Columnist makes plea for humility

His sense of humor kept getting him in trouble, according to Kirby. At a roadblock, searching for drunk drivers, he would be asked by people what the problem was.

"I'd tell 'em, 'We're looking for Democrats,' and because it was Utah County, they'd say, 'Heck, we don't even know any Democrats. We hope you catch them, though.'"

In one incident, a speeder he pulled over handed him his driver's license and his LDS temple recommend. He wasn't impressed, as he had one himself, Kirby said. He issued a ticket, "and on his Temple recommend I wrote, 'void.' ...

"So I got two days off without pay for that one." However, he still thinks it was funny.

Kirby talked about a column in which he poked fun at the Deseret Morning News for a political questionnaire that sought to ask about all sorts of personal matters, such as whether the candidate was having or had had an affair. The questions didn't have much to do with running a city, he felt. He joked that it didn't matter if a certain candidate had shot a ballerina and two nuns when he was four.

Nuns of Utah were unhappy with that, and Kirby's then-editor asked him to write a letter to soothe the troubled waters. The letter began, "Dear nuns," he said. He told the audience he didn't know what the correct term was for them because in the LDS faith the only nuns are none of this and none of that.

He apologized about the column and then wrote that the nuns should know that he is sorry "and going to hell because I'm a Mormon." He added that if they already knew he was damned, they should know he couldn't be expected to behave.

He expressed dismay with fighting that he has witnessed through the years over religion.

Kirby concluded with this message: "The mere fact that we aren't as smart as we think we are really should teach us to approach these issues with a greater sense of humility than we do."

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com