Friday, March 4, 2011

Brandon Davies And Bad Rules

It was looking like a great season for the Brigham Young University college basketball team -- ranked 3rd in the country with a 28-2 record. Unfortunately, their leading rebounder, Brandon Davies, got kicked off the team for having consensual premarital sex with his girlfriend. Like drinking alcohol and coffee, premarital sex is forbidden by the University honor code. They promptly lost their next game by 18 points to an unranked team.

It takes effort to instill discipline in people and get them to follow rules. It's a real shame when that effort gets wasted on arbitrary or harmful rules. In an era of condoms and the pill, preventing eager young athletes from having sex with each other falls squarely into the arbitrary and harmful category.

4 comments:

Ron E. said...

Erm. Coffee is banned too? I wonder what the Biblical justification for that one is.

wsn said...

Mormons don't use caffeine.

Not sure what LDS texts are the source of it, but I don't think it's "Biblical" in the sense of Catholic/Protestant norms of "Biblical."

low-tech cyclist said...

Even if I could believe the rest of the hogwash the Mormons are selling, the caffeine ban would suffice to keep me out of the LDS.

At any rate, with respect to Brandon Davies and BYU, it's important to remember that BYU's raison d'etre isn't to produce winning sports teams.

You can believe, as I do, that BYU's principles are misguided, but it's silly to think they shouldn't abide by them.

Neil Sinhababu said...

I guess I think BYU shouldn't abide by their principles, because they're misguided. That's how a certain value of 'should' works.