Just_A_Guy

I largely agree with this; but I keep having to remind myself how ephemeral 21st century politics really is in the grand scheme of things. My “side” is the Kingdom of God—period. If Kirk is willing to use his position to lie about/stir up sentiment against The Kingdom (ie, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), then he is fundamentally an enemy—or at best, an enemy-in-waiting. He does not become Captain Moroni, or anything like, just because in the short term he is successful at getting my tax rate lowered from 31% to 29.5% or makes YouTube videos showing stupid college kids to be (surprise!) stupid college kids. Having hung out in some conservative discussion fora, I think many Church members underestimate the degree of suspicion and contempt a lot of conservatives (especially Trumpian conservatives) have for the Church as an institution, its members as individuals, and its principles (particularly the ideals of self-discipline, sexual restraint, education, and—for lack of a better word—“thoughtfulness” or intellectual humility.) Many of them talk about us very much the way many early-1930s-Germans talked about Jews. They are not our friends.

Maybe I’m projecting; but I’ve had a hard time watching Charlie Kirk. There’s a flatness—maybe even a darkness—about the guy.

The First Presidency serve as the chairman and two vice-chairs of the board of directors at BYUH. They could overrule this, if they were aware of the situation and thought it was important enough. As it is, I think Admin has a strong point that with the PCC being an international tourist destination staffed by BYUH students, it makes sense to err on the side of caution. The last thing the Church needs is a pandemic surge/outbreak that is clearly traceable back to a Church institution. Transferring from BYUH to another CES school is not that onerous; and with regard to Sandor specifically, it appears that BYUH has science on their side—the various vaccines are functionally and qualitatively different and she does have statistically safe alternatives; she’s just snippy because Admin didn’t unquestioningly kowtow to her osteopath (who by definition does not primarily focus on the latest scientific research, particularly where synthetic medications and vaccines are concerned) and his merry band of non-doctors whom she managed to browbeat into giving her a semi-informed excuse note. Frankly, the drama queenery is strong with Sandor and the other would-be students cited. I resent that they ran squealing to an advocacy group to try to humiliate a Church entity into changing its policy; and my gut is that if they weren’t being pains in the Church’s posterior over this issue—they’d find something else to gripe about. In the event, I’m glad my tithing isn’t going to go towards the “education” of these miserable, self-entitled little maggots. As the saying goes—“Bye, Felicia . . .”

The Catholic Church is in a difficult position. I sympathize with the traditionalists. But, as one who had a really hard time with the changes to the LDS temple rite a couple years ago: I’m not sure it would have been a good thing for the Church to accommodate me by offering different versions of the endowment. I think we benefit, as a church, from participating in the same liturgies and knowing that we are all making the same covenants in the same way; and I imagine the Catholic leadership feel similarly.

Perhaps not just in Catholic circles: “Well, the Church is trying to be more relevant.” ”To God?” ”Oh, of course not, Prime Minister.”

Butler struck me as mostly re-writing Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember, with a bit of armchair psychoanalysis brought into the mix (I believe he’s the source of the “catatonic-Captain-Smith” theory). And yes, THG looks amazing; though I think they bit off more than they could chew with some of the features and wound up overpromising, which in turn alienated their donors. The team seems much more focused now, so I hope they finally get it done. But along the way they’ve released some very nice content; Matt DeWinkler’s “Titanic University” series is great.

Yep. I read it as an ebook and finally bought the paperback last year. It’s very, very thorough—maybe even a bit laborious! “Report into the Loss of the SS Titanic: A Centennial Reappraisal” is also excellent—it basically follows the same structure as Lord Mersey’s report at the end of the British Inquiry, but takes into account data that was learned in the ensuing century.

So, you know I have no love lost for Trump; and his post-electoral conduct has made me dislike him even more. That said: I think it’s fair to point out that for a lot of the supporters, this is less about Trump (or even purported election fraud) than about the dawning realization that the country and values they learned about in high school civics doesn’t exist anymore (if ever it did). The last few years have illustrated the obvious hollowing out of a number of previously-trusted American institutions—not just the press and academia but the courts, DOJ, FBI, corporate America, and even increasingly the military. Take a look at the Twitter thread that’s been copied and pasted here. I still think conservatives need to stay engaged in the traditional civics game; because short of bloodshed, that’s really all there is to play—if nothing else, the January 6 capitol occupation/hasty retreat (and the squealing like stuck pigs ever since) has shown that even the Trump wing of the GOP doesn’t have the guts for a bona fide revolution. But I can understand why people are mad; and while I can fault Trump for stoking that anger when he had a responsibility to at least try to tamp it down—there’s no point in pretending that he created the situation.

The example that immediately comes to mind is Alma the Elder’s prayers for Alma the Younger; but that sort of reinforces the original question. Did being confronted with the undeniable reality of an angel of God, somehow improperly influence Alma the Younger’s agency? (Same question vis a vis Saul of Tarsus, actually . . .) And if it doesn’t, then why don’t we see more supernatural messengers unambiguously testifying of the Gospel to unbelievers; and why is “the veil” that makes us forget our premortal interactions with God, necessary at all? Hmm . . .

Hey, I see what you did there . . .

Hmm. When I hear “pearl clutcher”, I think of someone who is sincere but whose motivations are irrational and whose responses are ineffectual.

The Washington DC Gay Men’s Chorus was invited to perform at the DC Temple Visitor’s Center back in 2019. I don’t believe they’re affiliated with the San Francisco chorus.

I see what you did there . . .

Historically, in the age of sail, warships of the Royal Navy (and, following that tradition, the US Navy) would include a detachment of soldiers—“Marines“—to handle any hand-in-hand fighting that might develop if the ship team into close quarters with an enemy. They would form the core of any boarding party or shore raiding party and would defend the ship from boarders with musket fire from their positions on the “fighting tops”; whereas the “Navy” personnel focused on operating the ship and manning the big guns. You see this distinction in the film Master and Commander, and on the BBC’s Hornblower series. Also, FWIW, I believe the formal command was “weigh anchor!”; when done, the boatswain would report back “anchor’s aweigh!”. Considering that this phrase would not logically be given at a dockside where it could be overheard by people ashore (ships don’t drop their anchors at a pier or quay; they are moored with dock lines and the order would be “cast off!”), I’ve always kind of wondered how the phrase “anchors aweigh” got to be in such common landside use.

At an opiate addiction seminar I went to a couple years ago, it was stated that there are no universal training or accreditation requirements for coroners or universal standards about how to determine “cause of death” (for example, a person may OD to the point that their heart stops; one coroner may name the cause of death as “opiate overdose” whereas another may simply write “cardiac arrest” on the death certificate). The data should be taken with a huge grain of salt; but at the same time—we aren’t likely to get better data anytime soon; and the spotty data we have is likely more a result of incompetence rather than malevolence.

Media stories have a way of reporting the beginning of stories—but not the ending. Jedi, I hope you’ll let us know if/when it is positively determined whether the vaccine actually caused the death.

@pam, wasn’t the last time anyone called you “missy” sometime during the Hoover administration? I chose this weekend to visit my folks in Lodi. They, too, have a pool; else I would be reconsidering my life choices right now.

Romans, bud, I love you; but your perseverating on this indicates that you have completely missed the point of my post’s first paragraph. Let me try to rephrase my point. Descendancy is not exclusive. The fact that one is literally descended from a person who lived thousands of years ago through one line, does not mean that one is precluded from also being descended from that ancestor’s sibling through another line. In the House of Israel, tribal membership was primarily an indicator of subcultural identity, covenant obligations, and specific sets of inherited blessings. If Lehi had grown up considering himself (say) a Levite, then looking at an actual family tree that confirmed he also had Josephite ancestry would have been meaningful to him in light of Jacob’s deathbed blessing upon Joseph and his posterity.

(I don’t know the answer, I’m just hypothesizing here): If the hearing was on a regular law-and-motion calendar day (as most divorce pretrial hearings are), there was probably only about half an hour blocked out for the hearing. That’s not enough time to swear witnesses and take testimony or review evidence. For law-and-motion issues, the parties are supposed to have filed affidavits ahead of time; and if they hadn’t done that then a judge might get pretty testy at a lawyer basically blowing up the afternoon calendar and insisting that the next twelve hearings run late because the lawyer wants to convert a half-hour L&M into a two-hour evidentiary hearing.

Sure; the document @Carborendum linked to is actually a petition on appeal. But the grounds of appeal aren’t “church and state is being violated” or “Muslim courts are inherently anti-female”; it’s a routine contract law question of “did she know what she was signing when she signed it?”

Yes, if the court approves an arbitration agreement, then the arbitrator basically functions as a sort of mini-judge and the arbitration panel’s decision carries the force of law.

So, the idea of couples being able to have a religious court arbitrate their divorce is not a new one—New York Jews have been referring their divorces to beit dins for decades. If a Jewish couple can do that, I don’t see why a Muslim couple can’t. The issue in this case is whether the wife knowingly agreed to arbitration in lieu of a standard court proceeding. Looking at the court’s actual order (page 306 of 800+ pages), it seems to me that the judge was saying “go do the arbitration; and if the imams are clearly shafting you then come back here and we can evaluate it in light of your constitutional rights and the child’s best interests”. I think that’s procedurally wrong—I think the judge should have evaluated the arbitration agreement’s applicability as a threshold issue. But judges are also notoriously eager to get issues off their desks if at all possible (more so now due to COVID-related backlogs) and many family courts require mediation before they’ll let you take the case to trial anyways. So so I think this is less about a judge being willing to accommodate/enforce Islamist misogyny, and more about the judge just being a little lazy and saying “look, talking is easy; so go ahead and do your alternative dispute resolution thing now; and I’ll evaluate the whole process later if you don’t wind up with a settlement everyone can live with.” The other issue that occurs to me—and this is perhaps more of a moral issue than a legal one—but Mom seems to want to have an Islamic marriage when it works for her (“I signed whatever documents they put in front of me during the wedding because that’s what we do in our culture!”) and then reverts to a secular marriage when the Islamic rubric no longer works for her (“golly gee willikers, I had NO IDEA that this guy who wanted a marriage under religious law wouldn’t also want any dissolution of that marriage to be done under religious law!”). I don’t find that particularly impressive. I strongly suspect that she knew, at least in general terms, what she was getting into. This strikes me as a cautionary tale: If you don’t want to be treated like the wife of a fundamentalist Muslim—don’t marry a fundamentalist Muslim. Under the circumstances I also suspect Mom’s attorney isn’t serving the client very well. The appeal is costing her far more in delay and legal fees than half a day’s arbitration would have.

I think the answer to all your questions is “yes”; with a caveat that perspective is largely a function of life experience and I think God, by virtue of His Atonement, already understands all experiences and therefore all perspectives perfectly. But for what it’s worth, I think Dr. Glenn is speaking from a communitarian/social standpoint; not a theological one.

It’s hard to be specific, but generally . . . Premarital property should revert to the premarital owner (unless it was something like a house or car where the spouse helped pay on the loan after the marriage); and one spouse deliberately destroying another spouse’s premarital property could create civil liability under a divorce settlement. Whether it could give rise to criminal charges as well . . . “maybe”. The sticky wicket is that a person does have the right to destroy their own property; and so different jurisdictions may have different standards about how much leeway one has where the property in question belongs to ones spouse and the marriage has not been dissolved.

1990s: “I didn’t inhale.” 2020s: “She didn’t ingest.”