The Hebrew Bible does not mince words about the worship of Molech. Per Leviticus, anybody in the land of Israel who gave their children to Molech was to be put to death; not only that, God would “set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people.” In fact, two chapters earlier we read that one reason God expelled the Cananites from their land was because the Cananites let their children “pass through the fire to Molech.” Leviticus 18 makes clear that the expulsion is not just in the past tense; if the Israelites offer their children to Molech, they too will be spewed out of the land and cut off from God.
So who was Molech? According to the notes in my Jewish Study Bible, Molech was the Hebrew name for a Near Eastern god associated with the netherworld. Biblical tradition is uniform that worshiping Molech involved the sacrifice of children. Milton paints a devastating picture of Molech, an abomination and “horrid King besmear’d with blood/Of human sacrifice, and parents tears,/Though for the noyse of Drums and Timbrels loud/Thir childrens cries unheard, that past through fire/To his grim Idol.”
Today, of course, we don’t literally kill our children to worship various deities. But also, we don’t limit our reading of scripture to the narrowest, most literal interpretation possible. Famously, Pres. Kimball virtually canonized[fn1] the idea that the biblical injunction against idolatry isn’t merely an injunction against worshiping gods other than God. Rather, “[w]hatever thing a man sets his heart and his trust in most is his god; and if his god doesn’t also happen to be the true and living God of Israel, that man is laboring in idolatry.” He expressly points to the wealth we have accumulated as our new false god.
Taking Pres. Kimball seriously, I want to stake a claim that some subset of us have made our politics our false god. And recently, specifically, we’ve made our politics into a Molech who demands that we sacrifice our children.
Yesterday, the Utah legislature overrode Governor Cox’s veto of HB11, a bill the prohibits Utah public schools from allowing or competing with schools that allow transgender girls to play on interscholastic girls’ teams.
In his veto statement, Gov. Cox pointed out that of the 75,000 high school athletes in Utah, four were transgender and only one was playing girls sports. Meanwhile, 86% of transgender children report suicidality and more than half have attempted suicide.
So the Utah legislature solved a problem that doesn’t exist by eliminating a problem that does. It’s not my purpose here to go into the substance of why this is terrible from a policy perspective, though. My goal is to underscore that this is terrible from a religious, and from a Mormon, perspective.
Because high school sports are not primarily about winning. The Utah High School Activities Association recognizes that interscholastic sports are meant to, among other things,
• Create learning laboratories where practical life situations, teamwork, sportsmanship, winning and losing, hard work, leadership and cooperation are taught.
• Nurture self-realization and build self-confidence.
• Promote, through participation, higher academic achievement, better attendance, lower drop-out rates and positive citizenship.
Transgender children benefit as much as cisgender children from the goals of interscholastic sport. They need that comradery, that self-confidence, and that feeling of inclusion and competition. In fact, based on the fact that even today transgender individuals are marginalized, that even today politicians are willing to treat them not as people but as political props,[fn2] suggests that they need these opportunities and benefits more than other children (who, to be clear, also need them).
And don’t get me wrong: I’m (pretty) sure not every member of the Utah legislature is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And I know for a fact that some LDS legislators–both Democrat and Republican–voted against the override.
But a significant majority were willing to demonize and actively harm a group of children to further their, or their constituents’, political preferences. And if that’s not figuratively passing our children through the fire to Molech, I don’t know what is.
And I understand that the church itself is unwelcoming—and at times hostile—toward transgender members. But bans on transgender children playing interscholastic sports strikes me as incompatible with official church policy, which demands that we welcome transgender individuals and treat them “with sensitivity, kindness, compassion, and an abundance of Christlike love.”[fn3]
So what if we stop sacrificing our children to the Molech of our politics and instead we love, embrace, and welcome them, we allow them to nurture their talents, and most importantly, we recognize their inherent worth as people and as children of God?
[fn1] Yes, I know that “The False Gods We Worship” isn’t technically canon. But it’s been massively influential during the almost 46 years since he delivered it, so I’m comfortable with my minor exaggeration.
[fn2] Transgender children have become political props throughout the country. I didn’t even mention the Idaho legislature’s move to criminalize gender-affirming care. And while Idaho is less Mormon than Utah, I’ve been told that somewhere around 1/3 of its legislators are, themselves, Mormon.
[fn3] Again, you don’t have to tell me that this statement is often more aspirational than it is descriptive. And as a church we need to live up to our aspirations better than we do.
Picture from Patrick Gray. CC BY 2.0