MrShorty

There's a reason we don't have an explicit list of every possible circumstance.  It's up to us, individually, to do the best we can to follow the WoW sincerely.  If somebody's using legalistic technicalities, that just means that on some level they feel  they probably shouldn't do it but are looking to justify it.  Meanwhile, someone else might sincerely believe it's fine.  Which do you supposed would be judged more sternly? 
I personally know where I draw the line, but somebody else may draw it either more permissively or less.  It doesn't make either of us more spiritual than the other, assuming we're both honestly doing our best according to our understanding.

There is a story of President McKay being served rum cake and indulging enthusiastically, to the consternation of his entourage; whereupon he declared that the WoW prohibited *drinking* alcohol, not *eating* it.
Those who know me know I’m not typically a fan of using such legalistic gnat-straining when discussing which Gospel-relates behavioral standards one might be justified in ignoring.  As for me personally, I choose not to eat coffee or alcohol.  But given the conflicting precedent, I have a hard time getting too offended when I see another Church member eating rum cake, or Flemish stew, or mocha ice cream.

I had doubted, shortly after being excommunicated, that I would seek to be readmitted to the Church through baptism. In all honesty, I knew I could go to Church, sit with my family, and be a part of the Church community without having to enter into that covenant. I had felt the forgiveness from the Lord, I had begun to repair things with my family as we sought healing together, and the Lord helped me escape behavior that I didn’t think was possible to abandon. So why would I need to rejoin the Church? Maybe it would be easier to remain in the world, loosely connected to the Church. I put the question to my stake president who reminded me that “the first fruits of repentance is baptism…” and that it wouldn’t be long before I would have the strongest desire to be baptized and receive the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. I was reminded of a lesson I learned years ago but had forgotten over time. In reading Joseph...
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[rant]
Have you ever received a strong positive recommendation from a trusted friend or family member? "You gotta see this movie! It's mind-bending!" "This is The. Best. Book. EVAR. It changed my life." "I just heard the most awesome song! Utterly beautiful, thoughtful, introspective! You'd love it!"
Have you then watched the movie, read the book, or listened to the song, only to find that it was rather the opposite of life-changing? More like a waste of your time, or worse? Have the words "trite", "insipid", or maybe just "stoooopid" come to mind? Have such experiences maybe even given you cause to rethink your assessment of the friend or family member?
Have you ever been on the other side of such an event?
[/rant]
Some scattered and wandering thoughts:
I wonder why this situation described above happens. Are we really so fundamentally different, especially from family and friends, that what is garbage to one is inspirational to another? Apparently so. Not sure what to make of this phenomenon. I remember when my oldest, who is incalculably precious to me, so strongly recommended an LDS-oriented movie called Ephraim's Rescue. We watched it as a family. I kept my opinions to myself, wisely, and didn't let him see me rolling my eyes throughout. I was perhaps a little surprised that he found it as moving as he did. But he was a young, tender-hearted, uncalloused twentysomething, not a disillusioned and slightly cynical middle-aged man who sometimes gets bothered by things like bad scripts, hammy acting, or undisguised attempts at emotional manipulation. It's been probably a couple of years since that event, and I think I'd like to rewatch the movie to understand what my boy liked about it, rather than worry about how it was not entertaining me sufficiently.
Surely even the very best of our mortal works of art, however amazing they might seem to us, are no better than kindergarten crayon scrawls to our Father. The operas or movies or songs or plays or novels or stories that we think are so "deep" are, of course, nothing of the sort. There is no depth in mortal works. Nibley liked to talk about mortality as a two-dimensional world that occasionally provides hints at what he called the third dimension, that of eternity. Any and all truly profound things in our lives are those things that establish, reflect, or at least hint at the things of eternity.
Holy things are those things that are eternal. What do we have around us that is eternal? Not our Church; it's the current manifestation of the kingdom of God, which is of course eternal. But the Church is temporary. It had a beginning—1830—and it will have an end. Insofar as the Church embodies the kingdom of God, it must be a sacred thing. But it's sacred by association, or better, by assignment, not intrinsically.
Temples? Same. A temple is a sort of portal to eternity; for us in mortality, it is a representation of God's realm, perhaps the way a song about love is a representation of a man and woman living in marriage for eighty years. It is manifestly not the same thing, not even the same type of thing, but it is a representation of that thing. Whether it's a truthful representation or just a mockery is probably a function of the representation itself and the mindset of those witnessing it. But temples do represent eternity. Moreover, temples are expressly sanctified as the dwelling place of the Lord, who is literally the embodiment of holiness—Man of Holiness is his very name. So temples are "holy", in a sense, which is why we call them "holy temples". But they are not eternal; they are merely representations of enduring reality.
How about people? They are certainly not eternal in a physical sense, yet they are eternal beings. As we know, our bodies are temples, in that they house the spirits of God—that is, us, our spirits. So that makes human life intrinsically sacred.
How about families? Well, families can be eternal, which makes them at least potentially sacred. At its best, a family is not merely a representation of eternity, but an actual functioning piece of eternity. Nothing is more sacred than that.
How about friendships? I don't know, but I'd feel pretty safe that guessing that any human relationship might potentially be eternal. Of course, when the very nature of that relationship goes against spiritual reality (such as an abusive relationship between spouses, or a sexual relationship between same-sex individuals), those relationships become rather the opposite of eternal.
Maybe if we somehow concentrated only ever on sacred things, our lives would be much fuller and more productive. Working for a living is very much concentrating on sacred things. Playing video games? Not so much. Participating in online discussion groups? Hmmm...
The world believes that nothing is sacred, but that some works of art are profound. As usual, the world has it utterly backward. Ephraim's Rescue is neither profound nor sacred, but my son is, and so are the noble feelings arisen in his breast when he watched it.

Somewhat off topic...
When a site attributes things like your hair stops falling out...my suspicions instantly get raised.
Currently there is a disconnect that I see between actual science and what Christianity WANTS science to say.  Thus, many Christian religions are trying to get evidence to support their ideas with ideas taken out of context or scientists who are not in that specific field commenting on something beyond their knowledge, or outliers to the scientific community on what is or is not an addiction.
is porn addiction real or pseudoscience
 
is "Porn addiction" a real thing?
Science currently does NOT back up the idea that there is such a thing as Porn addiction.  However, as the articles tend to mention, that is of no comfort to those who are experiencing such compulsions and cannot overcome them or have trouble dealing with such things.
It is currently NOT listed as an addiction in the Manual for Psychiatric Disorders.  Factually, in relation to science, then, calling it an addiction probably is incorrect.  When a site goes all out to try to claim that it is an addiction and that science states this clearly, you know that these people may not actually be proving something by...scientific means.
That does not mean it is not a problem or difficulty, but I think it means that when I am talking to someone in a private discussion and they say they have problems with pornography I am not going to tell them it is not so bad because they are probably addicted to it.
I may advise them to try a 12 step program similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, or that I may ask them to try to pray and have faith and read the scriptures more, talk to their friends and family to support them and refrain from doing things out of site, but I'll probably not feel that they have an addiction like someone who has a heroin addiction has.
I like what this individual has to say.
Is pronography addiction real
In this he avoids outright stating pornography addiction is scientifically real or correct at this point.  He DOES acknowledge that there are many who suffer and struggle with compulsivity.  In fact, he addresses it as such, that it is a compulsion that many seem to suffer from.  Saying that they have no problems does no one any good, but as there is not enough research yet and that, thus far, science does not seem to indicate that those who have pornography compulsion or compulsory behaviors have the agreed upon symptomatic behaviors means that right now, it is not listed as a clinical diagnosis of addiction.
Instead of calling it an addiction it is more correct to call it a COMPULSION.  It is a different set of motivations and symptoms.
I think it is controversial in science right now.  It seems that the push to call it an addiction is NOT being pushed by science but more specifically religious conservatives.  These are the same groups that pushed for years that masturbation caused insanity and various other disorders that eventually were blatantly obviously wrong when scientific research was completed.  It does not mean that they are completely wrong in their ideas about pornography addiction, but it casts a strong shadow of doubt when groups go around trying to proclaim it as such when the prognosis on such is still undecided.
In relation to us.  We, collectively talking as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, see pornography as a sin.  Looking upon a woman (or a man) to lust after them (if not married specifically to that individual) is sinful.  Watching or looking at pornography is something we need to repent of.  We have various ways to try to help those who have problems with pornography, and we want them to repent and overcome this problem.  I think in many instances we may call it pornography addiction among ourselves, but we are not scientifically centered on this.  We are a religion and are trying to help people come to the Lord.
However, when I see groups saying they are utilizing a dialogue of science but instead pushing pseudoscience, I tend to be more disgusted with them and those behind those companies and theories.  I find it like the snake oil salesmen who tries to convince others that their well water was a great medicine created by the greatest scientific men who traveled the old west, rather than proficient doctors of medicine that try to help people in our modern day.

Is there a relationship between sin and sickness?
In the words of a very wise man:
Yes, I've overstated a very small amount for comic relief and dramatic effect.  But I will be adamant that the strength of the relationship between sin and sickness is, at best, weak (that's an actual statistical term that roughly translates to "has poor predictive ability"). 
Focusing on the two examples you provide: "gay bowel syndrome" is not a disease.  It was a generic term that covered a large array of conditions. One doctor coined the term to describe the set of symptoms he saw across his entire practice (which treated many gay men). It was not a medically developed term, nor was it a term used to describe a narrow, reproducible set of symptoms. Most notably, the term described symptoms, not disease. 
Caveat: yes, most of the diseases at issue were sexually transmitted. This was a term coined at a time when homosexuality was underground and the social consequences of being identified as homosexual were severe and frightening. In that environment, committed, steady homosexual relationships were rare, with many preferring casual relations to avoid having their sexual orientation discovered by their "normal life" acquaintances.  As homosexuality has come out of the shadows, homosexual relationships have become more accepted/tolerated, and safe sex practices have been established, "gay bowel syndrome" has fallen out of use out of both lower incidence and a preference for discussing the actual disease and not the symptoms.
If you want to make the argument that extra-marital/non-marital sex has an increased risk of sexually transmitted disease, go right ahead.  But that is not gay-specific.
 
Second, the relationship between mental illness and substance abuse is much more complicated to address.  And even in the article you quote, the relationship is described as complicated.  Certainly there is a correlation, but establishing which one is the cause and which one is the effect is incredibly difficult.  Your article even points out that in many instances, the mental illness precedes the substance abuse. Yet in others, the substance abuse may fundamentally alter the brain resulting in mental illness. In the former case, the sickness likely predisposes to the sin; in the latter, it wasn't the sin that caused the illness, but the natural consequence of mixing chemicals.
I won't object to a claim that commandments may protect us from certain consequences.  But there is a big difference between framing illness as a consequence of action and framing illness as a punishment for action. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your motives, but your discussion thus far seems to have favored the punishment paradigm, which is one I reject without reservation.

And I think this is at the core of the "hate the sin, love the sinner" philosophy.  We aren't able to judge each other because we can't possibly know all the factors.  It may be that some people truly deserve scorn while others who have committed similar acts deserve mercy... but it isn't for us to know which is which, so our default position should always be one of compassion.  We can show compassion for each other without excusing sinful acts. 

This is legit.  Seriously.
My point is that I don't really have a stumbling block with LGFBT-whatever.
To each his/her/its own.  I try not to judge.  And furthermore, I don't want to be in your bedroom or wherever you choose to do whatever it is that knocks your socks off.  
Come to church.  
“The church is not a place where perfect people gather to say perfect things, or have perfect thoughts, or have perfect feelings. The Church is a place where imperfect people gather to provide encouragement, support, and service to each other as we press on in our journey to return to our Heavenly Father.”  ― Joseph B. Wirthlin
 
Mark 2 16 And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?
17 When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Come, Join with US.  Uchtdorf, Oct 2013

From what I've heard and experienced in talking with a few of these people is that they don't see their lifestyle choice to be sinful. So the "Love the sinner..." mentality is offensive to them. It's probably one of the biggest barriers to seeing eye to eye with them. They simply don't see their attraction and subsequent actions as sinning. Those of us who believe the prophets and interpret the Bible to be a condemnation of homosexual relations think it is sin. And ne'er the twain shall meet in the middle. 

https://www.foxnews.com/science/famous-einstein-puzzle-solved-as-missing-page-comes-to-light
"But in the copies we had, one page was missing, and that was a problem. That was a puzzle," Hanoch Gutfreund, scientific advisor to the university's Einstein archive, said in comments to the AFP. He added: "And to our surprise, to our delight, that page is nowhere. It came with the new material."
How delightful! An important but missing page is nowhere! Great news!
Remember your spaces, children. The page is not "nowhere"; it is "now here".
Now that that's settled, let's eat Grandma!

Aw great you add the spoiler alert at the end... now I don't need to bother finishing the Three Little Pigs.  THANKS A LOT, @Vort

I have seen some theorize that there was a "floating" Sabbath (other than the weekly Saturday Sabbath) that occurred on Wednesday or Thursday of that week that year. I posted some links in this thread:
 

Not to put a pin in your joke balloon, but even if the story of Jonah/Jonas is just a made-up morality tale rather than a literal account, that doesn't really impact the Savior's words, any more than my saying "Don't build a house of straw!" would be meaningless because, you know, there weren't really three little pigs that built houses out of various substances for a wolf to come and try to blow down.
(Maybe I should add: *** SPOILER! ***)

Out of all the things I've heard church leaders state over the years in the capacity of their calling, 99.9% of it is good advice, nothing objectionable, sound principles, gospel truths, etc.  There is a tiny, tiny, miniscule handful of comments I've gathered over the almost-5 decades, that are problematic in some way.  I could probably count all of them on both my hands. 
I'm guessing that most of that small amount of problematic stuff have come from the leader's stuff-they-were-always-taught, cultural knowledge, incorrect assumptions, etc.  In other words, even in that tiny small handful, they were trying their best to do good, they were just letting some of their imperfect show.  I have never personally encountered a church leader trying to do ill, work evil, be unhelpful, etc.  Once or twice I've seen one lose their temper and speak out of negative emotion, but they've recovered and apologized later. 
But anyway, more than one of these comments have been clueless, ignorant, even harmful advice when it comes to mental illness.  The human race has just naturally sucked at having this stuff figured out.  We struggle to know what to do about it, or even to acknowledge that it exists.  And when we're actually face to face with someone who is struggling with some form of it, and we can't empathize because we've got no clue what that's like, sometimes we, in our attempts to help, say something stupid.  The last comment I encountered was from a counselor in our Bishopric, giving a talk on how to have peace in our lives.  The offensive quote, which stood out and overshadowed everything else he had to say, was "You don't need a pill to feel the spirit."  I looked over at my wife, who has been on a maintenance dose of brain pills for most of her adult life, and she just rolled her eyes.  She had heard it before, from umpteen clueless idiots trying to help, and now she was hearing it taught across the pulpit by a member of the bishopric.  Fortunately, she was at a mature point in her life when she didn't look to church leaders for help living life, and could identify and forgive the occasional slip.  Maybe someone else less grounded heard it and gave up.  It happens.
The church tries hard.  Elder Morrison has published stuff on the topic:
Valley of Sorrow: A Layman's Guide to Understanding Mental Illness
Myths about Mental Illness - October 2005 Ensign 
I've joked more than once that once they make me emperor of the Mormons, you'll have to read that book and pass a quiz before being ordained to any priesthood office.  Book report for any Melchezedic office.  Over the years, I've bought a dozen or more copies of the book, and handed it to new Bishops, Stake Presidencies, anyone who wanted a copy.  The feedback was immediate and overwhelmingly positive.  "I wish the church gave us more training on this" was a regular comment a couple of decades ago.  These days, I'm told the church does indeed have training easily accessible for leaders on these subjects.  We're doing better.  But humans are still humans.  
Yeah, lots of people hear stuff wrong, have a chip on their shoulder, a persecution complex, a problem with authority, hate men in power, try to justify their complacency, are looking for a reason to be offended, are thin skinned and brittle, hurt by truth, offended by good advice they don't want to hear.  Those are all things that happen.  A lot.  Probably 99% of the time, when I hear someone grousing about counsel from a leader, I'd be willing to think there's a problem with the person receiving counsel.  But you know what else happens?  Sometimes this or that leader might give imperfect advice. Sometimes even downright clueless, false, harmful advice.   Almost never.  But yeah, it happens sometimes. 
The solution isn't to blame the person complaining. Or blame the person who tried and failed.  The solution is to spread the truth.
No really - go read that 2nd link.  Go get a copy of the book.  If anyone wants to PM me, I will personally mail you a copy.

I've mentioned it before, but here's a quick recap for those of you who haven't read much of my work (intentionally, probably, because my sense of humor is so weird): when I served a mission, I struggled with significant depression for almost the first nine months. After several transfers, my angelic mission president put me in touch with a General Authority (it wasn't a member of the Twelve, and please don't speculate). I remember talking with him, sobbing out my entire heart, telling him how I didn't understand why I had wanted to serve a mission so desperately my entire life but then hated it... But his response was not what I needed. Please don't get me wrong: this man — a man with a holy calling, but still an imperfect man! — was a good man who was trying. He didn't shoot me down or say anything intentionally hurtful, but his response was something along the lines of, "Well, the pioneers had to do things they didn't want to do,...
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I note that the article, for all its virtues, doesn’t mention the fact that Joseph Ball apostatized.  It doesn’t mention Jane James’s historically suspect recollection that Joseph Smith offered her an adoptive sealing at a time when adoptive sealings were not a thing.  And it doesn’t mention William McCary (whose antics were probably the immediate precursor to the ban) at all.
Is the article itself a “whitewash”?

I grew up out of Utah and now live here.  You find some provincialism (as you do anywhere), but on the whole I find the prevailing commonality of values liberating and have no desire to leave.  
As for sociality:  I have virtually no social life and as a dedicated introvert, have no especial desire to cultivate one amongst either Church members or non-Mormons.  I see my family, I hang out here at ThirdHour, I commiserate with government workers during the breaks between court hearings.  It takes me a solid week just to recover from all the human contact I get from church on Sundays.  

This explains it rather well:  WiKi: Torah
Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Knowing nothing at all but this, it sounds like decertification is a reasonable if extreme step. Certified police, able to arrest and have all other policing powers, cannot truly be private. BYU may pay their salaries, but they still have to do all the regular police stuff. Open records is a vitally important part of that.
But note the caveat of my first six words. Wherever the Salt Lake Tribune is involved, you may be almost certain that corruption and hatred of the Church closely follow. So it well may not be as cut-and-dried as it seems at first glance. Or maybe it is; BYU certainly may have just screwed up this whole situation. Wouldn't be the first time. BYU was fully within its rights to kick Barney the heck out of school; I have very little sympathy for her, being as she is a liar and then an advocate for hating on the institution she defrauded. But refusing to comply with an open-records request? I just don't even understand that. Maybe JAG or Mirk or someone else with legal understanding can enlighten us.

The Tribune filed a GRAMA (the state equivalent of FOIA) request, which BYU opposed.  I don’t remember how the administering agency ruled, but it was appealed to a state-court judge, who ruled for the Tribune.  BYU appealed to the Utah Court of Appeals, and I understand the case is pending there.  The disputed issues have to do with the extent to which BYUPD is subject to GRAMA.  I can sympathize with their argument there.  The state legislature is currently considering a bill that will put BYUPD unambiguously under the umbrella of GRAMA.  (@Mirkwood can correct me, but I don’t think BYUPD has any jurisdiction off-campus; they just share database access with other law enforcement agencies.)
But I am inclined to agree that when the Department of Public Safety sends you a subpoena wanting to know how you’re handling a discipline issue with a POST-certified officer—you don’t blow that off.  DPS seems to think that BYU did just that. BYU also seems to be saying that they *did* do an IA review of the officer complaint, suggesting that maybe there are technical disagreements over whether the review procedure satisfied POST/DPS standards.  
It appears that BYU was juggling between a POST investigation, an AG’s Office investigation, a County Attorney investigation, and the Tribune’s GRAMA requests; all whilst conducting their own internal investigation at the same time.  Not a happy situation to be in.  

I would note that the article in the OP is from the DesNews. The only reference to the Trib is that this is at least partially precipitated by a GRAMA request by the Trib back in 2016, which the article mentions. The article is written by a Church and BYU friendly source (assuming we think the DesNews is friendly to the Church and BYU).
I, too, am ignorant of all of the legal ins and outs. BYU's police seems to be an interesting intersection between private and public. The case in question should help clarify exactly what the nature of that public/private intersection is.

For those who do have some of these instruments, who dig astronomy, and yet also "have eyes to see," this site is a very cool use of vision to point us towards God:  http://www.seetheglory.com/

I agree (I think!), and I’m not saying every Church action should be attributed to revelation and/or canonized in scripture.  It behooves us to keep our canon as canon, rather than letting it morph into a full-fledged legal code.
What I am suggesting is that 1) the general membership are more willing to defer to the leadership now then they were in Joseph’s day; and 2) there are both overlaps and distinctions between “whispering of the Spirit” versus “inspiration” versus “revelation” versus “voice of God” versus “vision” versus “vague feeling, articulated in imperfect language and maybe later re-worded to convey the feeling more accurately” versus “verbatim and unchangeable dictation from God Himself”; and these exist even within the canonized D&C in ways that the current text doesn’t always make clear.  
The demand for new canon is really a demand for less ambiguity in the revelatory process that our current leadership undergoes, and it is rooted in the (in my view, fallacious) assumption that there was a point in Church history when there was no such ambiguity.

Told that they should be wearing hosiery under their skirts?