Just_A_Guy

They should call the second one the “Leah Kinyon Memorial Bill”.

The one thing this policy potentially does, is outsource eligibility for “worthiness” determinations away from BYU HR and/or department heads (who might otherwise apply their own judgment of an employee’s “temple worthiness”) and places the issue squarely and unappealable in the hands of bishops and stake presidents who are neither functionaries of, nor beholden to, BYU. One wonders if this is related to the current Title IX investigation BYU is undergoing.

I thought they already did that, frankly. One of the reasons I didn’t pursue academia was that I only would have wanted to work at BYU; and given my own struggles with porn, I didn’t want my secular livelihood to depend on my current worthiness to hold a temple recommend. (Although, if it has hitherto been possible to be an LDS BYU professor without holding a current temple recommend, then that would explain a lot. A whole lot.)

Goblin Valley, and maybe a slot canyon?

It may be worth noting that there’s a difference between how things are actually going for us, versus how WE THINK things are going for us.

I wonder whether it's really accurate to suggest that Americans are as racist in 2021 (or in 2008, when they elected Barack Obama) as they were in 1978. But, I happen to think that one of the reasons for the priesthood ban in 1847 was due to William McCary's efforts to raise up a branch of mostly-black Mormons in Cincinnati with himself at the head, which was kneecapped by the declarations of Parley Pratt and others that black men had no claim on the priesthood. To my view, under the conditions extant in 1847, McCary's discrediting may well have prevented the rise of a movement of self-segregated and socially activist Mormons who rejected Apostolic authority--and as American (and indeed, global) social conditions evolved over the next century, the 1978 revelation may paradoxically have had the same effect.

1. Now, we should perhaps note that we've just made quite the transition in going from the priesthood ban as a general policy, to the varying ways in which the ban was later implemented and interpreted. Reeve's book is on my to-read list--haven't gotten there quite yet--but based on podcasts I've heard of him, the notion that Brigham Young as of 1846-1852 was looking for an excuse to "segregate the Church/priesthood along racial lines" is not one that Reeve holds to. Reeve, IIRC, argues that Young's understanding of Joseph Smith's temple theology and the idea of eternal progeny made him see the Biblical narrative of Abel's murder and the subsequent "curse of Cain" in a new light; and Young came to understand a priesthood ban on the literal seed of Cain as a naturally and justly required outgrowth of that theology. In other words, per Reeve's view as I have heard it expressed elsewhere, Young wasn't engaging in self-serving, results-oriented revelation seeking. To the contrary, he seized upon an extant revelation and followed it to what he understood to be its logical end. But even without Reeve, we can narrow the timing of the ban to sometime between April 25, 1847 (at which time Young endorses the priesthood of William McCary, even though McCary is married to a white woman) to February 13, 1849 (at which time Young, in a council meeting, endorses priesthood ban based on Cain's murder of Abel and rejects Lorenzo Snow's proposal that "the key be turned" to Africa). Now, maybe Reeve thinks he has found some source from 1847 to 1849 indicating that Young actually had some secret desire "to segregate the Church/priesthood along racial lines"--and if so, I hope you'll cite to it. But in the absence of any such source, I think most of us are pretty safe in our understanding that Brigham Young and the rest of the Church didn't give a flying fig, in 1847-1849, about what they were being told by 19th century American society. I mean, my gosh--the Church embraces polygamy, and when America says "ick", Brigham Young persists with the practice even though it got Joseph Smith killed and the rest of the Church booted out of their city in the dead of winter, resulting in the deaths of hundreds and the survivors being compelled to go and start over again in a gosh-forsaken wasteland. But, the Church embraces ordination of black men to the priesthood, America (hypothetically*) says "ick", and Young immediately throws some of "the best Elders" in the Church under the bus just to curry favor with roughneck Missourians, prophet-killing Illinoisans, and useless east-coast dandies? Mormon history buffs used to think Young was made of sterner stuff. *Out of curiosity, does Reeve provide any evidence that, from 1847-1849, a single American newspaper criticized the Mormons for having ordained black ministers? 2. You have a fair point that I could have been a shade more nuanced; though I daresay God cares much more about whether we have quality relationships than whether we're gettin' it on with the frequency that we think we deserve. But while warped views of human sexuality come from every direction, I think the driving force in modern notions of sexuality come less from St. Augustine and more from the decrepit corpse of Hugh Hefner.

I assume you mean “in the absence of you, personally” receiving such an experience, right? Because the Church leadership has “testified” of this repeatedly. 🙂 And, sure, in a church with living prophets dedicated to ongoing revelation, surprisingly little is ever fixed in stone. Maybe someday we’ll start marrying girls off at 12 or 13; as our predecessors in ancient Israel did. Maybe we’ll start approving slaveholding, as the original apostles did. Maybe we’ll start slaughtering livestock in temple courtyards and sprinkling the blood all over the furniture of the celestial rooms; maybe temple sealing rooms will close to all but the presiding high priest (and then only once a year); maybe an edict will come down requiring all LDS women to quit their jobs, get married, and get pregnant within the next six months. Heck, maybe it will be announced that Jesus Christ is better known by the name of Glurg from the planet Zerg, which He fled because it was destroyed by photon torpedoes launched from the Starship Enterprise. If one wants to believe it strongly enough, one can find ways to create ambiguity in the traditional authoritative sources within the Church and justify getting out in front of the Church leadership on pretty much any topic one wishes. But if while we’re waiting for authoritative third parties to receive additional revelation to confirm our predilections on this or any other topic, we should just bear in mind that: 1) Reliable revelation rarely comes as a result of a person telling God “I have already picked what is easy and gratifying over seems hard and unpleasant, and Your only role here is to ratify my decision”; 2) Reliable revelation never comes as a result of a person telling God “But, I want sex!!!!”

IIRC, based on the department (my memory says) you work for, you have the disadvantage that your particular DA very often is on the side of the bad guys. 😞

I’m sure public public pressure plays a role. But the question is: are they charging because they personally have political animus towards the defendant; or are they charging because they feel like—regardless of the partisan affiliations of the parties at play—this is just a behavior that they don’t want to become commonplace, and so the more publicly it’s done, the more publicly they have to slam the door on it? Thats not a question I could begin to answer in this case.

It appears so. https://www.whsv.com/2022/01/22/page-county-woman-charged-after-comments-made-school-board-meeting/

It depends on state law. In Virginia, my understanding is that a CCW does not allow you to carry on a school campus (unless you’re in your car in a pick up/drop off zone). And, it’s one thing to coincidentally carry a gun. It’s another to get in a screaming match whose gist is “I’m right because next Tuesday at 9 AM I will be at your workplace with a GUN!” It’s a verbal equivalent of brandishing, which is also often a crime (for example, if you cut me off on my freeway, I don’t get to pull out my handgun, kiss it, look you straight in the eye, and then put it away. If you happen to have it a gun and crap happens to go down, then okay—but if you take an extra step to make people know you have it, then you’d darned well better need it.) It’s really hard to put an innocuous meaning to her words. I mean, maybe it’s possible—that’ll be her attorney’s job. But it’s hard for me to imagine one, given the context that we’re being offered so far.

Throw in an “allahu akhbar”, and imagine that rather than enforcing mask-wearing the school is banning niqab-wearing, and . . . you tell me. Would it? I’m inclined to think that when you get to the point where you’re proposing bringing a loaded gun to school as a means of dispute resolution, anything further you may have said if you hadn’t been cut off isn’t likely to have dug you out of the hole you’ve created for yourself.

Closing an argument with school personnel by promising to being a loaded gun to the school “ready to . . .”, and then ominously trailing off? Yeah, I think as a prosecutor I’d like those odds.

For me, the illuminative thought-experiment has been: What if she had concluded her remarks with “allahu akhbar”? That leads me to @MarginOfError’s conclusion. Don’t throw the book at her; maybe don’t even incarcerate her. But . . . prosecutors can’t ignore something like this. They just can’t.

Indeed, as will the day of judgment. Lots of us who have managed to convince ourselves that we’re fine and just living according to the way we were created, will be having some illuminative conversations.

There is, as you well know, a difference between not knowing an argument exists versus knowing it exists but also understanding it to be a ridiculously flawed argument. Folks making the argument you cite would have to completely dismiss the distinction between mind and body, between predilection and behavior; and embrace the notion that humans are essentially dumb animals with virtually no capacity to overcome their baser urges or otherwise regulate their behavior.

This presupposes that a brain chemically/physiologically inclined towards homosexuality is nevertheless in its “proper and perfect frame” (see Alma 40:23), which is odd because we know there can be physiological irregularities in the brain that influence all kinds of predispositions and behavior—including sexuality.

Well, I think a 1976 variant of this forum that had its historical data in order, would have hard-core orthodox members noting: —David O. McKay had prayed to God for permission to revoke the ban, and had been told “no”; so God certainly “owned” the ban. There is no room for sincere doubt of the divine origin of the ban itself. The Church leadership’s continued teaching and enforcement of the ban as of 1976 is not some sort of failure on their part; it represents an example of their accurately relaying the word and will of the Lord to His Church. —The ban is not, by its terms, eternal in nature. There was a time when the ban did not exist. —Multiple prophetic proponents/defenders of the ban had said that at some point the ban would end, the only question is “when”; and wouldn’t it be cool that happened at a point when we here in 1976 were still alive? —It noteworthy that the ban is based on race, not behavior; there is no course of conduct or behavioral standard that a black man can adopt in order to qualify himself for the priesthood as long as the ban remains in place. Darned shame, really. The Lord must have His reasons. —Within its scope of applicability, the ban’s burden falls upon *all* people; not just the ones who have structured their aspirations and values around an inappropriate reliance on sexual fulfillment. —People who try to engage in politicking/public shaming in order to guilt the Church into adopting their own pet theories of social justice, misapprehend the fundamental nature of what the Church is and how it works, and are likely to find themselves and their descendants out of the Church sooner rather than later.

The question as you pose it is a toughie, but the question as I’ve modified it represents the scenario we actually face. And I would agree that from a perspective of evolutionary psychology, it can’t feel right—certainly not in matters of sex, anyways. The fight/feed/mate responses are governed by the most ancient parts of our brain stem, and if those instincts aren’t being sated there’s likely going to be some measure of discomfort even at the best of times. But I’ve seen the multigenerational fallout of individual apostasy in my own family; and I’m not about to uproot my entire life (not to mention that of my children and my children’s children) just because my freakin’ amygdala tells me that that’s what I ought to do. Postmodernism has given “repression” a bad rap, but “repression” is what separates us from the beasts. And I was reading just the other day that, contra much of 20th Century psychological theory—the latest research so who isn’t that expressing (as opposed to repressing) emotions does not moderate them. Their very expression allows them to feed into themselves in a way that makes them get stronger and harder to control over time.

Agreed. And this isn’t technically a discussion about two comparable things; but about the comparisons made between those two things. At a certain point, things become so “meta” that I’m not sure there’s anything really useful that I could say on the subject.

These scriptures tell us a great deal about how God feels about sin; but less about the way God views that eternal value of those who have fallen into those sins or the eternal fate to which Gods sees fit to consign them. And herein, I think, is perhaps a fundamental philosophical schism between much of mainline Christianity versus Mormonism. Mormonism sees pain primarily as either 1) the natural and foreseeable result of a being created according to divine light and law (as humankind is) either affirmatively rejecting or being otherwise compelled to exist outside of that divine light and law; or 2) an experience that by its nature is refining and sanctifying and that has the power to convert its sufferer into some one more Christlike. Mormonism (at least the philosophical variant of Mormonism to which I subscribe) envisions a God who takes pre-existing, primitive beings and engages them in a refining process whereby they may ultimately become reconciled to Himself to some degree (or else reject Him utterly and be returned from the primordial primitive state from which God raised them in the first place). To the extent that God causes or permits suffering in this process it is for the purpose of ultimately exalting the sufferer, not Himself. By contrast, it seems to me that much of mainline Christianity conceptualizes a God who creates humans ex nihilo, planning to reconcile each of them to Himself either in toto or not at all. But for the recalcitrant who will not be reconciled—rather than simply unmaking what He has made and ending the suffering (which surely an all-powerful God *could* do), He not only keeps them in existence but takes proactive steps to make that existence excruciating and adds physical conditions that enhance the pain and misery thereof. And all this, not for any ultimately cleansing or redemptive or other altruistic purposes; but because His Own Glory (or, ego?) demands that this must be what happens to those who cross Him. In this view it’s not that the suffering has to exist now and in eternity because God is to some extent limited in His ability to change the rules of the game—it’s that all this human suffering (especially of His enemies) makes God perceive Himself as being the more glorious. This second view of God, frankly, is not one that I find particularly appealing.

1. I would respectfully submit that this is too absolutist a position to take. A more accurate position is that during the periods when they are used properly, masks partially work (with “work”, in this case, defined as “limit the wearer’s ability to spread disease”—I think it’s been common knowledge for over a year now that mask don’t significantly protect the wearer). People on both sides talk about masking as if it’s supposed to be some sort of mystical rite that if used at all renders one wholly invincible for a day (or, by contrast, renders one essentially “infected” or “unclean” if it slips out of place just once. But really, it’s a choice one makes every minute of every day, during dozens or hundreds of discrete physical encounters or near-encounters with people and things; and “safety” isn’t an all-or-nothing characterization but a spectrum depending on the aggregate of all of those encounters. Think of it this way: If I were to say (and I’m sorry for the PG-13 nature of this analogy, it’s just the one that came most easily to my filthy mind) that “prophylactics don’t have a 100% success rate, so in my 100 sexual encounters a day I’m not going to use a prophylactic for a single one of them”—you’d say that was obvious nonsense. But the argument you deploy above kind of seems to be a variant of it—“since I can’t limit my transmissibility risk to 0%, there’s no point in me inconveniencing myself for the sake of lowering it to 75 or 50 or 25%. Now, if someone wants to say “I believe that the reduction in risk of transmissibility offered by a mask, in conjunction with the potential consequences to a person who gets infected from me, are not worth the personal sacrifices it would require for me to wear a mask at all”—that, I think, shows that some thought has gone into the decision; and I could respect that (I say “could” because so far it’s a hypothetical—I don’t recall dialoguing with *any* anti-masker who was willing to acknowledge that masks do anything at all. So far they all seem to stick with “it won’t do ANY good”, which strikes me as the result of an over-simplified calculus). 2. Agree. I suspect that my own mask is no more than 20-25% effective, if that. But ultimately, wearing one costs me very little. And while I don’t care what people think of my virtue, I do care that people feel comfortable around me. In the past I’ve cited Romans 14 and Mosiah 10 in defense of “modesty culture”, arguing that females in the Church should inconvenience themselves to a degree for the sake of not becoming a stumblingblock to their fellowsaints and in the name of bearing one another’s burdens. Having personally done that, I’d feel a bit hypocritical refusing to wear a mask to Church when for me, the cost to my convenience and health is so very low and I know that there are people in my ward who’s feel safer if I wore one. As you say—it’s an individual decision, and good folk will apply different praxes for different reasons. I just reserve the right to comment and criticize when some folks openly cite to/advocate a decision-making process that has some noticeable flaws. (Though I note that as a conservative Church member, I don’t think we—as conservatives—have ever bent over backwards to assuage the consciences of those who chose publicly proclaim their choice to disregard a particular bit of prophetic counsel. We didn’t buy their assertions that it was “just his opinion” or that even aspiring to obedience was unnecessary and even harmful. We haven't done that regarding the counsel about young men having a responsibility to qualify themselves to serve missions, or for young women to limit themselves to one pair of earrings, or for teens to avoid R-rated movies, or for young couples to have as many kids as they can, or for the Church membership to read the Book of Mormon through in a given year or participate in a social media fast or make a series of Facebook posts about gratitude. No, our counsel as conservatives has been “if you can’t, you can’t; but most of us can actually do more than we think we can, and if you can, then you should try.” We have pointed out that while we strive to love everyone, the church is a subculture and subcultures define their membership by who aspires to a set of standards. Jumping when the prophet says “jump” (or at least agreeing that we should jump, and encouraging and helping others to do so even when our own legs fail us) is a standard the Church has long maintained. Other Church members are always going to notice whether I seem eager to conform or eager to justify my failure to conform. And (within reasonable bounds), that is as it should be.) And, for what it’s worth—given what I took @JohnsonJones to be suggesting about anti-maskers and potentially trying to lump them into Harry Reid territory, I thought I was actually defending them with my comment about them being deceived!

The other factor here is the labor shortage and the ongoing “Great Resignation”. My feeling is that just isn’t as much goods and services being produced, but the same number of people chasing those goods. As people economize, particularly in housing and transport, they paradoxically find they have more available cash to throw at the things they need/want now that they don’t have to worry about mortgage/rent/car payments. I don’t want to be excessively judgmental; but I think we’re dealing with a lot of people who have resigned themselves to the idea that they’ll never get ahead, and so they’re reconciling themselves to housing and transport limitations that their parents never would have tolerated (but that their grandparents and great grandparents would, and did) and giving up on the employment rat race. Employers want to respond with higher wages but (I suspect, and especially the small businesses) are already at rock-bottom margins, have little disposable cash and/or are over-leveraged already, and are reeling not only from supply chain shortages but from transport/infrastructure bottlenecks at the Port of LA. Additionally, I suspect many parents are realizing that public schools are so unreliable (we’re open. We’re closed! We’re open, but for six hours instead of right. We’re closed, but only on Tuesday’s. We’re staggering classes. Our teachers are striking again) that, in two-parent families, especially, one parent is choosing to quit work to care for (and maybe even home-school) the kids—further feeding into the labor shortage. I don’t think the problem with housing is foreigners buying up all the cheap properties—if they’re not living in them, they’re renting them; and they’re only charging what the market will bear. The problem, I think, is largely a bona fide shortage of housing (exacerbated by eviction moratoria - it’s safer for a landlord to let a property sit vacant and eat the mortgage for half a year than to get some tenant who will pay rent for two months, squat for another year and a half, and then trash the place on their way out requiring the landlord to front another $30K in renovations). And yes, as city-dwellers continue to transition to distance working and realize that they can live literally anywhere in the country, those of us already in rural or heartland states are going to continue to see property prices going bonkers in our necks of the woods. The current and prior administration may have pushed us over the brink with some unwise policies (stimulus payments, eviction moratoria, a part-time Transportation Secretary who thinks he’s Mary Poppins, etc). But I think at this point the problems are largely systemic and, I’m afraid, self-perpetuating for the foreseeable future.

It may also be worth noting that . . . In common LDS discourse, we are used to equating the “these things” of verses 3-4, with the published Book of Mormon that the reader holds in their hands. We grow up with this interpretation. It is a (almost always) plausible reading. But it is not the only plausible reading. When Moroni writes this, he is completing a set of plates that included the “Book of Lehi”, a segment of between 116 and (according to Don Bradley) possibly up to 300 additional pages, which were lost and omitted from the book that we read. Does “these things” include the Book of Lehi? If so—how can Moroni’s promise work for anyone today, since no one now living has ever read the same record that Moroni sealed? If “these things” is not one and the same thing as the published BoM, then are we even sure “these things” refers to the record as a whole? What if “these things” actually refers to the concepts that the record describes and discusses, rather than the record itself as a tangible item? I met lots of Catholics on my mission to Brazil who agreed that the Book of Mormon was a good book because it said true things about Christ; but even if they got a spiritual confirmation they didn’t immediately feel that Moroni’s promise textually/logically bound them to accept the Book of Mormon as co-equal scripture to the Bible or to recognize Joseph Smith as a prophet or to affiliate themselves with the Church. When I was a missionary we were able to “coast” a bit by using the Book of Mormon’s mere existence as a proselytizing tool—read a few chapters, pray about it, and blammo—conversion! That experience is still hugely important—helping people to nurture the sort of relationship with God where they can talk to Him and find out that, wonder of wonders, He talks back! But I think much of that fruit has been picked, and to be effective in ministering to other Christians today’s missionaries are going to need to be better versed in the Book of Mormon’s actual content as well as the specific ways that it reflects, builds upon, and (in some ways) pushes back against traditional understandings of the Bible in general and Biblical Christology in particular.