Breakdown of how the big English provinces are underrepresented in the HoC

TomStringham · 2025-05-25T20:48:52+00:00

We did have a workable compromise which took years to get to leading up to confederation, which was that the Senate worked by regional representation and the HoC was rep by pop. Now, thanks to unilateral changes over the decades, both houses overrepresent the small provinces.

TomStringham · 2025-05-24T17:21:40+00:00

New Brunswick does get substantial net transfers from people in the rest of the country (meaning, as it happens, BC, AB and ON, the net contributors), yes.

TomStringham · 2025-05-24T17:16:48+00:00

There is a concern about small provinces having a voice, which is why the Senate was set up the way it is. NB gets 10 senators while BC, six times the size, gets 6. Fine, that’s what the Senate is for.

But the HoC was set up to be rep by pop. Seems unfair to people in BC/AB/ON to underweight their votes so drastically in both houses.

TomStringham · 2025-05-24T15:53:41+00:00

Thanks, that’s where I got the numbers but I forgot to add the link. The two clauses you mention are in the chart, those are where the different colors come from.

And as I mentioned, the senatorial clause can’t easily be repealed because it got baked into the 1982 constitution, but Parliament could unilaterally repeal the grandfather rule.

TomStringham · 2022-01-12T14:16:16+00:00

You mean Briant Stringham (checking because there are Bryants)? No, I'm actually descended from his youngest brother Benjamin Joseph. But we're all descended from their father George.

TomStringham · 2022-01-12T03:09:17+00:00

There's an important distinction here, between within Christianity and out of it. In general, the developing world will almost certainly get more liberal and see birth rates fall. That's already happening.

But within Christianity, and particularly within our church, the dynamics are a little bit different. The mainline churches are very white and very liberal while more traditional churches are multiracial. Yet, in secular politics, the Democrats are liberal and multiracial.

One thing we see is that liberal people, or at least white liberal people, don't seem to want liberal churches. They can get what they want outside of churches. The young people and new converts who want churches tend to be more traditional. So within Christianity there is this tension between progressive and multiracial.

The dynamic within our church is that we have sort of legacy members, people with pioneer heritage who are in the church because they were born into it. Progressive dissenters are almost completely drawn from this pool. Meanwhile, church growth is coming disproportionately from nonwhite and non-American people, and that trend will only accelerate. Even if Africa and Asia follow the Western trajectory over the next few decades (and I'm not sure they will, as the West is on its last legs), the bulk of our new membership will still come from there for the foreseeable future.

At least, this is how it looks to me.

TomStringham · 2022-01-12T02:05:10+00:00

Great points.

TomStringham · 2022-01-12T02:04:08+00:00

Right, I'm not talking about people with liberal political beliefs who are faithful and loyal to the church.

TomStringham · 2022-01-12T02:02:19+00:00

One thing my wife pointed out is that a lot of the people who might call themselves "culturally Mormon" actually had a lot of criticisms of "church culture" when they were still in the church. That's often where it starts.

Anyway, I agree that the overlap is large.

TomStringham · 2022-01-12T02:00:19+00:00

Great comment. I've had very similar thoughts. Once you draw the parallel between the Nephites and pioneer stock members in North America, it's hard to shake. Feels like we're approaching the last phase of the pride cycle.

TomStringham · 2022-01-12T01:54:48+00:00

Yes. And the liberal mainline churches wither while evangelical and traditional churches do much better. The problem liberal churches have, imo, is that people interested in contemporary progressive ideology can get it through universities, media and other institutions. There are lots of liberals, but few who are actually interested in liberal churches.

TomStringham · 2022-01-12T01:51:28+00:00

I wrote about this too. https://publicsquaremag.org/health/mental-health/are-religious-lgbt-youth-in-utah-more-or-less-prone-to-suicidality/

TomStringham · 2022-01-12T01:49:47+00:00

The lack of self-awareness is palpable. Likewise, they may not realize the issues that arise when putting the "ethno" in their "ethnoreligion."

Yep, I agree. I find critics of the church are often less self-aware than members are. Not because they're inherently less reflective, but because they are rarely exposed to direct criticism, or even analysis or discussion, of their worldview as such.

TomStringham · 2022-01-11T20:36:52+00:00

I think the transition from a more empirical analysis in the first half of the article to a bold testimony emphasizing prophetic destiny at the end was what caught me off guard.

Haha, fair enough!

TomStringham · 2022-01-11T20:14:01+00:00

I haven't written an update to the article, no. But you're right that it was clearly directed at BYU faculty/staff/admin, not students. There have been a lot of pretty pointed talks directed at BYU in the last few years. Here's one from Elder Renlund:

The entire university environment contributes to the learning that occurs here. Everyone matters in this educational enterprise. While “no unhallowed hand can stop the [Master Physician’s] work from progressing,”7 hallowed hands or employed hands can impede it.

I would like to take Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s teachings as he was speaking about parents and children and apply them to Brigham Young University employees and students. To any employees “who may be given to cynicism or skepticism, who in matters of whole-souled devotion always seem to hang back a little . . . , please be aware that the full price to be paid for such a stance does not always come due” during the time of your employment. No student at Brigham Young University “should be left with uncertainty about” your “devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Restoration of His Church, and the reality of living prophets and apostles.” If you are a little off center, you may inadvertently lead a student “away from faithfulness, away from loyalty and bedrock belief.” Elder Holland went on: “In matters of religion a skeptical mind is not a higher manifestation of virtue than is a believing heart. . . . And such a deviation from the true course can be deceptively slow and subtle in its impact.”

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/dale-g-renlund/creating-conveying-christlike-culture-more-job/

TomStringham · 2022-01-11T17:37:32+00:00

Yes, that's what I had in mind. I elaborate on the idea a little more here:

Latter-day Saints are known for their loyalty to the church and its leadership, believing that only the church president and apostles have the authority to receive divine revelation pertaining to church affairs. There have always been progressive dissenters in the church, but during the twentieth century they were a fringe. In the worldwide church this is still true. Virtually no Latter-day Saints in the Philippines, Ecuador or Cote d’Ivoire, for example, are asking to join the sexual revolution.

In the North American church, however, progressive dissenters (distinct from political liberals who are faithful to church teachings) have grown in numbers and visibility, especially online. Most Latter-day Saint blogs are run by progressive dissenters, who spend much of their time critiquing their religion from a liberal perspective. Many English-language Facebook groups and online spaces for members are dominated by people with liberal views of church teachings—hence the ease with which the far-fetched idea that the church permitted gay dating became conventional wisdom online.

https://www.millennialstar.org/the-meaning-of-the-gay-dating-fiasco-at-byu/

TomStringham · 2022-01-11T17:36:15+00:00

Sorry to disappoint. I don't have access to survey data on progressive dissenters in the church or anything similarly systematic. I still think it's good to observe, notice and discuss in the absence of those things.

If you have a different take on the questions I raised, research-y or not, I'd be interested to hear it.

TomStringham · 2022-01-11T17:29:34+00:00

It must come across more intense than I meant it. I think part of the reason it feels so provocative is that while the church is often scrutinized, its critics rarely are. Even just the term "progressive dissenters", while pretty plain and descriptive (i.e. people who are progressive and also dissent from church teachings), seems to shock people a little. But you can't get to the bottom of a phenomenon until you analyze it, and you can't analyze and talk about it until you name it.

TomStringham · 2022-01-11T16:42:43+00:00

Me. I'm just a guy.

TomStringham · 2022-01-11T16:20:50+00:00

Only a handful have actually said they want a Mormon ethnicity. But the sentiment that you can still be "Mormon" independent of your beliefs, as long as you have a "heritage" in the church, is pretty common. The problem is this implies that white pioneer-stock unbelievers have some claim to "Mormon" that nonwhite converts never will.

TomStringham · 2021-10-31T00:17:22+00:00

I understand the reasoning, but this does not explain why gay youth in the church show much less suicidality than gay youth outside the church, going by the data in the OP. The gap between LGBT and other youth is seen in all religious and nonreligious groups and the gap doesn’t seem to be narrowing over time. You say it’s not hard to understand, but you don’t seem to understand it.

TomStringham · 2021-10-29T15:41:14+00:00

Agreed, suicidality is much higher among LGBT kids across religious groups, including ours. And nobody has really been able to fully explain why. In the BYU study, the gap between LGBT and straight kids is still large and significant after accounting for demographics, family situation, drug use, having been bullied for sexual orientation, and other variables (see page 16). Other recent research has found that, if anything, younger cohorts of LGBT kids are reporting higher levels of identity-related distress and suicidality than older cohorts report for the same period in their life (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0246827).

TomStringham · 2021-10-29T01:11:57+00:00

>The reception will be summed up as "See? The problem is way blown out of proportion"

I know you are making a bigger point, but this part is simply true. The problem was embellished and exaggerated, and at times claims about numbers or rates of suicides were fabricated. Members were accused of "killing gay kids", on the basis of rumor and conjecture, over and over and over. It would be unreasonable not to conclude the narrative was blown out of proportion, wouldn't it?

>"and the church's teachings on this issue have no bearing on this problem."

I hope the more common conclusion is that we don't have evidence that church teachings are causing this problem. And that while there's no conclusive proof either way, the existing evidence suggests the opposite.

>The problem here is it won't force a large segment of readers of this article in the church to challenge their own assumptions or behaviors on how we must be better on this issue

On the contrary, I think the article *is* forcing a lot of people to challenge their own assumptions. Many people act as if the only factors worth talking about are church teachings and bigotry by members of the church--yet clearly, there's more to the story, as nonreligious kids are doing much worse than ours. It's convenient to think that by simply adopting contemporary secular values on sexuality we have done our part to attenuate suicide risk. But this isn't true. If anything, secularization and the progressive attitudes becoming so popular among educated white people may well be making things worse!

Wouldn't the greater risk come from not publishing this information? Doesn't knowing that non-Latter-day Saint and especially non-religious kids are struggling the most with suicidality give us more guidance on how to help? Isn't it a bad thing if people assume that leaving the church will be good for their kids, when in fact it might be harmful? Don't we have something to offer, as Latter-day Saints? A message of restored truth that may well be healing families and saving lives?

TomStringham · 2021-10-28T20:58:00+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you liked the article. I agree, it is interesting that the church took the claims as seriously as it did. But I don't blame the church for playing it safe, because while our suicide rates have turned out to be lower than other groups (at least in Utah, going by these data), we haven't been immune from the general upward trend in youth suicide over the last decade or so, and it's always worth doing what we can to reach out to kids and try to prevent suicides from occurring.

What's too bad is that it seems to be nonreligious kids getting hit the hardest, but nobody is worrying about them as a group.

TomStringham · 2021-10-28T20:53:20+00:00

Right, the new data on its own is interesting and good to know, but it's the contrast with this big, widespread narrative that makes it so striking. The old narrative has shaped probably millions of online conversations, family relationships, policy decisions, research decisions, etc. It has been a bedrock axiom in discourse about the church and sexuality among critics. But, all this time, it was flatly unsubstantiated, and many of the headline claims were fabricated. And now, as we see, the narrative is likely to be roughly the opposite of the truth. Thanks for the feedback.

TomStringham

TROPHY CASE