Yesterday we went up to Gilgal Gardens in Salt Lake City. I took this photo of a Sphynx with the face of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon church.

This is my first attempt at HDR photography using CHDK (a third party firmware enhancement for Canon cameras).

It is amazing to me how many people misunderstand national doctrines like the first amendment and the separation of church and state.

Roseanne bar (who actually used to be a Mormon herself, believe it or not) recently posted on her blog:

we citizens gay and straight pay for the police and the firemen that protect the property of the mormon church, which spans entire blocks of los angeles and orange county. let's stop doing this until this backward hateful racist and homophobic organization which allows child and plural marriage organization called the mormon church steps up and becomes american, and starts to respect the laws of freedom that this country was based on!!! the church is going down over prop 8..this is my prophecy!!! [sic]

Ignoring for a moment her poor writing skills (I would think her shift key is broken except she does sprinkle capital letters every once in a while throughout her blog) and misunderstanding of the LDS church, let's focus on her claim that the church is not respecting the "laws of freedom that this country was based on." I saw this claim echoed elsewhere, such as on Daily Kos:

It seems the LDS does [sic] not understand there is a separation between church and state (and they well should given their history).

Does anyone really believe that an organization should not have a right to weigh in on a political position simply because they have tax exempt status as a faith-based organization? The first amendment is granted to all Americans and protects either side of the debate. In this case, both sides felt very strongly that they were in the right and that the other side wanted to trample on their rights.

Should we limit free speech based on how offensive some people might find it? While Hollywood and the media in general push more and more increasingly perverse material, they yell at others whose political ideas differ from theirs and claim that their opinions are offensive.

Maybe they are offensive, but a country which would silence people who come in strongly on one side of a controversial issue may not have allowed the discussion on gay marriage in the first place.

Let me say it again: such a place may not have allowed arguments in favor of gay marriage to begin with.

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people whose opinions we despise, then we do not believe in the freedom of expression.

The people of California already made their voices heard on this subject and said that they did not want gay marriage in their state. Then, four judges decided that they were smarter than the people and that they should allow gay marriage after all. The will of four people outweighed the majority of the entire state of California.

Nobody can claim gay marriage was intended as a guarantee under California's constitution. It wasn't written that way and it had never even been a serious question until recent history!

So four judges usurp control of California law. This is not a democracy. A democracy is a place where majority rules. A place where minority rules is called an Oligarchy. It is counter to everything this country was founded on. If you want a place where minority rules, you would do better in some other country. To reverse the decision of California's Oligarchy will require a democratic process. Seems a bit unfair, right?

Now we have people picketing outside of places of worship in California because they supported proposition 8. The fact that this is their right does not erase the fact that they appear to be completely blind to their own hypocrisy. They are crying for investigations into the tax exempt status of the LDS church while ignoring the many faith based organizations that supported their side of the argument.

The protestors want their cake and to eat it too - they say any faith based organizations that supported prop 8 should have their tax exempt statuses stripped while nobody complained when they were getting money from churches on the other side of the fence.

If you don't believe me, look at these tons of churches listed as supporting opposition to proposition 8 on the noonprop8.com website.

So I guess a church is only acting illegally if their opinion isn't the same as mine?

This is nothing short of a direct and disgusting abuse of speech rights. You cannot enjoy the umbrella of the first amendment while denying it to others. Anyone who reads the first amendment and thinks it should not apply to faith based organizations needs to learn how to read. Imagine where we'd be if the government were to step in and start telling church leaders of any religion what they can and can't preach to their people. We fought wars over this. It's not a complicated thing.

These protestors want religion out of public discourse. They want separation of faith from influencing state matters. Yet they want the state to come in and dictate what they're allowed to believe in. It's really despicable when you think about it. A perversion imagined by those attacking the very thing that allows them to sit in luxury and attack things.

Think about this: should state employees be entitled to religious opinions when the state is paying their wage? Under the protestors inane re-imagining of the separation of church and state doctrine, the answer seems to be no.

Please, before commenting remember that this article is not about the rights and wrongs of gay marriage. It is about the horrible and hypocritical way in which gay marriage's supporters have gone about promoting it.

I watched the election coverage in our "Super Spectacular 2008 Election Coverage Obamanation McCainification Center MegaScreen Ultra-Def Extratacular 2008 Election Coverage Headquarters" that we put together in our living room. I kept noticing that the speakers and reporters kept saying it was "an historic night."

This picture has nothing to do with anything.

This sounded odd to me, and I thought that there was perhaps a secret rule of the English language at work that I was not aware of. To the best of my knowledge, "an" goes before any word that starts with a vowel sound and "a" goes before any word with a consonant sound. Since "historic" starts with a consonant sound, it seems correct that it would be proceeded by an "a."

Some words that start with the letter H do so silently, and have a vowel sound first. It makes sense that these words should be proceeded by "an" as in "an heir." But "historic doesn't fall into this category.

I did some googling.

The first site I came to claims that "an" is appropriately used because some speakers prefer to use "an" before any word starting with an H that is three or more syllables. This seems like a pretty obscure rule. While "I have an hypothesis" sounds just a little bit weird "I had an hysterectomy" sound really stupid.

Another site I came to brought out the big guns with references from real printed books. Shamelessly, I will republish the relevant part here.

For choosing a or an, spelling doesn't matter; pronunciation does. A is for consonant sounds; an is for vowel sounds. The ever-popular an historic is incorrect, at least for American speakers, because historic does not begin with a vowel sound. Even those Americans who say "an istoric" will admit that they say "historic," with the consonant h, when the word stands alone. I don't care whether "an istoric" rolls off your tongue more easily than "a historic"; you don't go altering your pronunciation of a word in order to change the article you use before it. Your comfort is none of the language's concern.

Most of the times I've heard "an historic," however, it has been from blustery types who heartily pronounce the h. Think Howard Cosell.

So maybe people who use "an historic" simply don't know how to pronounce the word "historic." That doesn't seem right though, I'm pretty sure Obama didn't say it was "an istoric" night like some kind of 19th century street rat.

Okay, here's a quiz. Put the appropriate article in front of the following words:

• hotel
• historic
• heroic

According to the stylebook for the London Times, each of those words should be proceeded by an "an." Like "I'm going to go stay at an hotel." But fortunately this is British english and their language is even more screwed up than ours (like when referring to a singular noun that denotes a group they use "were" instead of "was"). There is no such rule in American English.

So the sources seem unsure - some saying "an historic" is technically incorrect but okay to use, and some saying it is correct because of some obscure rule. I would tend to agree with this writer and their list of authorities on the subject and will use "a" before historic.