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Both of those things are ideally received by the Laying on of Hands rather than just a prayer.
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A black person murders another black person: "What is the deal with the blacks?" "What is the deal with the Mexicans?" "What is the deal with the Chinese?" How come no one ever says "What is the deal with the whites?"
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Someone from our ward finally reached out to us
Notatbm replied to Notatbm's topic in General Discussions
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Yea nehor already accused me of that nice try. Tell me who the police should investigate and or provide security for/ from? Probably the people who are killing each other. In this and the previous incident. Apparently Tongans.
- Today
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Racist a bit??
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I did ask claude to see if it could find an increase in abuse/harassment since 2013 and it said it did increase but since it is based off of what is reported, it wasn't sure since it could just be an increase in news reporting vs an actual increase in incidents. But I do think some restrictions need to be in place. I don't like the "reasonable people will act reasonable" approach.
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Prayers for the spirit and authority to come upon me, and strengthen me, come spirit come.
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blackholesun4792 joined the community
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Pronoun/Gender Wars Continue Apace
SeekingUnderstanding replied to smac97's topic in General Discussions
Ok so it’s fine for schools to punish speech acquired and used for the purposes of humiliation. Unless an individual acquires, uses and mocks a trans person with their dead name. Then it’s bad government compelled speech. Is that fair to say? - Yesterday
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Today we morn the loss of Dolly Parton. When others labeled her a whore, her own grandfather criticizing her looks to parents of her school friends, who thought she was “a bad influence,” as she wrote in her book. They said “you look more like a hooker than you do a singer.” Yet she lived her life and created the public image that SHE wanted to live and not worry about what others thought of her. She also reached out to children and gave more than 200 million books out to any child requesting them. Many probably forget the rage against Dolly Parton's persona that she deliberately chose to create. From a news article about her life. We all only have one life. There is no dress rehersal. Of all days, and of all the messages Dolly Parton gave in her life the greatest legacy she gave us is to be fearless and live our one life on our own terms and not let others keep you in the box they feel they must stay in. I get that there are some who only want to demonize those that are transgender and are willing to comb through the entire news events to find evidence to encourage others to make them out to be immoral, sexualized, grooming others etc. But a happy life lived is the greatest answer to that criticism. Dolly Parton lived her life in Drag. God bless Dolly Parton. God bless those that struggle to live their lives on their own terms despite the pushback they receive from others.
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I don't think that is correct. Many, perhaps even most First Amendment lawsuits do not involve someone being criminally prosecuted. Public universities are part of "the State." This is not a matter of personal opinion or hysteria, but of legal reality. I encourage you to give this matter some further consideration and study. First Amendment cases routinely center on "government prosecution" that falls short of criminal charges. Again, the First Amendment limits government. A public university is an arm of the state. When it disciplines a student or fires a professor for refusing to say required words, that is government action. Barnette was a school board, not a criminal court. Meriwether was campus discipline. Olentangy was a public school district. Treating “only an arrest counts” as the rule would wipe out most of student-speech and public-employee law. Private colleges are different. Conflating BYU with, say, Ohio State would be legally improper. Conflating a state university with “not the government” is the actual error. As for the rest, there are real cases pending in various courts, with actual disputes, not fabricated or "imaginary" ones: students and teachers disciplined over pronouns, Title IX sports suits now at the Supreme Court, and bathroom/locker policies that courts are actively splitting over. You can think those policies are wise and still admit they are government rules backed by real penalties. If the claim is “no one is being jailed for deadnaming,” that is mostly true and worth saying. If the claim is “therefore nothing the state does here raises a speech issue,” that does not follow. The live dispute is compelled speech and viewpoint discrimination in public schools, not whether the sheriff should make an arrest. Thanks, -Smac
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Public schools, being funded by the State, are extensions of it. As for "respectfully addressing people," I assume you refer here to using preferred pronouns, instead of biologically/linguistically accurate pronouns. See the above Bloomberg summary. I'm not sure what you mean by "power of violence." The State can compel or punish speech via means other than violence. Your distinction here - the State arresting people for their speech versus the State punishing people in some other way for their speech ("disciplined at a university"), that is a difference of degree, not kind. Both involve the State punishing speech, just in different ways. The First Amendment limits the power of government, not only the criminal code. A public university is the government, a part of it. When it suspends you, fails you, fires a professor, or withholds a diploma unless you say particular words, that is state compulsion. West Virginia v. Barnette was about a school pledge, not handcuffs. Janus v. AFSCME was about a union fee. Meriwether v. Hartop was campus discipline: None of those cases asked whether anyone had been booked into jail. “Violence” is a narrower idea than “state power.” The state has many tools short of a nightstick: grades, housing, employment, professional licensure, remaining enrolled. Those tools are why public schools and public employers have always been First Amendment defendants. Two distinctions still matter: Public vs. private. A private college can generally enforce a speech code without a First Amendment problem. A state university cannot treat “say these pronouns or face discipline” as a mere house rule. Harassment vs. compelled affirmation. A school may punish targeted ridicule. That is not the same as requiring every student or employee to use designated pronouns as a condition of staying. So if the worry is only “no one is being arrested,” the constitutional concern is already in play at a public university. The question is whether the institution is stopping abuse or conscripting speech. Those are different things, and only the first is an easy First Amendment win for the school. Thanks, -Smac
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Broadly, yes. I think that would depend on the application of the Tinker test: So is using a person's "temple name" better analogized to a racial epithet (which are generally regulated by schools) or to preferred pronouns (which are generally not regulated)? Under Tinker, schools may discipline speech that invades other students’ rights or that they can reasonably forecast will materially disrupt school. Mocking someone with a sacred, private name is the kind of personal attack anti-harassment rules are typically built for. Preferred-pronoun cases (including the Sixth Circuit in Olentangy) draw that same line: schools may punish bullying—severe, persistent, or objectively offensive conduct—without being able to compel a political or theological statement. Using “he” or “she” for a student’s sex is ordinary English. It is how speakers have referred to males and females for as long as the language has existed. Students cannot talk without pronouns. A mock temple name is not ordinary address. It is extra, acquired for the purpose of humiliation. Thanks, -Smac
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Usually no, not if it is a public school acting on on-campus (or school-controlled) speech directed at another student. The First Amendment applies to public schools as government actors. Private schools generally are not bound by it. Public-school student speech is protected, but not as fully as adult speech off campus. Under Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), schools may discipline speech that would substantially disrupt school or invade the rights of other students. Calling a classmate the n-word is routinely treated as the second category: targeted racial harassment, not political debate. Courts have repeatedly upheld discipline for slurs and similar personal attacks at school. Regarding "preferred pronouns," the Supreme Court has not issued a clean nationwide rule, and the federal circuit courts appear to be split as to teachers, but for students, recent appellate law is moving against compelled pronoun use. Public schools can still punish harassment; they are on much weaker ground when they treat ordinary refusal to use preferred pronouns as punishable speech. See, e.g., here: The Latest Legal Battle of the Pronouns A little long, so here's a Grok summary: But see here: Policy Requiring Teachers to Use Preferred Pronouns Upheld And here: Trans Students’ Rights Suits Will Test Split Circuits in 2026 A Grok summary: Thanks, -Smac
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No, it is not. It is a first amendment violation if you end up prosecuted for it. You can see the transphobes trying to come up with stories to stoke the hysteria so they conflate a university with the government and run with it because they can’t find any actual government persecution. They do the same with their imaginary bathroom and locker room invasions and spin hypotheticals about the dangers of Drag Queens because they don’t have any good incidents of it actually happening. It is like the Satanic panic as those warning about the dangers of cultists have to accept the flimsiest stories since they can’t find any real ones. This isn’t a spoof.
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I don’t think a university having rules about respectfully addressing people counts as ‘the STATE’. If people were being arrested for deadnaming people I would be concerned. Getting disciplined at a university? That is not using the state’s power of violence to force speech.
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Now that is an interesting question.
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Pronoun/Gender Wars Continue Apace
SeekingUnderstanding replied to smac97's topic in General Discussions
Further let’s say I know when someone was endowed and find their temple new name. If I mockingly address a Latter-day Saint classmate with this name, is that protected first amendment speech? The school should not be able to do anything about that? -
[Deleted... the path will inevitably lead to darkness.]
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Pronoun/Gender Wars Continue Apace
SeekingUnderstanding replied to smac97's topic in General Discussions
Is it a first amendment violation if a school disciplines a student for calling another student the "n-word"? Honest question. I don't know. Is a first ammendment violation if a school punished its students for saying "F*** the mormons" and a football game? -
So are you consistent on this? I think so. Discipline from the State? No. None. At all. Private parties generally lack authority to mete out "discipline." No. None. At all. I think so, yes. "{A}llowed to be jerks" seems to presuppose that the State is doing the allowing or disallowing. Are there segments of society, outside of the "trans" community, that is seeking - with some success - to use the coercive and punitive power of the State to compel others to speak certain words (e.g., pronouns, former names, etc.) or be punished for failing/refusing to? I can't think of any offhand, but I am open to any input on this point. The State and its extensions should not regulate speech as to either "preferred pronouns" or "deadnaming." Doing so is inimical to the First Amendment. I am not a big fan of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's "Book of Mormon" musical, as it profanes things sacred to me. However, I would strongly object to and resist any effort by the State to suppress that speech, or punish it, or compel it. If the State were to curb their right to speak in this way, it could do the same to me and my right to speak. Nevertheless, I would be open to hearing what you have to say. Do you think the State - let's say in the U.S. - should regulate speech as to either "preferred pronouns" or "deadnaming"? If so, what sorts of regulation do you have in mind, and on what philosophical/legal basis would that regulation be built? Thanks, -Smac
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The Book of Job - Satan doesn't interact with God?
The Nehor replied to TheTanakas's topic in General Discussions
The prologue and epilogue of Job are believed to have been added later. It makes sense. The prologue and epilogue undermine the whole point of the text. God comes out in the ‘meat’ of the story saying that man cannot comprehend the ways of God and Job is not in a position to question what he endured. We see in the prologue that God made a bar bet with Satan and that is why Job had to deal with all he did. Not really that incomprehensible. Also worth noting that sub divine beings (what we would call angels) in Judaism at the time were often conceived as being opposed to humanity and not their ally. You get texts where angels/divine servants don’t get why God bothered with the foulness that is humanity. You get Merkabah mysticism where the goal is to somehow convince to let you pass or trick or give passwords to dangerous angels when you attempt a mystical descent to the throne of God. Many reportedly died or went insane trying this path because the angels pushed back hard against humanity going where it did not belong. -
Someone from our ward finally reached out to us
Calm replied to Notatbm's topic in General Discussions
Our ward in Canada was for awhile all young families who were married student housing at the University my husband worked at (the chapel’s parking lot was often used by students and made fundraising easy by selling spots for football, we had to split it with the rest of the stake though to be fair) and grey hairs. Very few were middle age like us, except a couple of former student families who had fallen in love with the ward. The cost of housing for what you got was too high. -
So are you consistent on this? If someone decides to take their spouse’s last name and someone has a ‘moral’ objection to that practice and deadnames with their old name out of malice that should not result in any kind of discipline? If someone legally changes their name and someone chooses to use the old name out of malice that shouldn’t be a discipline thing? Are you philosophically consistent on this point or do transphobes just get a special carve-out where they are allowed to be jerks?
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Why did you put that in quotes? Are you suggesting it is not actually insanity? Based.
