Just_A_Guy

I don’t know that I look at it quite as much in terms of “sinfulness”, as simple human relationships. At a future day humanity will all have to be reconciled, not only to God, but to each other. In that reconciliation process, Person #1 will have more work to do than Person #2 will. Why entertain attitudes and thought processes during the day of our mortal probation, that we know we’ll have to un-learn at a future time when such change will apparently be harder than it is now? That said, in the here-and-now Person #2 probably needs to be wary of being taken advantage of/being subjected to behaviors that, intentional or not, constitute some form of abuse.

Backroads, there is zero reason this should be happening; and if the kids really are hungry for extended portions of the day and you’re in Utah, you should probably give DCFS Intake a call. Even if it’s not a case of abuse/neglect (and frankly, though I’m admittedly jaded, I sort of suspect either parental drug use or parental mental health issues if everything is as you describe it) DCFS can still work with the family on a voluntary basis to review what benefits they are receiving versus what’s available, and help them come up with strategies to make their benefits go further.

Well, none of those guys like coppers like you, Then again, neither do rapists . . .

Pontificating about “love” by pretty much any modern entertainer, academic, and/or clinician. Given the endless procession of failed relationships most of those bozos have participated in, I can’t think of a group in the past three centuries that is less qualified to advise us on human relationships.

Max who?

Millions for defense, but not one penny for tribute.

It’s hard for me to avoid characterizing Wakara as a miserable, evil SOB. Didn’t he leave instructions for the live burial of a couple of slave women and children with him to serve him into the afterlife?

So, this is a long thread that I haven't followed closely (family camping trip the last couple of days). So, @clbent04, I'll throw out some random thoughts that occurred to me as I perused the thread this evening; and maybe they'll be useful, or maybe they'll just be illogical rantings. I also want to note that it seems to me that you've been very tentative and vague in some of your questions/inferences in this thread. Some other folks seem to have read you as suggesting either a) that a person can, with some degree of scienter, deliberately reject opportunities to enter into covenants with God throughout their mortality and yet still claim exaltation at some point thereafter; or b) that it is unnecessary for an exalted person to have received their saving ordinances, either in person or by proxy, prior to the Resurrection. Frankly, I don't read you as alleging either of those things--and I'm not sure if it's because I've been reading you very closely, or not closely enough! Either way--I'll respond to some of those ideas, but please don't interpret me as posing straw-men if that wasn't what you intended to suggest. With that said . . . here goes: 1) I don't know that, in these sorts of discussions, it's very helpful to talk about what a "good Baptist" or "good Methodist" or "good Buddhist" or "good Muslim" was. Religion--other than our religion--is, to a significant degree, man-made; and in many cases is so inextricably tied up with local culture/peer pressure that I'm not sure a person's loyalty to their chosen religion is an eternally significant indicator as to what kind of eternal reward someone is going to receive. 2) Similarly, I would agree with those who have pointed out that it's not particularly helpful to get wrapped up in a person's deeds/works in these kinds of decisions. 3) I would also beware about over-emphasizing trite platitudes about charity or "wuuuuuuv"; particularly as the concept has been bastardized and perverted in the last fifty years. 4) The seminal scriptural texts here, I think, are D&C 76 (cited by @mordorbund), D&C 88 (cited by @laronius), and perhaps also D&C 130. Then-Elder Oaks's "The Challenge to Become", I think, is also crucial in getting a proper perspective on these sorts of issues. Again, these scriptures seem to say relatively little about institutional religious devotion; and they don't come off to me as being either legalistically works-based or being rooted in hippie-dippie notions of "charity". Taken together, I think the scripture and Elder Oaks point to a set of "judging criteria" that focuses primarily on the nature of the relationship that we have formed with Jesus Christ, the ability we have cultivated to hear Him, what we have become already, what we are willing to become further under His tutelage, and what we are willing to give up. 5) The covenant path--the commitments and liturgies associated with what we call the "saving ordinances"--are a sine qua non for exaltation, full stop. They are non-negotiable. They have to be made, whether in person or by proxy. No other current institution has the divine authority to administer those ordinances. The quantity and depth of Church teaching on this (as exposed in part by @The Folk Prophet) and the tremendous sacrifices the Church has historically made to make this teaching a reality, is staggering and--to my mind--not up for debate. 6) In the priesthood ordinances, the power of godliness is made manifest. In the ordinances, we receive (or become eligible to receive) endowments of spiritual power that can magnify and enhance every virtue, give power to every endeavor, and fundamentally change our lives. We can also receive these ordinances and thereafter fail to live up to the privileges associated with them. It seems that significant proportion of Church members fall under this category--I know I do. 7) Nobody on this earth is a finished project. The finished project is Godhood; and the most amazing, godly person any of us has ever met in person is a tiny speck compared to the dazzling light of exaltation that may one day be attained through atonement and full reconciliation with Christ Jesus. In this sense, then, no one is living a "celestial caliber" at any point in their mortal life. I can't look at anyone and think "yeah, he's made it." Similarly--and harking back to point 6) above--the question is not whether John Q. Non-Mormon seems to be living a more "celestial caliber" life than Jane Z. Mormon. The question is how much more awesome John Q. Non-Mormon would be at this moment if he had access to the same wells of divine power--the same promise of potential--that we in the Church do. I am satisfied that--as I think it was @estradling75 who suggested it--those who were denied access to that power in life will wistfully reflect on how much better mortality would have been if they'd had that power; even if only in an Alma-esque, "I do sin in my wish, for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted to me" sort of way. I don't see anyone in the eternities saying "geez, sure glad I dodged that 'Mormonism' bullet, 'cause paying tithing woulda sucked!" 8 ) Are the saving covenants/ordinances required for salvation as well as exaltation? I don't know. Is there progression between the kingdoms that renders the difference between "salvation" and "exaltation" moot in the long run? Again, I don't know. These questions add a layer of complexity to what we've been talking about. I've also grown up with the paradigm that proxy temple work is of absolutely no benefit to people who rejected the Gospel in this life; which had always led me to the conclusion (which I'm sort of revisiting now, but I haven't abandoned at this point) that a person who receives a Terrestrial or Telestial inheritance does it independently of any priesthood authority that the LDS Church currently possesses (and has the ability to receive limited ministrations from the Holy Ghost even in their unbaptized state). So, if the Catholics or the Presbyterians or even the Shintos can bring a person to the Terrestrial Kingdom just fine, it seems to me that the LDS Church's raison d'etre is to do what the other churches can't--to point out the path to exaltation for those people who want to follow it, and to facilitate the liturgical work for the living and dead who want to go down that path. There may be some incidental material benefits--supportive communities of fellow believers, cheap food storage, ridiculously economical academic degrees, and the like--but fundamentally that's not what make us, us. I believe it is in our acknowledgment of the quest for exaltation and our ability to orient people on that quest, that fundamentally defines us as a Church; and if we fail to do that, we make ourselves institutionally expendable as far as the Lord is concerned.

In Moroni 7, Moroni as author (or God/Joseph Smith as translator) is consciously aping the language of Paul in 1 Corinthians 13. The Greek idiom rendered as “sufferereth long” in 1 Cor 13:4 is generally rendered “patient” in modern translations. I don’t know that charity, by its nature, is any more universal than any other virtue—perhaps I am generous to my kids but stingy to a hobo? Attentive to a judge but dismissive to a client? In the example you cite, I think someone could rightly say that, as an objective fact, I do have charity. I just don’t have the requisite degree of integrity to apply my charity universally.

Well, hang on a sec. When I was a criminal defense attorney, and later a parental defender—I tried to “minister” to my clients as best I could, and I was often point-blank prohibited from talking to or interacting with the victims. Similarly, I doubt our friend @prisonchaplain went out to find every single victim of every single inmate he ever ministered to. We are all of us called to somewhat different ministries at different times of our lives; and I’m not sure I’d go so quite far as to say that we are erring if we minister to a perpetrator without personally, directly giving “equal time” to our victims (which is sort of how I interpret your position here; and apologies if I’m misreading you).

Hey, @The Folk Prophet, just wanted to let you know I’m not ignoring you; it’s just going to take me a good hour or so to collect my thoughts in response, and I haven’t had a solid hour to put into it yet and probably won’t for a few more days—family camping trip coming up . . . I’ll try to put something together when I get back, if the topic hasn’t gone stale by then. Happy belated birthday, by the way!

Oh, yeah; that’s elephant in the room when we talk about elective abortion. It always makes me giggle a little when feminists complain that abortion regulation is just men trying to get access to women’s bodies; and I have to bite my lip to avoid saying “Dearie, men already have access to your body. That’s why you want the abortion.”

I frankly don’t know if life begins at conception or not. I rather suspect that it doesn’t, based on things my wife and other pregnant LDS women of my acquaintance have said about “quickening” and so on. But I’m not so sure about that, that I’d counsel each and every rape victim to go out and take a Plan B. Though I suppose, in general terms, that if an abortion is going to take place, it’s probably a little less inhumane to do it earlier rather than later.

Part of what elicited my response in this regard, is that I don’t think there are available medications that can predictably nullify the pain of flashbacks/PTSD on an as-needed basis. I could easily be wrong; but I think the nearest medications that might fit the bill are antidepressants (which have their own set of issues and I believe are more designed to deal with chronic mood issues, not acute trauma symptoms) and Ecstasy (which has shown promise when used in therapy sessions to help people work through their trauma while having a sense of detachment about it, but AFAIK isn’t available for home use even with a prescription). So when you spoke of medication, I assumed you meant medication to address the physical pain, not the psychological pain. Hence, the crack about Ibuprofen. Perhaps I should have said “Prozac”. But this is all sort of a diversion from my primary point; which is that the days and weeks and months after the event a rape victim is still being raped, and it’s a heckuva thing to tell her that she’s not allowed to take certain steps to make the process stop just because the rapist has essentially created a hostage-type scenario. I have some chores to do this AM but will try to reply to your other post later today.

1. To be clear, I am conceding arguendo that the baby is just that--a full-fledged baby. I'm not sure to what degree I believe that that's true in the first few weeks after conception, but I'm happy to "steel-man" the argument. I'd rather wrongfully describe it as life, than wrongfully describe it as not life. The trouble with asking if the situation changes if we're holding the baby, out-of-utero, in our arms; is that the fact that it's no longer in the mother means it's no longer causing that psychological trauma--the victim isn't pregnant, she's not feeling symptoms (or the death of the baby will no longer alleviate the symptoms), she's no longer required to be in the perpetual presence of the baby. And of course you don't kill a human who isn't a threat to you. 2. a) Is all "rape" equal? Hoo, boy; you're gonna get me in trouble with this one! . . . Theoretically, I suppose objectively there are particular uniquely traumatic occurrences that are present in some rapes but not others. That said, as a guy and as a non-rape-victim, am I going to get into the business of telling a rape victim just how psychologically damaging she ought to deem her experience to be? Heck no! b) It's not always the only option. But in some cases, where the child's presence in utero, combined with the ongoing symptoms of pregnancy, cause ongoing psychological damage, there may not be an immediate remedy to the ongoing psychological rape that is occurring. c) Because , whether one is a baby or an adult, no person's natural rights include having one's own material needs met through the compulsory involuntary servitude of others.* (That's why you and I both oppose nationalized health care and are suspicious of government welfare programs, no?) Scarlett O'Hara may be starving and about to lose Tara, but she doesn't get to put her former servants back into chains and make them work the farm for her own support. Now, if they choose to keep working on her behalf, then their compassion is certainly laudable. But ultimately they owe her nothing; theirs is the right to walk away, even if it means Scarlett dies. By contrast, the right to self-defense and to use lethal force, not only against a person posing a threat of likely death or physical trauma, but against a person posing a threat of likely severe emotional trauma (and even if the threatening person's mental state renders them incapable of forming any actual malicious intent) is well established. Put another way, it seems you're trying to assert a positive right of the child against a negative right of the mother; and I think that when they cannot otherwise be reconciled, negative rights will generally trump positive rights. *One could argue that family relationships constitute just such a relationship; but these are consensually entered by the burdened parties, even if the parties may occasionally regret their choices thereafter. 3. Frankly, yeah; I kind of did think it approached what you were saying; and it didn't sound like you. But I understood you as suggesting therapy and meds, while insisting that the situation ought to be permitted to persist until such time as the therapy and meds might actually begin to dull the pain (if ever they do). I'm glad to hear that I misinterpreted, and I'd love to hear a little more about what you actually had in mind. 4. Frankly--I don't know. But--and here's where the rubber hits the road for policy discussions like this--I am darned sure that I wouldn't seek to impoverish or imprison a dad who did. But if we believe that life begins at conception, do we really want to create a regimen where abortion is the default option? I've spilled a lot of virtual ink here in defending a rape victim's right to abort--but I would always hope she could find it within herself to deliver the baby.

1. "All"? Probably not. A few? Shucks, we do that already. How many children has our country killed in drone strikes on terrorist commanders in the past ten years? If you can take out Hitler, but there's five kids in the bunker too--do you do it? If you're manning a security gate in Afghanistan and a Toyota drives towards that gate at full speed, and there are three kids tied to the hood . . . do you shoot? I think, unfortunately, we can "never say never" in the sorts of scenarios you or I are contriving; we just have to take them one by one and weigh the value of the child's life against the degree of harm actually threatened (as we perceive it at the time that action might reasonably mitigate that threat), and the role the child plays in that threat. In the two scenarios you posited in your most recent post, I don't really see you make an argument about why the kids pose a threat; you almost seem to be hypothesizing situations where the killing is primarily retributive rather than preventative in nature. And of course, I wouldn't agree with those kinds of killings at all. If a rape-baby needs to be aborted, it's not because the baby is the demon spawn of an eee-vuhl rapist, and we're gonna show him what's what, and he's going to see I've taken my body back, and yay girl power!!! It's because the victim's being forced to carry the baby may be, in a very real psychological sense, perpetuating the rape; and there may be no other way to make it stop (more on that below). 2. Well, and maybe I should have drawn a better distinction earlier on. I would absolutely agree--the question is whether he's a threat, not whether he's an innocent; because someone can simultaneously be legitimately perceived as a threat while also being factually innocent (See, e.g., Tamir Rice--dumb as a sack of rocks, maybe; but most certainly "innocent"). And I'd agree with your preference for non-lethal action, if non-lethal action mitigates the threat. Coming back to the abortion discussion--if we can come up with a way to transfer a fetus out of a rape victim's uterus and bring that fetus to full gestation, and if that method is not significantly more invasive/painful/traumatizing than an abortion is, then I'd be all for mandating that kind of procedure. But so far, no such procedure exists. 3. Having spent more time than I would wish sitting down with rape victims and reviewing the event with them in exquisite detail (and being scheduled to do it again next week)--I would respectfully suggest that your arguments thus far may be not be giving as much consideration as is warranted to questions about the nature of rape, and how it affects victims both in the moment of the offense and (via PTSD and other issues) afterwards, and why society considers it to be so abhorrent, and the measures society is willing to let people take to prevent it. If the sole reason for prohibiting rape were that it can be physically painful, we wouldn't punish rapists who used threats rather than actual physical force. Nor would we punish rapists who left no bruise or other physical injury on their victims. If the sole reason for prohibiting rape were that it can be emotionally violating/traumatizing only in the moment that the rape actually happens, then we wouldn't punish rapists whose victims were unconscious at the time of the offense. I submit that rape is particularly heinous (and indeed, warrants death to the perpetrator) because, by its nature, it is not just a "one-and-done" type of act. By its nature, it--both the memory of the event, and the simple knowledge that the event occurred--forces itself into the mind of the victim and repeats itself, over and over and over and over again, until she is reduced to a non-functional gibbering wreck; and then it repeats itself some more. Post-hoc "feeling bad" about being a victim of such an act is not just an unfortunate, incidental side-effect; it's part-and-parcel of what makes rape rape and it’s the reason decent red-blooded men want to wring the necks of the rat-bastages who commit it. Thus, when we see a woman who is pregnant as a result of a rape, I believe it is wrong to see her purely as a victim of a past act that happens to have some ongoing fallout. In a very real sense, she is still being raped. Psychologically, maybe the baby is part of that dynamic, and maybe it's not--no one can tell but the victim herself. But if so: The baby is, metaphorically, tied to the hood of the Toyota that is careening towards her gate in a scenario that repeats itself once a second, eighty-six thousand seconds a day, for two hundred and eighty days. It's a horrible thing to have to shoot the baby, but if that's what it takes to stop the Toyota . . . she didn't put the baby there, the rapist did. You speak of therapy and medication. These may work, over time . . . or they may not. And even if they do, they aren't quick fixes. If I walk into my house, and my daughter is being actively raped by a guy whose accomplice has a gun to my toddler's head, I don't just pass her a bottle of Ibuprofen and say "here, honey, these might help you feel better in an hour or two, and I'll call you a good therapist to talk to in the morning" and then turn around and walk out. You do what you have to do* to stop the act that's happening now. And if my toddler dies in the process . . . I'll be brokenhearted, naturally. But I'll also sleep soundly in the knowledge that I didn't create that situation; the rapist did. All I did was to defend my daughter. *Subject to the whisperings of the Spirit, naturally.

As often, I agree with much of what you have written; but let me push back a bit on this point so that we can see where the contours are: Surely you wouldn’t argue that, if we have an enemy who is out to enslave and possibly rape women and children (but we are confident that the enemy will not actually kill or even seriously physically injure those women and children so long as they comply with the enemy’s demands), that we are not justified in using lethal force to defend them because the trauma these women and children face is primarily emotional in nature? Surely you wouldn’t argue that, if something goes “bump” in the night and I go downstairs and find a teenager in my living room, I am unjustified in shooting him when he lunges at me—even if he’s much smaller than me, and even if it turns out that he grew up in a dysfunctional home or has a mental/cognitive deficit such that he doesn’t know right or wrong? It seems to me that in speaking of justified or unjustified killings, we generally look at the self defense issue first. We identify and neutralize the threat to our physical and, to some degree, emotional well-being (understanding that “emotional trauma” is a slippery slope, particularly in this age of snowflakery; but I surmise we can agree that both suffering a rape and carrying a rape-borne pregnancy to term can fall under this rubric). Analyzing the actual mental state (including “guilt” or “innocence”) of the threat to be neutralized is usually only a secondary consideration; and off the top of my head I can’t think of any classical “justified killing” scenario where a justified killing suddenly turns “unjustified” once we know a little more about the victim’s mental state. (Note that when I say “justified” or “unjustified”, I mean “with regard to the culpability of the killer”. I don’t mean to suggest that the person being killed was receiving their just desserts, or deserved to die, or anything like that.)

I largely agree with you here; but what bewildered me was your apparent suggestion that all abortions—even (given the context of our discussion) those requested by and for rape victims—are tantamount to murder. What definitions are we using? Are we using a fixed standard, or are we just post hoc labeling as “murders” the subset of killings that we find subjectively distasteful? Isn’t “murder”, in the colloquial sense, really just shorthand for “unjustified killing”; and if so, isn’t it kind of unhelpful to insist on labeling abortion as “murder” before we undertake an analysis of whether it might ever be justified? Ammaron accused Moroni and Teancum of having undertaken the murder of Amalickiah. Did they?

*Shrug* For people who subscribed absolutely to the mantra of “thou shalt not kill”, they sure left a lot of bodies . . .

Was that Moroni’s and Helaman’s theory for how to deal with Lamanites who were abducting and trafficking Nephite women and children?

Ok, thanks for clarifying. Barring abortion for rape cases, of course, creates collateral damage too. In that vein one might ask in return how you would protect a bona fide rape victim from being forced to re-live her experience dozens (hundreds?) of times per day, every day for nine months, by having to keep a tangible and growing and increasingly-physically-painful reminder of that rape, inside her body? Naturally, there are no perfect solutions here either way. The best balance I can think of is requiring a police report, including a statement signed under penalty of perjury. Frankly, regardless of abortion restrictions, in today’s society men already know that any sexual interaction with a woman subjects them to a possible false allegation of rape. At a certain point the risk of a false accusation, like the risk of pregnancy itself, is just a cost of doing business; and if people don’t like the cost—they shouldn’t do the business. I would also note that most of those young men want these babies aborted just as much as the mothers do; so I don’t think we need to get excessively worked up over the possibility that noble sons of Zion will be having their good names besmirched by worthless young strumpets here. But if you feel a nine-month phase-in for a statutory regimen like this is necessary to protect the reputations and legal rights of rakish young cads, I suppose I could get on board with that.

The catch to all this is that we are told in prophecy that eventually *every* knee shall bow; *every* tongue shall confess. So theoretically, *everyone* (perhaps excepting the sons of perdition) has some evidentiary standard that, if/when met, leads them to accept and obey Jesus. But it seems some people’s standard is lower than others due to an excess of faith, love of God, humility, etc. There’s also an element here that’s sort of like the old grace-works conundrum. It may be that it’s the love/charity that defines a celestial person; but would a person who has cultivated that level of love and trust in the Savior really reject the fullness of His truth when it came a’knockin’? The idea that God may deliberately withhold a spiritual confirmation from someone because their calling is to do a work that requires them to be out of the Church for a while (possibly, eg, Thomas Kane, John Paul II, etc), is an intriguing one. But as a general rule, knowing that light cleaveth to light and whatnot . . . I’m thinking that someone who isn’t at least a little intrigued at the shreds of Mormonism that come their way, probably hasn’t yet grown into the sort of trajectory that defines a Celestial person.

Legal protections against the accused rapist, you mean? [Note—that’s not an attempt at a rhetorical point; I just want to be sure I understand you.]

FWIW, I believe it has been the position of the AG’s office for some time that they wouldn’t prosecute stand-alone polygamy unless there were other crimes being committed concurrently. On your scenario B: I absolutely believe that the current presidential administration would bring such a suit if they thought it was capable of knocking two Republicans out of an otherwise deadlocked Senate and the White House had a big package it wanted passed. The suit likely wouldn’t prevail in the long term; but it would give the VP grounds to bar the Utah delegation from the Senate floor for a few precious hours or days.

The federal law that permitted Utah Territory to convene a constitutional convention and apply for statehood, conditioned statehood on Utah prohibiting polygamy in perpetuity. One could make a lot of hay over whether such a restriction is even legal, or what the ramifications would be if Utah were to buck this provision and totally legalize polygamy. But I think the State legislature would rather not test a provision that might be interpreted as a lawful basis (or excuse) to undo statehood, dissolve the legislature, fire the governor, and unseat two Republican senators while we go have another state constitutional convention.