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In scripture…examples of people who were unlikely to have been baptized and received the ordinance of the Gift of the Holy Ghost (even if you assume they had an identical or even just comparable ordinance at the time), but are recognized by LDS as having some, if not many gifts of the Spirit: The magi are recognized as having been inspired to seek out Christ. Balaam, while not always in line with the Spirit I am guessing, still received revelation at times. Cornelius was not a Christian and yet was considered devout towards God and received a vision. Samuel the Lamanite was called as a prophet, but may not have been a member of the Nephite Church. Joseph Smith received much revelation concerning multiple subjects prior to baptism and confirmation covenants. It’s a major doctrinal point that the Constitution is an inspired document and none of those involved had been confirmed or were in their lifetime.

That is how some members interpret it if they choose to ignore what scriptures teach, but not having the constant guaranteed companionship is not the same as having no companionship at all nor does it exclude you from having it with you at all times because you seek it in other ways and are worthy in those ways. Think of the difference between having the marriage contract with your wife vs having a non contractual friendship with someone or a different form of contract even. That someone could even move in to be a roommate, so with you as often or even more than a wife might be. They might even have a contract based on something besides marriage. They will never be your spouse, but they may have a very deep, different type of intimate relationship with you, correct? And I believe that is where most people get hung up through lack of understanding what this means. Even with the ordinance, if we sin, we lose this form of companionship until we repent. It is not a vending machine type of relationship nor is it exclusive rights. Listing blessings received through the ordinance does not mean that the ordinance is the only way to receive those blessings just as many blessings received through marriage or parenthood are not exclusive to those, even if a few are. “the website isn't as kind as you are, is it” While I recognize that some members, perhaps many though in my own experience they are definitely not the majority, and even some leaders tend to have black and white, rigid, or even all or nothing type of thinking, does not require our actual doctrine to be so rigid. We have examples of leaders correcting past leaders (for example the Priesthood Ban and Adam-God) even if they are at times overly careful out of respect not to call out particular leaders when disavowing certain beliefs, so I don’t see a need to treat past leaders as authoritative when they contradict current teachings and/or scripture or even just logic.

I appreciate you saying that on more than one occasion. I believe that is your teaching, and while I appreciate it very much. Here is what I read on the Church website in the article on the Gift of the Holy Spirit: "Have you ever considered all the ways you’ve been blessed through the gift of the Holy Ghost? All of God’s children can experience the influence of the Holy Ghost guiding them to Jesus Christ and His gospel. But the gift of the Holy Ghost is reserved for those who, through faith in Jesus Christ and repentance, make covenants with Jesus Christ through baptism. This gift is the promise that you can enjoy the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost—a member of the Godhead. It is no ordinary gift—it can’t be seen—but its power is undeniable when you choose to receive it through righteous living. Those who receive the gift of the Holy Ghost are cleansed from sin, receive personal revelation, and enjoy the blessings known as “the gifts of the Spirit.” Let's go down through that. 1. All of God's children can experience the influence of the Holy Ghost guiding them to Jesus Christ and His Gospel. - In other words I can experience the influence of the Holy Spirit guiding me to the LDS Church. That's a pretty limited influence for me since I already have accepted Jesus Christ and His Gospel - just not in the LDS Church. Not much benefit for me there, right? 2. The Gift of the Holy Ghost is reserved for those who, through faith in Jesus Christ and repentance, make covenants with Jesus Christ through baptism. That of course means no Gift of the Holy Ghost without LDS baptism and covenants. My baptism and covenants don't count. So there is no benefit there for me, right? 3. This gift (the one available in 2. is the promise that you can enjoy the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. So this one isn't available to me, is it? No constant companionship. Maybe sometimes, once-in-a while companionship? I have no idea what this one even means. 4. This is the big one!!! "Those who receive the gift of the Holy Ghost are cleansed from sin, receive personal revelation and enjoy the blessings known as "the gifts of the Spirit." This is a doozy (as my mother used to say). So. . . I haven't received the gift of the Holy Ghost, therefore I have not been cleansed from sin, I cannot receive personal revelation and by far, worst of all, I cannot enjoy the blessings known as "the gifts of the Spirit." What does this mean except that I have no access to enjoy: Wisdom, Understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, Fear of the Lord, Faith, Healing, Miracles, prophecy, discerning Spirits, tongues, administrations and helps. Also, what about the fruits of the spirit? Without the Gift of the Spirit, how do I enjoy the fruits of the Spirit? That eliminates: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These four items are devastating exclusions for me as a non-LDS Christian. As a non-LDS Christian, I clearly am less than. Over the last few months I have never felt more less than when it comes to our local LDS friends. So now I have to say I have experienced most all of these things to one degree or another, so of course my personal truth is that I reject this LDS doctrinal exclusion of all of this in the lives of non-LDS Christians. So your thinking seems to me to be non-orthodox on this issue. You are kind so you state the Gift of the Holy Ghost is one kind of direct influence of God in my life, not the only kind. So what are the other kinds of direct influences of God in my life? Certainly you can't mean the Light of Christ that is available to everyone on earth????? As a non-LDS Christian, what are the direct (to use your word) influences of the Holy Spirit I have available to me, given the exclusions listed in: Gift of the Holy Ghost ? Thanks so much. I own that I get really frustrated on this one. It seems to me to be one of the principal doctrines of the LDS Church that when discussed with kind LDS Christians, I am told, "Well, we don't really mean that . . . . . . oh and its not something personal! Huh? No personal revelation isn't personal? I would rather not hijack this thread, but it is pretty related to the concept of a great apostasy. Anyway, I do appreciate your kindness as always, but the website isn't as kind as you are, is it?

Again, not having the Gift of the Holy Ghost is not not having any direct influence of the Holy Spirit. That is not authoritative doctrine of the Church. The Gift of the Holy Ghost is one kind of direct influence, not the only kind.

This is a clearer statement of the same proposal, not a different one. "Identity" still governs entry in the first instance (and allows anyone into what was created as a sex-segregated space), and conduct governs expulsion after entry. Sincerity is, somehow, supposed to function as the eligibility test. Stalls and “private options” are the consolation prize given to women, on the condition that they surrender sex-segregated spaces and silence themselves about it. "Birth-sex" exclusion is treated as a stipulated taste rather than the very purpose for which women's spaces are created and maintained. The model is honest enough to say the evidence does not show this uniquely minimizes harm to biological females, but then recommends it anyway. Let's start with the definition of “optimal.” It says the objective is lowest expected harm, with particular priority to biological females’ safety, privacy, dignity, and practical access. It then says existing evidence does not establish that identity access does that. The recommendation is therefore not the policy that won on the stated criterion. It is the policy that survives after sex exclusivity is redescribed as an extra preference and after “do not assume a transgender woman’s presence is inherently harmful” is loaded into the prompt’s scoring. If female-only occupancy is what privacy and dignity are in a shared toilet, that is not a silent expansion of the population. It is the content of the interest. And self-ID, "sincere" or otherwise, is still not administrable. The model admits a quiet liar with no visible misconduct gets in. Staff may not use appearance or status alone. There is no showing, no official, and no moment of refusal except a separate offense. That is Question 2 unanswered. Calling it a “hybrid” does not add a gate. It just adds a lock on the stall and a training memo. Women and girls still get the short end of the stick. The Massachusetts paper is still the load-bearing study, and it still doesn't bear the load you are putting on it. To its credit, the model lists the right caveats: a tiny treated sample, police logs, mixed facility types, no female-specific total experience, weak causal desig, etc., and then lets “no detected increase in those charges” do work those caveats forbid. It does not measure avoidance, dignity, HR discipline, or the usable sex line. Again, a 2026 methodological critique in Theory and Society is why that paper should not be treated as the empirical floor for a statewide rule. “Predictions of a crime wave are overstated” is not the same as “the institutional effects are imaginary.” Women who "identify" as men are used again as the symmetry that makes sex rules look cruel (when we all know the elephant in the room is men in the bathroom). A sex rule places females in the women’s room. If that is “compelled placement,” every sex-separated space is compelled placement. The comparison only works if the harm of a masculine female in a female room is treated as equal to admitting males as a class. Those are not equal. One is an edge of a female category. The other is the end of the category. You are still not acknowledging that your proposal eradicates sex-segregated spaces. On spillover the model is careful and still too neat, by a long shot. Bostock reserved bathrooms. Lower courts, agencies, and advocates did not. The 2016 "Dear Colleague" letter put restrooms and locker rooms in one sentence. Public-accommodations clauses do not contain a “toilets only” proviso. You can write a narrow statute. This recommendation does not. It says the same rule need not govern showers, sport, or prison, then offers no legal distinction that would stop the next complaint from quoting the restroom policy as the meaning of “sex.” That was Question 1. The steelman is the right objection: a preventive sex line is what the space is; identity access asks - requires - women to detect danger after the male is already inside. Small studies cannot certify the trade. The model answers that birth-sex rules also have costs, and that current evidence does not “establish that balance in their favor.” That shifts the burden. The status quo to be justified is the demolition of exclusivity, not the existence of a women’s room. If the evidence gap is “we have not measured females’ total experience under competing rules,” the recommendation should be: do not change the eligibility rule until you have. As it is, the gap is used to keep identity at the door and to call stalls an adequate substitute for a female-only room. What would change my mind is the inverse of the model’s last paragraph. That is, show a limiting principle that a clerk can apply without a lawsuit. Show why "identity-as-sex" in a restroom policy will not be cited in the locker-room brief (and good luck with that). Show that women who object will not be the ones disciplined. Show that the policy will not eradicate, de facto and/or de jure, sex-segregates spaces. Until then, all this is still just a "self-ID" plus conduct law, with better partitions. That may be a building code, it it is not a women’s facility. Thanks, -Smac

Prayers for you Pyreaux. I think you can still talk to him.

This is very powerful. Well said. This is compelling. Well said. I was on the pastoral staff of at least six different churches (in varying capacities) including as senior pastor. In those capacities, I prepared teachings, sermons, instruction for two Sunday morning teachings, two Sunday evening teachings, and a Wednesday and/or Thursday evening Bible study. Every week. Every year, except perhaps when we had special speakers or I was on vacation. During those years no one ever told me what to teach or preach. There was no curriculum, no calendared formal schedule of lexicon to follow. For all those sermons/presentations/teachings, I prayed, studied, taught, and interpreted the gospel as I learned (I was always learning) it to be. It was quite a full-time job with visiting hospitals, shut-ins, administering the church, etc. In all of those situations, I was teaching in some form. I was telling the folks something in some way new every presentation. I prayed diligently for wisdom and guidance from the Holy Spirit as I prepared and then delivered each talk. At least over one thousand times at the very least. In some ways my teachings were authoritative for my congregations. Were they dogma? I don't know. I never thought of it that way. Were they canonical? Perhaps for some in my congregations who had an overly high estimate of me. Were they a revelation? Yes, I think so - at least, to @webbles point using my definition of the word. I never once consulted a creed, unless I was doing a series of teachings on creeds. In the same way, but to a much much much lesser degree and with no authority, except that which anyone has giving a LDS Sacrament talk, I took my turn (as did my wife) giving sacrament talks. I prepared in the same way. No one told me what to teach. I think I did it occasionally more often than "my turn" because if someone got sick, the bishop could count on me at the last minute. So, do I believe in new revelation from the Holy Spirit? Yes, every week as I taught. No, if you mean as authoritative for some church beyond my own. I preached in churches with bishops, in the case of Mennonite churches (and LDS chapels - if you will accept a Sacrament talk as a preaching - I do, because I really didn't do anything differerent, except make the talks a whole lot shorter. My "sermons" and Bible teachings in my full-time service were never less than an hour. I bet that doesn't surprise any of you! Ha! I just offer all of this up to you to suggest that even when we speak of teaching, preaching, revelation, inspiration, explaining, or whatever we call it, we, who were in full-time ministry were always, often five times a week teaching and interpreting new stuff for our congregations from the sacred desk of the pulpit. Perhaps, no more than five times in all those efforts did I preach a sermon I heard someone else give or that I got from a book written by someone else. Was I a revelator? Yes and No. Now of course, and you can imagine I can't resist saying this, I am told that I don't even have the Gift of the Holy Spirit because I am not LDS. I guess I was deceiving myself all those times I believed I did what I did under the direct influence of the Holy Spirit. So no, I can't agree with that onlyism of my LDS friends in that regard. Perhaps it is at best my personal truth. I would ask you all to accept that even if it runs counter to your doctrine which is your own corporate truth. I think that fits into what @webbleswas trying to say in the above quote. Anyway I love you all in Christ. I treasure this forum as a place where the vast majority of posters honor and respect each other. I think that makes Christ smile. Best to all Navidad.

And a believer of the Nicaean Creed could easily say that God inspired the argument between Arius and Alexander so that it would reach Constantine so that he would then call a council and so that the correct understanding of God would be revealed to the world. What I'm trying to argue is that just because Catholics don't talk about continued revelation in the same terminology that we use doesn't mean that they don't believe in continued revelation. For us, we call inspiration that is clarification of beliefs as "continued revelation". For Catholics, they call it differently but it is pretty much the same thing. For them, the "public revelation" is finished but God still inspires and directs the Pope and the bishops to clarify understanding of the public revelation. We say revelation is ongoing but then we also seem to have a closed cannon at this point. Sure, we believe that it is possible to add to the cannon, but will we? It feels like you are trying to argue semantics and show how we are more correct because our terminology makes more sense, but that only works if everyone accepts our definitions. But they don't. I think it is more useful to understand the definitions of others and work with those definitions vs trying to just say that they are wrong because their definition isn't ours.

Prayers for comfort and strength Pyreaux, I’m so sorry.

Love it!

Except we aren't seeing further knowledge being gained from additional examination of public revelation, we are seeing conceptually new things. See the example of the Assumption of Mary. It has no support in scripture and it's support in tradition is questionable at best. There are some issues with this analogy: 1. Scale: In this case, the claim is that all data has been collected, but the experiment (i.e. mortal human existence) is still continuing despite the claim that all data has been collected. It is strange indeed to deny that data collection is continuing, but to then take so long at releasing the data set despite it supposedly being complete. 2. Lack of evidence: This support for this completeness claim is stated to be from the parameters (i.e. scripture) set forth by the designer of the experiment as well as chiefs among the designer's chosen representatives (i.e. God, Jesus' apostles). However, no explicit statements indicating this completeness can be found. Comparing this to a painting is even worse. If I can't see the whole painting, I have no reason to believe that it is complete. Were it complete, there is little reason to keep some obscured while still claiming completeness. Again, this is the cognitive dissonance. What they say and how they behave are at odds with each other. Instead of being honest and simply saying that public revelation is ongoing, they have to dance around the idea because they've caught themselves in a trap of their own making.

If I didn't really care, I wouldn't have bothered to look in the first place. If you find something about this to be "insulting", "inflammatory", or a "gotcha", that's more on you than me. You're choosing to be insulted over a critique of your church's own words and actions. Yes, cop outs. If there is nuance, then surely you should be able to explain it rather than simply state that it exists. They are logically opposing. Again, show the nuance. Seeing as how you referenced nuance twice to this point and failed to elaborate, I'll again go with this being a cop-out. Revelation that has not been made explicit is functionally equivalent to something that has yet to be revealed. If I claim that I have all of the burgers in the world and that there will be no more, but then in the same breath state that some burgers have yet to be made, I can't rightly claim to have all burgers in the world or that there will be no more. Whether you call the pope a "living prophet" or not isn't all that relevant. The point is that you claim that prophets are no longer needed, yet treat the pope as one in all but name. As for vicar supposedly having more "punch", that doesn't really hold water either given that "vicar" doesn't even have theological roots as a title, while the concept of a "living prophet" as relevant to Christianity goes as back to Adam. Also, given that "vicar" originally referenced the officials under the command of the Praetorian Guard, this isn't the flex you think it is (as some younger people would say) given the Guard's history as an organization. They had a bit of a habit of killing those who they were supposed to be protecting. Sure, both your pope and our prophet both claim inspiration and revelation. But again, as I quite explicitly illustrated earlier, the pope operates under the presumption that all public revelation has ceased while simultaneously claiming that not all public revelation has been made explicit. Again, this is the cop-out. Instead of just simply saying that the pope is a living prophet and that public revelation is still ongoing, you have to perform this dissonant dance where you deny the concept of a living prophet and ongoing public revelation but still behave as if both are true. The word revelation doesn't trip me up at all, that seems to be more your bag. Again, you claim that all public revelation has ceased but not all public revelation has been made explicit. We just say that it's ongoing. The latter is far more honest than the former. Yes, the Assumption of Mary was declared dogma back in 1950. Again, there's the issue. Why, if public revelation has been complete for close to 2000 years, would this only be made dogma less than a century ago? What would the point be in keeping this particular concept unexplicated for so long? Nevermind the absence of scriptural support and the questionable support in tradition. This goes back to what I presented earlier. The Catholic church's behaviors do not match up with it's actions. Accusing me of bad faith is hilarious when I point out a blatant contradiction in your church's statements versus its behaviors. You can't even elaborate on this "nuance" I'm supposedly missing or where I'm incorrect (given that my stance is taken directly from your church's own words). At what point did I claim that you were stupid? Again, if you have issue with my presentation, that's entirely on you.

I was 1600 miles away from home, working in Chantilly, VA, 20 miles from the Pentagon. The government agency I was right next to and supporting, the National Reconnaissance Office, had planned an emergency exercise for the day of a plane crashing into their headquarters building compound. Needless to say, I shut down the R&D lab I was managing, and the week was eerie... no planes in the sky for days. My family, attending and teaching seminary out west was apprehensive of my status until my son and I had phone contact. That son went on to later become an Army Ranger (after a mission), deploying to Iraq, then A-Stan 3 times. My brother who lived in Northern Virginia was scheduled to attend a meeting at the Pentagon that morning, but it was cancelled. I left Dulles Airport on Friday on the first United flight to depart from there since 9-11. We all cheered raucously as we took off and there wasn't a dry eye on the passengers.

Thank you Calm for your input, appreciated.

Someone announces the data has all been collected from an experiment and that stage of research has been finished; the lab has been assigned to someone else and the students helping out have moved on to their next project. While preliminary findings may have been released, more in-depth examination may still result in additional or even different findings. That isn’t functionally the same as the experimental part of the research still continuing even if new conclusions can be arrived at by either new data collected or new examination of old data. In this case, public revelation is equivalent to experimental data where further knowledge can come from additional examination of that public revelation. Or look at it like a painting that has hidden features in it. It’s not a new painting just because someone finally figures out how to shift their attention to be able to see those previously hidden features.

Or perhaps you should work on reading comprehension. If I claim that public revelation has ceased, but not all has been made explicit, that is no different than saying that public revelation has continued. If something is not explicit, it is functionally no different than something that is unknown.

Not correct. Again, their denominations would not exist were that not the case. Why did the Reformation happen? Why did every schism happen?

Sure, but we also aren't talking about lesser things like tobacco use or polygamy. Constantine essentially called a council to determine the nature of God and essentially would not allow any sort of dissent with his view. This is of a much greater magnitude than the two examples you presented.

I think it’s Stargazer who has written a book. Maybe he will show up and share some advice with you. My sister is writing a book, she is a retired, occasionally substituting elementary education teacher/former English lit university professor who writes daily for an hour or two first thing after breakfast iirc. It’s a deep dive version of one of her classroom adventures she would create to anchor the lessons to, which creation was something she greatly enjoyed. Writing about something you love and catches your attention seems to be the key to success of staying with the project.

The concept of divinity is certainly an interesting topic for non-LDS, especially when they try to appeal to scripture to support the idea of "only one divine being".

Seems like if you're hearing quacking from this, that makes you the duck. Incredibly ironic coming from the dude downplaying persecution going back more than a decade as little more than "Ukraine war going bad".

I am sorry you didn’t get the time desired. That hurts.

This seems like it would happen if birth sex rules are put in place as well, if not more (see my previous posts).

This is what I have been wondering about. How would birth sex rules improve safety without ID checking becoming an issue?

A: Toileting is a biological function we all must perform regularly. Locker rooms are used for planned activities that are not biologically necessary and often involve changing clothes or communal nudity. Sports are organized competitions with their own safety and fairness considerations. Prisons involve involuntary confinement by the state and require individualized security assessments. Those factual differences justify different legal rules. Different statutes apply, different governmental interests are involved, and courts decide the particular dispute before them. I am proposing that gender identity matter when deciding which public restroom someone should use. I am not asserting that gender identity replaces biological sex for every legal purpose. No legal principle requires a restroom rule to travel automatically to sports, prisons, or locker rooms. Thank you for your response. Those are differences in setting. They are not a legal wall. It is the practical legalities that I am asking you to address. The rule you are defending is not “people need to pee.” It is that gender identity determines which sex-marked facility the person may use. Public-accommodations statutes, school facility rules, and Title IX guidance have never confined that substitution to a toilet stall. You don't even have to take my word for it on this point, as there is ample evidence from your side of the argument that substantiate it. The 2016 Dear Colleague letter - the purpose and results of which I assume you endorsed - treated restrooms and locker rooms as the same Title IX sentence. GLAAD and the ACLU, both of which - like you - are advancing "advocacy" positions, state the claim as facilities and activities. Stonewall treated everyday toilets and changing rooms as the default inclusion zone. That is not assertion. It is how the same advocates and the same agencies wrote the rule. These issues are bundled together. Policy decisions made for one will affect the others. Your denial of that is both wishful thinking and not responsive to my question. “Different statutes” only helps you if the statutes use different words. They do not. When “sex” is read to mean "identity" in a restrooms case, the next complaint under the same statute—locker room, team, housing unit—arrives with that reading already in the file. Courts decide the case in front of them. They also cite the last case. That is how the category travels. You do not get a restroom-only holding unless someone writes a restroom-only statute. Necessity cuts both ways. Women also have to use toilets. The question is not whether elimination is optional. It is whether men may be present in women's restrooms while they (women) do it, and whether saying so becomes the civil-rights problem. Locker rooms add nudity; they do not become a different legal universe. They are the same sex line applied where clothes come off. Sports and prison add fairness and security, respectively, as further considerations. They still depend on whether the institution may maintain a female category at all. If identity is enough at the bathroom door, the burden shifts onto the women who want the door to mean something in the next room. You say you are “not asserting that gender identity replaces biological sex for every legal purpose.” That is a personal reservation and preference. It is not in the proposal. The proposal has no limiting principle for who may be turned away, on what showing, by whom. Until you write one that a school, a gym, and a warden can administer without being sued for the same “misgendering” theory, locker rooms, sport, and prisons are not separate issues. They are the next complaint under the rule you have already adopted. You are not addressing the legal realities that come with your proposal. I have previously surmised that this was an intentional motte-and-bailey tactic. Again, you are a smart guy. I had assumed you had given your proposal some real thought and consideration, either before posting it or since. And I had assumed you would have run your proposal through an AI platform a time or two. And yet your response to "How, other than by assertion, are women's locker rooms, sports, and prisons 'separate issues' that a self-ID bathroom rule will not reach?" is . . . to repaint your "separate issues" assertion: "different legal rules," "{d}ifferent statutes apply," "different governmental interests are involved." As much as I disagree with the positions taken by GLAAD and the ACLU and the other advocacy groups, I do appreciate their ability and willingness to address what you will not, namely, that public policy and legal analysis about men in women's bathrooms are inextricably linked to policy/analysis about men in women's locker rooms, sports and prisons. GLAAD gets it. So does the ACLU. They get it and, to their credit, acknowledge it and treat these issues for what they legally are: an intertwined, package deal in which policy set in one is going to be analogized and applied to another. So what is going on here? As you are staking out a position markedly different from GLAAD and the ACLUE, are you saying they are wrong to treat these matters in this way, and that you are right? If so, what is your legal reasoning? We need to get past sheer assertions ("factual differences justify different legal rules," "{d}ifferent statutes apply," "different governmental interests are involved"). They are not argument or reasoning. They're just an expression of how you think things ought to be. What "factual differences" do you think exist that "justify different legal rules" between women's bathrooms and other sex-segregated spaces? What governmental interests do you think apply to women's bathrooms (such as justifies putting men in those spaces or excluding them) but not to women's locker rooms? What governmental interests do you think apply to women's bathrooms but not to women's sports? What governmental interests do you think apply to women's bathrooms but not to women's prisons? Why is your "these are separate issues" claim more legally tenable than the "package deal" position advanced by GLAAD and the ACLU? A: My proposal concerns ordinary public restrooms, not every facility designated for women. People should ordinarily use the restroom most appropriate to their identity, presentation, and circumstances, with the individual making that decision. Someone may be removed for voyeurism, harassment, lewd conduct, threats, or other behavior that would justify removing anyone else. Facility staff, security, or law enforcement may intervene based on credible evidence of such conduct. Mere suspicion about someone’s biological sex would not be enough. Yes, that line leaves room for judgment. That is intentional because people and circumstances vary. Calm and other women have explained that they do not want masculine-presenting transgender men required to use the women’s restroom. I am listening to them. Our disagreement is that you want the state to impose a universal biological-sex rule, while I think ordinary discretion and conduct-based laws usually produce better results. Our current disagreement is that I have asked you to either A) articulate coherent limiting principles for your proposal, or B) concede that your proposal has no such limiting principles. You've been dodging and evading this inquiry for weeks, and you have done so again here. What you are describing is a rule about misconduct after entry. It is not a limiting principle on who may enter in the first place, nor is it an acknowledgment that your proposal does not have any limiting principles. “Identity, presentation, and circumstances,” with the individual deciding, means there is no eligibility line. A male who says he belongs there belongs there. That's it. No limiting principle in view. Staff may not act on “mere suspicion” of sex. So the only people who can be refused are people already committing a separate offense—voyeurism, threats, lewdness—that would get a woman thrown out too, and even then they are thrown out after having legally entered already. That is ordinary criminal and trespass law. It does not preserve a women’s room. It is not a limiting principle as to who can enter into women's bathrooms in the first place, which is what I have been asking you to articulate for weeks now. It merely preserves a de facto unisex room with a women’s sign and a conduct code. I understand this. GLAAD and the ACLU understand this. Now I am to conclude that you, being the very smart person that you are, do not understand this, so much so that you are incapable of answering the question I have posed over and over (to identify limiting principles or to acknowledge there are none)? “Ordinary public restrooms, not every facility” is a personal limit you have not written into any statute, handbook, or training. The moment the same person walks from the toilet to the locker room, or a school applies the same nondiscrimination clause, you are back in Questions 1 and 2. Judgment without a standard is the problem, not the solution. After-the-fact “credible evidence of misconduct” is easy to say and hard to use when the policy also says A) anyone who wants to can go into women's bathrooms (because, again, there are no limiting principles), and B) women and girls are not allowed to scrutinize sex or appearance. A woman who reports a male in the room has offered suspicion of sex. On your rule that is not enough. Staff who ask are the ones who get the complaint. That is how the space is policed in the only direction the policy allows: against the woman who noticed. The bearded female is a misdirect. A sex rule sends females to the women’s room, including a masculine-presenting female. It does not “force transgender men into the women’s room” as a punishment; it treats them as female. If you want masculine-presenting females in the men’s room, you have switched legal horses midstream: from identity to looks, while also saying that "looks" should not be investigated. You cannot refuse a sex line and an appearance line and still claim there is a line. "Discretion plus conduct" laws are what we already had for people who use the correct room and then behave badly. The dispute is whether a male may be in the room before any crime occurs. Your answer is yes, unless and until he enters into a women's bathroom (as anyone can, since there are no limiting principles) and then does something independently illegal. This is an admission that there is no limiting principle on entry. It is only a principle on expulsion after the fact. I must think that you recognize this. It's pretty darn obvious. I can't reconcile that surmise of your intelligence with your refusal to acknowledge this obvious thing, except to conclude it is a motte-and-bailey tactic, which you have denied. So what are you doing? A: Sincere self-identification is a limiting principle. It excludes biological males who do not sincerely identify as women, including men who invoke gender identity merely as a pretext. I agree that under my proposal, a women’s restroom would not be exclusively limited to biological females. But that does not mean women’s restrooms cease to exist. They remain designated for women, and ordinary men remain excluded. You are treating any exception to biological-sex exclusivity as the eradication of the category itself. That conclusion does not follow. In practice, nearly everyone would make the same restroom choice under either rule. Most transgender people also try to avoid confrontation and use the facility where they attract the least attention. Your argument treats the possible harm from allowing transgender women to use public toilets as decisive while disregarding the harm caused by legally requiring masculine-presenting transgender men to enter women’s restrooms where they generally are neither expected nor wanted. Both consequences belong in the comparison. "Sincerity" is not a limiting principle. It is an unverifiable mental state. Staff may not act on “mere suspicion” of sex. They have no test for sincerity, no document you will let them demand, and no permission to notice a male body. A pretext from a pervert and a sincere claim from anyone else look the same at the door. A principle that cannot be applied is not a principle. It is a hope that people will be honest. It is wishful thinking. Not workable and legally enforceable public policy. I do appreciate that you have now conceded the legal point, but you then contradict yourself: I am really struggling to understand what your position is. If anyone who wants to can go in, and if there is no limiting principle keeping anyone out, then how in the world do "ordinary men remain excluded?" You have been evading this for weeks now. Who gets to say who is excluded (as in "excluded" from ever going into the women's bathroom in the first place, not after someone has done something wrong after having already entered the space)? By what rule or statute? How are "ordinary men" (I take that to mean "non-trans-identifying" men or some such) to be legally excluded from the bathroom while other men ("trans women") are legally allowed to enter? Why are you evading these entirely legitimate questions? If it's not because you have a motte-and-bailey purpose under your hat, then what is keeping you from answering? A women’s room that is “not exclusively limited to biological females” is not a sex-separated space. It is a mixed-sex space with a women’s sign, into which anyone can enter. “Designated for women” does no work once “woman” includes any male who says so. Ordinary men are excluded only if they decline to say the sentence. That is not exclusion by sex. It is exclusion by refusal to self-ID. De jure the category is no longer sex. De facto it lasts only as long as males choose not to use it. “Nearly everyone would make the same choice” is not a rule. It is a prediction, and it is already false in locker rooms, prisons, and sport—the places you keep characterizing as "separate issues." People who want the access use the access. People who do not want confrontation are not the ones who test the policy. The bearded female does not rescue the proposal. Under a sex rule she is female and belongs in the women’s room. If other women are uncomfortable, that is a courtesy problem inside a female category. It is not comparable to admitting males as a class (particularly given that your proposal allows anyone to enter) . One is an edge case about presentation. The other is a change in who the room is for. Treating those as equal “harms” in the comparison is how the category is talked out of existence while the sign stays up, all the while subordinating or disregarding the interests of women and girls who want sex-segregated spaces to remain as such. If the room is still “for women,” say who a staff member may turn away when the only fact is a male body and a female identification. If the answer is no one, until a separate crime occurs, the space is not sex-separated. It is unisex with extra steps. A: The premise of the question is disputed. You have identified possible effects, but you have not established that all of them follow from my restroom proposal. Employers should not discipline women merely for expressing a good-faith privacy concern or requesting an accommodation. They may discipline employees for harassment or for refusing to follow lawful workplace policies. Whether a particular disciplinary action is justified depends on what the employee did, not simply on the existence of a gender-identity access rule. My proposal does change the access line for public restrooms: biological sex would not be the sole criterion. It does not make biological sex unusable or abolish it as a category. Sex can remain relevant in medicine, sports, prisons, and other settings where different interests are involved. I do not support automatically applying the same rule to sports or prisons. Sports raise questions of competitive fairness and physical safety. Prisons require individualized decisions about safety, vulnerability, security, and confinement. Federal prison regulations already use case-by-case assessments rather than gender identity alone. Any actual adverse consequences count. So do the harms caused by your rule, including compelled mismatches, public scrutiny, mistaken challenges, and bathroom avoidance. The question is not whether consequences count. The question is which policy produces less total harm. You have described the mechanism and then denied that it fires. If the workplace policy is identity-based access, a woman who, differentiating by sex, asks a male to leave the women’s room is not “expressing a concern.” She is refusing/defying the policy. That is the charge HR will write. “Harassment” is the label the policy already uses for noticing sex. You say employers should not punish good-faith privacy objections. You have also said suspicion of sex is not enough to intervene. Those two sentences cannot be administered together. The employee who speaks is the one who created a record. That is why the corporation silences her, and any other woman who does the same thing, first. It is not a separate hypothetical. It is how a protected-class policy works when "identity" is treated as "sex." “I do not support automatically applying the same rule to sport or prison” is your preference, and your wishful thinking. It is not a legal distinction. The same statute, the same agencies, and the same advocates already use one sentence: facilities and activities consistent with identity. Federal prison placement is “case by case” on paper. The cases that get litigated are demands to be housed by identity. A restroom-only reservation that lives only in this discussion we are having on this message board will not be the brief filed next year. Sex remains “relevant” in medicine only if someone is still allowed to say what it is. Once the institution has trained staff that sex is not a permissible basis for a facility decision, the usable sex line is the one nobody will enforce. That is collapse de facto. De jure it is a mixed-sex room with a women’s sign. You already conceded exclusivity is gone. All consequences count. They do not weigh the same. Compelled presence of a masculine-presenting female in a female room is an awkward edge of a female category. Compelled presence of males as a class, plus discipline of women who object, is a qualitative change in the category. “Less total harm” is not a finding that one Massachusetts police-log paper can supply. It is a request that women and girls absorb the new risk (anyone can go into what are supposed to be sex-segregated spaces) and the new speech rule (women and girls are prohibited from saying anything about men in women's spaces) so that identity can govern the door. If those institutional effects occur and you still want the policy, I think you should actually say they are worth it. Do not say they will not occur because you would rather they were filed under a different heading. A: Reported crime is not the only interest that matters, and I have never said it was. It matters because safety is repeatedly offered as a justification for a new coercive law. If the law is supposed to prevent a safety problem, asking for evidence that the problem exists is entirely appropriate. I also care about privacy, dignity, and comfort, including those of biological women and girls. That is why I oppose a law that requires masculine-presenting transgender men to use women’s restrooms and encourages people to scrutinize women who do not look sufficiently feminine. Privacy includes being left alone while using a toilet. I discard none of these interests. I disagree with your assumption that they can be protected only by categorically excluding every biological male. My proposal asks which rule protects privacy, dignity, and safety better in actual public restrooms, after counting the harms caused by both policies. If you discard none of those interests, you still have to say how a woman vindicates them when a male is already in the room and “suspicion of sex” is not grounds to act. Privacy here is not only “being left alone.” It is being free of the opposite sex while undressed or using a toilet. That is why the room was marked "Women" in the first place: to exclude men from the space. A rule that forbids noticing sex, and that treats a request to leave as the problematic incident, does not leave her alone. It leaves her with a choice: absorb the intrusion and remain silent about it, or else become the problem and face the consequences. Dignity is the same interest. It is not comfort as a preference. It is the institutional statement that this space is not for men. Safety evidence is a fair demand if the only claim is “self-ID will produce a crime wave.” Again, that is not the only claim. The Massachusetts paper counted police-logged incidents in a few towns. It did not count women who stopped using the facility, girls who wait or skip, or employees who were told not to say anything. Those are privacy and dignity costs. They do not appear in a felony file. The masculine-presenting female is still the wrong comparison. A sex rule does not police femininity. It police’s sex. A female who looks male is not “required to use the women’s room” as a humiliation. She is female. If you want her in the men’s room to spare other women a glance, you have switched to an appearance test—the scrutiny you say you oppose. Self-ID plus “don’t look” does not protect the woman who does not pass. It protects the male who claims the label. Also, I am disappointed you persist in ignoring the elephant in the room. I think we all know the vast majority of issues that will arise from your proposal will not be about women who "identify" as men going into women's bathrooms, but rather about all males having lawful access to women's bathrooms. The "masculine-presenting female" may generate some sympathy, but it also evades the central concern affecting women and girls. You say the question is which rule protects privacy, dignity, and safety better after counting both sides. Counting requires a rule that can still say no at the door. Yours says no only after a separate offense. Until then the women’s interest is subordinated to the entrant’s declaration. That is not weighing the interests. It is ranking them and prioritizing the interests of men at the expense of the interests of women and girls who want sex-segregated spaces. I think you need to acknowledge ranking if that is the proposal. Do not describe it as protecting the same things the sex line was built to protect. It doesn't. A: It doesn’t answer Questions 1–5 by itself, and I have never claimed that it does. It addresses one important empirical issue: whether gender-identity access laws are associated with increased reported assaults, sex crimes, or voyeurism in restrooms and similar facilities. The study found that such incidents were rare and did not significantly increase after the laws were adopted. That does not prove that no incident ever occurred, measure every form of discomfort, decide sports or prison policy, or supply a complete legal rule. It does, however, bear directly on your repeated predictions that gender-identity access creates serious safety and privacy harms. Those predictions are factual claims, and the available evidence does not support them. The study is one part of the analysis, not an answer to every question. Then I don't think you can keep citing it as if it is. You used Massachusetts to wave off a legal analysis as a “list of hypotheticals” against “what actually happened.” The paper measured police-logged assaults, sex crimes, and voyeurism in a few Boston-area towns. That is one empirical slice of one interest. It does not tell you whether identity-as-sex travels to locker rooms, sport, or custody. It does not tell you who staff may refuse at the door. It does not tell you whether a women’s room remains sex-separated when admission is a declaration. It does not tell you what HR does with the woman who objects. Those were Questions 1–5. You now agree the study does not answer them. Good. Then it cannot be the rebuttal to them. The study also does not do what you still claim for “privacy harms.” An incident that never becomes a police report is not a finding that nothing happened, but that is nevertheless how you are treating it. Avoidance, undressing in a stall, a girl who waits for an empty room, a worker who is told not to speak—those are privacy costs. They are outside the dataset. Again, the 2026 Theory and Society critique of that paper argues it cannot even support the stronger press-release claim about safety, only that logged incidents did not clearly jump in a handful of treated jurisdictions. That is a thin plank for a statewide or nationwide rule. Predictions of a crime wave and analysis of a legal rule are not the same thing. The rule changes who may be present and who may be punished for noticing. That follows from the text of the policy whether next year’s voyeurism count moves or not. If your remaining point is only “we have not seen a statistically significant spike in those particular charges in those particular towns,” say that. Do not treat it as evidence that the institutional effects are imaginary, or that Questions 1–5 have been met. A: I am willing to set aside accusations about you personally and address the substance of your arguments. I will not promise never to describe an argument, policy, or pattern of conduct as bigoted if I believe that description is relevant and can explain why. But I agree that the label should not substitute for evidence or reasoning, and I will not use it that way. Sounds good. If I argue that your proposal results in a de facto and/or de jure eradication of sex-segregated spaces (which you now kinda sorta admit: "I agree that under my proposal, a women’s restroom would not be exclusively limited to biological females"), that is not bigotry (which is what you said previously: "If ... somebody remains convinced that sex-distinct bathrooms are suddenly in mortal jeopardy without bathroom laws, I can’t help but wonder whether the real problem is them and involves something that rhymes with spigotry"). It's a recognition of how the law and logic and reality work. If I say "'trans women' are not women," that is not bigotry. It is a statement of reality (on par with other truisms such as "black is not white," "dogs are not cats" and "apples are not oranges"), and a statement predicated on a refusal to go along with an ideological and radical redefinition of "woman." If I say that gender dysphoria is a mental illness, that is not bigotry. It's a statement of the contents of DSM-V. If I dispute that man can "become" a woman by "identifying" as one, that is not bigotry. It's a statement of biological and empirical reality. If I say that a sex-based rule is superior to wholly subjective ones ("self-identity," "appearance," etc.), that is not bigotry. That is a reasoned conclusion based on an axiomatic thing, namely, that sex-segregated spaces should be segregated by sex. If I dispute the claim that a man who sincerely believes he is a woman trapped in a man's body, that is not bigotry (As SU put it: "Your denial of their lived experience is your bigotry."). It's a rejection of an utterly subjective and empirically untestable assertion. And so on. Thanks, -Smac