that I read Monday in full. The author seemed to take delight in bashing the honor code pledge to live a moral life; in particular the virtue of chastity, and of sobriety for men. Even though Jamal had his failures in living the honor code, he has my respect for taking on the challenge, learning from his mistakes, owning up to it after he withdrew from school and coming back for his senior year.

Actually most of the article isn't about Jamal and the honor code, its about Jamal's uncle's horrible childhood and the disasters it led him into as an adult. I noted these key facts about Jamal's uncle, Luke Neal:
"Neal never knew his father, and his mother was a prostitute. One man Mom was with—A pimp? A john? He's not sure—once grabbed him by the jugular at night and said, "I could rip your f--king life out right now." No, Mom didn't care if he lived or died, so Neal spent his entire childhood in South Central L.A. with an adopted grandfather and in Chicago with his grandmother (by blood) and uncle. An uncle who was ruthless. One beating kept Neal out of school a full week."
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2702414-after-5-years-of-byu-and-its-honor-code-jamaal-williams-is-free-what-now

The article details Neal's violent extended "family", suicide attempts, betrayals, and loneliness Neal suffered. What I found incredibly ironic about the article is how blind our society is to the causes of the horrible life stories that these authors love to write about. The author glamorizes a lifestyle of drinking, partying, and premarital sex that he has presumed is the normal life of a college football star player. Then the author writes about the tragic and painful story of Luke Neal's life, yet never connecting the clear cause and effect--that Luke Neal's life is most likely a result of Luke Neal's FATHER'S lifestyle of premarital sex and booze! As mentioned in the article, Neal is a product of extramarital sex between a father he never knew, and a prostitute mother.

We have all read story after story of the inner city athlete who grew up with a broken family and no father in the home. Yet journalists like Tyler Dunne in this article endorse a viewpoint that moral virtues like chastity and sobriety are something to be "freed" from. That viewpoint will surely perpetuate the cycle of horror as they glamorize the kind of behavior that leads to people like Luke Neal. Luke Neal is actually one of the lucky few--he's not dead, in jail, or a drug addict rotting away in the slums of L.A.

Its time to call out the hypocrisy of these attitudes and the soft bigotry of low expectations these journalists display toward people like Jamal Williams. And we should be proud of the moral tenets of the Honor Code. Its good for young men, young women, and the future children and families of anyone that tries to live it. Its NOT just for Mormons, its for the betterment of all mankind.