history – and that law and politics are inherently an exercise in navigating conflict.
- Peacemaking from the mouths of “peace hypocrites” is about nothing more than compromising and accommodating gay rights and same-sex marriage – and that the exercise of “peacemaking,” according to the behavior of these individuals, is simply another name to navigate the inherent conflict of law and policy.
Part 2 explains that the purpose of the U.S. Constitution was to establish order, not for Americans to learn how to compromise. The new narrative from these “peacemakers” is that the Constitution exists as a primer on compromise. All sorts of organizations have popped up to help people dialogue through legal and political disagreements. All of these groups feed off of the almost-250-year anniversary of the Constitution. As we are reminded ad nauseum, our Founders set aside disagreements to create the Constitution and we should do the same today over any disagreement.
Compromise is not a visionary purpose; it is a political tactic for losing parties to invoke when needed to save some legal or political ground. I explain and challenge what I call “preemptive compromise” – walking into a legal or political negotiation having already decided to give ground.
In Part 2, I summarized,
- The purpose of the United States Constitution was to establish order.
- Peacemaking is a personal journey, not a public mandate. Legal and political compromise is not peacemaking; it’s a tactic for appeasement.
- Real peacemakers have broken hearts and contrite spirits, but do not give up the keys to the kingdom in a virtuous spirit of “civic charity.”
- The expressions “moderate and unify,” “fairness for all,” “civic charity” and a “civic theology” are words used solely to justify Latter-day Saints endorsing gay rights and same-sex marriage.
Part 3 of The Ugly Underbelly of “Peacemaking” is subtitled “Where the Bodies are Buried,” wherein I promised to share an important subtext to my narrative. The expression “where the bodies are buried” means “having insider knowledge about secrets or confidential matters, particularly those that could be damaging if revealed” or “to know a large amount of secret or scandalous information about a person or group that they would not want to be revealed, especially due to one’s lengthy experience with that person or group.”
In this sense, I know where the bodies are buried in relation to all of my claims in Parts 1 & 2. As I mentioned, my narrative is true and I only dig where the bodies are buried to punctuate the veracity of my narrative. In other words, I would rather not get into where the bodies are buried. But I have chosen to do so because proponents for the campaign of “Fairness for All” keep pressing. I should add that none of what I share is secret or scandalous.
But what I have described is a form of gaslighting. The gaslighters lean on a structure of narratives, always similar, always one building off of the other, always flanking to protect the “Fairness for All” doctrine and campaign.
By gaslighting, I primarily mean arguing that the Constitution’s purpose, form and structure is actually the source of compromise, when its purpose, form and structure was created to separate and delineate legal and political processes. The document divides and dissipates political power and pits one faction against another. The source of arguing, agreeing, disagreeing, contending and compromising is human fallen nature. Our Founders created our Constitution to channel human fallen nature to give us the best chance to build and maintain a free society despite human fallen nature.
A document cannot compromise, only people do. Anyone suggesting that the Constitution is the heartbeat of compromise is gaslighting.
I know the author of “Fairness for All” is President Dallin H. Oaks. I do not like disagreeing with a man I love, admire – a man I easily sustain as the prophet of God – and whose friendship of nearly 20 years has been a blessing. I have defended the church and the brethren for all of my 40+-year career. My experiences with the church and brethren since 1991 – experiences with the “senior brethren,” who now sadly only include Presidents Oaks and Eyring – have been faithful and productive throughout the modern American culture war.
So I reiterate: I do not criticize people in this narrative – though I admit that I slip up now and again when there is too much stupid on the table. I criticize legal and political ideas, strategies and campaigns. Most certainly I do not appreciate the legal and political discourtesy I have felt followed closely by professional disrespect. I am not speaking about strangers mostly. The gaslighting and discourtesy comes from past friends, maybe even friends still.
And there is the subtext: I take this personally. After 14 years of faithful and very effective service in Utah, my livelihood was taken from me without notice, without any meeting of any kind – no meetings by a board of directors, no meetings by the primary donors to my work on their behalf and no meetings from the friends and colleagues who still silently disrespect my career. Adding insult to injury is the “Fairness for All” narrative, every ounce of it, carefully choreographed gaslighting designed to defend and champion that impotent campaign.
For example, one person commented on Part 2 of my narrative that I have seriously mischaracterized the essay by Judge Griffith. I did not. If I knew nothing else except Judge Griffith’s essay, I might say the same thing. But because I know where the bodies are buried, I smell the gaslighting from a distance.
Bottom line: The gaslighting exists to cover for President Oaks and his “Fairness for All” campaign he started in 2015. I get why those persons and organizations flanking that campaign go to the lengths that they do. As I do, I am sure they love and respect President Oaks. And as I once did, I am sure they are driven by deep loyalties. I always have been driven by truth. My own deep loyalties never have been unconditional.
Why am I sharing all of this with you? It is because I vehemently disagree with my friends pushing a surgical campaign on this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence to define the United States Constitution as something it’s not. I find myself in an odd position looking up at my friends across a wide chasm of difference regarding the Constitution.
My friends are persistently campaigning to position the genius of the Constitution as an instrument of compromise. They believe that its inspiration is that it teaches Americans how to get along and quit the divisiveness. In my mind, that thinking is silly bordering on absurd.
Allow me to repeat myself. There is nothing – nothing – about compromise in the Constitution. Compromise is a penumbra these people have created within the cloak of “peacemaking.” Ever since President Russell M. Nelson called on Latter-day Saints to be peacemakers, Utah is now full of peacemakers. Peacemaking is the new gospel fad among LDS audiences. You know it’s a fad because many Latter-day Saints have rushed to profit from it – defending it, raising money for it and creating “peacemaking” organizations under the pretense of civil dialogue.
I believe in peacemaking, but not this misleading commercial kind. Jesus didn’t sell his command to be a peacemaker. He taught the doctrine privately to his disciples. They did not take what they learned and swiftly sought to share it with King Herod.
Whether he would agree with me or not, I believe in peacemaking the way my friend, Jim Ferrell, has taught it for over 20 years – see people as people, not as objects – from his many books on the subject, including The Anatomy of Peace and The Peacegiver: How Christ Offers to Heal Our Hearts and Homes. At Sutherland Institute, I created a program for elected officials named The Transcend Series, used to address how to process good public policy. Jim Ferrell was always a key part of this educational series. We weren’t selling anything.
I promised an explanation of the subtext to my concerns and criticisms of the “Fairness for All” campaign: It is personal, very personal, and it is a betrayal among friends and colleagues.
Here is the subtext narrative.
In the fall of 1997, my Virginia nonprofit, Projects for America (PFA), merged with the Illinois-based The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society (THC). Eventually, I was introduced to each member of the THC board of directors. Three of those directors were Latter-day Saints: Dallin H. Oaks, Jack Wheatley and Katharine “Kay” Swim. About the time I joined THC, Elder Oaks needed to resign his board seat due to a directive from the First Presidency that disallowed members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from serving on outside boards.
Even so, my path crossed with those three Latter-day Saints on several occasions. Jack Wheatley was a regular donor to THC and I had the pleasure of visiting with him at his home at Pebble Beach. He was a good, even if brief, mentor for me. All three were intimately involved with THC’s project, the Second World Congress of Families (WCF II) held in Geneva, Switzerland, in late 1999. All three were “donors.” Kay Swim was the matriarch over the Swim-family fortune. Jack Wheatley was uber-wealthy after a career in construction, including building the Oakland temple. Elder Oaks, along with President Boyd K. Packer, hosted a major fundraiser for the WCF II at the Salt Lake Hilton Hotel in early 1999.
Was it coincidence or fate that I became very familiar with those three giants of faith, wealth and influence?
At the time, Jack Wheatley spent most of his time in California caring for his lovely but ailing spouse, and through his son eventually put his name on the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University. The institute is run by Paul Edwards – a friend, I think.
I became very close with Kay Swim over those early years – still with THC, I would stay at her home while doing business in Utah. We had long conversations about the gospel, attended the Provo temple together and we were close enough that she once requested that I give her a priesthood blessing. I was honored. She was elderly by the time I met her and was terribly ill. I lost a good friend and cheerleader when she passed. Although, to my good fortune, she had enough time by 2000 to call me and tell me to apply to become the president and CEO of Sutherland Institute (SI) – a state-based think tank founded by her son, Gaylord, in 1995. I was happy at THC in Rockford, Illinois, and was disinclined to throw my hat in the ring. Honestly, I did not want to raise my six children in Utah. But she was insistent. So I obeyed.
Of course, my friendship with Elder Oaks was different. We met professionally and only professionally many times over the next 14 years. Although Senator Mike Lee was the first phone call I received when SI fired me on August 15, 2014, and Governor Gary Herbert was the first note I received, Elder Oaks was the only person I notified directly after it happened. His opinion was really the only one I cared about to make sure he knew that my separation had nothing to do with malfeasance, immorality or unethical behavior.
In a return note, he shared three sentences. The first sentence was appreciation for letting him know. The third sentence wished me well. The second sentence left me puzzled. He shared that he had no knowledge of it or why. What? Approximately 17 years of association and he gives me three sentences? More so, a central sentence telling me he had no knowledge of my firing? I assumed he had no knowledge – that’s why I wrote to him. In that weird light, his comment felt like plausible deniability.
As I wrote at length in my book, Defeated, I now know “the church” had me fired. I hope President Oaks really didn’t know anything about it. But I was the only person in a position to stop gay rights in Utah and put an end to “Fairness to All’ before it began. Somebody on Temple Square made the phone call or whispered the request to Sutherland’s board and donor leadership.
As I stated, it’s personal:
- President Oaks drives a political campaign he calls “Fairness for All,” just months after I was fired from Sutherland Institute, creating the antithesis of my “Fair to All” campaign, announced at an October 8, 2013 event he attended and celebrated.
- The Wheatley Institute at BYU, named in honor of a donor to the work at THC, Jack Wheatley, is all hands on deck in support of “Fairness for All” – from its website, “As Wheatley Institute seeks to follow the admonition of President Russell M. Nelson to model peacemaking in these turbulent times, we have collaborated with strong bridge-building organizations across the country to offer resources that can help us “moderate and unify” rather than pull apart.”
- A note. Paul Edwards runs the institute. He had been a friend for a few years when he was associated with the Deseret News. During a Q&A portion of the October 8, 2013 event regarding the threat of gay rights and same-sex marriage, his was the only question: “Is there any room for compromise?”
- Paul Edwards brought to Utah a self-described “liberal, atheist, homosexual” pundit, Jonathan Rauch, to extol the virtues of President Oaks’ “Fairness for All” campaign. Don’t we see how great “Fairness for All” is? Even a celebrated homosexual loves it! Paul Edwards can do what he wants. Just saying, what he wants to do is to go to great lengths to support President Oaks’ political work.
- And in my absence, Sutherland Institute endorsed both of President Oaks’ “Fairness for All” legislative efforts: the 2015 “Utah Compromise” and the 2022 congressional Respect for Marriage Act.
A coincidence? I think not. More like a life lesson for me. All friends either actively opposing gay rights and same-sex marriage or doing so passively by degree – my church, the Wheatley Institute at BYU and Sutherland Institute – changed their minds to support gay rights and same-sex marriage. What is even more remarkable is that each of these actors from President Oaks on down would say that they oppose gay rights and same-sex marriage today. How weird is that?
And, as I have described in Parts 1 and 2, the “Fairness for All” virus keeps spreading, now to what some people refer to as “disagreeing better.” For instance, a long-time friend and colleague, Maury Giles, who I first met in 1998 when THC hired his employer at the time, Wirthlin Worldwide, to do a five-continent survey for the Second World Congress of Families, now runs a lets-break-bread-with-enemies organization, Braver Angels. The thinking is that if we just got to know our enemies better, democracy might be better served. I love my friend Maury and his good-hearted effort. The arena of law and politics does not preclude strange bedfellows, but the arena always has been about winners and losers.
To summarize what is right, America was better off when people, like the friends I have mentioned, knew instinctively if not explicitly that law and politics are naturally in a state of conflict; conflict is to be navigated successfully, not ignored; compromise is not a gift from our Founders; in the arena, compromise is to be offered begrudgingly and only when necessary; preemptive compromise, like “Fairness for All,” is appeasement; getting to know our legal and political enemies is a tactic, not an obligatory practice of goodwill; and, gay rights and same-sex marriage are policies inherently antithetical to the church’s Family Proclamation and the basis of a free society; and, family is the fundamental unit of society (and of eternity).
Though retired now, I will still pick up a sword in defense of the Family Proclamation and a free society. Furthermore, I will not compromise regarding gay rights and same-sex marriage, as my friends have sadly.
I hope this subtext explanation helps readers to better understand Parts 1 & 2 of The Ugly Underbelly of “Peacemaking.”
The Ugly Underbelly of “Peacemaking”: Part 3
Where the Bodies are Buried.
The Ugly Underbelly of “Peacemaking” is a narrative about how prominent Latter-day Saints have used their authority and stature to compromise, or accommodate, on gay rights and same-sex marriage. This narrative is true.
Part 1 dived into the evolution of Dallin H. Oaks (i.e., President Oaks) from a contender for religious freedom to accepting trade-offs through compromise and accommodation for gay rights and same-sex marriage – specifically through his rigorous defense of the 2015 “Utah Compromise” and the 2022 federal legislation, the Respect of Marriage Act. This new view of these rights has grown to a full-throated campaign from President Oaks. He has named this campaign to compromise on and accommodate gay rights and same-sex marriage, “Fairness for All.” The concept of his campaign is simple: Rights of religious freedom should not be a zero-sum game – they must be shared with gay rights and same-sex marriage.
Part 1 also introduced an essay by the esteemed Judge Thomas Griffith (“Promise and Peril at 250,” Y Magazine, Summer 2026, BYU’s alumni magazine). Judge Griffith extols the legal mind of Lawyer Oaks in establishing the campaign of “Fairness for All” and glorifies President Oaks for his prophetic vision, presumably if the brilliance of Lawyer Oaks was unconvincing. After all, who feels comfortable arguing with the wisdom of a prophet of God? Talking to President Oaks about religious freedom is equal to talking with Russell M. Nelson about heart surgery. I am humbled.
In Part 1, I summarized,
Part 2 explains that the purpose of the U.S. Constitution was to establish order, not for Americans to learn how to compromise. The new narrative from these “peacemakers” is that the Constitution exists as a primer on compromise. All sorts of organizations have popped up to help people dialogue through legal and political disagreements. All of these groups feed off of the almost-250-year anniversary of the Constitution. As we are reminded ad nauseum, our Founders set aside disagreements to create the Constitution and we should do the same today over any disagreement.
Compromise is not a visionary purpose; it is a political tactic for losing parties to invoke when needed to save some legal or political ground. I explain and challenge what I call “preemptive compromise” – walking into a legal or political negotiation having already decided to give ground.
In Part 2, I summarized,
Part 3 of The Ugly Underbelly of “Peacemaking” is subtitled “Where the Bodies are Buried,” wherein I promised to share an important subtext to my narrative. The expression “where the bodies are buried” means “having insider knowledge about secrets or confidential matters, particularly those that could be damaging if revealed” or “to know a large amount of secret or scandalous information about a person or group that they would not want to be revealed, especially due to one’s lengthy experience with that person or group.”
In this sense, I know where the bodies are buried in relation to all of my claims in Parts 1 & 2. As I mentioned, my narrative is true and I only dig where the bodies are buried to punctuate the veracity of my narrative. In other words, I would rather not get into where the bodies are buried. But I have chosen to do so because proponents for the campaign of “Fairness for All” keep pressing. I should add that none of what I share is secret or scandalous.
But what I have described is a form of gaslighting. The gaslighters lean on a structure of narratives, always similar, always one building off of the other, always flanking to protect the “Fairness for All” doctrine and campaign.
By gaslighting, I primarily mean arguing that the Constitution’s purpose, form and structure is actually the source of compromise, when its purpose, form and structure was created to separate and delineate legal and political processes. The document divides and dissipates political power and pits one faction against another. The source of arguing, agreeing, disagreeing, contending and compromising is human fallen nature. Our Founders created our Constitution to channel human fallen nature to give us the best chance to build and maintain a free society despite human fallen nature.
A document cannot compromise, only people do. Anyone suggesting that the Constitution is the heartbeat of compromise is gaslighting.
I know the author of “Fairness for All” is President Dallin H. Oaks. I do not like disagreeing with a man I love, admire – a man I easily sustain as the prophet of God – and whose friendship of nearly 20 years has been a blessing. I have defended the church and the brethren for all of my 40+-year career. My experiences with the church and brethren since 1991 – experiences with the “senior brethren,” who now sadly only include Presidents Oaks and Eyring – have been faithful and productive throughout the modern American culture war.
So I reiterate: I do not criticize people in this narrative – though I admit that I slip up now and again when there is too much stupid on the table. I criticize legal and political ideas, strategies and campaigns. Most certainly I do not appreciate the legal and political discourtesy I have felt followed closely by professional disrespect. I am not speaking about strangers mostly. The gaslighting and discourtesy comes from past friends, maybe even friends still.
And there is the subtext: I take this personally. After 14 years of faithful and very effective service in Utah, my livelihood was taken from me without notice, without any meeting of any kind – no meetings by a board of directors, no meetings by the primary donors to my work on their behalf and no meetings from the friends and colleagues who still silently disrespect my career. Adding insult to injury is the “Fairness for All” narrative, every ounce of it, carefully choreographed gaslighting designed to defend and champion that impotent campaign.
For example, one person commented on Part 2 of my narrative that I have seriously mischaracterized the essay by Judge Griffith. I did not. If I knew nothing else except Judge Griffith’s essay, I might say the same thing. But because I know where the bodies are buried, I smell the gaslighting from a distance.
Bottom line: The gaslighting exists to cover for President Oaks and his “Fairness for All” campaign he started in 2015. I get why those persons and organizations flanking that campaign go to the lengths that they do. As I do, I am sure they love and respect President Oaks. And as I once did, I am sure they are driven by deep loyalties. I always have been driven by truth. My own deep loyalties never have been unconditional.
Why am I sharing all of this with you? It is because I vehemently disagree with my friends pushing a surgical campaign on this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence to define the United States Constitution as something it’s not. I find myself in an odd position looking up at my friends across a wide chasm of difference regarding the Constitution.
My friends are persistently campaigning to position the genius of the Constitution as an instrument of compromise. They believe that its inspiration is that it teaches Americans how to get along and quit the divisiveness. In my mind, that thinking is silly bordering on absurd.
Allow me to repeat myself. There is nothing – nothing – about compromise in the Constitution. Compromise is a penumbra these people have created within the cloak of “peacemaking.” Ever since President Russell M. Nelson called on Latter-day Saints to be peacemakers, Utah is now full of peacemakers. Peacemaking is the new gospel fad among LDS audiences. You know it’s a fad because many Latter-day Saints have rushed to profit from it – defending it, raising money for it and creating “peacemaking” organizations under the pretense of civil dialogue.
I believe in peacemaking, but not this misleading commercial kind. Jesus didn’t sell his command to be a peacemaker. He taught the doctrine privately to his disciples. They did not take what they learned and swiftly sought to share it with King Herod.
Whether he would agree with me or not, I believe in peacemaking the way my friend, Jim Ferrell, has taught it for over 20 years – see people as people, not as objects – from his many books on the subject, including The Anatomy of Peace and The Peacegiver: How Christ Offers to Heal Our Hearts and Homes. At Sutherland Institute, I created a program for elected officials named The Transcend Series, used to address how to process good public policy. Jim Ferrell was always a key part of this educational series. We weren’t selling anything.
I promised an explanation of the subtext to my concerns and criticisms of the “Fairness for All” campaign: It is personal, very personal, and it is a betrayal among friends and colleagues.
Here is the subtext narrative.
In the fall of 1997, my Virginia nonprofit, Projects for America (PFA), merged with the Illinois-based The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society (THC). Eventually, I was introduced to each member of the THC board of directors. Three of those directors were Latter-day Saints: Dallin H. Oaks, Jack Wheatley and Katharine “Kay” Swim. About the time I joined THC, Elder Oaks needed to resign his board seat due to a directive from the First Presidency that disallowed members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from serving on outside boards.
Even so, my path crossed with those three Latter-day Saints on several occasions. Jack Wheatley was a regular donor to THC and I had the pleasure of visiting with him at his home at Pebble Beach. He was a good, even if brief, mentor for me. All three were intimately involved with THC’s project, the Second World Congress of Families (WCF II) held in Geneva, Switzerland, in late 1999. All three were “donors.” Kay Swim was the matriarch over the Swim-family fortune. Jack Wheatley was uber-wealthy after a career in construction, including building the Oakland temple. Elder Oaks, along with President Boyd K. Packer, hosted a major fundraiser for the WCF II at the Salt Lake Hilton Hotel in early 1999.
Was it coincidence or fate that I became very familiar with those three giants of faith, wealth and influence?
At the time, Jack Wheatley spent most of his time in California caring for his lovely but ailing spouse, and through his son eventually put his name on the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University. The institute is run by Paul Edwards – a friend, I think.
I became very close with Kay Swim over those early years – still with THC, I would stay at her home while doing business in Utah. We had long conversations about the gospel, attended the Provo temple together and we were close enough that she once requested that I give her a priesthood blessing. I was honored. She was elderly by the time I met her and was terribly ill. I lost a good friend and cheerleader when she passed. Although, to my good fortune, she had enough time by 2000 to call me and tell me to apply to become the president and CEO of Sutherland Institute (SI) – a state-based think tank founded by her son, Gaylord, in 1995. I was happy at THC in Rockford, Illinois, and was disinclined to throw my hat in the ring. Honestly, I did not want to raise my six children in Utah. But she was insistent. So I obeyed.
Of course, my friendship with Elder Oaks was different. We met professionally and only professionally many times over the next 14 years. Although Senator Mike Lee was the first phone call I received when SI fired me on August 15, 2014, and Governor Gary Herbert was the first note I received, Elder Oaks was the only person I notified directly after it happened. His opinion was really the only one I cared about to make sure he knew that my separation had nothing to do with malfeasance, immorality or unethical behavior.
In a return note, he shared three sentences. The first sentence was appreciation for letting him know. The third sentence wished me well. The second sentence left me puzzled. He shared that he had no knowledge of it or why. What? Approximately 17 years of association and he gives me three sentences? More so, a central sentence telling me he had no knowledge of my firing? I assumed he had no knowledge – that’s why I wrote to him. In that weird light, his comment felt like plausible deniability.
As I wrote at length in my book, Defeated, I now know “the church” had me fired. I hope President Oaks really didn’t know anything about it. But I was the only person in a position to stop gay rights in Utah and put an end to “Fairness to All’ before it began. Somebody on Temple Square made the phone call or whispered the request to Sutherland’s board and donor leadership.
As I stated, it’s personal:
A coincidence? I think not. More like a life lesson for me. All friends either actively opposing gay rights and same-sex marriage or doing so passively by degree – my church, the Wheatley Institute at BYU and Sutherland Institute – changed their minds to support gay rights and same-sex marriage. What is even more remarkable is that each of these actors from President Oaks on down would say that they oppose gay rights and same-sex marriage today. How weird is that?
And, as I have described in Parts 1 and 2, the “Fairness for All” virus keeps spreading, now to what some people refer to as “disagreeing better.” For instance, a long-time friend and colleague, Maury Giles, who I first met in 1998 when THC hired his employer at the time, Wirthlin Worldwide, to do a five-continent survey for the Second World Congress of Families, now runs a lets-break-bread-with-enemies organization, Braver Angels. The thinking is that if we just got to know our enemies better, democracy might be better served. I love my friend Maury and his good-hearted effort. The arena of law and politics does not preclude strange bedfellows, but the arena always has been about winners and losers.
To summarize what is right, America was better off when people, like the friends I have mentioned, knew instinctively if not explicitly that law and politics are naturally in a state of conflict; conflict is to be navigated successfully, not ignored; compromise is not a gift from our Founders; in the arena, compromise is to be offered begrudgingly and only when necessary; preemptive compromise, like “Fairness for All,” is appeasement; getting to know our legal and political enemies is a tactic, not an obligatory practice of goodwill; and, gay rights and same-sex marriage are policies inherently antithetical to the church’s Family Proclamation and the basis of a free society; and, family is the fundamental unit of society (and of eternity).
Though retired now, I will still pick up a sword in defense of the Family Proclamation and a free society. Furthermore, I will not compromise regarding gay rights and same-sex marriage, as my friends have sadly.
I hope this subtext explanation helps readers to better understand Parts 1 & 2 of The Ugly Underbelly of “Peacemaking.”