Letters.

Mormonizing?

I was disappointed with Stephanie Mencimer's article criticizing the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah ("Theocracy in America," April 2000). Even as a non-Mormon who has spent only a week in Utah, I found numerous inaccuracies in her critique.

The use of the word "Gentile" to mean "non-Mormon" has been gradually declining among Mormons for years; the Church itself discourages it, and non-Mormons are now just non-members. The Mountain Meadows Massacre happened in 1857, not 1848. Young Mormon missionaries are certainly not required "to get married within six months of their return, and produce a baby within a year after that." Many may do that, but that's not much different from the Baptists I grew up with in rural North Carolina, who often got married and had babies right out of high school. (The only difference is that the Mormon grooms are two years older and have some worldly experience under their belts.) Also, young Mormon males aren't even required to become missionaries--there is a lot of pressure for them serve on a mission, and most faithful ones do, but many do not.

Recruitment of Mormons by the CIA (for which Mencimer provides no statistics) probably has more to do with the language skills and the familiarity with foreign cultures that they pick up as missionaries than with any spying on members done by the LDS Church (which Mencimer also does not document). Her references to Mormon history, such as attributing polygamy solely to Joseph Smith's lust and mocking the literary quality of the Book of Mormon, are only repeats of the oldest and crudest attacks by anti-Mormons. Mencimer ignores the extensive work of modern historians and scholars of religion, both Mormon and nonMormon, who have attempted to treat Mormonism with the same respect and seriousness as any other world religion.

There are, no doubt, many things to criticize about the conduct of the Church in Utah, but Mencimer details few incidents besides the most obvious that have been picked up by the mass media. Other than that, she repeats the standard negative stereotypes about Mormons being priggish, a cult, etc., and spends most of her time criticizing them on the grounds that she simply felt uncomfortable living among them--which is nothing more than classic prejudice.

SAMUEL BELL Raleigh, NC.

Down `n' Out in Ogden

What an excellent article! Stephanie Mencimer's "Theocracy in America" perfectly articulated what it is like to grow up and live as a non-Mormon in Utah. My hope is that people around the country--outside the state of Utah or those who aren't aware of how insidious the Mormon church can be--will take this article seriously and not think that Ms. Mencimer is just someone with a chip on her shoulder. Often when I try to describe the theocratic and downright unconstitutional situation in Utah to someone outside of the state, they think I am being mean-spirited or even paranoid. I am really happy to see this article of complete accuracy appear in a national publication. I hope supporters of getting more "religion in public life," including President Bush, will reconsider the ramifications of government faith-based initiatives.

JENEAN LINDLEY Bountiful, Utah 

Incoming!

Thanks, Mr. Webb for "The Myth of Military Poverty" (April 2001). It's nice to know that my fiscal status after nearly 18 years in the Army is completely my fault. It makes complete sense now: My paycheck is only supposed to be "pocket money," and the real compensation is in the hundreds of special payments, allowances, and benefits I get. (Although, according to you, I wouldn't recognize them if they reached down from my wallet and scratched my rear end.)

In principle I agree that some of our young soldiers are living (and procreating) beyond their means, but don't insult me by implying that my pay is good if you add up the bennies. How about slicing your pay in half in exchange for those bennies? Those bennies include, by the way, a move every few years, so forget building 15 years of equity in your home. You'll rent, either at significant out-of-pocket expense or in really lousy apartments, or live in those nice 40-year-old on-post apartments the Army doesn't have the money to fix. And tell your spouse her career will never take off since she has to leave her job every two years to go with you. Or perhaps she'll decide to stay in America with the kids while you're in Korea or Turkey this Christmas. Then she can buy jewelry and clothes at the PX at a fraction of retail cost, usually the same fraction as a decent sale or shopper's warehouse her civilian girlfriends shop at. And by the way, most of our "special pays" involve doing something nobody in their right mind would do, like defusing bombs, risking being shot, and jumping from airplanes. Or they're for jobs that you'd get paid a hell of a lot more to do as a civilian, like flying planes or translating Arabic. You should know better, Mister I-was-in-the-Coast-Guard. So don't tell me I need a class on how to live within my means. I do. I pay my family's bills; I fix my own 15-year-old car; and I put food on the table. If I were working somewhere else, I'd have a lot more left over.

TOM ADAMS SERGEANT 1ST CLASS, US ARMY Ft. Meade, Md.

More Myth-Making

While I agree with the main idea of Andrew Webb's article, "The Myth of Military Poverty," I wonder where he researched his facts. First of all, the military does not offer $100,000 of free life insurance. If this is true, it is a fact that they are keeping from every military member who sees the money come out of his paycheck each month. Second of all, Mr. Webb stated that the military pays a soldier with a large family more than a soldier with a small family. This is absolutely untrue. The pay rate for BAH (Basic Allowance for Housing) with dependents is exactly the same, whether it is for a civilian spouse only or a civilian spouse with seven kids. The concept of "the larger the family is, the larger the income" is a farce. Besides these two flaws, I think Webb has a good argument. The military does encourage marriage and it is certainly not the military's fault that many soldiers have poor fiscal management.

SPC KIMBERLY THOMAS Ft. Gordon, Ga.

Andrew Webb replies:

SPC Thomas is correct: I said group life insurance available to military personnel is free. I was wrong: It's merely dirt cheap compared with that available to civilians. However; nowhere did I write that the compensation for personnel with large families is greater than that for those with small families or that basic allowance for housing increases as one acquires dependents. As for SFC Adams comments, I can't begin to address them all in the space allotted. Suffice it to say, he didn't read the article carefully. For example, the reference to "pocket money" was about the military before 1973. The main point of the article was--and still is--that military personnel receive overall compensation on par with, if not better than, that of their civilian counterparts. However; because the military compensation system is so complex, servicemembers, military lobbyists, and members of Congress believe military personnel are grossly underpaid.

Show Me The Moolah

This responds to the article by Ted Halstead and Michael Lind, "Taking Charge" (April 2001). The authors offer the big lie that school funding can be equalized with a "slight" reduction in spending on affluent students. The same F-33 database they used is available to anyone on the Internet from the Census Bureau Web site (http://www.census.gov/govs/www/sc hool.html). Using the most recent data available (1997), and excluding the few extreme statistical anomalies, the 1st percentile per-student revenue is $4,683 and the 99th percentile is $22,995. The national average (what all students would get under a national funding equalization scheme) is $6,742. This is not a "slight" hit for an affluent district: For a very rich district, this is a 75-percent reduction! By the same token, to bring everyone's schools to this level, one would have to more than triple school taxes. Put another way, the $2,059 boon for the 1st - percentile districts costs the 99th-percentile districts $16,253. The hit starts to be visible at the 55th percentile; a 60th-percentile school district (revenue = $7,033/student) would take a 4.2-percent reduction, and increasingly affluent districts would take increasingly large hits under the authors' scheme. A 75th-percentile district (revenue = $8,136/student), for example, would take a 17-percent hit; a 95th percentile district (revenue = $12,717/student) would take a 47-percent hit, reducing their districts' per-student revenues by almost half. In brief, the authors offer a "beast of burden" paradigm for educational funding, with the upper middle class selected as the beasts of burden.

JOEL S. DAVIS Albuquerque, NM

Michael Lind and Ted Halstead reply: In defending traditional school funding systems biased in favor of the wealthy, Joel S. Davis manipulates both numbers and words. To find a substantial "hit" on taxpayers, he has to go all the way out to the 95th percentile (the 17 percent "hit" for districts in the 75th percentile fits our definition of a slight reduction). Those whom Davis describes as "the upper middle class" are more accurately called "the rich." The rich pay taxes for other vital public services with the understanding that the beneficiaries will not be limited to members of their own social class in their own exclusive neighborhoods. Why should education be an exception?