It Gets Better

[Sky]

Who is Ty Mansfield. While, I presume he is an openly gay mormon, what about him, makes him a role model.

I

[Libs]

Unfortunately, the odds of having a happy marriage between someone struggling with same gender attraction and a straight person, are not very high.

Link

"They're very conflicted about who they are, versus who they need to be for others," Fronczak said.

He added that he has never met a gay married man who has not been depressed or considered suicide: "These guys are so isolated. ... They feel there is no way out. They feel they are trapped between two worlds."

[elguanteloko]

This was a recent message of hope created by staff members of Pixar.

How could we, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ, present the Gospel to the same individuals to whom this message is directed, to address these same very real feelings of despair, loneliness, fear, lack of self worth? How can we present the message to help them feel at least the same freedom, joy, and hope expressed by those who are delivering the message?

If you were a missionary receiving a referral for an individual to whom this video was directed, knowing what you know by watching the video, what would be your loving approach to expressing the hope and joy of the Restored Gospel?

There's plenty of threads discussing how we should feel about such individuals, and judging their motives. But I haven't seen many topics exploring how we could effectively and lovingly present the message of the Gospel to address their specific concerns, doubts, despair, and very real feelings, in such a way that would bring comfort, and hope, a real assurance that, indeed, "It Gets Better".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKC_SCz6JPc

[LeSellers]

"When Does It Get Better?"

While I disagree with the premise, this is just one of a myriad of arguments in favor of the government's controlling, funding (pardon the redundancy), requiring, defining, or influencing education.

The primary argument, that children who are forced into school are slaves and thus less than human, is exactly right. The argument that children thus forced would tend to see other children similarly placed as being fair targets of their reaction, and treat each other as less than human is also correct.

A third argument, that children are capable of being responsible for their own education is right in so far as children are capable of masking any such decision. However, that's the job of parents until they are. It is not the job of government, and it is not the job of government to continue to do so after the child has acquired that ability.

Further, all children (to some extent) are bullied in school. All children there are treated as slaves by the staff, including teachers. And they are slaves to the state.

Lehi

[Libs]

I wasn't sure what the second guy in the video was getting at. He defined what he considered to be the problem, but didn't really offer any solution.

There is always the option to home school, even in highschool. We did this with my youngest and it was a good option for her.

I don't think doing away with public education is the answer to bullying. That's too much like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

[LeSellers]

I don't think doing away with public education is the answer to bullying. That's too much like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

The problem with this parallel is that there is no live baby in that bath. He drowned long ago. And that was the intent of those who drew the water in the first place.

Read Horace Mann, A Life, by his doting wife, Mary Peabody Mann, or The Underground History of American Education, by John Taylor Gatto, once the New York State "Teacher of the Year", who twice wore those laurels from New York City. "Public" schools are not what they claim to be, never were, and will always be destructive of family and individuals. That's their goal, and they are very good at it.

Lehi

[Libs]

The problem with this parallel is that there is no live baby in that bath. He drowned long ago. And that was the intent of those who drew the water in the first place.

Read Horace Mann, A Life, by his doting wife, Mary Peabody Mann, or The Underground History of American Education, by John Taylor Gatto, once the New York State "Teacher of the Year", who twice wore those laurels from New York City. "Public" schools are not what they claim to be, never were, and will always be destructive of family and individuals. That's their goal, and they are very good at it.

Lehi

Those are some pretty broad statements, Lehi. I think public education has helped more than it has hurt. And to say that the goal is to destroy families and individuals is very hyperbolic. You really believe that? Seriously?

[LeSellers]

I think public education has helped more than it has hurt.

By what measure?

It costs more, far more, every year to have government-run, tax-funded (grtf, aka welfare) schools (which are not a legitimate government function) than it does to support the military (which is).

The costs of a private K-12 (wadda stupid way of setting up learning) education can run from a few hundred dollars a year (for family-centered education) to $20,000 for a high-end (but not necessarily "better") school. The average in USmerica is less than $5,000, last I checked. It's a very bad economic trade off, especially when one considers that the grtf-welfare graduate can barely read his own diploma. I can teach any four year old (with normal sight and speech) to read in three months. If the grtf-welfare schools cannot do it in twelve years, and the costs (far from money alone, see below) are so horrendously high, they are not worth it, and they are destructive. That baby died long ago, and the bathwater needs to be thrown out.

And to say that the goal is to destroy families and individuals is very hyperbolic. You really believe that? Seriously?

It's not hyperbole, it's a fact.

Why should we not believe it? It's what Mann (the "Father" of "Public Schools") said himself. As a Unitarian, he wanted to "divorce child[ren] from [their] parents" precisely so the child would be free from his father's religion and values. Dewey, a half-century later, said, "What can they do in their hour Sunday School against thirty hours a week in our schools?"

What about William Torrey Harris (look him

up), the US Commissioner of Education who said that grtf-welfare schools were "scientifically designed" to keep a child from aspiring (or even imagining) to any position other than what they, the industrialists, had destined him to hold?

How about the "reluctance" of schoolmen (those who insist that they, and they alone know what is best for the children, they, not their parents) to even allow a child to opt out of "education" (let's call it what it is: indoctrination) on sex, climatology, and a host of other subjects?

The Reverend Robert Dabney warned Protestants, in the 1860s, that using the grtf-welfare schools to coerce Catholic children into being "good Americans" would eventually backfire on them, and that the same power that they wielded then would be used on their grand children to coerce them into becoming "good Americans" of a later age, and that these new, "good Americans" would not be Christian.

How about this article in Overland Monthly Magazine in 1884?

Compulsory attendance would assure the presence of the Mormon children. Enlightenment ... would reduce to a minimum the influence of the Mormon priesthood.

"A Practical Consideration of the Mormon Question"

Of course, what he means by "enlightenment" is forcing them to believe what he believed, and "the Mormon priesthood" is the father of the child in question.

If that's not an open attempt to destroy the family, then no such thing exists. But it is Satan's (at least) interim goal to destroy the family because that is Father's fundamental organization for "[His] work and [His] glory

[Libs]

You're using quotes from the 1800's to try and prove something? Sorry, I'm not buying.

Before public education, most children in this country were working ridiculously long hours and barely educated, if at all. Sorry, I don't wish to return to the "good old days".

[LeSellers]

You're using quotes from the 1800's to try and prove something? Sorry, I'm not buying.

Your choice, but nothing has changed in the intervening 150 years. And, please note, that a century before government took over "education", we saw the most outstanding men civilization has ever seen: Jefferson never went to a grtf-welfare school. Franklin did not; Washington, Hamilton, Madison, none of them did because the disasters had not been invented yet.

Dewey was in the XX, not the XIX, and there are many, many others who live yet today who echo the same sentiments. Did you read The Underground History of American Education? It is a XXI product, and, although it draws heavily on the origins of the grtf-welfare schools, it is contemporary, because Gatto, a man I have met and broken bread with, tells his own story. You might be interested in his letter to the eidtors of the Wall Street Journal.

Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents. The whole blueprint of school procedure is Egyptian, not Greek or Roman. It grows from the theological idea that human value is a scarce thing, represented symbolically by the narrow peak of a pyramid.

That idea passed into American history through the Puritans. It found its "scientific" presentation in the bell curve, along which talent supposedly apportions itself by some Iron Law of Biology. It

[Libs]

Lehi, we still have many, many outstanding men and women in this society. I would say many more than ever in history, in part, due to our educational system. The United States, for your information, has a 99% adult literacy rate. On average, people are more well educated than ever before, in history...and MORE people are educated than ever before. In my generation, almost all of my close relatives (siblings & cousins) went to college, whereas, our parents didn't even graduate from highschool. My parents both quit to go to work, because their families needed the income (especially my dad's family, where there were 13 children). Educationally, things have only improved; that's apparent even from just a brief survey and historical comparison.

Not sure what you think would replace public education. I'd venture to guess most families could not afford to pay for private schools.

The public education system can certainly be improved, but it sure isn't as worthless as you are making it out to be. It's actually been quite a blessing to our country.

(Those starving kids, you talked about, were probably starving anyway, as they were only being paid pennies or less a day - they were nothing more than slave labor - outrageous abuse of children...and you think that was okay?)..

[Sky]

Can somebody please tell me what exactly does Public Education have to do with the subject of this thread? You guys lost me.

[Libs]

Can somebody please tell me what exactly does Public Education have to do with the subject of this thread? You guys lost me.

I'm sorry. You're right, it's way off topic. Not sure how we got there.

(I think it was Lehi's fault )

[TAO]

I'm sorry. You're right, it's way off topic. Not sure how we got there.

(I think it was Lehi's fault )

We went Math.random() ;-)

[Libs]

We went Math.random() ;-)

Apparently! lol

[LeSellers]

I'm sorry. You're right, it's way off topic. Not sure how we got there.

(I think it was Lehi's fault )

The Crazy Glove posted the "When will it get better" Youtube clip, wherein the narrator said, correctly, that one reason homosexual youth (which I deny even exist, but that's another story) were bullied in school because they were forced to go to the place where others could pick on them. GRTF-Welfare schools are no better for any children than they are for homosexuals.

It may have been my fault, but I did not raise the question. Of course, the answer is, "GET YOUR CHILDREN OUT OF THE GRTF-WELFARE SCHOOLS, AND GET THEM OUT NOW!!!" and that answer applies no matter what the problem may be. GRTF-Welfare schools are evil from the git go, and will never be anything but evil until they are fully abandoned. They were designed that way, and there is no way to fix them: they are working according to specification.

Lehi

[Sky]

Lehi

[LeSellers]

Lehi

[Sky]

Lehi

[LeSellers]

Lehi

[semlogo]

Oh, my.

[Ahab]

Whether or not California Boy, I, or anyone else from "the gay community" personally believe that you are "being delusional" and "living a lie" is really totally irrelevant--just as the personal religious convictions of Wade, Ahab, or any other heterocentric Latter-day Saint who opposes same-sex relationships as sinful, evil, or abominable are irrelevant to my life. They, after all, think I and CB are as "delusional" and are "living a lie" (we who are, according to both their and your belief, sons of God with inherently heterosexual eternal potential, deceived by a cunning and evil Lucifer) as you feel/fear that "the gay community" thinks of you.

Just to be clear, the only sense in which I think you (and other homosexuals) are "delusional" and "living a lie" is in the sense that you think something which is actually evil is good and the best way to live your own life, and I feel that way because I know for a fact that it isn't, by personal experience, having experienced what you are now going through, Darin.

I hope that is clear enough without getting into any more detail, because I'd personally like to leave my past in the past and get on with a glorious future.

Save for the power to raise my own voice in testimony of the inherent goodness of my life and the manner in which I love and express that love, I have no power to change their or your beliefs to the contrary. The reverse is also true, of course. And isn't it wonderful that neither of us have that power...? Isn't it wonderful that, even though our laws allow for other viewpoints, our laws do not require mandatory alteration of our own personal beliefs to fall into alignment to the whim of others?

It's a double-edged sword, though, because while nobody (including God) has the power to change someone else's beliefs or feelings about something, save for the power to raise our own individual voice in testimony, you either win or you lose based on what you choose to stick with, with no good ever coming from something which is evil save for the ability to replace what is evil in favor of what is good.

In my view, "respecting others' agency" does not mean compromising our own personal beliefs by being forced to agree with someone else. Respect, however, does mean (in my view) that we allow others to choose to live their lives as they see fit, according to the strength of their own convictions, in spite of our disagreement with their chosen religious or relational life "style" (or lives).

Don't forget the fact that there are going to be consequences if you do anything which is evil, though, even if you choose to repent, because you will likely always have all of your memories of what you've done with you.

For example, if homosexuality is evil (as I know it is) and you engage in that kind of behavior, there are and there are going to be consequences to those evil actions even if you later repent from engaging in that kind of behavior, and even if you repent and are forgiven for those past sins, because you will likely always have your memories with you to remind you of what you have done in your life. And even worse, if you don't repent you will suffer in Hell, because that's where all people go when they refuse to repent of their sins.

And yes, I know the example above is relevant only if homosexuality is actually evil, but given the fact that I know it is, even if you don't, I'm not going to be messing around in that way as if to take a chance that it might be good (in which case I would now be the one who has been deluded, even though I know I have suffered for that in the past) with a faint hope that I won't have to suffer for doing that later.

In fighting equal civil marriage rights for gay couples, however, Latter-day Saints go far beyond allowing others to live as others believe--they seek to impose their own religious morality upon others who do not subscribe to their own belief.

I don't see raising my voice in testiimony as "imposing" my morality upon you, even when I vote against homosexuality to express my testimony regarding homosexual behavior. I'm simply saying it's wrong, and evil, and should not be condoned, and that people who engage in that behavior will suffer for it either now or sometime later.

You don't really expect me or someone else who feels the same way I do to say it's "okay" or "good" if you do it... when I know and believe it isn't... do you???

Do you know of examples of "the gay community" seeking to strip you of any similar type of rights? Are gays and lesbians calling upon you (or others who have or may have ever 'struggled with attraction to a member of your own gender") to remove, prevent, or prohibit your heterosexual civil marriage rights?

Hence my question: what type of "recognition, dignity, and respect" do you feel you are being denied...?

Darin

As long as you feel I am entitled to share my testimony regarding homosexuality, whatever my testimony of it may be, No, I won't feel you are trying to deny me of any of my rights which God has given to me.

[Daniel2]

Just to be clear, the only sense in which I think you (and other homosexuals) are "delusional" and "living a lie" is in the sense that you think something which is actually evil is good and the best way to live your own life, and I feel that way because I know for a fact that it isn't, by personal experience, having experienced what you are now going through, Darin.

Fair enough. I don

[Analytics]

Why? They have spoken clearly on the matter, and no one here has shown that any new counsel has been received. Virtually every prophet and many Apostles in the modern Church have told us to keep our children away from the grasp of government-controlled schools....

I happened to grow up a few blocks away from Boyd K. Packer, who happens to have a son my age. I went to public school with his son K-12. Is that an anomaly? Do you have any statistics on how many modern-day GA's keep their kids out of public schools?

If "the Brethren" were really opposed to public education, I would think that public school wouldn't be so prevalent in Utah. If public schools were really evil, I would think the Church would work with high school administrators to have release time for seminary just as readily as they

[Ahab]

... if homosexuality is amoral (as I know it is), and it