Just_A_Guy

No, not at all. And maybe “sifting” wasn’t quite the right word. But within the church, I find that a person’s getting worked up about relatively trivial GA-imposed policies that they may not understand, or even don’t agree with, tends to be a sort of canary-in-the-coal-mine indicating whether or not that person will be able to develop a healthy and productive approach to deeper spiritual struggles. Plus, tuition at BYU is stupidly cheap. If it happens to have a couple of stupid policies in return, then IMHO the students there can suck it up and thank the Church for its largesse.

If remember correctly from his biography, even 40 years ago as president of BYU, President Oaks expressed his belief that the beard ban was cultural, not theologically necessary; and that he personally would have preferred its removal. The fact that it remains in place all these years later suggests to me that perhaps the beard ban served, and continues to serve, a sort of “sifting function” at BYU that the General Authorities feel is desirable.

It’ll be interesting to see the practical effects of this. The new standards are less detailed and—frankly—less objectively enforceable. They give much more authority to the subjective judgment of the enforcer; and given some of the libertine predilections of the current head of the BYU Honor Code Office (unless he’s been replaced in the last year or so)—I suspect things will get much more interesting over the short term.

Say, what *is* your real name, Grunt? Not asking for any particular reason, and no need to answer immediately. Please just let us know before November of next year, mmm-kay?

You’ve heard of the Benedict Option. But are you ready for . . . the Lehi Option?

Mmmm . . . Bacon.

I have long believed that if (to use the language of ancient Judah’s conundrum) we keep our distance from Egypt even when getting threats by turns from Samaria, Syria, Assyria, and Babylon—that deliverance will ultimately come. I think that’s the subtext between D&C 98:10. We have all, over the last couple of centuries, been led down the primrose path of embracing progressively more cunning and less thoughtful leaders; and we probably ought to have drawn a bright line long before now. But Trump strikes me as an opportunity to awaken to our awful situation.

As has been pointed out, the Church leadership has for years released generic statements about “all parties have done good points, vet the candidates as individuals”, etc. This is nothing new, and I think the article’s author is to some degree making a mountain out of a molehill. I also agree with @Carborendum in that I think our Church does face a bit of a generational gap, exacerbated by school systems that a) endorse and promulgate the ideals of the sexual revolution; and b) have bought into the cult of authenticity that says humans don’t need to change because what they are is what they were created to be. That said: I think that as a Church we have largely eluded the Trump problem, because our leadership never really openly embraced and endorsed him the way many on the Christian Right did. I realize I’m not really an insider to the CR; but to my outsider view—they spent forty years setting themselves up as the faction of self-discipline and character (especially on matters of sexual restraint), and proclaiming that these were foundational elements of a stable (and Christian) society; and then for the asking they jumped completely into the camp of a guy who had been notoriously promiscuous, had been pro abortion, and had been credibly accused of wife-rape (among other probable character flaws relating to honesty, thoughtfulness, etc). I think a lot of people felt a lot of whiplash when that happened and started asking “geez, other than gays being evil, what DO you guys stand for?” And it betrayed a baser desire among many on the Christian Right to seek protection from strong-men with all the worldly trappings of power (particularly governmental power); which again—seemed antithetical to many longtime observers of the Christian Right generally and made their longtime/sometime libertarian allies particularly contemptuous of them. We Latter-day Saints have problems of our own (one could certainly argue, as many hardcore LDS conservatives generally and LDS Trumpers in particular do, that we’ve generally been too accommodationist with secular governments throughout the COVID crisis). But a wholesale sellout of a concept that had been a bedrock principle of our spiritual faith and political actions over the last forty years, isn’t one of them.

This may be irrelevant, but just occurred to me and seems worthy of exploration: Murder was much gorier, more physically laborious, and took longer to complete (ie, more opportunity for a change of heart/backing out) in scriptural times when the firearm hadn’t been invented yet.

Welcome, Dylan! I would join with others who would say that FCA is a private organization with specific institutional goals (among which, as I understand it, is to turn out Trinitarian, Nicene Christians) and that if they don’t want to Latter-day Saints among their leadership ranks—well, their house, their rules. 🙂 Now, if the Spirit is telling you that you should still make the request—by all means, go for it. It may create opportunities for good conversations that will lead folks to a higher path down the road; especially as you strive to comport yourself in a godly manner regardless of whatever opposition you face. If, in the process, the local FCA bigwigs comport themselves in a way that openly shows to all and sundry that their religion has utterly failed to turn them into decent human beings (and may actually be excusing and exacerbating their natural human flaws)—well, all the better for us, as we try to model a more excellent way. But, don’t go into the thing thinking that they’re going to accept you. They aren’t. By their standards, we are damnable heretics.

I remember on my mission watching some Protestant services and having the distinct impression that it felt like they were kissing up to/flattering God. I am inclined to think the way you do, but with the caveat that while I think that most of the rituals in the Church that we would call “worship” have more value to us and to our fellow Church members than they really have to God—that doesn’t excuse us from participating in them. The idea of spiritual gifts here also feels appropriate to me. Some people’s gift is to build, others is wisdom, others is healing, others is dance or song—and some people’s gift is oratory; and I’m not always good at discerning whether a speaker is being a beautiful orator or just plain long-winded. So I try to be patient with mellifluous or maudlin speech or prayer at the pulpit.

In Utah, for what it’s worth: DCFS maintains what the statute calls the “management information system” (colloquially, we call it “SAFE”). If Intake decides, based on a report, that a CPS investigation should open, then the system will hold the case activity logs of the CPS worker who handled the investigation (they should be logging every contact, conversation, forensic interview, etc), and the case will eventually close with one of four findings: 1). “Supported”: basically, the caseworker thinks there’s a greater-than-fifty-percent chance that abuse or neglect actually occurred. 2). “Unsupported”: the caseworker thinks there’s a less-than-fifty-percent chance that abuse or neglect actually occurred, but can’t conclusively disprove the allegation. 3). “Without merit”: the caseworker uncovered information enabling them to prove that the allegation was false. 4). “Unable to complete: the casework was unable to locate the family, or wasn’t permitted to interview the child directly. The SAFE system is confidential and may only be used for internal Utah Department of Human Services (DCFS’s parent agency) purposes, including vetting foster parent license applicants and potential DHS employees. (I have heard that school boards have the option to access the system to vet potential teachers, but the people I’ve talked to who are in a position to know for sure, get really vague whenever I try to pin them down on this issue). (Utah also recently enacted a regimen for expungement of “unsupported” and certain types of “supported” findings, though it’s still relatively new and they’re still working out the wrinkles of how to apply it.) However, “supported” findings of severe and/or chronic abuse or neglect (including sexual abuse) do get forwarded on to the “licensing information system”, which is accessible by various state agencies that handle licensing of various professions. Parents may appeal a “supported” finding by requesting review by DHS’s Office of Administrative Hearings, and may appeal the OAH by requesting a hearing before a juvenile court judge. Parents have the ability to pull the complete (unexpunged) SAFE history of their kids. So, a divorcing couple could access reports of abuse or neglect involving the children and try to implicate the other parent in court. But an unsupported, without merit, or UTL finding isn’t going to get them very far with the court (and may not be admissible at all under evidence rules); and even if there’s a “supported” finding—the parent would still probably have to subpoena the same witnesses DCFS spoke to in their investigation, and have them testify in court firsthand; the DCFS records would only play a secondary role from an evidentiary standpoint.

Random factoid: With the big ocean liners of the early-to-mid 20th century: the British and Germans generally had steam turbines (more or less) directly linked to the propeller shafts. The French were generally less comfortable machining the large reduction gears necessary to such a setup, with the degree of precision required; so they opted to have the turbines drive generators which then powered electric motors that turned the propellers. It was reportedly a more fuel-efficient design—when it wasn’t breaking down.

They can be done well, but it’s actually *more* work to do it right. Because (in my experience) you have to appoint group leaders several days in advance, and spend some time with them to make sure they’ve read the lesson themselves and understand what it is that you (as teacher) are hoping to accomplish. Some topics (brainstorming, hypothetical scenarios, problem-solving) lend themselves well to small-group discussion; others (“share your most intimate spiritual experience in this small group, so that the ‘group leader’ can recount a watered-down version of it to the entire classroom a few minutes later”) really don’t.

My understanding is that in Romans, Paul uses “circumcision” as a sort of metaphor/ shorthand for the outward performances of the Mosaic law generally. See, eg, https://benspackman.com/2023/08/new-testament-gospel-doctrine-lesson-36-romans/?fbclid=IwAR1N096XHqlUZVNG54lvij3tubZS-JFvv8w4jn-UYKYHF9sTherYhTy1q8Y

On an individual level, there’s a strong ethic that we should be “anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of [our] own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness” (D&C 58:27). And there’s always a tension generally about how we as Saints can make sure that we are doing, not merely “good” things, but the best/most effective things we could be doing given our limited time and resources. (Apostle Dallin Oaks gave a rather memorable sermon about this sometime back, entitled “Good, Better, Best”.) But on a collective/organizational level, the laity mostly trusts that the leadership knows what it’s doing and is doing it for a good reason; so (aside from a cadre of internet-based professional complainers) it’s fairly rare for congregations to form large groundswells of people saying “why aren’t we doing more of x?”.

Many of them, in my experience, wind up being the result of children who were taken by a parent who wasn’t supposed to have them—either a parent with joint custody who failed to return a child to an ex-spouse at the appointed time, or a child in DCFS custody whose parent somehow managed to finagle the child into their care and then took off with the child. For professional reasons, I’m glad the Amber Alert tools are available. But as a citizen/former layperson . . . I dunno. I grew up sort of envisioning Amber Alerts as being intended to retrieve children who were kidnapped for the express purpose of maiming, violating, and/or killing them and where such harm was imminent if the child were not recovered immediately. I’m not sure how I feel about the system being used for less-immediate threats—especially when the core issue is basically a custody spitting match between divorced parents.

1. I’m not a woman (obviously!), but I would respectfully push back against the ideas that a) a universal policy is inherently wrong just because it hits a particular subset of people in a particularly visceral way, or b) that people who are not directly effected by a policy are unable to weigh in on the objective pros, cons, real-world effects, and theoretical rationales behind said policy. 2. I’d be fine knowing my wife were still administratively sealed to a prior spouse, if I were confident that from both an emotional and theological standpoint, the bond between my wife and her ex was well and truly “over”.

At the trial court level, it’s fairly common (at least by government attorneys and solo practitioners). Appellate filings, and filings from big firms generally, are edited much more closely.

I've tried not to weigh in too much on this, because I have mixed feelings about Ballard specifically and about the way awareness of human trafficking is being raised more generally. But I will at least say this . . . From what I understand, at least within the United States, the sorts of scenarios we envision with The Sound of Freedom and Ballard's work generally, are statistically a relatively small proportion of the total "human trafficking" that occurs here. By and large, human trafficking victims aren't abducted by sinister men driving nondescript windowless vans; they aren't kept chained up in squalid motel rooms or storage sheds with half a dozen other victims; they aren't even necessarily homeless or runaways. The far more common scenario is for children to be trafficked by their own parents--most frequently by a single mom trading access to her daughter to a dealer in exchange for drugs; or to a landlord in exchange for a month of free rent; or to a boyfriend and/or his friends in exchange for what passes (in the mother's tortured, addled mind) for affection or emotional support. In a large proportion (probably a majority, as I understand it) of human trafficking cases, bringing the children home is darned near the worst thing you can do. I wish well for Ballard, his organization, and his movie. It's desperately important that we have a cultural renaissance regarding the importance of childhood innocence. There are theories being bandied about, and becoming increasingly mainstream, that tend to justify the exploitation of children and erode the institutions that have traditionally stood between children and the adults who wish to sexualize them. Those theories need to be exposed for what they are, and Ballard is one of the leaders of the charge on that issue--which I think is why he generates a lot of the pushback that he gets (though certainly not all--he does strike me as a bit of a poser; and I have methodological issues with some of the historical theories he has published). I do worry, though, that he sort of sucks all the air out of the room in any discussions regarding the allocation of anti-trafficking resources. Even if Ballard were 100% successful and effective against the specific subsets of trafficking he targets--we would still have a major child trafficking problem in this country.

This discussion reminds me that nine years ago, I wrote this: [quote]Let's be blunt: One in three Americans (not American adults, but Americans) currently has an STD. Due to overuse of antibiotics, we're losing our ability to control/manage the symptoms of a couple of the biggies (Gonorrhea, for example). Combine that with the fact that we have a culture--and even, arguably, a political party--that takes it for granted that people have a right to consequence-free sex. What do you do when you want (and have been told you have a natural right to) disease-free sex, but all your prospective partners have diseases that can't be medically controlled? Simple--you find the people who aren't having sex right now and are relatively disease-free, and try to get them onto the sexual market. It may take a while to attain legal droit de signeur over adult abstainers/monogamists (I'm being a bit facetious here) (I think); but opening up the teenaged market can be done--is being done--with relative ease. Few of the movers and shakers in our society will realize that that's what the end game is--and even fewer will admit it--but watch and see. That will be the net effect of the legal, scientific, and social "advancements" over the next few decades. You'll see it with the publication of medical studies showing that sexual intercourse by children is a part of healthy physical development. You'll see it with a general social and legal softening of social standards regarding sexual relationships between adults and minors (have you noticed the recent prevalence of news stories involving affairs between young and improbably beautiful female teachers and sixteen- or seventeen-year-old male students?). You'll see it with a marginalization of individuals and institutions that continue to publicly encourage abstinence. And--yes--you'll see it with a deliberate attempt to limit or undermine conservative parents' abilities to influence their children's sexual mores. [/Quote]

If we didn’t watch movies because we disapproved of the ideologies of some of the principal actors, directors, or producers, we’d never watch anything. I note that a number of Harvey Weinstein films are still enjoying some degree of popularity . . .

Welcome aboard! A few thoughts: 2. Wife #1 is only able to control Husband and Wife #2 because Wife #2 is willing to be controlled. 3-5: Two thoughts here that tie into all of these: a) The sealing covenant establishes/ enhances three specialized relationships, not just one. There is the relationship between husband and wife; but there is also the relationship between the husband and God; and the relationship between the wife and God. While the vicissitudes of human relationships may cause the husband-wife bond to decay or evaporate over time (both in terms of the shared emotional attachment, and the sealing ratification of the Holy Spirit of Promise), the relationships between each covenant-keeping party and God Himself can remain intact and the covenant-keeping party has the assurance that, at an appropriate time, they can receive all the temporal and eternal blessings of the New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage with a worthy partner. The Church’s policies decree that generally speaking, while a divorced man can get a “clearance” to move on and be sealed to a new wife, he simply does not get to unilaterally shut his ex-wife out of that covenant with her Heavenly Father by going to the First Presidency and accusing her of covenant-breaking in order to subject her to a full “cancellation”. (Women, by contrast, generally *do* get to do this to their ex-husbands if or when they wish to be sealed again; probably a vestige of plural marriage and a recognition that eternal polyandry is not a thing in our doctrine.) b) Why do women get a privilege that men don’t? I surmise that the following considerations play a role: —Men hold priesthood. Where much is given, much is expected. —Due to western economic and social norms, single men are i) typically expected to take the lead in courtship and ii) often, and unlike women, are considered *more* desirable marriage partners as they enter midlife and become more established in their careers and general living situation. —LDS prophets and apostles from at least Brigham Young onwards have recognized the terrible risk a young woman takes when she hitches her fortunes to a young man who is, at that stage of his life, something of an unknown quantity. From Turner’s biography of Brigham Young, p 242: “[Young informed a man requesting a divorce] ‘that when a man married a wife he took her for better or for worse, and had no right to ill use her, and if she [pooped] in bed and laid in it until noon, he must bare it.’ . . . Similarly, Young told another man that ‘if you have drawn a red hot iron between your legs and scorched yourself bear it without grunting.’” Under the circumstances, we elders (and the women foolish enough to love us) should probably just be grateful that the Church permits men to divorce and remarry at all.

A worker at a local temple claims that President Nelson had said something to the effect of “they’re not really dead”—I think trying to emphasize that they are still conscious and that they and the living share common interests. I did baptisms and confirmations last Saturday morning. I caught myself a few times, but the confirmation recorder told me that they had been told that either way is acceptable.

One other possibility, with the caveat that I haven’t read the new opinion and it’s been 15 years since I read the old affirmative action cases: The old precedents allowed for affirmative action in the name of diversity, but not for the sake of righting past discrimination. Rather, the schools were arguing that they needed affirmative action to build an intellectually diverse class of students, in order to provide a more meaningful educational experience by fostering cross-cultural or cross-racial interactions for all of their students. SCOTUS basically said “fine, if you can make a straight-faced argument that this serves an honest-to-gosh educational purpose, we aren’t going to tell you how you can or can’t provide your students with the kind of educational experience you, the university, think they need.” It *might* be that Roberts is thinking “okay, educational/racial diversity might be important to turn out humanities scholars and I’ll defer to private/state-run entities to weigh that principal on their own, but the object of the federal military service academies is to win wars and we reserve the right to look at the academy’s educational methods to see if ‘diversity’ actually serves that purpose.”