To today’s woman, it seems almost ludicrous to imagine not being able to vote—something as archaic as pioneer dresses or butter churns. But it’s not anymore. Beth Allison Barr, a historian at Baylor, told the New York Times this spring that she used to teach “household voting”—where every household gets one vote, usually cast by its patriarch—as a “fringe” idea. Now, she said, it has begun to bleed into the mainstream.

This is the apex of the political tradwife movement. There is an important distinction to be made here before I go further: being a tradwife is a lifestyle choice, with spiritual and sociocultural beliefs factoring into it. Being a tradwife is sometimes the family’s best economic arrangement; sometimes it is just the family’s preferred arrangement. It does not necessarily correlate with the suppression of women’s political rights or professional ambitions.

But in the political reading—it does. Barr once taught household voting as a thing of the past, just like making butter from scratch, wearing dresses all day long, and women not working outside the home. But all these things are back. The aesthetic spread first, galvanized by influencers and consumers, but it has now progressed to the point that it is furnishing a Constitutional proposal.

Two kinds of tradwives: real and direct-to-camera

“Tradwife” is a term gifted by the modern era—of course young Internet netizens thought to compress two words, traditional and wife, into one. It is a nickname for influencers who cosplay a traditional lifestyle, wearing dresses and making all their food from scratch while posting their content online and earning millions (think Hannah Neeleman and Savanna Stone); in the truer sense, it refers to millions of American women who really do live out traditional gender roles—women who have children, become stay-at-home mothers and never go back to work; women who suffer from chronic illnesses and cannot work; or women wealthy enough to afford to stay home without needing formal employment.

This category of tradwife has not always gone by the name tradwife, but it fits the most important elements. Women who primarily manage the home. Women who work, but don’t have formal employment. Women who concentrate on raising their children while their husbands act as breadwinners. Some of these women like to wear skirts and dresses all day. Many of them like to bake from scratch. Many of them—in fact, many women, trad or not—wear cute linen aprons. They may even teach their daughters to adopt similar lifestyles or impress Christian values upon them. However, these tradwives do not necessarily feel the need to convince the mainstream to adopt their lifestyle. Many of them are live-and-let-live.

These women may fall under the “Silent Majority”—the same name as the chunk of voters to which U.S. presidents like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump have petitioned for support—a demographic to which politicians and pundits find it incredibly useful to assign viewpoints without evidence.

These tradwives may at least be described as the Silent Majority of tradwives. They have existed from the beginning of American history. There has never been a time in the United States without tradwives; such is the patriarchal culture that sees us hail Founding Fathers but no Founding Mothers. All those mothers were at home.

The history of the tradwife movement

The influencer tradwife is relatively new, and it is a gift of—and a reaction to—the feminist movement. Kristin Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne describes this in detail. Du Mez explores how American Christianity became a masculine, and political, movement.

The industrialization of the late 1800s, she explains, alarmed advocates of the era’s family model, where wives primarily managed the home and men often managed the farm or the shop. Du Mez says that, as men transitioned to corporate work—becoming underlings, clock-punchers—their “very manhood seemed in question.” Simultaneously, new waves of immigration and advances in women’s rights—women’s colleges opening and women’s bloomers normalizing—threatened conservative conceptions of themselves. Unrest grew among white Christians who sensed the fragility of their position at the top of the social hierarchy.

Politicians sensed an opening.

In Du Mez’s telling, it started with Theodore Roosevelt, whose strenuous, martial manhood—re: the Spanish American War and the Rough Riders—turned personal toughness into a political credential. It continued with pastors like Billy Graham, who found it at least profitable to stir up congregations with rousing speeches about masculinity of Jesus Christ—whom Graham once described as “a man, every inch a man,” the most physically powerful man who had ever lived. World War II drove home the need for masculinity and Christianity: American men wanted to feel brave, strong, and capable, and they wanted to engage in a battle for good versus evil. Or, at least, that was the rhetoric that propelled them to the front lines.

This rhetoric also solidified the politicization of gender roles—and the weaponization of Christianity to enforce it. Men had come not just to acknowledge, but to depend, on the idea that they were distinct from women. And once men returned home from World War II and needed jobs, women were pushed back to their “God-given” roles in the home.

Nevertheless, the wheel of progress continued to turn; women’s rights slowly continued to advance. As Democratic presidents like FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ thwarted Republican aims until about 1970—and as the civil rights movement progressed and the Sexual Revolution cropped up in the 1960s and 70s—conservatives found themselves feeling increasingly persecuted, or at least isolated, in a progressive world.

But conservative politicians, thought leaders, and pastors had noticed the profitability that came from exploiting traditional gender roles, and the persecution felt by conservatives provided them an opening.

And I phrase this cynically—they noticed the profitability—because many of the people who advocated for a return to traditional gender roles either did not conform to those roles themselves—in the case of the women—or confused genuine religious motivations for political goals—in the case of some of the most prominent men in the movement.

There were a host of women prominently involved in the launch of the modern tradwife movement, and none of them conformed strictly to Biblical gender roles. They all sought influence and profit and did so by defying the very positions they advanced. There was Beverly LaHaye, who told women to stay at home and concentrate on sexually satisfying their husbands while writing books and organizing political movements.

There was also Phyllis Schlafly. An attorney, author, and activist, she campaigned against the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, which does nothing more than explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. Schlafly said that women’s highest priority was the home—while also campaigning for office, not once but multiple times. She offered women who were increasingly being asked to do more and more—be educated, work, and continue homemaking—a way out: all they had to do was homemake, and in fact, that was God’s design for women in the first place, and women who followed it would invoke the blessings of God.

While there were prominent women who advanced tradwifery with great success, there were even more prominent men, as is fitting for a position that depends on calling women to stay at home. But that was not the primary goal of the men who sponsored traditional gender roles in this period; they wanted political authority concentrated in the hands of white men (re: themselves), and they took up whatever cause could deliver it—segregated schools first, then gender roles, then abortion. Bear in mind that this was one movement; these men were allies of one another.

There was Paul Weyrich, who co-founded the Heritage Foundation and said that what politicized Christian conservatives in the 1970s was the removal of tax exemptions from racially segregated Christian schools and colleges. Because segregation was no longer a tenable public position, they turned to religious liberty and a return to tradition—which naturally placed white men at the head. Weyrich was equally frank about the arithmetic. In August 1980, at the National Affairs Briefing in Dallas, he told several thousand assembled preachers that Christians suffered from a “good government” syndrome of wanting universal turnout, and that he did not share it: “I don’t want everybody to vote.” Elections, he said, are never won by majorities, and the movement’s leverage rises as turnout falls.

The briefing was convened by Ed McAteer, a former sales executive who had founded the Religious Roundtable to bring preachers with national audiences into electoral politics. Schlafly, Tim LaHaye (Beverly LaHaye’s husband), and other spoke there. The Washington Post described the audience as almost entirely white and middle-class. That same year, the Republican Party struck the Equal Rights Amendment from its platform after four decades of endorsing it.

And there was Pat Robertson, who built the Christian Coalition out of the wreckage of his 1988 presidential run and found that nothing activated middle-class Christian donors more than a threat to traditional marriage. His 1992 letter against Iowa’s state equal rights amendment described feminism as a socialist assault on the family and told recipients their money would stop it.

In time, Christian conservatives became synonymous with white masculinity. At least, this is Du Mez’s argument. Her narration of events concludes with the back-and-forth partisanship that followed Reagan—wild pivots from George H.W. Bush to Clinton, from George W. Bush to Obama—and eventually from Trump to Biden and back to Trump again.

This is the main point. As the left crystallized around advancing the rights and success of women and people of color, the right coalesced around protecting white men.

These are not the only issues separating the left and the right. But this is the issue when it comes to gender or diversity politics.

And whether or not the right’s focus on protecting white men is called-for is up for debate. What is not up for debate is the intertwinement of traditional gender roles, or tradwifery, with politics.

The age of social media has ushered in increased visibility for proponents: pastor Doug Wilson has made national headlines with televised interviews and sermons calling for the household vote; Dale Partridge posts continuously to Twitter about the failings of women; U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who famously blamed the country’s failings on “childless cat ladies” miserable about their life choices; and female influencers like Savanna Stone, Erika Kirk, Estee Williams, and Lori Alexander, all of whom advocate for women to stay home, have babies, and concede greater political autonomy to their husbands.

This isn’t something to ignore. The consequences for American politics are startlingly real

In sum: there are neutral forms of tradwifery, and then there are politically-charged ones, propelled by voices with ulterior motives like profit or authority. Distinguishing the two is critical in everyday life, especially for young adults who are being increasingly targeted by messaging from the latter.

In an October 2024 survey, a fifth of Americans confessed hoping that the 19th Amendment should be repealed. This year, Ipsos reported that nearly a third of Gen Z men globally—31%—believe that wives should always obey husbands, and 33% say that husbands should have the final word on major decisions.

This is a marked uptick from Baby Boomer men (13% and 17%). Meanwhile, 18% of Gen Z women, against 6% of Boomer women, agree that wives should obey husbands, while 15% of Gen Z women versus 9% of Boomer women believe that women should not appear too independent or self-sufficient.

In essence, it appears that the message is catching.

Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey attracted almost as much criticism before its arrival than after: Internet warriors complained about the American accents, decried the casting of transgender and Black actors in relatively prominent roles, and, of course, asserted the futility of trying to compress twenty-four books of ancient epic into a something that a modern audience can sit through. That last point holds the most weight—it is arguably impossible to try to cram all of Homer’s original yarn into a compelling film, what with the original Odyssey’s complexities, vagarities, and ancient Greekisms. The point is—the original Odyssey, as told by Homer, likely would have made a boring film for modern audiences with poor understandings of ancient Greek culture. To Nolan’s everlasting credit, he didn’t even try. Instead, he wrote a film specifically for the modern viewer—and, apparently, for the modern American.

Nolan’s Odyssey hinges on a narrative thread mentioned relatively infrequently in the original epic. Telemachus supplies the thread early in the film, watching his mother’s suitors eat through yet another year of the palace stores: these suitors are violating xenia, the law of Zeus. In Homer’s world, xenia is the sacred obligation between host and guest; a traveler could expect food and shelter from strangers, though they owed respect in return. The law of Zeus functioned as an omnipresent safety net in a lethal ancient world where traveling necessarily meant placing yourself at the mercy of strangers. The rule was enforced by the Greek gods themselves, on the theory that you never know when the stranger at your door might actually be a deity in disguise.

“It’s supposed to keep people on the straight and narrow,” Nolan told Variety in a recent interview, comparing the law of Zeus to the Golden Rule. “I was interested in the idea that the interdependence of people is the foundation and possibly the definition of civilization.”

The Golden Rule—the straight and narrow—people need each other, and that social contract, composed of kindness and mercy, underscores the entire film. However, as is typical of Nolan, he doesn’t make this quite plain until the very end of the film. There, he frames the Trojan Horse—Odysseus’s masterpiece, the trick that won the war on Troy—as the act that shattered xenia’s sanctity: a gift that wasn’t a gift, the weaponization of hospitality, a meaningless betrayal. This is important—Odysseus used the expectations of xenia to win the war; he benefitted from the law while making sure to break it with self-serving betrayal. His violation of xenia then places him and his men outside of the gods’ favor. From that moment on, Odysseus crosses into a world that forces him to understand what it is like to live outside the social contract: in this world, hosts bewitch guests, guests plunder and hurt hosts, and the ocean becomes stormy and jagged with broken guarantees.

Nolan’s film is a powerful note of conscience for an America currently bitterly divided over birthright citizenship. Immigration is, and has always been, our xenia: we are a country of immigrants; even the most foundational members of the dominant white subculture trace their American lineage back to immigrants. Birthright is how all white Americans came to be. The Fourteenth Amendment is the promise that a child born here belongs here, regardless of who her parents are or how they arrived—whether that be by slaughtering Native Americans and plundering their crops or by overstaying a work visa. It is, in short, the mechanism by which every proud American reading this became American. It is not a privilege that was earned, but a gift freely given.

Some Americans, led by U.S. President Donald Trump, are marshalling sociocultural, political, and legal pressures to end it.

Now, there are many issues with birthright citizenship and broader policies attached to unchecked immigration. I don’t have time or space to delve into the constraints and limitations imposed by the practicalities of granting citizenship to massive numbers of people whose intentions may not always be positive. But the basic morality of the principle—allowing hospitality to others the same way you have been granted hospitality—has implications for Americans generally, as well as Christians in particular.

Regarding Americans generally: the public, to its credit, is not enthusiastic about reversing birthright citizenship. Roughly two-thirds of Americans support keeping the guarantee made by the Fourteenth Amendment, with majorities among independents and a substantial share of Republicans. Support holds across region, race, and party—unusual for a country that seems unusually divided at present. As the head of the PRRI put it after their December survey: ending birthright citizenship is simply not something that the American public wants.

But majority opposition isn’t the only thing that can kill a constitutional guarantee. It only takes some people and a couple of authorities who are willing to treat the Fourteenth Amendment as optional. The suitors in Ithaca were not a majority of Greeks; they were a few dozen men who decided the rule didn’t apply to them, in a house whose owner was presumed too far away to object. If partisans wish to end birthright citizenship, they can start to harass immigrants right now—and in many ways, including through strict detention policies and unnerving ICE work, including actions that have resulted in the deaths of several American citizens, they have already begun.

Nolan’s $250 million, wildly popular movie warns of the consequences of such a course of action. Hospitality is not charity, it is infrastructure; xenia protected the traveler because everyone, eventually, travels, and in ancient society, you would die if the stranger at the end of the road didn’t take you in. Xenia was crafted by people who knew they would someday need it. Likewise, birthright citizenship protects all groups of people. Right now, white Americans are the dominant culture; in a hundred years’ time, two hundred years’ time, that may not be the case, no matter how hard some partisans try. What will happen then if America is a country built around race and not around creedal mercy and hospitality? If the latter identity is smashed up, the descendants of the Americans who benefit in the short term will, at some point in either the near or far future, suffer. We know this: we see this when the presidency turns over and Trump starts to investigate his opponents, when a political party like the Democrats returns to power and begin to reverse Republican policies, when disasters or wars strike and it turns out we need our fellow countrymen, as when Black soldiers who had long suffered under Jim Crow laws fought for the country alongside white soldiers in World War II, and when international politics go sour and we need our allies, as when Iran tightened its grip on the Strait of Hormuz and America called on European nations for help.

Nolan’s film ends with Odysseus home, having killed the men who ate his house, standing in a kingdom he no longer entirely recognizes. He sends himself to exile because he recognizes that Ithaca is no longer a safe place for him; his own actions have led to his ruin. In Nolan’s Odyssey, the end is not a triumph; it is a man discovering what it costs to live in a world where the old guarantee no longer holds. As it turns out: it is a highly unpleasant world where everyone treats him according to the same standard which he treated them.

Regarding Christians: In the film, Nolan couches his message of hospitality in religious framing. Odysseus’s smashing of the hospitality by which he had benefitted leads to a withdrawal of favor from the gods.

Among those who have benefitted the most from birthright citizenship are many white American Christians, some whom descend from Europeans who were persecuted for their beliefs and fled to the New World for refuge. It is this demographic—white Christians, the most reliably churchgoing constituency in the country and the most reliably right-wing constituency in the country—that, among the religious, are the least likely to support birthright citizenship. This group—and I count myself among them!—has benefitted so much from being allowed to stay in a country to which our ancestors did not belong; if we do not extend this same privilege to others, then we risk the withdrawal of favor from our God, who asked us to extend the same mercy we are shown to others.

Christians’ sacred text is unusually direct concerning the Golden Rule. It is a message repeated time and again in scripture. I was a stranger, and ye took me in (Matthew 25:35). The Samaritan who stops on the road is the hero of the parable precisely because he owes the wounded man nothing (Luke 10:25–37). Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Matthew 7:12)—which, for a descendant of immigrants weighing whether to close the door behind him or her, is not an abstraction, but an audit.

Christian institutions know this. The Evangelical Immigration Table has spent years reducing the biblical position to three words: welcome the stranger. Fuller Theological Seminary has said the same. The Catholic bishops, in a rare joint pastoral message, condemned indiscriminate mass deportation by a vote of 216 to five. A hundred fifty-four Episcopal bishops asked: whose dignity matters? The pulpits are largely holding, but the pews have ideologically drifted.

Homer’s gods punished the violation of hospitality because they understood it as the load-bearing wall of civilization: remove it, and the house will come down on everyone inside. The Christian formulation is just as direct. Whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me.

Birthright citizenship is a privilege; being an American is a privilege; any of the blessings of God are privileges, and ones we should not be quick to withhold from others. This was the message I heard when the Trojan Horse opened up and Odysseus’s boots hit the cobblestone beneath.

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I saw it while driving to a family function, squinted my eyes, wasn’t quite sure I was seeing what I was seeing. When I drove back home, late that night, I parked in the Provo Library lot just to double check. My eyes hadn’t deceived me the first time. Someone had plastered a white supremacist ad onto the utilities box right by the library, by one of Provo’s busiest intersections. I took a picture, climbed back into my car, sat there, and wondered: How will the Latter-day Saints react?

That’s the chief question. Seeing such a sign in Provo, Utah is an indication that soul-changing questions, the kind that confronted Christ and His apostles back in the day and throughout time, have crawled up to our very doors. The sign was torn at the edges and slightly graffited with people’s recriminations against it; nevertheless, whoever had posted it had used something very sticky. I touched it myself just to test. It wasn’t coming off easily.

I want to quickly elaborate on how I know the sign was a white supremacist advert and who the white supremacists are, just to assure you that I’m not blowing hot air. It was a sign by the Patriot Front, whose website reads: “Americans will fully recognize themselves as a people… bearing a unique national interest rooted in our heritage on this continent. Our people, born to this nation of our European race, must reforge themselves as the new collective capable of asserting our right to cultural independence.” One of the smaller white supremacist groups out there, they hope that America will become a white ethnostate. Their end-goal is to eventually end democracy, believing it has failed America by allowing too many voices to determine the direction of the nation. They recently captured national headlines when they marched through Washington, D.C. on July 4 for the country’s 250th birthday celebration, waving Confederate flags as they went, describing immigrants as invaders and America as the rightful belonging of white men. Finally, it is worth noting that the sign was posted during the week that Tyler Robinson, who is on trial for the assassination of Charlie Kirk, whom some white supremacists praised, was given a preliminary hearing in Provo, just a few blocks away from the poster. Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk was in town for the hearing, as well as Donald Trump, Jr.

I am involved in a number of political peacemaking efforts with BYU. I’m a researcher in an AI lab where we’re trying to craft LLMs able to help individuals practice communicating with someone who is difficult or outright hostile. I’m an officer of the student-led Peacemaker Project, where I produce a podcast that has brought together partisans from across campus and the aisle. I recently traveled to Philadelphia for a conference with Braver Angels, an organization specifically dedicated to bringing together partisans. I TAed for a politics- and religion-related peacemaking class last semester where we practiced communicating about hard subjects.

These are all great things. They are. BYU and Latter-day Saints in general are so, so good at seeking peace and finding practical ways to establish it. But sometimes—and increasingly more often—I walk away from each activity with ashes in my mouth. We keep practicing how to talk about an issue. Where guns should be allowed. How much should the rich pay in taxes. Is climate change a worthy government objective. We even sometimes touch on harder subjects, like is abortion ever okay.

But we handle such topics with kid gloves, and we never dare to go past them, to practice talking about the real issues that might make someone cry, or scream, or swear, or start a revolution—like, are all races really equal. Should a woman’s opinion be weighted the same as a man. Should the things God has given me be extended to others. Or the hardest question of all: when I look you in the eyes, should I view you as a child of God, should I see you as someone just as beloved, just as precious, just as real and noble and deserving by birthright as I am.

Or shouldn’t I.

I don’t know if a Latter-day Saint hung up the sign. I don’t know if Latter-day Saints tried to rip the sign off. But while I drove the miles home the question stared me in the face. How do I react as a Latter-day Saint? When an exclusionary doctrine comes knocking at my door, what do I do? How will my fellow believers react—what will they say?

This question is not a question of politics. It is a question that goes back to ancient times, back when Jesus radically defied custom and expectations in a region strictly segregated by class and gender and race and country. It goes back even further, to when the Lamanites and Nephites brawled for land in unrighteous wars. It goes back to Cain, who looked at Abel and thought my happiness is worth more than you. In other words, the question facing the Latter-day Saints is—does God love all His children equally, or not?

“He inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female... all are alike unto God,” writes the prophet Nephi (2 Nephi 26:33).

“They are like unto you,” the prophet Jacob tells the Nephites while he recriminates them for “reviling” the Lamanites over their skin color (Jacob 3:9).

“There were no robbers, nor murderers, neither were there Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites,” records Mormon in 4 Nephi 1:17, describing the idyllic period of time born of the teachings imparted by Christ after His visit to the Americas.

If we believe these scriptures, then the natural action for people who have learned, from holy writ (3 Nephi 27:27) and the words of ancient (Moroni 7:48) and modern prophets (Dallin H. Oaks, “The Challenge to Become”) that becoming like God is our chief imperative in life, then we must love God’s children equally, too.

And now I know there are plenty of ways to interpret such words—to use them to justify hurting someone because “it’ll help them” or because loving them might not serve somebody else’s interests. Those consequences are for God to consider: the actions we take are not—those have been circumscribed by the Lord. The point is: God has commanded us to love His children equally. Now: do you actually love the person for whom you are deciding law and policy? I’m a woman. When a man tries to tell me how a woman should think and act, if she should stay in the home or go out and work, what her place is, is he saying it because he just thinks so, or because he loves me? Only the second motive can imbue his advice with the Spirit. And it is not possible for anyone to love someone whom they have not approached with curiosity, questions, and a willingness to understand.

In Moroni 7:45, the aged, hidden, hunted prophet Moroni records: “Charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not… seeketh not her own… endureth all things.

“Charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.”

It is my hope that all believers will be possessed of charity at the last day. It is my hope that we will be possessed of it now, too. As white supremacism and other forms of exclusionary extremism show their faces more proudly, more unflinchingly in the daylight, it is up to us to decide as a community if we will leave such signs up—or take them down. As individuals: if we will permit the spread of such actions and rhetoric with inaction and acceptance—or not. The poster of the sign left it in hopes that we are a people that leave such things up. Are we?

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I’ve always wanted children. For spiritual and personal reasons, I believe deeply in the importance of family, including in building a home with a spouse and in raising children who are kind and curious and make the world better. Beyond that, I just want kids. I want to care for little babies and help teenagers grow into good adults; I’d like to be a good mom.

Lately, though, I’ve noticed an alarming trend. I am being increasingly inundated by pronatalist messaging. I am used to religious messaging on the topic—my local religious leaders underscore the importance of having children in order to carry out God’s plan for the world—but they usually stop there, and they address the message to both men and women. But my political leaders go further. My social media, the news I read, and legislative reports are packed with the political glorification of childbearing—specifically, of becoming a mother—coming from politicians, bureaucrats, and political thought leaders.

And it’s starting to feel suspect.

As America’s far-right movement continues to push its vision for motherhood, my native excitement for children begins to recede—and I begin to suspect that the ground I am standing on as a young, Christian woman, soon poised for marriage (the end of August!) and motherhood (not for a few more years yet), is not trustworthy ground, but rather a sandy cliff about to crumble beneath my feet.

I have come to think this because prominent voices in the American conservative movement have a certain vision in mind for childbearing right now—and I’m not convinced that its vision, though stocked with the precious babies of my dreams, knows what is best for me at all.

Consider the elements of today’s pronatalist political movement. The government, led by U.S. President Donald Trump and a cabal of pronatalists, Christian nationalists, and—overwhelmingly—old, conservative white men who surely know much less than I do about a young woman’s abilities and ambitions, has begun to push pregnancy in a major way. They are considering policy proposals for creating government-funded fertility tracking programs while defunding contraception education, have implemented $1000 tax-advantaged “Trump Accounts” for newborn U.S. citizens, and have frozen over $65 million in Title X grants, causing the closure of numerous clinics in addition to a reduction in access to contraception, STI screening, and prenatal care. They are considering a $5000 baby bonus for new mothers, setting apart 33% of Fulbright scholarships to married individuals or people with children, expanding the Child Tax Credit, and tying transportation funding to birth rates—meaning communities with higher marriage and birth rates will receive more transportation funding.

Some of these policies could be partly, or even wholly, good. Supporting families financially may be in the best interest of a nation wishing to turn out well-educated, emotionally healthy, and productive citizens. Some policies, in particular, might allow individuals to more successfully parent while not receiving economic penalties if they must juggle their familial responsibilities with work.

But connecting all of it is a through-line so concerning that it forces me to ask: who are these policies actually for? Will I and my future daughters benefit—or, ultimately, only the men at the head of the movement?

Because the Trumpian vision of the family pursues the birth of babies, not the wellbeing of whole families. It pursues the economic and cultural ambitions of men, not the health or flourishing of young women. And it seems to have no interest in what young women might bring to the world beyond a womb.

Consider the Trump administration’s Mother’s Day launch of Moms.gov. This site claims to help “mothers and fathers who face difficult or unexpected pregnancies.” Immediately, the site raises some red flags for the discerning viewer—one being that the majority of pictures of the website are seemingly AI-generated depictions of white women and babies, with one of the only pictures of a POC, being used to front a page about adoption. (This falls right into line with the rhetoric already espoused by the country’s leading pronatalists—it’s good when white people have more babies, but if you’re a black or brown woman with a lot of kids, then you’re threatening American culture (re: the Great Replacement Theory) and, quite possibly, a deadbeat.) Beyond that, the resources listed by Moms.gov are a sham. It links exclusively to pregnancy centers offering “limited medical services” with no abortion referrals, even for procedures medically necessary to save a mother’s life. Its long lists cover how women should eat for their babies, prepare their homes for their babies, and protect their babies from workplace hazards. There is no mention of maternity leave, career balance, or what fathers might contribute. (There is, notably, no Dads.gov. Maybe one will roll out on Father’s Day 2026—but only time can tell)

Let’s link Moms.gov to other efforts. The Trump administration has proposed a “National Medal of Motherhood” for mothers with six or more children—essentially incentivizing women to give up their careers and become full-time moms, out of the workplace and out of college, for the rest of their lives. Trump-aligned advocates have dogged on contraception, with Elon Musk even using X to amplify misinformation discouraging women from using birth control. Policy analysts close to the Trump administration have even advocated for defunding higher education, reasoning that higher education discourages young women from starting families by suppressing religious beliefs—as well as giving them more things to do with their time than having children.

In short, while the administration supports baby bonuses, it also supports restricting access to birth control and abortion—life-saving, health-protecting resources—rolling back opportunity in education and in the workplace, and has made cuts to healthcare and food assistance that low- to moderate-income families rely on. Then, reckon with a lack of national paid maternity leave or affordable childcare options—how are women supposed to support themselves or contribute financially to their families and have children, especially in a world where rising costs necessitate two working parents and where grandparents are not always available to help? On top of that, even—reckon with rising costs! Gas is over $4.50 a gallon in my town, and rising across the country. How could I afford to drive children around? How could I afford meals for children while saving for retirement, a car, and funding foreign wars, all while the threat of nuclear retaliation hangs over my head from heightening international conflict? Yet all of this is underscored by political threat and an increasingly risky landscape for women who want to work. Childcare is too expensive for most women who want to work; therefore, they have to stay at home, and they end up sacrificing career progress and eventually a whole career. The administration and its allies are building a political infrastructure hostile to working women—remember when Congress blocked two of its own members, women with new children, from voting remotely? And they are financially incentivizing more and more kids, while framing childless women interested in careers as misguided, dangerous, selfish, not worth listening to, and even, in many cases, not worth giving a vote, as the right-wing pastors who lead the churches attended by Cabinet officials advocate for the stripping away of women’s votes.

Such a system is structurally coercive, not supportive, to women.

The rhetoric makes this plain. Vice President J.D. Vance framed childless women as people who “want to make the rest of the country miserable”—not men who abandon their children, not the powerful abusers in the Epstein files. Charlie Kirk called single women “one of the biggest issues facing civilization”—who cares about single men—and told young women that a life filled with education and professional achievement was empty and miserable, apparently unaware that it is precisely the men who achieve such things who currently control policy. Erika Kirk, now CEO of Turning Point USA, told young women they could and ultimately should rely on men—that financial independence is a distraction, that they can always go back to work, that they can never go back to having children. Matt Walsh declared on The Daily Wire that society’s goal should be “fewer women in the workforce because a lot more of them are home raising their kids.” And at a Green Bay rally in October 2024, Donald Trump told his audience he was going to protect women “whether the women like it or not.”

I don’t want to be protected by someone who doesn’t listen to me.

This brings me to the question I keep returning to: why? My mother sacrificed enormously to have me. Why can’t I live a full life doing what I am capable of—advocating, creating, serving, changing things? Why the relentless pressure to produce children? I was the child once, the child that conservatives wanted so badly to come into the world. Did they want me born just so I could reproduce? What is the point of babies if not to eventually become people who get to shine?

The truth is—the far right only sees boys shining. Boys are encouraged to go out and work; a rollback in DEI operations are effectively trying to station white men at the head of business, while preventing low-income or minority groups, like women from ever having the chance to prove that they could meet the same qualifications; a lack of enforced protections for pregnant women in the workplace maintains the gender wage gap and makes it more financially viable for husbands, not wives, to work, further separating women from the public sphere and depriving the world from any valuable output they might themselves create, outside of a son. Because daughters are meant to stay home, meant to rely on men, meant to have many children. Among those children, those daughters will again have many children; among those children, those daughters will again have more children. And so women pass away without memory or record beyond a card on Mother’s Day and a boy’s fond recollection of his mother doing so much for him—then he goes home to a wife deprived of the financial and educational resources to pursue her own skills and talents, though he can, every day between 9-5.

This is the far right’s dream. The far right’s dream reduces me to a baby-making shell. Pay no attention to what a woman can do. Only to what her sons could.

I don’t want to fall into this trap.

Children come in their own time. I will not have them just to find political and economic value in the eyes of men who think my opinion and work are worthless. I will not allow my God-given gifts and skills to be subsumed so early in my life by the time-consuming demands of children and related bills. I will work until I am sure that my employer will not fire me for having kids; I will work until I am sure that my right to vote is secure; I will work until I am sure that having children will not result in my political disenfranchisement and my financial devastation.

In short—stop telling me to have kids. I will when I’m ready, and the more you tell me to, the less I want to.

“After 9/11 we said ‘Never Forget.’ I think we sadly have forgotten,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) posted on X last June, when Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old Muslim American, had just cruised to victory in New York City’s mayoral primary.

She was not alone in such sentiments. Conservative activist Laura Loomer declared that Mamdani’s win signaled the impending destruction of New York City, while Donald Trump Jr. quoted a post about New Yorkers voting for a second 9/11.” Yet Mace’s post was particularly disturbing. Mace once characterized herself as a Republican moderate, even breaking with the party’s MAGA line at times. Yet she confidently attacked Mamdani, not on policy—on faith.

Her boldness demonstrates the depth of a certain hate festering in far-right American politics: Islamophobia seems to be verging into the political mainstream.

Months after Mace’s post, early on November 5, 2025, the Associated Press announced Mamdani’s victory in the mayoral race. Islamophobia immediately surged online. Advocacy groups reported a 238% increase in anti-Muslim and anti-South Asian slurs; 91% specifically targeted Islam. Terms like “Islamist” and “New Yorkistan” went viral. Conservative activist Amy Mek posted an old video of the Islamic call to prayer, or adhan, playing in New York—lied that it was taken during Mamdani’s tenure—and called it “the sound of conquest… one amplified ‘Allahu Akbar’ at a time.”

Unlike Islamophobia, the adhan is not a call to conflict; it is a call to peace.

While fury circulated online, I woke up to the hauntingly beautiful strains of the adhan floating around my head, every day before the sun rose.

I spent last fall in Rabat, Morocco, studying the Arabic language. I lived steps away from a mosque, in a little apartment where my devout Muslim host mother fed me and washed my clothes daily. I walked to school by hijab-wearing women with warm smiles, children who helped me practice my Arabic, and old men who cared for the street cats. 

Islamophobia escalated as I fell in love with the believers. While anti-Muslim content trended, my hijabi speaking partner, who I now call my Moroccan sister, knitted me a birthday gift and prayed for me; loving others is one of Islam’s central tenets. While Fox News comment sections percolated with hate, my host brother unhesitatingly pressed money into the hands of beggars; charity is another tenet. While thought leaders caricatured Islam, I puked my guts onto my host mother’s bathroom during a memorable night of illness—she gently stripped away my clothing, washed it, put me to bed, and mopped my vomit off her tiles. 

Selflessness is another of Islam’s central tenets.

I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Like Muslims, we have been called to live differently from other faiths. We have been caricatured as threats, too—polygamists, cultists, anti-Christs. I know what it is to live a faith that others fear, and I know fear is not discernment. So when I heard accusations of jihadism in New York, I paid attention to real jihadism demonstrated in Morocco.

Jihad, meaning “striving,” is defined violently by extremists. However, most Muslims interpret jihad as spiritual striving: continual effort to be a better, kinder, more God-fearing person.

During fall 2025, tens of thousands of Moroccans marched for reforms to education, healthcare, and employment. The government responded forcefully. I watched peaceful protesters dragged into vans by heavily-armed police; but they continued anyway—still peaceful. I saw pain, courage, and striving for a better world.

I saw the adhan exemplified. “Allahu Akbar”—did Mek know what that phrase meant when she posted it? It means God is greatest. Greater than hate and evil. This belief motivated those good deeds gracing my life last semester. It compels Moroccan people to strive for justice. This is true religion, true Islam.

This is not a New York story. Islamophobia is rising nationally, urged by leaders from all across the country. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tn.) wrote that Muslims “don’t belong in American society,”; a similar post by Georgetown University’s Republican chapter surfaced;13 Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fl.) posted, “we need more Islamophobia, not less.”

Mamdani is Muslim. He is also the city’s youngest mayor since 1892. He served as a foreclosure prevention counselor and built his mayoral platform on free public transport, affordable groceries, universal childcare, and public safety reforms. In other words, he seems to be a true jihadist—his policies aim to serve. He uses Democratic Socialist tactics; it is fair to criticize these as ineffective.

But it is unfair to attack Mamdani’s Muslim identity. It could be one of the best things about him.

The adhan in New York was characterized as a threat. But I know those who pray to it—I know Islam better. Before I would suppress it, I would let the call to prayer ring from every corner in the city. Unlike Islamophobia, the adhan is not a call to conflict; it is a call to peace.

And as Jesus passed by, He saw a man which was blind from his birth. / And He disciples asked Him, saying: Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?

Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: But that the works of God should be made manifest in him. (John 9:1-2)

I was about age 10 when my parents started pushing me to be friends with a girl in our church congregation. We were both home-schooled and shy, so we were paired up all the time anyway, ostensibly friends from the start—but we didn’t share many hobbies, and we hadn’t known each other for long, so my heart hadn’t caught up quite yet. I wasn’t entirely interested in being friends with her at first.

But one Sunday she gave a little talk in sacrament meeting. I remember watching her step up to the podium, face pale and nervous. She started speaking about Jesus.

And all of a sudden, I was overcome with the sweetest, warmest love for her.

It was the strangest thing. Suddenly I heard everything she said as if hearing her speak for the first time and I loved all that she had to say. I fell in love with her perspective. And when the meeting finished, I ran up to her to congratulate her and thank her for her talk. It was one of the best talks I’d ever heard. And she was suddenly one of my favorite people.

It was the most rapid, inexplicable, life-changing thing. But all of a sudden, I loved her. We still didn’t have much in common. But I didn’t care. And that love has never since gone away, though we did not grow to be more alike. I still adore her and we are good friends. Particularly, while we were young, that friendship blessed us—me—so much. Thanks to my deep affection for her, previously boring, awkward church meetings and family get-togethers became cause for celebration; all of a sudden, I had someone I could rely on and invite into my own heart, too.

In the intervening years, her talk, listening to her while love flooded my heart, has never left me. Because as she opened her mouth to speak about Jesus, it was as if He gave me His eyes, and all of a sudden I saw her a little more like how He does. And that gave us a bond that will never be broken.

Since then, I have tried to recreate that miracle with other people. It was clear to me that my love for her was a piece of God’s love, and that that love was clearer, more enduring, and more motivating than any other kind of love I could conjure up on my own.

I have achieved some recreations with success while in college, confronting different perspectives and working with new friends; while teaching the Gospel in Arizona, trying to find anyone willing to learn about Jesus Christ; and while traveling the world, from Germany to Morocco to India, speaking with people of all faiths, creeds, and backgrounds. Many times, I have had to try hard to love different people. I have had to pray, to labor, and to spend time with them. At first, my feelings for them were usually forced and artificial, like with the girl from my church growing up. I would try to care, but not succeed; I would smile, but not with my heart.

But after sincere prayer and labor, that sweet, genuine feeling would come.

Rushing like a flood into me. Pure and overwhelming and irrevocable. I have never once lost my love for any of those people. And it was always the gift of God. Each time, I was acutely conscious of the Savior’s hand in mine, His voice in my ears, because each time I saw the person standing in front of me as divine and wonderful—and beloved, infinitely, amazingly, so much so that I hungered to know more about them because I knew that God loved them so much.

In essence, God gave me new eyes.

I was not read up on the New Testament when I first experienced this kind of miracle. But now my favorite passage is John 9—just because I know how that healed man feels.

As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

When [Jesus] had thus spoken… he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, / And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam… He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing. (John 9:5-7)

***

In the past year, I have been to many new places. I have also witnessed a depth of poverty and corruption that I have never before seen. From extreme poverty in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco to the grandeur of the King’s palace in Rabat. From old men missing all their teeth, women carrying sacks up mountains, and children who will never receive an education, to wealthy old men building billion-dollar stadiums and gorgeous halls, which will never receive anyone but them and their families.

From children, bleeding and dying in Gaza, to greedy men in safe, private rooms, holding onto power and pride while innocents perish. From students trying to scrape out their futures while faraway politicians make plans to bomb them and redevelop their homes. From people with real, valid suffering that could so easily be cured, to people who know those problems, who have seen them with their own eyes, who receive reports, who hear protests, but fail to act. Who stand upon the bones and backs of their fellow men.

(I concede that some of these examples may not be black and white. There are many complexities to politics and the interplay of wealth and power. But from Hamas’s treachery to Netanyahu’s extremism, from Putin’s conquest of Ukraine to Trump’s relentless mockery of half of his country, many of whom are suffering—it becomes clear that there are people in positions of power and advantage who are choosing to inflict more pain than they need to.

And why?)

The last few months in Morocco have worked a change in me. While the news from America spins in endless cycles of rage, I have immersed myself in a new political landscape. I have visited protests and watched police drag young adults like me into vans. I have sat down with detained demonstrators and listened to their stories of police abuse and violence. I have walked through the halls of mountain villages and spoken to young women who will never receive an education. I have walked through luxurious halls and observed billion-dollar construction projects.

I have watched waves of people marching in Rabat, Casablanca, Marrakech, Essaouira, and more, calling on the government to end corruption. Meanwhile, similar movements have taken place in Madagascar, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Algeria; meanwhile, No Kings protests pop up across the United States.

I want to help!

So many of the students with me here want to help, too. But it has become clear that millions and millions of people marching is not enough. There is no amount of logic, evidence, or people that can convince someone to help when they do not want to.

I do not think that logic, evidence, or everyone else being obsessed with that girl from my church could have genuinely instilled in me love for her.

Only God could have done that.

I ask myself how I can help while I watch protestors congregate in the streets. I ask myself how I can help while a demonstrator is tear-gassed. I ask myself how I can help while beggars sit on gilded streets and people cry and ask for justice. I ask myself how I can help while children die in foreign wars and old men profit off their graves.

I cannot help. None of us can. No amount of people can.

The only thing that changed me was God.

Then again called [the Pharisees] the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise: We know that this man [Jesus] is a sinner.

He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. (John 9:24-25)

***

The only thing that can change someone else is God. Which compels me to ask—is God with me?

If I want to serve and bless others, if I genuinely want to persuade others, then I must, must have the Spirit of God with me. As President M. Russell Ballard once taught—“True conversion comes through the power of the Spirit. When the Spirit touches the heart, hearts are changed.” While proselyting in Arizona, my mission president frequently reminded me that a missionary can only carry the Gospel message to the door of someone’s heart. Only the Spirit can enter.

In other words, I cannot make someone else see. Only Jesus can.

Ergo, I must have the Spirit to be with me.

Here comes the point of this very long, rambling essay, but with all the stories I have previously shared, I hope that my meaning is fully clear to you. If we want to change the world and serve others, it does not matter how technically right we are. It does not matter if we have logic or evidence. It doesn’t even matter if we had the Spirit with us when we determined our political perspectives or constructed our opinions.

If we do not have the Spirit with us, right now, in truth and sincerity, then we cannot truly help the world in the way that it must be helped.

The only way that we can have the Spirit with us is if we improve our moral and spiritual character and align it with the Lord’s, also in truth and sincerity.

As I have walked the streets of Morocco, it has become increasingly plain that building my resumé will not do as much to position me in a place to make a difference as building my moral character will. It has become clear that speaking a foreign language will serve to influence someone less than speaking with the Spirit will. It has become clear that becoming like Jesus Christ is at least a co-equal, and in truth, a more vital part of my education than anything else.

Back to that girl from my church. Ever since the Spirit touched my heart, I have loved her; I have come to know her; and though we may differ and disagree, I will never stop loving her, striving with her, and caring for her comfort, her opinions, and her goals.

If I could only see everyone with the eyes of Jesus, then I would never hold myself above them. I would never put personal gain over their needs.

If only we could help others see with the eyes of Jesus, then maybe we could live together in love and peace.

“In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting and constant influence of the Holy Ghost,” taught President Russell M. Nelson in his first remarks as the prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, back in April 2018.

He also taught that one of the “greatest gifts of God to His children” is the Holy Ghost.

Now we know that God heareth not sinners: But if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth His will, him He heareth.

Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind.

If this man were not of God, He could do nothing. (John 9:31-33)

23-year-old “Brahim” is at Morocco’s average professional peak. As a master’s student who teaches English speakers the Arabic language, he is relatively well-employed, well-paid, and well-educated—more stable than many of his fellow Moroccans. He has the money to dress nicely and own a motorcycle. He even lives in the well-connected, well-serviced municipalities outside of Rabat, meaning his family has access to private schools, functional hospitals, communications infrastructure, and basic goods and services.

Many of his fellow citizens lack these things, so Brahim is fortunate. But even he plans to leave Morocco for better opportunities.

“I won’t find any opportunity in Morocco,” he says. “My country is not giving me any opportunity to stay here. If I stay in Morocco, I’m going to work as a teacher, teaching Arabic to Moroccans, in public school with the government, and I’m going to get [7000 MAD, $700] a month. Do you think it’s enough?”

Today, like always, he drove his motorcycle to the school where he teaches Arabic learners. At this point in the conversation, his fingers drum on his bike helmet. He says, “If [young Moroccan students] stay here, they waste their time.”

Across Morocco, his sentiment is becoming increasingly common. Each year thousands of the country’s most qualified young professionals—studying engineering, medicine, education, and other highly skilled fields—depart Morocco for hypothetically greener shores in Europe, the Gulf, and America. This phenomenon is known as brain drain: the emigration of talents and qualifications from one country into another.

Moroccan brain drain has accelerated over the past decade. And if young Moroccans are not leaving the country, they are protesting its policies. Public healthcare and education systems, which many citizens argue are stymied by government corruption, are under immense pressure from overcrowding, meaning many are unable to access the kinds of services that other nations may take for granted. This issue has drawn thousands of Moroccans to the Generation Z 212 protests that began rocking the country in early September.

In response to the protests, Head of Government Aziz Akhannouch’s administration has increased its health and education budget by 16% in FY 2026. But this reform does not approach the extent demanded by protesters, and as more and more dissatisfied young adults depart Morocco, problems with healthcare and education only worsen.

This results in a ping-pong effect. Bad healthcare and bad education create bad opportunities, so the people with sufficient opportunity—meaning college students or young professionals—leave. Their exodus creates a talent vacuum. Industry issues worsen, and so do opportunities for progress.

But who started the ping-pong effect? Where do nationwide issues in healthcare and education source from?

Overwhelmingly, frustrations point back to employment and allegations of government corruption.

What’s the problem?

According to the Ministry of Higher Education, an estimated 3,700 Moroccan doctors and engineers emigrate annually. Sometimes as much as a third of the graduating medical and pharmacy class from Morocco’s flagship university, University Mohamed V in Rabat, immediately go abroad after graduation. In previous years, thousands of professionals in other fields—including in computer science, mechanical engineering, economics, and more—have emigrated alongside them, often amounting to tens of thousands of annual emigrés.

Historically, they tend to go to Germany, Spain, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and, in particular, France—so much so that France has begun to recruit specifically from North Africa.

One of the most critical statistics is this: In 2024, Arab Barometer found that about one in three of surveyed Moroccans wish to leave the Kingdom for economic reasons alone, leaving out political and social causes; in 2023, over 70% of young surveyed Moroccans wished to leave. And outside of statistical data, anecdotal evidence suggests that “everyone” wants to leave, per the college students and graduates interviewed for this article.

“While the government has increased the number of engineering and medical graduates, Morocco struggles to retain its talent. Many skilled workers are drawn to Europe, where wages and opportunities are significantly higher,” writes journalist Dakir Madiha, who reports on brain drain for Walaw.

The Moroccan government has continued to pour funding into education, thereby increasing the number of graduates and diluting the impact of emigration. Along with allocating more funds to education in 2026, they have also made partnerships with international organizations like the World Bank, which in 2023 invested $300 billion in Moroccan higher education.

In the interest of adding actual jobs and attracting more income into Moroccan circulation, the government has also invested in events like the African Cup of Nations, to be held in December 2025, and the World Cup, to be held in 2030. Then, thanks to the United Nations’ recent resolution placing the Western Sahara under Moroccan authority, Morocco has turned towards foreign investors. Labor laws have even been rewritten to attract and accommodate an influx of international corporations. Much income is expected to flow into Morocco via foreign companies and tourists.

But many jobs associated with such work are transient, far-away, or unrelated to the fields most on Moroccans’ minds—health and education. Furthermore, foreign investments do not provide timely or direct enough assistance to people like Brahim and his friends.

This is displayed by statistics like those of Trading Economics, which state that the Moroccan youth unemployment rate hovers around 36%. Last year it reached an all-time high at 40%.

“[It’s] very concerning… many young people can’t find jobs that match their education or skills [or there is a] lack of opportunities, especially in small towns and remote villages. [I’m] both worried and sad,” said Brahim.

Though no official survey data exists, informal interviews and anecdotal evidence seem to suggest that Brahim’s words are accurate.

Take the example of Fahd and his partner, a couple in their 30s living in Rabat. Though both received college educations in engineering and teaching, they ultimately only found employment as a driver and a vape shop attendant, respectively.

There is also Mohamed, a man in his 40s who studied law in college but now works as a taxi driver; Soufiane, 34, who studied business, but now works at a call center; and many others whose education now goes untouched in the course of an entirely unrelated and sometimes poorly-paying profession.

The issue stems back to a lack of available, adequate positions. As Brahim says, his master’s program employs only two people every year. Even in fields with high demand like engineering, teaching, and healthcare, openings are few and salaries are low. There are not enough firms, schools, or hospitals to satisfy workers and consumers, and even in the ones that exist, good wages are not guaranteed.

In other words—it does not matter whether or not Moroccan young adults want to go. If they want to use their degrees, they must.

Caught between a rock and a hard place: The emotional toll of leaving the homeland

A concept central not just to Moroccan culture, but to Arab culture, is ghorba (غربة). This little word means something that the English language cannot concisely capture. It conveys a deep, intrinsic, and inescapable longing for home, along with a feeling of estrangement from that very place.

Though this sentiment sources back more particularly to refugee conflicts like in Palestine, Syria, and other places, it comes up many times in interviews with the young adults who love their country, but believe they must leave.

“Amir,” a 23-year-old finance student at University Mohammed V in Rabat, said that the thought of leaving tugs deeply on his heartstrings. When pressed about his point of decision—when he realized he would have to leave Morocco to obtain the future he wants, which lies in the intersection of business development and policy-making—he said he could not even remember the decision.

“I think, like, the whole Moroccan society had this… realization… We all [woke] up to [think], like, yeah, this is bad,” said Amir. “It’s like a win or lose situation. And winning is leaving.”

Though Amir says he feels great pain over his decision to leave, it is because he cares deeply about his family and his fellow citizens. He disavows loyalty to his government.

“The problem here… is the trust, especially with the last events [the Generation Z 212 protests and detainments],” said Amir.

“A deep thing of trust [was] broken inside every Moroccan that saw how the government used violence.”

Nevertheless, Amir says that if opportunity improved, he would not leave Morocco. He also would like to come back to Morocco after securing his own future. “The older [I get], the more resources I have, I can help Morocco.”

Amir is not alone in his sentiments. Interviewed college students and professionals say that they would not leave Morocco if they could find opportunity to work here, or that they hope to return to Morocco to reinvest in their homeland after studying and working elsewhere.

But many feel alienated by the government’s present conduct—which is deeply related to the Generation Z 212 protests that have appeared in every major Moroccan city. In the course of these protests, thousands of young adults have been arrested while protesting—including two of Brahim’s friends—though the detainees, human rights advocates, lawyers, and eyewitnesses attest that they were demonstrating peacefully and legally.

People like Brahim, Amir, and others also believe that they cannot make a difference in politics outside of protesting. Brahim alleges that, even if he were to try to enter politics, the electoral process is stifled by candidate dishonesty. This would bar him from advancing to a national level.

“Corrupt politicians buy votes from unaware citizens… This makes the political arena dirty and repulsive,” said Brahim. “In the last election, I was offered 500 MAD to vote for a candidate, but I refused. I also know many people who were offered money to vote.”

The wealth gap therefore prevents Moroccans from making a political difference, especially at levels above that of their local community. Upward social mobility averages around 35% in Morocco and is particularly low in rural communities, meaning people tend to stay in the same sphere of influence as the one in which they were born.

Furthermore, many in the governing class, meaning Parliamentary officials or wealthy business leaders, entered their roles via what the Washington Institute calls “parachutage”—meaning leaders are usually the children of previous leaders. Outsiders cannot access such circles.

This altogether creates a feeling of helplessness. If Moroccans are detained while peacefully protesting, if the government does not recognize their demands, if they cannot enter the government themselves, and if they cannot find adequate employment or education within Morocco, then they have no choice but to leave.

At the conclusion of the interview, Brahim zips his motorcycle jacket back up. It is chilly outside, and it is a long drive home to his family’s farm in the suburbs of Rabat. He may be happy to see them, but he will still be glad to move away—one day. He dreams of going to the United States eventually. If not that, Europe. But growing anti-immigrant sentiment in America and Europe works against him.

Even with increasingly long odds, he goes to school and work and networks with American and European professors and students in addition to his Moroccan friends and teachers.

Meanwhile, the news cycle covers the World Cup and the Western Sahara, but not the gap between protesters’ demands and results; meanwhile, his own friends who were arrested while demonstrating sit in detainment. Meanwhile, his family struggles to eke out a living. The whole time, emigration stays on his mind.

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Two days after the attack on the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan, I ran into a couple of white boys in the market. I specify that they were white because we were in Rabat, Morocco, in the middle of Al-Medina Qadima—the old city—meaning everyone around was brown and Muslim. So these boys, with their American accents, stuck out to me. It’s nice to see someone with whom you have much in common.

They told me and my friend that they were from Michigan. Close to my home, Wisconsin. We were all Midwesterners. The attack was fresh on my mind, so I mentioned it and asked if they lived close. It was one of their hometowns. I expressed condolences and told them that it was a church of my faith that was attacked. They expressed condolences back. They said they were Christian and their churches had been praying for ours. Wow, looks like we really did have a lot in common.

We all stuck around and kept chatting for a while. One of them eventually turned to me and asked what Mormons believe in.

I’ve talked to enough evangelicals to know how similar our beliefs are. So I repeated the point I had been thinking—that we had a lot in common. We both believe in Christ. We believe He is the only path to salvation. We believe He marked the way. We believe in grace.

He asked me what made us different, so I told him that we didn’t believe in the Trinity the same way that evangelicals usually do, and we also believe that the Book of Mormon adds testimony to the truths in the Bible, adding a second witness to the Gospel.

The words then tripped off his tongue so easily. “So you’re not really Christian, are you?”

I said no, we believe in Christ—we believe He is God, we believe He is the way, the truth, the life, the light, we believe in His Gospel and try to live His teachings. We believe in Him.

“But just differently than Christians do,” he said, a laugh creeping into his tone. Later in the conversation, he says that anyone who is not Christian will go to hell.

I have heard those words countless times before. Old men yelling at me on my mission in Arizona—me, a teenage girl, trying to share a scripture while spit flies from his face. Evangelical Christian teens my age telling me Satan had deceived me as they repeated denigrating stereotypes. Soccer moms sneering at me, telling me the Book of Mormon adds to the Bible, though the verse that says not to “add or take away from the Gospel” comes from Revelations—which was added before many other books in the Bible.

They all say so many things. You’re not Christian. You’re going to hell. You belong to a cult. You are brainwashed.

I have also read those words countless times on social media. Even in the immediate aftermath of the shooting in Michigan, Christian Instagram influencer Josh Benson posted a video mocking Joseph Smith while also spouting misinformation about the Prophet’s plural marriages—and also entirely disregarding the existence of plural marriage in the Bible. His post’s comment section was full of people calling Mormonism a “demonic cult.” In the comment sections of Latter-day Saint influencers—people fighting, calling members demons, harbingers of hell, pedophiles.

There were similar comments on an article from the Washington Post, which reported that Latter-day Saints had raised over $300,000 for the family of the deceased shooter, in addition to the families of the victims—That’s so weird. Bad move, Mormons. Mormons are pedos. They’re nice people, but they’re going to hell. They belong to a demonic cult. Don’t be deceived by their nice actions. Satan is leading them so that they act nice and look nice, but they are evil and they will deceive you if you listen to them.

Most of these commenters were Christian.

Many of them said we are not Christian, and that this difference, and our lying about it, justifies the verbal abuse, because we are deceiving others.

(As an aside: I refer to those Christian commenters by their chosen label, because I believe that Jesus knows them better than I do and what is in their hearts—He, not I, knows if they are Christian or not.

But this boy, who stood in front of me in the Medina Qadima, who never met me before in my life, seemed to believe that he knew me and all my life history better than Jesus does.)

In front of this boy, I found myself biting my tongue. I wanted to tell him so many reasons that I don’t think he is a real Christian—because he doesn’t seem to be loving me sincerely or meeting me where I’m at. But my desire is misdirected (and not Christlike).

And it’s not really about this boy. It’s about all the other people I have met who are unable to give their judgment to Jesus. It’s about all the other people who have tried to debate me into losing my beliefs, assuming that they are smarter and wiser than me and that I have not researched, studied, or poured years of my life into understanding my faith so that I can be sure it connects me with Christ. It’s about all the people who have thought that yelling might convince me that they were connected with Christ. Who have told me I will go to hell and called me a servant of Satan or a demonic cult member while I stood on their doorstep as a nineteen-year-old missionary.

Every time this happened, it scared me. Every new rumor I heard about my faith drove me to study deeper, to pray harder, to scrutinize my belief system. Eventually, my study drove me deeper into the arms of my faith. I felt Jesus where I was. I felt His love, and I learned as a missionary that, if I showed others that love, then they were likely to join our Church, knowing that they could feel His love there because of my example.

I have also learned from these experiences—more than anything—that criticizing someone’s beliefs without love or understanding does not work.

And this is important. I did not feel as if this boy understood me. He did not know what I have gone through to have the beliefs I do today. And I had focused on pointing out what we had in common; he focused on pointing out that we were not the same. Basically, he “othered” me, and in doing so, he led me to believe that he did not care about me. He drove me away from listening to him.

If he had borne his testimony to me, I would have thought: This is irrelevant to me because he is bearing his testimony to the version of me in his mind, not me in actuality. I would have thought: He does not care about me. He just wants to win. This is not a testimony of love because he does not know me or take the time to listen to me. If his church does not help him love, then it must not be the church of Jesus.

This raises three questions for all Christians in the wake of the Grand Blanc shooting.

Do we have faith that Jesus judges others correctly, or do we need to do it for Him?

Do we believe that Jesus listens to others to love, understand, and help them, or that He listens to others with criticisms on the tip of His tongue?

Do we genuinely believe that other people can be as good, worthy, and intelligent as we are, or do we, before we know them or meet them, classify them as less than ourselves?

It is saying no to these questions that leads to a desire to other them.

It is othering others that leads to dehumanizing them.

It is dehumanizing someone that lets you spit at them and tell them that they are members of a demonic cult.

It is calling someone a demon that justifies you in driving families from their homes in the middle of the night, as happened back in the beginning of the Church’s modern history in Missouri.

The same thing motivates you to issue an extermination order for all members of one faith.

To burn down their sacred temples.

To tar and feather them.

It is the same train of thought that led a man to drive his truck into the church in Grand Blanc, unleash gunfire, and set the chapel on fire.

(Another aside: I do not believe that this boy, in the Medina Qadima, would have done the same—I assume that he knows himself better than I do, and when he says he is Christian, he really does try to follow Christ.

I wish he thought the same thing about me.)

On the other side of the token: it is members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that follow the same pattern that engage in Instagram wars with Internet warriors.

It is members following the same pattern that judge LGBTQ+ saints in their ranks.

It is members following the same pattern that have to bite their tongue, staring at a fellow American Christian, in the Medina Qadima.

Essentially, it is people who do not follow Jesus Christ’s example that do not become like Him. Your Christian label does not matter—it is your Christian actions.

As General Conference goes on this weekend, I pray to have my heart opened and my eyes unlocked. I pray to become more Christian. I pray to love Him better and let Him work in my heart.

“I am the good shepherd; I giveth my life for the sheep.

“And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

“My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.

“I and my Father are one.

“Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.

“Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?”

John 10:11-32

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