Vort

Now you're just ranting. Look, either LDS claims to exclusive divine authority are true or they are false. If they are false, you can safely ignore them. If they are true, you must heed them. It's just not that hard. Fine. And I personally don't believe that chocolate caramel is the best ice cream flavor. Our opinions and two bucks will buy us a cup of steaming hot chocolate at BYU. Irenaeus? You have got to be kidding. Have you ever actually read the Bible? If you are so sure of this, then you have nothing to worry about. So why are you ranting on an LDS discussion group? Obviously, it really bothers you that others see things differently from you.

I have proved it to my own satisfaction. If you want to know, then you have some work to do. Or you can continue sitting there expressing disbelief. Either way.

The only way to God is through God's authority, which he has restored to the earth in his kingdom, aka the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is not a claim of "mine is better than yours", but of "God's is better than not God's".

You're just jealous because I make that pink tutu look good.

No, please! That was in no way a request for more smiley usage! (As JD said, my response was a joke to your joke, so I was commenting on my own joke going over your head...aw, heck, it's no fun when you have to explain it.)

Unfortunately, those of us who eschew smileys and "LOL"s run the risk of having our jokes fly over the heads of our readers...

This is fascinating. Tell me, has "Denise -> Dennis" been ordained to a Priesthood office since the operation? (Or before?)

Blanket statements are always false.

Missionaries are told to teach the basics and let the Spirit do the rest. They are taught to avoid contention. They are not told to avoid teaching certain established doctrines. (That is, I'm sure that some missionaries, somewhere, at some time, HAVE been told that, but it's not something that missionaries in general are told to do.) About half the missionaries in my mission were from Utah, and I would say slightly more than half of the really good missionaries were Utahans. I'm not from Utah, and I was not a particularly effective missionary, but I think I had a pretty good view of how other missionaries were. The Utahans acquitted themselves quite well.

For Mormons, what is Telestial? I have no idea what you're asking. So here's the flow of conversation: You say: "Yupp. That is all I ever here. When it comes down to it, if you are gay, live a lie or go to hell."I challenge you to back up this baseless and vicious statement.You don't.I mention that you haven't backed it up yet.End result: I'M the rude one.Funny how that works.

I don't believe anyone here has ever said such a thing. Please provide a source for such a baseless, vicious charge.If what the bible says about homosexuals are about modern day homosexuals they "shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven".You didn't say "will not inherit the kingdom of heaven", you said "go to hell". Provide a source for this charge. Surely you know the two are not the same. I'm still waiting.

Suffering from "gender confusion" or feeling like an opposite-sex person "trapped in the body" of the "wrong sex" don't sound to me like sins. They sound like weaknesses of the flesh, unusual to be sure but not necessarily all that different from what every one of us deals with. Looking beyond that: To me, the justification you offer above sounds similar to those who say, "God created some people with a strong sex drive/bad temper/lust for children/desire to overeat/taste for hominy grits, so therefore how can it be sinful for them to fornicate/beat people up/be a pedophile/eat themselves into morbid obesity/consume stuff with the taste and texture of kindergarten paste?" The argument sounds convincing, but it fails on a few levels: The fact that people have a propensity to act in certain ways does not justify that action.The fact that some people, through no fault of their own, are predisposed toward certain sinful behaviors does not absolve them of guilt if they sin.If an action is spiritually harmful, then it is a sin. This is true regardless of how pitiful or otherwise sympathetic the person engaged in the sinful activity might be.The fact that we cannot see the justice in a given situation does not therefore imply that the situation is necessarily unjust. It might simply be an artifact of our own limited understanding.People cannot always completely control their desires or impulses, but they can always control their actions if they so choose. Do you mean that you find each of these difficult to believe, or that you find the three together difficult to believe? I will assume the latter. The number of people with truly ambiguous genitalia is vanishingly small, less than one in a thousand. I have great sympathy for such people, but I don't think we should be determining sexual morality (or for that matter basing our laws) on the experience of 0.02% of the population. I understand your confusion. Justice often seems delayed or ignored in this life. I cannot speak to the idea of God's "fairness" or why people might be born with various handicaps. This is a gross overgeneralization.I'm sorry. How so?Genotypically speaking, humans either have a Y sex chromosome or they do not. If the presence of a Y chromosome indicates maleness, then genotypic sex is always unambiguous. Phenotypically speaking, people usually develop either as male or as female. There certainly are cases of ambiguous genital development and even of true hermaphroditism, but even in the latter case, it is generally incorrect to say that the person is "both male and female". A more accurate description would be that the person is neither fully male nor fully female -- though it would be equally inaccurate to say that they "simply are neither male nor female". I do not claim to be an expert in the area. Most of my knowledge in this area comes from a genetics class I took at BYU 25 years ago, with a professor who sensitized his students to the issues confronting the "intersexed". Nothing simple about it. Perhaps because of that class, I'm unwilling to condemn those who "feel trapped" in a "wrong-sexed" body. But at the same time, I am certainly not willing to abandon the teachings of God regarding human sexuality. Of course we say that. What do you suppose it means to have been created "in God's image"? I don't really understand your use of the word "sin". You seem to have a concept of sin that involves a long list of prohibited activities, and if you engage in one of those activities, God or an angel or someone else puts a check mark beside that sin and now you're on the hotseat. A "sin" is any activity that separates us from God. God has given us the gift of sexuality, along with some very strict instructions on how we are to use that gift. Inappropriate use of sex separates us from God very quickly and very effectively, and is thus a grave sin. I'm not sure what it is that I clearly don't understand. I believe I do understand what you've stated above. I confess I do not understand how that confusion might alter God's teachings or the definition of sin. Sorry if I offended you. It seemed to me that you were looking for complex reasons behind a straightforward law of sexual morality. Intersex issues might bring up some questions, but the fundamental principles won't change. That's all I was trying to say.

I don't believe anyone here has ever said such a thing. Please provide a source for such a baseless, vicious charge.

Did you actually read it though? u_u Yes. y_y Perhaps. I think a man who speaks the opposite of what the prophets have told us is the mind of God is someone willing to teach what some want to hear, despite the truth of things. Who do you think is doing so?

I disagree. Homosexuality is a huge issue.Huh? Who are you responding to? Did someone say that homosexuality was not a huge issue? No, it needs to be dealt with through revelation. Which it has been. f_f Those who believe the prophets are already in agreement.

You can assign meaning to it, I suppose. In any case, the symbolism of the covenant hand is well enough known in Mormonism that I don't think it's a particularly obscure symbol. I have seen no one use this argument. Can you point to that argument being used? Because this looks like a straw man, though I assume you would not intentionally use such an argument. In any case, I agree with your larger point about symbols, but I also think it's not overly relevant to this discussion.

You can find any number of people who will preach to you anything you wish to hear. The fact that some anonymous guy wants to proclaim, by his own authority, that homosexuality is Biblically acceptable is, in the words of Macbeth, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Thank God we have access to true prophets who teach us the pure words of Christ, and have taught us unambiguously that homosexuality is an evil we must avoid in our conduct.

The same way that the fact that we are created in God's image, with two arms, two legs, one head, two eyes, etc. is not disproven by the existence of those with birth defects. Our present mortal being is imperfect clay. This is a gross overgeneralization. I suppose for the same reason he "creates" people with no legs, no arms, or two heads. No. It means that men will still be men and women will still be women. Undoubtedly, those of indeterminate sex while in mortality will nevertheless be whatever sex they are spiritually, however their mortal genitalia may or may not have formed. For the same reason God "creates" any other physically imperfect being. Hope you've been helped. I think you're making the issue out to be far harder than it actually is.

I never heard of any Latter-day Saint refusing to teach LDS doctrine because the people were investigating the Church. If anything, the opposite is true -- we're only too eager to every little scrap of doctrine to anyone who asks a casual question, even if that "doctrine" is of questionable validity or narrow application. In my experience, if Mormons have a weakness vis-a-vis doctrinal exposition, it's that we talk too much, not too little.

I have been an active member all my life in many areas of the US and I have never heard of such a thing.

Do you feel the same way about baptizing -- the man performing the ordinance should not worry about which hand he's raising to the square, but should be thinking about the symbolism and covenant? Do you feel the same about temple worship? For many people, part of "think[ing] about the symbolism and the covenants" involves using the right hand. The difference in my examples above is that, under normal circumstances, the other ordinances mentioned are supposed to be performed with the right hand. As far as I know, the sacrament is no less efficacious if taken (or even administered) with the left hand. Nevertheless, I don't see using the right hand for sacrament as somehow removing the focus on the ordinance, unless you're watching to see if your neighbor uses his or her right hand. And if that's the case, your problem isn't with which hand you're using.

"Sinister" is the Latin word for "left", as in "the left hand" -- hence Ned Flanders' geeky joke about having a "sinister reason" for inviting people to the announcement of his new store, "The Leftorium". "Dexter" is Latin for "right", as in "the right hand" -- hence the word "dextrous" meaning "deft and coordinated". Doubtless this word usage reflects ancient, long-rooted prejudices about the right and left hands, which in turn contributes to the symbolism of our covenants. As I have already noted, I personally take and pass the sacrament with my right hand for this very reason (that is, symbolic covenants). But I do get a bit concerned that people might overstress a minor, unimportant symbolic gesture and make it the centerpiece of that element of worship. That would be a tragedy.

Personally, and without wishing to go into graphic detail, I don't believe that the ancients were in the habit of wiping their nether regions with the fingers of either hand. They may indeed have performed some sanitary functions left-handed, but the idea of the left hand being the "poop hand" strikes me as somewhat absurd. I suspect it's a modern misinterpretation of ancient practices.

You notice how the first half is describing what the men would wear and then the 2nd half says dress/skirt but also says for a men. I'm assuming she really meant to say women but eternalpromise516 hasn't said anything yet. Although I could be wrong and maybe what's written is correct and I'm misinterpreting. Here's how I interpreted it: People wear nice slacks and a blouse (or for men, nice pants and shirt)...or they wear a dress or skirt (or for men, a suit). Fwiw...

So then, anyone who suggests anything that you (Shego) don't find "compassionate" is hereby condemned for lack of compassion. Do I read you right? So you start out by preemptively attacking the ideas of anyone who doesn't agree with you, then request that no one else follow suit. Thanks anyway, but I don't really want to play by those rules.