LDSGator

All true, and remember that no one is perfect. Even apostles struggle with what you described, and they'd be the first to admit it. 

Oh, family estrangement is always very sad.
I think about that old quote about how pretty much any two good followers of the gospel could make a marriage work... and I agree with that and would daresay that can be extended to any sort of relationship.
The trick here is that we're talking about good followers of the gospel and I don't know how many of us are there yet. Even the best of us can be prone to some form of pettiness, pride, judgment, and that ever-so-frustrating tendency to feel pain and hurt.
I think, until we have a lot more truly good followers of the gospel, it's going to be a necessary evil to distance from certain others. 

Part of it is because we’re good prosecutors for other people sins and we’re good defense attorneys for our own and those people we admire. I’ll lecture you about your porn addiction but ignore my own foul temper and unforgiving nature. 

Do you see a difference in admitting to a sinful aspect of existence, and pursuing it?  I keep hearing from folks who get ticked off whenever someone is talking about being gay, in the context of trying to live life as a disciple of Christ.  People taking issue with statements like "I'm a gay saint"?
I see a massive difference in someone admitting (sometimes publicly) to having an aspect of their existence out of sync with the plan of happiness, and someone willingly embracing such an aspect and feeding it.   I'm wondering if folks see a difference between the two as well. 
I mean, our story is that we're all sinful fallen humans, in need of weekly opportunities to review our failings, renew our baptismal covenants, and become clean of our sins.  What's the difference between someone trying to master their temper, someone trying to master their straight adulterous inclinations, and someone trying to master their same-sex inclinations?  
I think about the alcoholism/addiction/pr0n recovery programs that use a 12 step format.  There's quite a lot of "my name's X, and I'm an [alcoholic/drug addict/pr0n addict/etc]".  Before folks work on mastering and winning over their addictions, there's a massive effort to get folks to understand, internalize, and admit that their addictions are out of control.  Once some mastery is gained and some time has passed, later steps are big on daily accountability and self-scrutiny for slip-ups. Folks don't 'graduate' from such a program, folks just move through the steps over and over, throughout life, in order to combat something that'll probably be a core weakness for their whole life.  
Maybe another way to ask the question: What percentage of LDS folks suffering from same-sex attraction out there, do you believe buy and push the "heroic deciding to act like my authentic self" narrative?
Perhaps a third way to ask the question: Do you believe it's possible for someone to say to themselves "I'm gay", without following that narrative?  In your eyes, is there such a thing as a "gay saint" who is being a good disciple of Christ, or is the person believing that about themselves somehow sinning?
 

Check in on your friends from Florida. We are not okay. 😜

Check in on your friends from Florida. We are not okay. 😜

A former bishop told me that we’ll all be surprised who ends up in the Celestial Kingdom, but we’ll be even more shocked over who does not end up there. 

Who wanted to regulate tattoos in the 80's?

What a dangerous slippery slope.  Next, they'll be giving left handed people the right to own property.

I’ll stick to gators, thanks. 
 
I know very little about guns, even though I vehemently support the second amendment. Guns are like tattoos were in 80’s. Those who knew the least about them wanted to regulate them the most. 
 
However if I lived in that 10% of Canada where Polar Bears roamed, I’d never leave my house without an M2 Bradley tank. 😉 

Actually, after further review, Polar Bears are the largest land predator in the world. A few other carnivores are bigger, but they hunt in the water.

Thanks bud. I had no clue. 

Polar bears fear no one, largest land predator in the Americas. They are rarely seen however in 90% of Canada. The Browns and Grizzlies are much more prevalent. One of my mission companions was from rural North Alberta, and he told me his neighbor (who lived 10 miles away) once shot a Grizzly going after his sheep/goats, and it took 3 shots from a 30-06 to make it drop. Wolves are also a big problem in many areas, and he saw their tracks all the time.

All joking aside, once again I’m very happy that I live in America. 

All joking aside, once again I’m very happy that I live in America. 

I want to thank @mirkwoodfor his inputs.  There is a lot to think about.  However, I still have questions.  Perhaps I should contact brother Wayne May directly.  I like his demeanor and his approach.
 
The Traveler

I find the topic fascinating.  It does not impact my salvation at all, but it is very interesting to me.

Don’t fall into that trap. Just because Tesla stock is down recently doesn’t mean that the company is falling apart. The right does this with “woke”’companies and all it shows is how little they understand about the markets. 

What do they call a pretty girl in Tallahassee? 
 
A tourist. 
 
😉 

What do they call a pretty girl in Tallahassee? 
 
A tourist. 
 
😉 

There are ways to stay positive.
Elon gave us a precious, precious gift that will stand forever in the annals of good things.  He strode into the woke capital of woke America, fired almost half of 'em and watched a bunch more quit in a zealously idealistic huff, and the place never even experienced a single hiccup in downtime.

I expect he'll hire a CEO with the same priorities he has. Because, of course he will. Those priorities were his whole point in purchasing the thing.

Musk's poll was silly, because he knew full well how it would come out and would not have committed to such inevitable results unless he wanted that outcome anyway. Which he did, and I don't blame him. He should be taking care of SpaceX and Tesla and seeing to Boring Co., not dinking around CEOing Twitter. Nevertheless, I voted in his silly poll, and I actually voted for him to stay, maybe just to be contrary but also because I think that when it comes to protecting open speech on public platforms, if not Elon, then no one.

About 15 years ago, the stake I'm in petitioned Salt Lake for the purpose of creating a young single adult (18 - 30) branch. The reason for this is because according to official stake records we had over 400 young single adults living within the stake.
What the stake officials failed to consider is that this stake is wrapped around an Army base, and the US military reserves the right to transition people between facilities as it sees fit... often with little notice. Because of this, most of those 400 plus records were of individuals who had left the area without being able to request that their records be transferred with them. In reality, we likely only had about 50 at most, and some of these individuals lacked reliable transportation to get them to the site of a single YSA branch instead of their home wards.
Making matters worse is that we had an individual at one point who was the very definition of "toxic". He was an Army officer in a career field recently made popular by a controversial movie, and he let it go to his head. In hindsight it's clear he was called to be elder's quorum president because he needed to learn humility, and he never did. Instead, his arrogance and insensitivity to the needs of others drove quite a few people away from the branch, never to return. 
These two issues were such that even though I aged out a long time ago, I kept coming in order to help out as there were Sundays the branch didn't have enough priesthood to even do Sacrament without me. 
Well, it's officially been announced that the branch will be dissolved after the new year. There will be two final Sundays (the 1st and the 8th), then everyone will be going back to their home ward or branch. I guess it was determined that the branch was simply no longer viable. 
I'm not entirely surprised, as by all rights the branch should have been dissolved a long time ago. But at the same time, I find its dissolution rather sudden. 

There are companies that do that? Not a challenge, just surprised. I honestly didn't think there would be a big enough demand for it.