Gays, blacks and the church


askandanswer
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4 hours ago, MrShorty said:

...........

How does one get to a point of certainty where they can believe these things (even if/when they choose not to say them for diplomacy's sake)? As interesting as the race and the priesthood and LGBT issues are, the underlying issue is one of epistemology -- how did we come to "know" that priesthood and temple blessings ought to be denied to a race of people and how did we come to know with such certainty that same sex marriage and gender transitions "disrupt progression and mock our divine nature."? 

How can we say that the laws of physics apply the same throughout the entire earth?  Solar system? Galaxy? and Universe?  How can we say with certainty that 1+1 is 2?  My question to you is how can you be certain of uncertainty? 

One of the great problems with understanding truth is the misunderstanding of the truth.  Dah!  Temple and priesthood blessings were never "denied" to any race of people as much as such blessings are only obtained according to a schedule.  But the schedule is often stated as the last shall be first and the first shall be last.  In scripture we learn that historically only those in Israel that were of the house of Aaron (Levites) could officiate at the temple and they alone enter the inner chambers of the temple.  In addition all women were confined to the outer courts of the temple.

For me - I am open to logic - but I see no sustainable possibility for any LGBTQ+ society - nor do I see any semblance of enduring "intelligence".  I know of no historical model, no sustainable religious model nor any scientific backing that suggests any LGBTQ+ society is sustainable.   The only logic I can even imagine is that to have any existence that a LBGTQ+ society must find "converts" from non-LGBTQ+ societies and sources.  In over 50 years of exposure to LGBTQ+ thinking; I have never encountered a single exception to prove it possible for such to be the result of evolution through natural selection.  So I wonder why anyone would invest in such thinking???????

 

The Traveler

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22 hours ago, askandanswer said:

Can you respect their choices while at the same time mourning their choices? If one of my children was to come out as gay, I would still love them but I would mourn there choice knowing that if they wanted to get married they would have to choose between a same-sex marriage not recognised by the church or a marriage to someoen of the opposite sex that they are less likely to enjoy and with which they are unlikely to be sexually satisfied. That seems to be to be a choice worth mourning.

This is one of the reasons why I love the movie "The Testaments of One Fold and One Shepherd" put out by the Church a while back. At one point the son says, "Why are you not happy for me?" To which the father replies, "I am happy for you, because you are happy. But I am sad because your happiness can not last."

We indeed can respect the "agency" of another while morning their decisions (which are against God) that will not bring lasting happiness.

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6 hours ago, Traveler said:

but I see no sustainable possibility for any LGBTQ+ society

The LGBT community has been around since the dawn of time, it’s just now that they are getting more open after hundreds of years of silence. 
 

Like it or not technology is advancing in ways where it might be possible that there are other alternatives for those people who want children but tragically are unable to have them naturally. Speaking from personal experience I know the soul crushing pain that causes. 
 

Since time never moves backwards and younger generations are simply more accepting of the LGBT community, I’m honestly unsure what can can be done to stop it.

It reminds me of how Queen Mary tried to get England back to Catholicism after the English Reformation. A generation grew up knowing Anglicanism (sp?) and no matter what she did, the ship had already sailed 

Stick to your values of course, and I’ll fight to the death to defend your right to speak and live your life how you feel you should. But as to the “culture war” one side has already sort of lost. 

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49 minutes ago, LDSGator said:

[1]The LGBT community has been around since the dawn of time, it’s just now that they are getting more open after hundreds of years of silence. 
 

. . .

[2]Since time never moves backwards and younger generations are simply more accepting of the LGBT community, I’m honestly unsure what can can be done. 

1.  I think this is half-accurate.  There have always been people who enjoyed having sex with people of their own gender, but through most of history participants in such behavior acknowledged the tawdriness of it.  Gay sex was something you did on the side when you weren’t making babies with your spouse.  The broad acceptance of idea that a gay relationship could be analogous to—even supplant—the intimacy and partnership and commitment traditionally associated with heterosexual marriage, is a new (last century or two) thing in global history.

2.  Members of a particular generation are often poorly situated to acknowledge the excesses, selfishness, and non-sustainability of their own behavioral mores; it generally takes the generation below them to realize just how badly their elders have mucked things up.

At the moment we have a crop of children who are growing up in mortal fear of saying the wrong thing (“in the future, everyone will be cancelled for fifteen minutes”).  A significant subset of modern kids who are having to fumble through their first romantic relationships without the benefit of parent figures of their own and their partner’s genders who can help them negotiate the pitfalls endemic to such relationships or to model healthy stability generally.  A small subset of modern kids have even been pressured into transgenderism, and will be “transitioning back” in coming years or decades.  In the near-ish future folks may also well be dealing with economic setbacks—and perhaps even wars—that simply leave them with less time to dwell on decadent frivolities because they’re too busy just trying to eke out a living. 

A few of us may live to see the full backlash against the stage of the sexual revolution as future generations come to understand just what a good thing we Americans had going on through the 1980s and how thoroughly and cavalierly our generation wrecked things in pursuit of our own psychological and material and sexual fulfillment; but we mostly won’t recognize that backlash as such—just as most of our own parents tend not to recognize the  seismic cultural and value shift that “okay, boomer” represents.

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2 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

The broad acceptance of idea that a gay relationship could be analogous to—even supplant—the intimacy and partnership and commitment traditionally associated with heterosexual marriage, is a new (last century or two) thing in global history.

Yes, correct. It's very new. And the awkward truth is that the right failed in some way to conserve their values and pass them on to their children. Speaking in generalities, not an insult to every conservative out there. 
 

And, because a generation is growing up with gay marriage being accepted, it’s highly, highly unlikely things will swing back to the time it wasn’t. 
 

Like you mentioned, time will tell. 

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10 minutes ago, LDSGator said:

Yes, correct. It's very new. And the awkward truth is that the right failed in some way to conserve their values and pass them on to their children. Speaking in generalities, not an insult to every conservative out there. 
 

“Kings built tombs more splendid than the houses of the living and counted the names of their descent dearer than the names of their sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry or in high cold towers asking questions of the stars.”

(Tolkien was a staunch Catholic, IIRC.)

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9 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry or in high cold towers asking questions of the stars.”

I prefer to sit on my couch playing Xbox. And I’m an Earl, not a Lord. But anyway. 
 

9 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Tolkien was a staunch Catholic

Correct. He was crushed when Lewis converted to the Church of England instead of the Church of Rome. 

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I wonder how our declining birth rate relates to the LGBTQ stuff.  I wonder how both of them relate to the 'recent' invention of reliable/cheap/effective birth control.  I already understand how serious an impact that third thing had, on traditional gender roles, the concept of a nuclear family, the marriage rate, percentages of intact families, etc.

Finally, I wonder how all those things relate to scriptures that talk about the US as a promised land for the righteous, which will stay that way until wickedness overtakes us and people end up being burned as stubble as the millennium is ushered in through force and deadly violence.

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3 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

I wonder how our declining birth rate relates to the LGBTQ stuff.  I wonder how both of them relate to the 'recent' invention of reliable/cheap/effective birth control.  I already understand how serious an impact that third thing had, on traditional gender roles, the concept of a nuclear family, the marriage rate, percentages of intact families, etc.

I wonder too. 
 

We like to think that previous generations were more holy and righteous than ours was, and perhaps that’s true. However, it’s obvious that most women now use some from of contraception, and if it was available in 1822 I’m very confident family sizes would have been as small then as they are now. 

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1 hour ago, NeuroTypical said:

I wonder how our declining birth rate relates to the LGBTQ stuff.  I wonder how both of them relate to the 'recent' invention of reliable/cheap/effective birth control.  I already understand how serious an impact that third thing had, on traditional gender roles, the concept of a nuclear family, the marriage rate, percentages of intact families, etc.

Finally, I wonder how all those things relate to scriptures that talk about the US as a promised land for the righteous, which will stay that way until wickedness overtakes us and people end up being burned as stubble as the millennium is ushered in through force and deadly violence.

From a social and spiritual standpoint, while these may each be problems per se, I think the deeper issue is the minder that gives rise to these as well as other behaviors:  the mindset being that our ancestors built an enormous store of social capital, and it’s our birthright to spend some of it down; and (we assume) there will be plenty left for the next generation without our having to take affirmative steps to contribute to it.  
 

“Won’t somebody please think of the children?” is a useful political slogan; but neither side of the political aisle is really acting like they are willing to seriously inconvenience themselves to leave the country overall (as opposed to their narrow social tribe/political faction) better for their children than their parents left it for them.  

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10 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Won’t somebody please think of the children?” is a useful political slogan; but neither side of the political aisle is really acting like they are willing to seriously inconvenience themselves to leave the country overall (as opposed to their narrow social tribe/political faction) better for their children than their parents left it for them.  

The other issue is that both sides have drastically different ideas on what makes the country better. We’re too busy applying evil intentions on one another because politics has become so emotional. 

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13 hours ago, LDSGator said:

The LGBT community has been around since the dawn of time, it’s just now that they are getting more open after hundreds of years of silence. 
 

Like it or not technology is advancing in ways where it might be possible that there are other alternatives for those people who want children but tragically are unable to have them naturally. Speaking from personal experience I know the soul crushing pain that causes. 
 

Since time never moves backwards and younger generations are simply more accepting of the LGBT community, I’m honestly unsure what can can be done to stop it.

It reminds me of how Queen Mary tried to get England back to Catholicism after the English Reformation. A generation grew up knowing Anglicanism (sp?) and no matter what she did, the ship had already sailed 

Stick to your values of course, and I’ll fight to the death to defend your right to speak and live your life how you feel you should. But as to the “culture war” one side has already sort of lost. 

Anything can seem possible within a short term unscientific control group.  In addition many destructive behaviors that destroy societies show up in small samples of a great deal of successful societies - perhaps in all known societies.  But we do have indications of elements of sustainable societies as well as elements common to failing societies.  I challenge you to provide just one human society with strong LGBTQ+ tendencies that survived beyond 3 generations.  If we apply the same scientific modeling to increased LGBTQ+ activity that we do to changes in climate the results to human society are just as catastrophic.   99.9% of known species have become extinct - including most human species.  The primary known cause of species extinction is a change in reproductive behaviors - sometimes this behavior change is rooted in catastrophic environmental changes.  The entire scientific point of failure within a species is called survival of the fittest and always results in failure to reproduce.

You seem to think this is just my opinion among many - so I would challenge you to provide the single example that demonstrates another possibility.

 

The Traveler

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7 minutes ago, Traveler said:

You seem to think this is just my opinion among many - so I would challenge you to provide the single example that demonstrates another possibility.

  

I think you overestimate the amount of LGBTQ people there are out there, and I think your analysis of society is far more grim than what society really is. Also, just because society is becoming more affirming of LGBTQ, that hardly means straight people will stop reproducing. 

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16 minutes ago, LDSGator said:

I think you overestimate the amount of LGBTQ people there are out there, and I think your analysis of society is far more grim than what society really is. Also, just because society is becoming more affirming of LGBTQ, that hardly means straight people will stop reproducing. 

I would be most interested in the samples (or scientific studies) that have helped form your opinion.  The scientific modeling of complex systems comes from Chaos Theory - which is based in the  uses of mathematical fractals.  The entire concern over climate change comes from these models.  If you are concerned about climate change it is likely because you have been influenced by Chaos Theory modeling.   I made my living (now retired) in automation and robotics with expertise in Chaos Theory modeling - using the same constructs for climate modeling and applying it to reproductive behaviors - the results to the human race are catastrophic.  

There are scientific studies with this modeling that explain the extinction of the Neanderthal human species resulted in a small change in reproductive behavior (2%) over 10,000 years.  For farther insight into the science (example) of great effects from small changes - I would refer you to our last general conference and a talk by Elder Michael Dunn titled "One Percent Better".

 

The Traveler

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17 minutes ago, LDSGator said:

Yes, I saw Jurassic Park too bro. 😉

It may seem strange - and I understand how most opinions are formed --- but for me it seems that logic and reason is a much better foundation for opinion than emotions and desires.  Which often seems to be the case with opinions.  I believe it was Brigham Young that said, "When personal pleasure is involved reason is thrown out the window."  I believe individuals should have the right to determine their choices for themselves.  But when someone says that something is beneficial to a society - I believe they have the obligation to prove it.  I have yet to see solid scientific proof that the constructs unique to LGBTQ+ by themselves benefit society or any proof that society cannot exist without the LGBTQ+ subculture.  I am well aware that individuals within the LGBTQ+ community can contribute to benefit society but if such is the case I am yet to discover that it is because and only because of their LGBTQ+ tendencies and nothing else.   I believe that benefits must be isolated in order to prove that such is beneficial.  If something else is involved it is possible that the something else is the cause of benefit.  In contrast I have yet to see that any society or binary species can exist without biological reproduction behaviors as the basis of sustainable behavior.  I am very confident that heterosexual behavior benefit society and makes it sustainable without any other sexual behaviors. 

I can agree that this is my opinion - if there is any other possibility or opinion that some other possibility exist - I would really like to see the proof of it.

 

The Traveler 

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23 hours ago, Traveler said:

Anything can seem possible within a short term unscientific control group.  In addition many destructive behaviors that destroy societies show up in small samples of a great deal of successful societies - perhaps in all known societies.  But we do have indications of elements of sustainable societies as well as elements common to failing societies.  I challenge you to provide just one human society with strong LGBTQ+ tendencies that survived beyond 3 generations.  If we apply the same scientific modeling to increased LGBTQ+ activity that we do to changes in climate the results to human society are just as catastrophic.   99.9% of known species have become extinct - including most human species.  The primary known cause of species extinction is a change in reproductive behaviors - sometimes this behavior change is rooted in catastrophic environmental changes.  The entire scientific point of failure within a species is called survival of the fittest and always results in failure to reproduce.

You seem to think this is just my opinion among many - so I would challenge you to provide the single example that demonstrates another possibility.

 

The Traveler

Beyond 3 Generations?

Imperial Rome.

Ancient Greece and Macedonia.

Sparta for example.

Ancient Egypt.

I am not saying it is RIGHT or MORAL, but these civilizations had strong LGBTQ (well, LGB elements at least) elements to them and lasted for quite a while.  3 Generations is a rather easy quota to fill.  If you asked for longer than that it would decrease how easy it is to fill that range.  A generation is normally 20 years (and they lived shorter lives in those days of history in general, or at least we assume they did), so you are asking for civilizations that had these elements that lasted longer than 60 years.  There are several to choose from.

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1 hour ago, JohnsonJones said:

Beyond 3 Generations?

Imperial Rome.

Ancient Greece and Macedonia.

Sparta for example.

Ancient Egypt.

I am not saying it is RIGHT or MORAL, but these civilizations had strong LGBTQ (well, LGB elements at least) elements to them and lasted for quite a while.  3 Generations is a rather easy quota to fill.  If you asked for longer than that it would decrease how easy it is to fill that range.  A generation is normally 20 years (and they lived shorter lives in those days of history in general, or at least we assume they did), so you are asking for civilizations that had these elements that lasted longer than 60 years.  There are several to choose from.

Indeed, homosexuality is neither historically rare nor universally condemned—quite the opposite. But I would point out that homosexual "marriage" has never, to my knowledge, been an accepted practice among any society throughout history until the late 20th century. If we could ask those ancient, homosexual-loving civilizations about homosexual "marriage", I suspect the response would be some mixture of uproarious laughter and genuine confusion about why such a legal status would even be considered for a homosexual couple.

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2 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

and they lived shorter lives in those days of history in general, or at least we assume they did

They did, but not as short as we think. High infant/child mortality skews the average lifespan. If we took those away, they actually lived lives relatively as long as ours, save  3-4 years. 

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Getting too old to keep up. A few things I want to respond to.

On 2/1/2022 at 5:07 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

1.  I would acknowledge the possibility--even probability--that the priesthood ban came from God at least in part as a result of broader social conditions. 

But, the operative phrase here is, came from God

I have yet to find an LGBTQ apologist who is willing to concede that divine origin played any role at all in the Church's current teachings and policy.  

Additionally, there's a difference between "we're doing this now because God told us to, and someday it will change" (Church on priesthood ban) versus "what you're proposing is contrary to the eternal order of heaven and it will never change" (Church on LGBTQ issues).

I see more parallel here than you do, perhaps because I am not convinced that the priesthood ban came from God. This group will tend not to like it, but I appreciated an essay from Johnathon Stapley over at By Common Consent where he argued that it might be time to accept that maybe the priesthood ban did not originate with God. As I see it, in both cases we can ask whether the Church's doctrine and policies around each issue are all truly from God or not.

https://bycommonconsent.com/2021/02/11/whether-the-temple-and-priesthood-restriction-was-mistaken/

I would add here that I'm not convinced that Pres. McKay's experience necessarily proves that God instituted the ban in the beginning. I find more support for God continuing to accommodate the Church's bad beliefs, waiting until the Church reaches a point of being willing to repent of it's errors. I don't believe that God accommodating man's foibles necessarily means that man's foibles were put there by God.

On 2/1/2022 at 5:07 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

The million-dollar question, of course, is "how do we define a 'good tree' or 'good fruit'?"  Do we define it narrowly according to what benefits the self, or do we look at the effects on third-parties as individuals and as society as a whole?  And, do we define it only by what we see in the here-and-now; or do we take an eternal view?  And, if we do take an eternal view, then how do we square up what prophets and scripture tell us the eternal view actually is, versus what we strongly desire and/or logically calculate what the eternal view ought to be? 

Agree that this is a huge part of the question. I don't have answers. What I know is that a strict focus on self is wrong, but I also believe that a martyr complex where I sacrifice everything in order to benefit those around me (a la Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree and the criticisms leveled against it). I also believe that God may require temporary suffering that leads to longterm, maybe eternal, goodness. However, I also believe that prophets and scripture are fallible and may present something as an eternal view that really isn't the eternal view. Ultimately, how do we come to know what is right and good as God Himself sees things? How did those processes of discernment lead us to believe so many terrible things about people with a different skin color to where we eventually need to fully and completely disavow those teachings? Are we absolutely certain that we have all the Truth (capital T) about LGBT issues that we know we will never need to disavow our current teachings and policies?

On 2/1/2022 at 6:55 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

But here I have to come back to the pedophilia counterexample--as always, not because homosexuality is on par in terms of grievousness; but because the logic you use to defend the one case is so easily applied to the other. 

I think this is the difficult nature of slippery slopes. Sometimes one really does need to hold fast to the anchors at the top because the descent to the bottom is inevitable. Other times, we cling to the top without allowing ourselves to explore the ledges and anchors that exist partway down and prevent the descent all the way to the bottom. As I've read Reeves, one interesting thing that seems to keep coming up is how broader American views of Mormon life were some kind of slippery slope into polluting the white race -- often explicitly accusing us of wanting to encourage interracial marriages (it almost seems like 19th century America was more scared of interracial marriage than they were of abolishing slavery. Abolishing slavery was just the first step down the slippery slope, so they resisted that first step. In the end, I don't know how best to navigate slippery slopes, I think they are difficult.

 

 

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On 2/2/2022 at 12:17 PM, Traveler said:

For me - I am open to logic - but I see no sustainable possibility for any LGBTQ+ society - nor do I see any semblance of enduring "intelligence".  I know of no historical model, no sustainable religious model nor any scientific backing that suggests any LGBTQ+ society is sustainable.   The only logic I can even imagine is that to have any existence that a LBGTQ+ society must find "converts" from non-LGBTQ+ societies and sources.

I think this assumes that LGBTQ+ is a separate society from our current society or that LGBTQ+ society is out to supplant cis-hetero society, and it also seems to assume that reproduction is the most important part of sustaining a society (which is at the heart of evolutionary theories). I think it makes a lot more sense to see LGBTQ+ as part (albeit a minority -- typical numbers on the order of 5 to 10%) of OUR society. Yes, the existence of many of these minorities removes individuals from the breeding population, but no where near enough to prevent the sustaining of our society. If this is the kind of argument we want to make, I think effective birth control and an overall aversion on the part of cis-hetero couples to have children would be a greater threat than the few sexual minorities that naturally remove themselves from the breeding population, as @NeuroTypical already mentioned.

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On 2/1/2022 at 6:55 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

But fundamentally, I think the issue comes back to the nature of the testimony that one has (or doesn't have) of those prophets themselves and of their calling and authority (if not their inerrancy).  If one wishes, one can certainly reject their authority and go on encouraging others to disregard some or all of the Church's behavioral standards.  It's just that after a certain point as determined by one's own local priesthood leadership, one can't openly do it and continue to call oneself a Latter-day Saint.  

It's a bit tangential, but I think this is another challenge the Church is struggling (maybe not the right word) with -- where to draw boundaries around who is and is not a Latter-day Saint. Dez-nat types (because they are just easy fringe punching bags for this sort of thing) would have us believe that there ought to be lots of things in our truth cart and we ought to urgently push anyone who can't absolutely support everything they put into the truth cart out as quickly as possible. Weeds and tares all over this field and the field must be cleansed. I see a lot of better voices (including many of the highest leadership) that wants to encourage people on the fringes to stay in, and leave the separating of wheat and tares to later. It is sometimes interesting to see how those going through faith crises struggle with the question of whether they ought to include themselves as "Latter-day Saint" or not. There is a question of "in or out" here that exists, but I'm not sure exactly how we want to decide who gets to be in or out -- and I'm sometimes not certain the Church is fully committed to some of the lines some want to draw.

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46 minutes ago, MrShorty said:

Getting too old to keep up. A few things I want to respond to.

I see more parallel here than you do, perhaps because I am not convinced that the priesthood ban came from God. This group will tend not to like it, but I appreciated an essay from Johnathon Stapley over at By Common Consent where he argued that it might be time to accept that maybe the priesthood ban did not originate with God. As I see it, in both cases we can ask whether the Church's doctrine and policies around each issue are all truly from God or not.

https://bycommonconsent.com/2021/02/11/whether-the-temple-and-priesthood-restriction-was-mistaken/

I would add here that I'm not convinced that Pres. McKay's experience necessarily proves that God instituted the ban in the beginning. I find more support for God continuing to accommodate the Church's bad beliefs, waiting until the Church reaches a point of being willing to repent of it's errors. I don't believe that God accommodating man's foibles necessarily means that man's foibles were put there by God.

Agree that this is a huge part of the question. I don't have answers. What I know is that a strict focus on self is wrong, but I also believe that a martyr complex where I sacrifice everything in order to benefit those around me (a la Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree and the criticisms leveled against it). I also believe that God may require temporary suffering that leads to longterm, maybe eternal, goodness. However, I also believe that prophets and scripture are fallible and may present something as an eternal view that really isn't the eternal view. Ultimately, how do we come to know what is right and good as God Himself sees things? How did those processes of discernment lead us to believe so many terrible things about people with a different skin color to where we eventually need to fully and completely disavow those teachings? Are we absolutely certain that we have all the Truth (capital T) about LGBT issues that we know we will never need to disavow our current teachings and policies?

I think this is the difficult nature of slippery slopes. Sometimes one really does need to hold fast to the anchors at the top because the descent to the bottom is inevitable. Other times, we cling to the top without allowing ourselves to explore the ledges and anchors that exist partway down and prevent the descent all the way to the bottom. As I've read Reeves, one interesting thing that seems to keep coming up is how broader American views of Mormon life were some kind of slippery slope into polluting the white race -- often explicitly accusing us of wanting to encourage interracial marriages (it almost seems like 19th century America was more scared of interracial marriage than they were of abolishing slavery. Abolishing slavery was just the first step down the slippery slope, so they resisted that first step. In the end, I don't know how best to navigate slippery slopes, I think they are difficult.

 

 

You can find any number of progressive and ex members to write any number of articles criticizing the Church and its Prophets.   I don't read them, though.   I see "By Common Consent" and I just keep on scrolling.

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5 hours ago, Grunt said:

You can find any number of progressive and ex members to write any number of articles criticizing the Church and its Prophets.   I don't read them, though.   I see "By Common Consent" and I just keep on scrolling.

I read it.

Basically:
Some people use what I think is twisted reasoning, so here's my twisted reasoning that you should accept because I think you should.

In other words, standard By Common Consent fare

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10 minutes ago, The Folk Prophet said:

I read it.

Basically:
Some people use what I think is twisted reasoning, so here's my twisted reasoning that you should accept because I think you should.

In other words, standard By Common Consent fare

By "some people" I assume he meant Prophets of God" and "I" is likely NOT a Prophet of God?

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