Just_A_Guy

A discussion elsewhere led me to dig into Utah’s recently-amended bigamy statute. I knew it had recently been downgraded to a misdemeanor-infraction; but they also defined it in such a way that it punishes you for undertaking the ritual, not for cohabitation (unless you’re also committing any one of several other crimes). So whereas it used to be you were committing a new crime for every night you spent with a plural wife—it appears the crime is now a one-and-done sort of thing.

Isn't there some degree of tension between the two statements above? How can one argue that [paraphrasing] "the celestial accept the truth when it's presented to them" while simultaneously [apparently] arguing that [paraphrasing] "a person can spend a lifetime rejecting the fullness of the gospel but still, in fact, be a 'celestial person'"? Or am I misunderstanding your assertions?

Just for context, here's a link to my original post.

Lots of good thoughts; the one I've cited above is perhaps the only one to which I might have anything salient/potentially useful to add in response I think a better analogy would be: Do you bomb Hitler's army, knowing that a nuclear Stalin will be overthrowing free governments throughout eastern Europe in the next three years?? How hard do you push the Imperial Japanese Army, knowing that Mao Tse-Tung is lying in wait to slaughter a hundred million Chinese? As Americans, it's easy for us to tut-tut about the necessity of annihilating Hitler and Imperial Japan; because we didn't have to really deal with what came afterwards--not in the same way others did. If we'd grown up in East Germany or Taiwan, we might see things differently. I fear that our confidence in our ability to keep "winning" short-term battle after short-term battle, rather than implementing and building up systems that will (if not always letting right prevail, at least) maintain our own liberty, keep a lid on open warfare, and withstand the test of time; is the primary difference between ourselves and our American ancestors.

1. I’m not unsympathetic; but what’s the benefit of saving lives in the short term if we do so in a way that undermines what’s left of the integrity of our republic and winds up threatening millions more lives in the longer term? Would you give up your right to own a firearm, in order to save those kids? Your right to have your child opt out of pernicious forms of education? Your right to abstain from an otherwise-mandatory vaccine? Your right to be observed going to a Mormon church on Sunday? Your right to have more than a fixed number of children? Your right to travel with the assistance of a petroleum-burning engine? What if government said “Well, WE aren’t depriving you of your right to live in Missouri; we’re just saying we won’t stop—and may even help—private citizens when they take it upon themselves to deprive you of that right”? It strikes me as a veneer for mob rule. As horrendous as Roe is, I believe it can and should be overruled on other grounds; and if this is the only way to do it—in my book, it’s not worth the cost. 2. It’s a fair point. The Church seems to think it can be justified under those circumstances (not that rape is an automatic justification, but that it’s conceivable that a trauma victim may find a daily reminder of her trauma over the next nine months to be so potentially traumatically debilitating that the abortion becomes a necessary act of self-defense). Let me put it this way: If I kidnap a kid, and then every day for the next nine months I tell some random woman “let me rape you, or I’ll kill the kid”; I think she would be quite right to reply “JAG, you’re a monster. I didn’t put the kid in this situation; you did that. I feel bad for the kid, but I have no moral responsibility to undergo this trauma; and if the kid dies that’s on you, not on me.” Similarly, I would say that a rape victim may not be universally morally responsible to save the life of the child* inside her, if preserving it causes major trauma. Then again, depending on individual circumstances and the degree of trauma and the whisperings of the Spirit—it might. Let me reiterate that I don’t think rape is an automatic justification for abortion. But I think women and their loved ones need to be given the latitude to make that choice; especially since the woman was deprived of the choice at the moment of conception. *I would also note that from a theological standpoint, I don’t think it’s at all clear that life begins at conception or even at the beginning of a heartbeat. From a church culture standpoint, we seem to have this notion of “quickening”; which comes into play a lot when a couple suffers a miscarriage (of which Just_A_Girl and I have been through four). Now, from a policy standpoint, I do define life at conception; because I think any other benchmark is arbitrary, and if we can be arbitrary about when life begins, we can’t argue against being arbitrary about when it ends. And I think that a major reason Roe damns our country isn’t necessarily because of what it objectively does, but because so many people are willing to tolerate what they think it does. I don’t think most Roe supporters can make a scientific or moral argument about why a particular embryo isn’t “human” beyond the fact that the embryo poses a threat to their sex lives. As far as they’re concerned, they are literally trading life for sex. But from a rhetorical/personal conscience standpoint, I confess I’m not particularly moved by suggestions that first-trimester abortions are indistinguishable from killing.

My understanding is that the law allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and facilitators even if the plaintiff has no relationship to the parties involved other than being aware that the deed happened. I think that’s a dangerous way to seek restrictions on an activity that SCOTUS has otherwise chosen to protect (like, say, owning a gun). My understanding, further, is that the law does not include exceptions for victims of rape or incest.

I am frankly deliberately ignoring this whole thing. I don’t want to get my hopes up that Roe will be overturned or significantly limited; and frankly, from what little I’ve seen the Texas approach seems a shade heavy-handed.

The thing is, most “trafficking” these days doesn’t look like it does on TV. Trafficking victims, by and large, aren’t being kept in dingy warehouses under armed guard by pimps who kidnapped them from loving homes. They are being kept, by their parents, in their own homes. A good bit of modern western trafficking is done by drug-addled middle-aged single women who trade their daughters (and often, their very young sons) for a hit of meth or for next month’s rent. It’s so decentralized that it never even hits the radar of law enforcement agencies, or even dedicated organizations like Operation Underground Railroad. In working with DCFS—I don’t think I’ve ever seen a case where we were called in to investigate trafficking and found conclusive evidence of trafficking. Usually what happens is that we snag kids because of drug use or environmental hazards in the home, and four or five months go by until the kid is feeling safe enough in foster care that she starts to open up about what else had been going on in the home.

There seems to be some confusion here; Tim Ballard stated that the number was more on the order of 2,000 when he announced the end of operations at the Kabul airport. I guess time will tell . . .

We saw Big River at the Hale a couple years ago. Music and plot were forgettable; but the sets were remarkable—the entire stage lifted up to reveal a water-filled tank, with the two leads paddling a raft around it and at one point interrupted by a full-on rainstorm. And in @LDSGator’s vein: the only song I remember from that musical is “Worlds Apart”, which struck me as pretty and poignant.

This is a start, but so far the reasoning is largely tautological—“it’s wrong because I say/everyone knows it is wrong”—which is where we were with homosexuality forty years ago. So, let’s examine this more deeply. What ethical principles tell us that an age disparity is potentially problematic in a sexual relationship? How so we even define who’s taking advantage of whom? If the animal kingdom doesn’t exalt notions of consent or age similarity or power balance between the letters—why should humans? Why should someone mind “being taken advantage of”, as you call it; and why should the rest of us care even if they do? Having disregarded the idea that nature’s god prescribes certain mores of sexual behavior (even if creation itself often flouts them)—on what, then, do we justify having any mores at all? Why don’t we adopt a simple “might makes might” moral paradigm?

It might be interesting to take a moment to unpack the ethical presumptions that underlie the bolded portion above, and their origins.

Define “supporting”? I think that there’s been so much of tying homosexuality to pedophilia in the past, and it’s become such a sore topic with gay folk and they’re so hyper-defensive about it, that it’s dangerous to really invoke pedophilia in any context in these sorts of discussions. But, I think LGBTQ advocates (and social progressives generally) haven’t put a lot of thought into developing a viable, comprehensive system of sexual ethics to replace the one they’ve rejected; and I think they should be challenged to come up with something if they think they can.

Oh, I’ll admit I’m being highly pedantic; I think overall we agree more than we disagree. At the moment I’m merely taking issue with your characterization of the parade-of-horribles as a “pseudo boogeyman we think is coming” [italics mine, and apologies if I misread your emphasis] and with your apparent belief that these horribles aren’t really related to the issue at hand. My position is the issues are integrally connected, even if the LGBTQ folks can’t or won’t understand the way they are preparing the way for what’s most certainly coming.

Fether, I’d agree with this more if progressivism were a static movement that could see the ramifications of its own presumptions and come out with a robust theoretical explanation as to why progressivism should go “thus far, and no further”. But it hasn’t. I don’t think it can, because it has largely thrown out the religiously-rooted theoretical/philosophical foundations of western morality without really having anything sustainable and near-universally appealing that is capable of filling that foundational void. The inevitable result of such tactics is collapse; and I think it entirely appropriate to point out what they’re doing even if they’re too short-sighted or too wrapped up on their own lust to figure it out themselves. Incidentally, you may recall that one of the prevailing arguments in favor of homosexuality was “well, there’s even homosexuality in the animal kingdom”. But it may interest you to know that there is also coercive copulation in the animal kingdom; there is sexual exploitation of juveniles in the animal kingdom; and—yes—there is even necrophilia in the animal kingdom.

The P-word will never be supported on its own terms; just as “sodomy” or “perversion” never were. It will be couched in terms of love and sexual autonomy and liberation. They’ll start out with the most innocuous cases—the seventeen-year-old boy who fell in love with and married his 22-year-old teacher, the sixteen-year-old from an abusive home who was noticed by a middle-aged school janitor who treated her with a kindness and respect she’d never known before and taught her to finally trust men . . . and on and on it will go.

In my experience, it’s not that they consciously support it; it’s that in justifying themselves they’ve undermined the ethical system that more broadly leads society to resist the darker impulses (especially those that are sexual in nature) that are constantly trying to drag humanity back into the animal kingdom. In the aftermath of the sexual revolution, the victory of the doctrine of consent uber allies, and the marginalization of the Abrahamic moral code and religions rooted thereon; the ethical case against pedophilia is based primarily on inertia and (in the case of pedophilia) on canons about childhood developmental psychology that could be (and in some societies, have been) knocked over relatively easily once the right political pressure is applied to the right people. To borrow a modern metaphor: It’s not that LGBTQ guys are the Taliban. It’s that they’re the American government that saw an Afghani army that had been trained to rely on close air support, and then suddenly deprived the Afghani army of direct air support while also choking off the resources they needed to fly and maintain their own aircraft. No, the American government is not the Taliban; but they’re still pretty flippin’ dumb. And in a similar vein: No, most LGBTQ advocates aren’t pedophiles; but they’re still useful idiots.

Well, now we’ve raised the bar, doncha know? [In all serious: a person who is in a missionary-companion-type relationship with another person who is sexually aggressive towards them, is in an intensely vulnerable situation. Time was, someone on the receiving end of such advances could punch the aggressor in the nose; but for twenty years the LGBTQ movement has not-so-subtly sent the message that when Gay Bubba puts the moves on you and refuses to stop, telling him “no” is an act of bigotry.]

You never know. My parents have an upright freezer in their garage that was there when they bought their house in the mid-1970s, and it’s still going strong.

The even more sinister corollary is that if you have no hope of being sexually fulfilled, you have no hope of ever having a fulfilling life at all and that whatever life you may have left is a sort of stunted life, a half-life. And then they wonder why suicide rates go through the roof when some of their audience grows up and learns the harsh truth that, just through the vicissitudes of life, not every Jack gets a Jill (or even another Jack).

Well, I’m not quite sure I’m understanding you—particularly how the bolded parts above tie in together. I can get that if a prophet reveals a bona fide ad hoc revelation from God implementing a policy that tends to be a “detour” around the policy He would prefer to implement, that may potentially leave the Church members still scratching their heads about what the eternal principle actually is. But I don’t see how that creates an issue with the reliability of that or any other revelation the prophet may receive. (If we’re using “reliability” as a shorthand for the “usefulness” or “universality” or “applicability” of the revelation in alternative sets of circumstances, then sure. But if we’re using “reliability” as a synonym for “authenticity” . . . you kind of lose me there. It seems tautological that if we grant that a revelation is authentic/reliable, then that settles the question of whether it is authentic/reliable, no?

Neither the manual nor the verses you cite say that the spokesman who Joseph of Egypt prophesied would come through his loins, would also be a descendant of Joseph-ben-Lehi. They merely state that Joseph-ben-Lehi’s seed would repent through the words of a book of writings created by the aforementioned spokesman (cf vv 18-19), who would “rise up among” the seed of Joseph-ben-Lehi. “Rise up among” can as easily refer to “come to the physical proximity to” as “be a literal descendant of”; in fact, if literal descendancy were the intent, Lehi could have explicitly said that the spokesman would come “through the loins” of Joseph-ben-Lehi (as he did when he wanted to convey that the spokesman would be a literal descendant of Joseph of Egypt). But he didn’t.

Mais oui. We are all entitled to our own English interpolations; we just aren’t entitled to our own Greek grammar and we aren’t entitled to write out key portions of the Genesis narrative regarding Isaac’s birth.

He wasn’t supposed to find middle ground. He was supposed to kiss the ring. Hence the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

Oh, I think he could always get a paid ministry in one of those looney “the Mormons worship a different Jesus, aren’t right-wing enough, and have been co-opted by the New World Order” type churches . . .