On the Farrer Side: December 2008

11/17/09

There is a Portland attorney who is making a good living by suing the Boy Scouts and the LDS Church for sexual abuse that took place decades ago. I’m told that he made millions suing the Catholic Church for abuses committed by their pedophile priests and now that that income stream has dried up he has moved on to greener pastures.

There is an AP article in our local paper about three brothers from Sunnyvale, CA, who the attorney is representing in a new lawsuit against the LDS Church and the Boy Scouts. The article says, “The plaintiffs, identified only as John Does, claim they were molested hundreds of times by 65-year old William Eugene Knox, who married their mother while the abuse was taking place in Sunnyvale, Calif.” It goes on to say, “One of the plaintiffs was still a devout member of the church, and two have served as Scoutmasters. . . . [and] one was a former FBI agent.”

I have never understood how a “devout” or even a believing member of the LDS Church (or any church for that matter) could sue the Church for money. How can you sue a church if you believe it is the means of salvation? I suppose the Catholic Church could raise the same question but in the cases of pedophile priests that were protected and enabled by their superiors I can understand the outrage and desire for compensation. But in this case the abuser was the stepfather of the victims. How can they possibly impugn fault on the Church or the Boy Scouts for the actions of their stepfather?

The article said the “three brothers claim the church ignored their complaints about being molested by their Silicon Valley Boy Scout and Mormon youth leader in the 1970s and 1980s. These are men who believe in the best of these institutions and believe this kind of lawsuit can help improve these institutions and prevent child abuse.” I think that’s absurd. They can’t get any money from their abusive stepfather so, on the advice of their attorney (who by the way has eleven other lawsuits against the BSA pending), they are going after the deep pockets of the LDS Church and the Boy Scouts. I wonder, is there is a special place in hell for that kind of attorney—right next to the child molesters?

Super Nerd

I’ve worn glasses (or contacts) as long as I can remember. I don’t recall how old I was when I started wearing glasses but I still remember the trauma of suddenly becoming a “four-eyes” nerd. I was definitely in elementary school and I think it was when we lived in Sunnyvale, CA—so I would have been eight or nine.

I can remember getting bifocals when we lived in Freehold, NJ. (I would have been about twelve then.) I remember the crazy visual effect of the bifocals and I kept trying to step up because the bifocals made it look like there was always a step or hill in front of me. I’m sure I REALLY looked like a nerd in grandpa glasses and walking weird. The eye doctor had the crazy idea that bifocals might actually improve my vision. They didn't.

It took me a long time to realize that my eyes were my best feature—big brown pools that girls found irresistible. [A quick jump to my mission: (I was wearing contacts then.) My companion and I were tracting a street in a very wealthy neighborhood when a woman answered the door. I gave her my best door approach and with a hopeful look in my eyes I tried to will her into letting us in. (Picture the scene in Shrek 2 where Puss-In-Boots is holding his hat.) She smiled at me and said, “Not even those big beautiful brown eyes are going to get you into my home.” That’s when I realized the power of my eyes.] Now, back to childhood. I was so nearsighted that I had to wear very thick lenses. The optics of the lenses reduced the apparent size of my eyes and thus I lost my super-powers over females. I’m sure it’s for similar reasons that Clark Kent has to take off his glasses to become Superman.

In addition to the negative social impacts, glasses also seriously hampered my athletic abilities. I’m sure I could have been a super-star athlete if I had perfect vision or wore contacts back then. I might have even been as good as Doug or Josh. But alas, it was not to be. Still, I was pretty active and my glasses were constantly falling off and breaking. I sweat a lot and when I would do anything physical I’d start to sweat, my face would get slippery, and my glasses would fly off at the most inopportune times—usually right before my big chance to make a perfect tackle or game winning jump-shot—and I would fail to achieve glory. That may be the reason I never became a pro athlete. The truth is I was an average athlete but having poor eyesight and greasy sweaty glasses didn’t help any.

I’m sure it got expensive replacing all the broken glasses. I doubt we had vision care insurance or replacement insurance. I remember being paranoid about my glasses and panicked when they got knocked off or broken. I think the classic nerd glasses with the tape on the bridge was patterned after me because it seem like I spent a lot of time with white athletic tape holding my glasses together until we could get new frames. I actually got pretty good at using scotch tape to fix my glasses because I thought that was less noticeable and I could still look cool (as much as a four-eyes can) in broken glasses. Then I discovered the little black strap that hooked onto glasses to keep them from falling off. I started using those and always kept one in my pocket so I could put it on when I did anything active or sweat inducing. But my friends quickly named it a “sissy strap” and I was back to being a nerd.

When I was in junior high I got a pair of unbreakable “athletic glasses.” The temples hooked around my ears to keep them from falling off and they had double hinges to keep the temples from breaking. They were a brilliant idea from a practical point of view—but they were the ugliest glasses ever invented. Wearing them was like wearing a huge sign that screamed “NERD!!!” in blinking neon letters. I kept them in my varsity locker and would put them on at the last minute and take them off as soon as possible after a game or match. As advertised, they never did break—I still have them today and wear them as part of a nerd costume when the occasion arises. [No Liz, not every day.] They worked pretty well for about a year when my eyesight got worse and distant vision was blurry when I wore them.

Then there was the time in the locker room after a high school football game. I was so blind without glasses and was so used to always wearing my glasses that I wore them into the showers once. One of my teammates yelled, “Hey Farrer, why are you wearing your glasses? You want to see me naked?” [and some other vulgar homophobic questions] to which I replied, “No, I’d need a magnifying glass for that.” The truth is that’s just what I wished I’d said, but he was bigger and meaner than me so I just laughed it off. But I didn’t wear my glasses in the showers again.

When we moved to Las Vegas I finally got to wear contacts. I got my super powers over women back! I was good looking and cool again. I was a man about town. Women couldn’t resist me! I wore contacts all through my mission years and I’m sure they were a key to my success. After a few years wearing contacts they were really irritating my eyes. My eyes were always sore, red , and dry and I would actually pull my nose hairs to make my eyes water so I could get a few minutes of relief. (They didn’t have eye drops you could use with contacts back then.) I went to my eye doctor and he told me I had two choices; I could go back to glasses or keep wearing contacts and slowly go blind.

So I wore glasses again for about ten years until we moved to Alaska. My eye doctor up there prescribed a new type of contact lens that allowed more oxygen to get to the eyes. They worked great and I was back to contacts for several years until we moved to Idaho. Then they started to bother my eyes again and as my eyes have aged I can’t focus on close objects without reading glasses. Wearing glasses and contacts at the same time seems bizarre to me (and ironic because I am very nearsighted). When it got to the point where I couldn’t read my computer screen and would have to pull one contact aside to read small print or look at photos, I decided enough is enough, and I’m back to wearing glasses.

I’m fine with glasses now. Nancy is stuck with me so my super powers don’t work on her anymore (and they could be dangerous to my health and happiness). I’m not nearly as active as I used to be and my glasses hardly ever fall off any more. My eye doctor has me in a pair of fancy trifocals without lines and rimless frames. I think they look pretty good (if I do say so myself) and I can see just fine at any distance. When I need to use my super-close-up-vision-powers I just take my glasses off and I can see fine details. But I’m very careful not to look any women in the eyes when I have my glasses off.

February 22, 2009

Flag Waving Racists?

Since when did not putting a flag out on a holiday become a racist political statement?

This past Monday I was at my desk hard at work when our receptionist came in my office and told me there was an angry woman on the phone who thinks the Boy Scouts are racists. Part of my job description is ‘complaint department’ and I get a fair amount of calls and visits from people who are mad about this that or the other.

I answered the call and listened to the lady’s complaint. The only time I could get a word in was when she had to pause to take a breath. “I’m outraged at the obvious bias and religious individualism of the Mormon troops in this town and I want to know why is it that the troop that had a fundraiser to put out flags on holidays did not put a single flag out in my neighborhood for Martin Luther King Day, they ought to be celebrating Civil Rights—especially the day before such an important and historic inauguration, the Scout troop put out flags for the Mormon Pioneer Day but not for MLK Day and I refused to pay for a flag and told them they need to stick with national holidays and not with a Mormon Church holiday, I am not from here I am from a big city and you would never see such blatant racism in big cities where everyone is open and accepting and celebrates diversity and acceptance of all people cultures and religions . . .”

At that point she had to breathe so I told her I agreed with her that the flags should be put up on all holidays. I was carefully trying to explain how the flag fundraisers worked. I told her that each Scouting unit selects their own fundraising projects and many LDS sponsored troops put up flags because they aren’t supposed to sell products door-to-door.

“They were selling flags door to door because they came to my door and tried to sell me a flag and when I saw that they were going to put out flags for the Mormon Pioneer Day I refused to pay for a flag and told them they need to stick with national holidays and not with a Mormon Church holiday . . .”

At another pause I was trying to explain that I think there is a very good explanation for why the Scouts had not put up flags yesterday but she insisted it was a political statement motivated by bigotry and racism. When I disagreed and failed to share her outrage she got mad and told me she was going to call the newspaper. She demanded that I give her the phone number for the National Boy Scout office. I gave her the number and she said, “I’m not being listened to!” and hung up on me.

A couple hours later I got a call from the reporter at our local paper who writes the weekly “You Asked For It” column and we had a good discussion. He told me he thought it was an odd question and he is going to have some fun with it. He said that when he drove to work that day he noticed that everyone in his neighborhood had put their trash out for the normal Monday pick-up, not realizing it was a holiday. He didn’t think everyone was making a political statement, they just forgot it was Martin Luther King Day.

Here is what he wrote:

Julie Zuck of Ammon had a great question for a curious journalist.
She wanted to know why local Boy Scout troops erect flags on every single holiday – including Pioneer Day – but not on Martin Luther King Day, which is a federal holiday celebrated Monday.
"Why do we have to be exclusive?” she asked. “Civil Rights Day is a very important day."
Those questions have all the elements of a great story: A powerful group, religion, exclusion and maybe – oh, maybe – a hint of racism.
Muckrakers worldwide salivate at just such a chance to shine the bright light of truth under the rock of old ideas and long-held prejudices.
Woodward and Bernstein watch out, this You Asked For It columnist was poised to take his place among the pantheon of great journalists.
That is, until Clarke Farrer, head of eastern Idaho’s Boy Scouts, drove a cold stake through our preconceptions.
“The ground is frozen and the kids can’t shove the rebar into the ground here in Idaho in the winter,” said Farrer, the head of the Grand Teton Boy Scout Council, which represents more than 21,000 scouts. “It is that simple.”
You see, the flags are affixed to pvc pipe, which is held to the ground with a stake of rebar. The ground is frozen and the rebar is too hard for an 11-year-old to push into the ground.
“In the winter, it ends up that the adults have to pound the rebar into the ground,” Farrer said. “Then they can’t get it out and it becomes a hazard. Not doing it in the winter is a matter of convenience.”
Farrer said planting flags on federal holidays is a Boy Scout fundraiser that is perfect for troops and packs sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The church doesn’t allow members to sell products door-to-door, but flags are seen as a community service that ties into the Boy Scout’s goal of promoting citizenship, he said.
“I don’t know of any other scout units that do this other than the LDS scout units,” said Farrer, who has been in scouting for 40 years at outposts from Idaho to Alaska.
He said Boy Scouts should honor Martin Luther King Day and pointed out that a flag flew Monday at his house.
Farrer also said he couldn’t believe any Scouts would be making a political statement.
“I am assuming that they didn’t sit around a smoke-filled room making the decision to ignore the holiday,” he said. “It may be insulting to her and others, but that is not the intent of the people who made the decision.”

So, there you have it. I’m sure Ms. Zuck isn’t too happy with the article or my explanation—but it’s the truth (Scout’s honor).

The article did generate one interesting online comment:

The funny thing is the Boy Scout flags were amazingly placed in that same frozen ground the following day for the inauguration. I think you were on to something with the racism, better keep investigating! -- birds

I asked around and no one I know saw any Scout flags up on Tuesday. (We put our flag up.)
Now I’m afraid that the troops will put the flags up for Presidents’ Day and make me a liar. The fact is we have over 100 units in town that could be putting up flags and they all use their own schedule and approach.

So if troops do put up flags for Presidents’ Day does that mean it’s a vast right-wing racist conspiracy?