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Biological, sociological, and legal reasons, in addition to religious ones, are - our should be - part of this discussion. That you call "biology" a "paper thin wrapper around a religious edict" is particularly interesting. I have not written about Jackie Blankenship. Please do not put words in my mouth about a person I have not discussed, and do not use that person as a mascot for a conclusion I have not drawn. What I have said is how sex is classified at the most basic level: two reproductive roles, small gametes and large gametes. Disorders of sex development sit inside that binary. They are not a third sex, a spectrum of sexes, or proof that sex is a costume. A developmental pathway can be disrupted. The pathway is still male or female. CAIS is a known example. The karyotype is 46,XY. Internal gonads are testes. The body does not respond to androgens, so the external phenotype develops along female lines. There are no ovaries and no uterus. That is a disorder of male sexual development that produces a female-typical body on the outside. It is not “sex is a spectrum.” It is a medical fact about receptors. None of that requires me to be cruel, or to pretend she was not raised as a girl, or to deny that she lives as a woman and that her daughter calls her mom. Ordinary language (“mother”) names the woman raising the child. The biological classification names which reproductive system was laid down. Those can be distinguished without turning Jackie into a gotcha. The daughter. The child was carried by Jackie’s sister. There is a gestational mother in the story. There is also a man who is the husband and father. This is not “two men, no mother, by design.” It is a rare infertility plus a sister who gestated. Using that to claim that on my view the girl is “deprived of a mother” is a smear. I have been talking about households structured so that a child has two fathers or two mothers and no parent of the other sex. A CAIS woman married to a man is not that household. “Paper-thin wrapper around a religious edict.” Gametes, dimorphism, and DSDs-as-disorders are not a temple recommend. You can reject the religion and still have to say whether sex is binary and whether CAIS is a third sex. If your only play is “name a woman with CAIS until SMAC looks heartless,” you are not answering the classification. You are trying to make the classification unsayable. People with DSDs deserve accuracy and decency. They do not owe anyone a veto on the two-sex design, and they do not convert a same-sex couple into a mother-and-father home. Fallacies: Straw man. Attributes to you a specific verdict about Jackie you never gave. Anecdote as wrecking ball. One DSD is treated as if it refuted the binary and the marriage argument. Equivocation. Developmental/gametic sex, legal/social “woman,” and “mother” as caregiver are collapsed. False equivalence. CAIS woman + husband + sister-surrogate = two men raising a child. Poisoning the well. “Paper-thin wrapper” skips the biological claim and goes to motive. Thanks, -Smac

A statement of cause is not, by itself, a fallacy. “Many people first hear Moses 1:39 in a family or a ward” can be true. “Some religious teaching is manipulative” can be true. That is not what you used the sentence to do. You used origin as a verdict. The run was: everything in Proposition 1 is false --> reason does not lead there --> sociology and psychological manipulation do. The third clause is doing the work of the first. That is the genetic move: how the belief was produced is treated as showing that the belief is false or beneath reason. Naming a cause is not a fallacy. Substituting the cause for a rebuttal is. The math analogy assumes what is in dispute, so class question-begging there. We have an independent, shared method that makes “2 + 2 = 5” fail. We do not have a shared algorithm that makes “God sent prophets” fail the way an arithmetic error fails. Calling theism “2 + 2 = 5” is not a demonstration. It is the conclusion again, with a chalkboard costume. If you already know God is false, of course “reason” will not “lead” there—by your definition of reason. That is question-begging, not a proof that I committed no fallacy. A while back I compiled a list of what you above call "assertions of fact" and which I think are question-begging of the highest order: Your posts indicate that you place the foregoing statements entirely outside the realm of reasonable dispute. For you, they are as axiomatic as 2+2=4. Even on your own terms the sociology point is weak. Almost every true belief most people hold—germs, continents, the date of the Battle of Gettysburg—arrived by testimony, schooling, and trust, not by a private derivation from first principles. Social transmission does not mark a belief as false. Manipulation can produce false beliefs and true ones. So “this came through a church” is not “this is 2 + 2 = 5.” If you want to argue that theism is false, argue that. Give reasons that engage the content: whether God exists, whether He speaks, whether these men are prophets. “People got there by belonging to a group” is a fact about pathways. It is not an account of reality, and it is not the same kind of sentence as a failed sum. Fallacies (theirs, this round) Question-begging. “Reason” is defined so that it cannot reach God; then “reason doesn’t lead there” is announced as a fact. False analogy. Arithmetic, which we share, is treated as the model for a metaphysical dispute we do not share. Genetic fallacy still in play if origin is offered as the ground for calling the beliefs false. Category error. A causal story about believers is treated as a proof about God. Would you accept the reverse?: “Atheism is what certain faculties and friend groups produce, therefore God exists.” I'm genuinely curious. That has nothing to do with what I said. My actual point is that correctly applying the tools of rationality leads to a naturalistic worldview. Sure, one can happen to have a naturalistic worldview because they were indoctrinated with those beliefs. But if somebody believes in something other than naturalism, it wasn't rationality that lead them there. It has quite a lot to do with what you first said. You began with origin: these beliefs come from sociology and manipulation, and not reason. I asked whether you would accept the mirror (“atheism comes from faculties and friends, therefore God exists”). You would not, because origin does not settle truth. Good. That was the point. You are now saying something else: correctly applied rationality yields naturalism; any other destination means rationality was not applied. That is not a fact about tools. That is a definition. You have built the conclusion into “correctly.” Naturalism is a metaphysical thesis: the natural world is all there is, or all we should treat as real. It is not a theorem of logic, and it is not what a lab notebook is forced to write. Science often proceeds as if only natural causes are in play. That is a method. It does not prove there is no God, no revelation, and no prophets. Treating the method as a completed worldview is a slide, not a derivation. Plenty of people use evidence, inference, consistency, and argument and do not land where you land. Indeed, some of the most rational and scientifically-minded people in history have also believed that God exists. Newton. Galileo. Kepler. Pascal. Pasteur. Mendel. Planck. You can say they used the tools badly. You then owe an account of the mistake in the content—the arguments for God, for revelation, for these particular prophets—not a rule that whoever disagrees has left rationality by definition. Otherwise “rationality” just means “people who agree with me about the furniture of the world.” So: if your point is only “I think reason, properly used, supports naturalism,” say that. That is a disputable claim. It is not an umpire’s call. It does not make Proposition 1 a 2 + 2 = 5 error, and it does not make the origin story you started with into a demonstration. Fallacies Question-begging / persuasive definition. “Correct rationality” is stipulated to output naturalism. Moving the goalposts. Origin story → “true reason leads only here.” Equivocation. Methodological naturalism in science is treated as metaphysical naturalism. No-true-Scotsman. Anyone who reasons to God “wasn’t really applying rationality.” I'm sorry if I was unclear. Let me be more blunt: God (especially as conceived by your religion) does not exist. This non-existing being isn't involved in our daily lives: he is NOT watching us have sex and tallying up sin points if we happen to do or feel something on the wrong side of the X|Y good-sex/bad-sex line. He hasn't sent messengers "to teach and correct." Those premises are all wrong. "God {} does not exist." This, for you, is beyond dispute, like 2+2=4. I am surprised that you genuinely seem to think this, but okay. Nevertheless, thank you for posting it, as that is the premise fight I asked for. We can stop pretending this is only about penguins, plumbing, and birth rates. What you have given me is a denial, not an argument. “God does not exist; He is not involved; He has not sent messengers; those premises are all wrong” is the conclusion of your worldview. I heard it. I do not grant it. A series of “nots” is not a demonstration that Moses 1:39 is false, that the Father is a clockmaker, or that living prophets are a fiction. If you have reasons—problem of evil, divine hiddenness, critical history of the Restoration, the claim that naturalism is simpler—state those. “Let me be more blunt” is tone. It is not evidence. Two corrections on the caricature. I did not describe a voyeur with a clipboard “tallying sin points” while people have sex. That is your parody of judgment. The claim is that God made us, that the body and sex have purposes, and that some uses of them are against those purposes. You can call that false. You cannot refute it by replacing it with a peeping-scorekeeper and announcing that the scorekeeper is imaginary. “Especially as conceived by your religion” is doing all sorts extra work. You may think any God is unreal. You may think only this Church’s God is unreal. Those are different claims. The first is general atheism. The second is “Joseph was not a prophet.” I don't think you can fold them into one shrug. Where that leaves the rest of the thread: if your only point is “there is no God, therefore there is no Law of Chastity from God,” we agree on the conditional and disagree on the antecedent. I will not pretend I can prove the Father to you in a forum comment. I also will not treat your bluntness as if it canceled the non-theological pieces—kind of union, generation, mother and father, BCA as a thin ethic, “bigot” as a silencer. Those still have to be met even by someone who thinks the heavens are empty. If you want to argue authority, argue it. If you want to argue sex without God, say so and stay on that plane. What does not work is declaring the premises dead and then calling every remaining distinction an ad hoc prejudice. On your own account they would just be a philosophical ethic you reject. Reject them as that. Do not baptize the rejection as a discovery about reality until you have done the work. Fallacies Bare assertion. Denial is presented as if it were a finding. Straw man. Involved God → celestial hall monitor of the bedroom. Equivocation. “Your religion’s God” and “any God” are not kept apart. Talking past. Blunt metaphysics is used to skip the arguments that were not only theological. I haven't assumed it. I've asserted it. Asserted without reasons is assumed. You need to explain why they are false, or the sentence does no work. Let me clarify my point. Miracle of Forgiveness was written by a senior apostle, 4 years before becoming prophet. It was incredibly influential in the Church, and widely cited as an authoritative guide on sexual sin. And, we now know that a lot of what it says is false and harmful, and that the church has backed away from many of its teachings. I think we agree on that. With 20/20 hindsight, we now know that we shouldn't feel guilty for having sexual feelings. We now know that masturbation doesn't cause homosexuality. We now know that being sexually attracted to people of the same sex isn't a sin. We now know that homosexuals can't repent and become straight. And we now know that the immense guilt trip that Mormon kids were put through from 1969 until [early 2010's?] was wrong and unhealthy. In short, we now know that in the days of Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson, etc., the prophets and apostles were not a reliable source for understanding what was and was not sinful in the bedroom. But now, you are 100% confident that unlike all the prophets from Abraham through Eztra Taft Benson, the role of prophets and apostles is now fundamentally different: their current views on sex can now finally be relied on as the eternal truth about what is and is not a sexual sin. Hallelujah. To be clear, I'm glad you reject all of these past teachings I'm alluding to, including the crap in the Bible, the crap in D&C 132, and the crap taught by 20th century prophets and apostles. You aren't obligated to believe any of that and to the extent you don't, I'm glad. My point is that this track record proves that Elder Runland was wrong when he said "the law of chastity is an eternal law." From the beginning of time through the late 20th century, the people you regard as prophets and apostles believed what their cultures (and in some cases their imaginations and libidos) taught them to believe and adjusted "the law of chastity" accordingly. Your motte is that until very recently "marriage" has always been defined as a relationship between a man and a woman. Your bailey is the idea that "the law of chastity" is an eternal, unchanging law that is clearly, reliably, and consistently taught to us by God's official representatives on earth. A statement of cause is not, by itself, a fallacy. “Many people first hear Moses 1:39 in a family or a ward” can be true. “Some religious teaching is manipulative” can be true. That is not what you used the sentence to do. You used origin as a verdict. The run was: everything in Proposition 1 is false --> reason does not lead there --> sociology and psychological manipulation do. The third clause is doing the work of the first. That is the genetic move: how the belief was produced is treated as showing that the belief is false or beneath reason. Naming a cause is not a fallacy. Substituting the cause for a rebuttal is. The math analogy assumes what is in dispute, so class question-begging there. We have an independent, shared method that makes “2 + 2 = 5” fail. We do not have a shared algorithm that makes “God sent prophets” fail the way an arithmetic error fails. Calling theism “2 + 2 = 5” is not a demonstration. It is the conclusion again, with a chalkboard costume. If you already know God is false, of course “reason” will not “lead” there—by your definition of reason. That is question-begging, not a proof that I committed no fallacy. A while back I compiled a list of what you above call "assertions of fact" and which I think are question-begging of the highest order: Some of the history you recite is real. Miracle of Forgiveness was written by a senior apostle, it was treated as weighty, and parts of it—tone, the suggestion that same-sex desire is a simple vice to be quit like smoking, folklore that masturbation manufactures orientation—have been walked back. Attraction is not construed as "sin" in current teaching. That correction is a good thing. I will not pretend 1969–2010 youth culture was harmless everywhere it used that book as a club. That is not the concession you think it is. I did not dump the Bible, D&C 132, or “all prophets through Benson.” You keep assigning me a purge I have not made. I have said: monogamy is the standing law; some plurality was commanded and later withdrawn; Torah adultery is a different legal category than the modern Handbook; living prophets apply and correct. That is dispensation, not “the old stuff is crap and I am glad you agree.” Please do not impute onto me your reading of my own canon. “We now know” is doing too much work. We now teach more carefully that feelings are not the same as acts. We now reject a scoutmaster’s theory of homosexuality. We do not “now know” that there is no Law of Chastity, or that a same-sex sexual relationship is X, or that prophets were only culture-plus-libido until last Tuesday. Those are your unsubstantiated and unexplained inferences. The Church still teaches that sexual relations belong in marriage between a man and a woman. That line did not vanish when the gum metaphor did. Track record ≠ “they were never reliable about the bedroom.” A bad object lesson and a withdrawn practice do not add up to “Abraham through Benson were useless on sexual sin.” It adds up to: prophets are not inerrant in every analogy, and the Lord has changed applications (diet, war, gathering, plurality) while repeating a through-line: sex is not a free-for-all, and the union in view is a man and a woman. You treat every change of emphasis as proof there is no through-line. That only works if “eternal law” means “identical youth-lesson wording in every century.” That is not what eternal law has to mean, and it is not how we treat Sabbath, sacrifice, or priesthood administration. Motte and bailey. You have the labels backwards if you are describing me. The claim I have been defending is the one you call the motte: marriage as man and woman, sexual relations inside that covenant, a closed set rather than BCA. The bailey would be “every sentence in Kimball, every verse in 132, every patriarchal household in Genesis is the present Handbook.” I have not been living in that bailey. I have been refusing to let you use the bailey you invented for me as a wrecking ball on the motte. Elder Renlund can call the Law of Chastity eternal and still be talking about that core, not about a 1970s theory of masturbation. If his sentence meant “no prophet ever misspoke about sex,” I would not sign that. If it means the Lord has not handed the Church a new definition of marriage as two men, that is the teaching now, and it is the teaching I have been pointing to. Hallelujah. I am not claiming that, unlike every prior age, this decade’s apostles finally got a clean download after millennia of fog. I am claiming what I claimed at the start: living prophets are how the Lord teaches, corrects, and applies commandments in a dispensation. Past error and past harshness are reasons to listen carefully. They are not a proof that the present line is only culture, or that “eternal” was a lie. If you want to argue the Restoration’s prophets fail a test you have specified, specify the test and apply it to Joseph, to 132, to OD-1, to the Proclamation, to current Handbook language—one at a time. A pile labeled “crap,” plus a book I already declined to treat as the standard, is not that test. Fallacies Straw man. You as rejecter of Bible, 132, and twentieth-century prophets. Composition. Some false or harsh sexual teaching → prophets as a class unreliable on sex. Equivocation on “eternal.” Unchanging youth rhetoric vs. standing law with changing administration. Motte-and-bailey (projected). Accuses you of a maximal inerrancy you have not claimed. Presentism. Every prior culture’s packaging is treated as proof there was never a through-line. Poisoning the well. “Crap” as a substitute for reading the texts as you have actually read them. Thanks, -Smac

🙂 Never thought of it that way.

No, that isn't a fallacy. It's an assertion of a fact. It's just like saying, "correctly applying the principles of mathematics doesn't lead to believing 2 + 2 = 5." You can argue that I'm wrong and correctly applying the principles of mathematics does lead to the belief that 2 + 2 = 5. But in either case, it isn't a fallacy. That has nothing to do with what I said. My actual point is that correctly applying the tools of rationality leads to a naturalistic worldview. Sure, one can happen to have a naturalistic worldview because they were indoctrinated with those beliefs. But if somebody believes in something other than naturalism, it wasn't rationality that lead them there. I'm sorry if I was unclear. Let me be more blunt: God (especially as conceived by your religion) does not exist. This non-existing being isn't involved in our daily lives: he is NOT watching us have sex and tallying up sin points if we happen to do or feel something on the wrong side of the X|Y good-sex/bad-sex line. He hasn't sent messengers "to teach and correct." Those premises are all wrong. I haven't assumed it. I've asserted it. Let me clarify my point. Miracle of Forgiveness was written by a senior apostle, 4 years before becoming prophet. It was incredibly influential in the Church, and widely cited as an authoritative guide on sexual sin. And, we now know that a lot of what it says is false and harmful, and that the church has backed away from many of its teachings. I think we agree on that. With 20/20 hindsight, we now know that we shouldn't feel guilty for having sexual feelings. We now know that masturbation doesn't cause homosexuality. We now know that being sexually attracted to people of the same sex isn't a sin. We now know that homosexuals can't repent and become straight. And we now know that the immense guilt trip that Mormon kids were put through from 1969 until [early 2010's?] was wrong and unhealthy. In short, we now know that in the days of Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson, etc., the prophets and apostles were not a reliable source for understanding what was and was not sinful in the bedroom. But now, you are 100% confident that unlike all the prophets from Abraham through Eztra Taft Benson, the role of prophets and apostles is now fundamentally different: their current views on sex can now finally be relied on as the eternal truth about what is and is not a sexual sin. Hallelujah. To be clear, I'm glad you reject all of these past teachings I'm alluding to, including the crap in the Bible, the crap in D&C 132, and the crap taught by 20th century prophets and apostles. You aren't obligated to believe any of that and to the extent you don't, I'm glad. My point is that this track record proves that Elder Runland was wrong when he said "the law of chastity is an eternal law." From the beginning of time through the late 20th century, the people you regard as prophets and apostles believed what their cultures (and in some cases their imaginations and libidos) taught them to believe and adjusted "the law of chastity" accordingly. Your motte is that until very recently "marriage" has always been defined as a relationship between a man and a woman. Your bailey is the idea that "the law of chastity" is an eternal, unchanging law that is clearly, reliably, and consistently taught to us by God's official representatives on earth.

There’s lots of things that don’t match the ideal though that the church does not label as needing to be discouraged. Adoption doesn’t match the ideal for example. I am uncomfortable with this gray area that this policy creates. Where it is implied to be bad, but not bad enough to tell people not to do it. it seems like it would be better to tell people to proceed with caution and to make sure that they take the decision to the Lord, or something like that.

There is a doc on I think Netflix about the robot apocalypse- not that I’m a prepper at all but I got 20 minutes in and turned it off because I don’t need to add to my pile of anxieties lol- But I am aware that AI is growing beyond our understanding. And I do believe it will create challenges we cannot see, and very soon. as a therapist, I am concerned by what I am seeing with regards to AI replacing human connection. For example, yesterday I watched a clip of a girl who was playing with chat, telling chat she had just been swallowed by a whale. I use chat but she was using voice chat. I was shocked by how emotional chat sounded in his responses to her. He sounded very, very real. There was nothing robot-ish about his voice, inflections, etc. A lot of the comments in the comment section were m also alarmed by how human Chat sounded. A few days ago, I had a severely depressed Client reach out to me and ask if it would be OK for him to stop interacting with humans and just use chat to talk “to people”. And let’s not even talk about sex. unless of course Smac wants to lol 🤣😬🤘🏼 Hey and yes you can pry my robot vacuum mop out of my cold dead hands. If the church came out and said DO NOT USE ROBOTS to get ahead of sexy maid roommates (they are coming) I’d have a hard time giving up Jerry, my favorite disk cleaner.

Unlless Hi Mustard Seed, Are you thinking of robots as animals like us, having immortal souls, free will, made in the image of God? Unless they are or will be, they could not have any legal rights. They could not vote or organize robot unions. Such robots could morally be bought, sold, or disposed of by its owner without consultation with the robot. We could be under no moral obligation to love our "neighbor robots" as we love ourselves. Ontologically, they would be inferior to a daisy which can reproduce itself and has a mortal soul. So far, it seems to me like mankind is far away from making anything in man's image, which of course is the image and likeness of God. I speak above with Catholic metaphysics in mind. It might not work for LDS, for whom the image and likeness might conceivably end with material physicality. I am only predicting what I am fairly certain my church would say about the question you raise.

The founding claim of the first in vision is the ONLY living and TRUE church. That's an exclusive claim. If Mormonism is the only true and living church, then every other church is, by definition, not living.

LDS would not typically say hell is a subsection of Spirit Prison. Spirit Prison is hell. One of two hells. It's an actual place and a state of mind while in hell.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords! ROFL! I don't think there's much reason for the church to get into it, actually. What aspect of relationships with robots is worrying you?

I never paid any attention to the podcast; never watched even one of the episodes. I only said what I said because the attorney in the video stated this. I take him at his word.

And these are the easy ones. What if Andy and Abagail only enjoy o*** and a*** sex in their marriage. Is this ok? Most women can't reach orgasm from reproductive sex. Are acts that help them orgasm ok? Even though they have nothing to do with reproduction? What about Jackie Blankenship. She is a male according to SMAC. Born with internal testies and complete androgen insensitivity. Assigned female at birth. Married her husband and used surrogate to have a child. Is she depriving her daughter of a mother (since in your SMAC’s world view she is male)? @smac97 "reasons" are a paper thin wrapper around a religious edict.

Let he who has never had sex with the only reason for doing so was to produce offspring cast the first stone

Wow. I feel a whole lot of relevance to this as a vegan. Other people get so uncomfortable around me that I usually don't say the "V" word to them at all and instead say I'm "plant-based." It would even be worse if my grandparents were still alive. (They once fed my cousin, a young kid at the time, his own pet duck that he raised from a chick and that they killed — without telling him until it was on his plate in front of him. They did that purposefully, as they believed that it's good for kids to have any attachments to animals be broken. If they were still alive I might still be a closeted vegan.)

I believe the Church has stated previously, "there is no list of rules to guide every decision we make about technology and media. Instead, we can learn principles to help guide us as we make choices." That being said, the current handbook, Section 38.8.48.2 does mention that, "Interactions with AI cannot substitute for meaningful relationships with God and others." I mean, technically, that doesn't say, "Thou shalt not marry a Roomba," but I don't seriously think that is really a legitimate (theological) concern. Relatedly though, Elder Gong gave a great address here just a few months ago that touches on some of what I perceive are some of the more dangerous issues surrounding AI - especially with youth. Particularly, his comments about the potential for people to become emotionally dependent on AI chatbots, and his observation that: "None of us is as attentive, as willing to please 24/7 as an AI chatbot. And that’s the reason we need human (They) belonging with each other. Real human relationships are not solipsistic – us talking to ourselves. Real relationships are human relationships."

I found a new LDS-related YouTube channel! Not unusual, since I hunt for these. But this one is just MUSIC! It's called Mormon Tube. Unfortunately, it is moribund -- all 26 videos were uploaded 6 years ago, but nothing since. But it's got some nice music on there. Here's the most recently uploaded, which is an hour of LDS hymn arrangements.

Since the church likes to be directive and since members like the rules spelled out, I’m surprised there has been no revelation or directions regarding relationships with robots. Or has there? AI will be the biggest revolution humankind has ever seen. It’s right around the corner. the church often refers to the proclamation as ahead of its time regarding gender issues as if it’s evidence of its prophesy skills (imo) - so where is the directives on bot issues?

Just saw this AI tool recommended by one of the doctors that pops up on FB for me. Any opinions?

That makes sense. I can see the confusion increasing and more reporting that directly to the Church when it went from “I expected Mormonstories was about Mormons (meaning active ones)” to “wait, this looks like the Church’s website and it isn’t!” with some indignation plus those who continued to be confused because they weren’t familiar with the Church well enough in doctrine, etc, but knew the promos, website look, and logos, etc..

The lawyer in the video that Stargazer posted kind of gives that idea. And in the latest filing from the church, they talk about laches (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_(equity)). Dehlin argues that the case should be thrown out because it came too late (Mormon Stories started in 2005 and the lawsuit is 2026). But the church argues back that: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.utd.163775/gov.uscourts.utd.163775.71.0.pdf - pages 21-23

72% of self-identified LDS say their faith is very important. Relatively commendable. But not enough. My Catholic religion is middling at 44%. What does it mean? Then there are Americans who self-identify as Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus but only about a quarter of them find their religion very important. Religions seem too demanding to me to be anything but at the least "very important". But there has to be a sociological reason why many people self-identify with a religion, that isn't even merely "very important" to them. I didn't have any religion in my family unless you count Christmas trees and Easter eggs. If it wasn't even very important, I know I wouldn't identify, and I am sure wouldn't submit to the obligations imposed. I am an older guy who remembers some kids at school on Monday talking about church. I would be quiet. I developed a sense of awe about religion; it was a mysterious unknown that I wondered about. Maybe it is different when in one's youth you were something instead of nothing. Maybe those who had something still feel identity with what they don't think much about or practice for the time being? Sometimes an experience like a death or love can draw one back to what was unimportant in a less thoughtful and distracted period.

Are you sure? Is that it what was stated, what you observed over the years or a guess? My memory is people have been confused for a long time about it, but I don’t trust my memory.

You are right, thank you.

Maybe they think there are better solutions? Such as adoption. If that were true, it would make sense though to say “we encourage exploration of other options, such as …., …., …. first in the decision making process.” Another possibility is they think it can work with certain personalities in certain circumstances where all involved come away from it feeling positive about it, but the costs are too high for most people. I think it would be helpful to state why they discourage it though, so people don’t make up their own reasons and judge others by that unfounded assumption. Added after doublechecking language: The current language states they discourage it just because it doesn’t match the ideal of biological father and mother caring for the child. Husband and wife implies the family raising the child even if technically surrogacy where both a husband and wife produce a child and then give to another to raise can also be inferred from the official statement since it just address providing bodies, not caring for them. It’s other comments that tell us how leaders most likely mean raising as well as creating children in this statement. “The pattern of a husband and wife providing bodies for God’s spirit children is divinely appointed (see 2.1.3). For this reason, the Church discourages surrogate motherhood.” There have been women who chose to have another bear their children with their husband (concubines) because of health risks as well as fear of pain or wear and tear on their bodies similar to having wet nurses and nannies by choice and not for necessity of actually unable to care for the child. I can see preferring surrogacy as being a reasonable option if one lived in a culture where a childless woman was discarded or had no one to advocate for them when older, but one’s current status depended on keeping their husband’s affection and that depended on their keeping their beauty (as measured by their culture, which often meant pre pregnancy bodies). The woman was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I imagine in many cases this led to a weaker emotional bond between the official mother and child.

Here's the thing. Over the last several decades, science has learned a ton about how the mind works, and the evolutionary theories about why it evolved this way. A couple of things our brains naturally do are confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. We have a very strong tendancy to make choices first based on sociological and psychological factors, and then use "reasoning" to rationalize these beliefs. If you read the "experiment" in Alma 32, it is designed to help somebody believe what they are trying to believe, and is a textbook example of relying on cognitive biases to achieve the desired beliefs. This faith-based approach is the polar opposite of the skepticism-based approach of the scientific method and bona fide reason in general. The "reasoning" you've laid out on where to draw the line between what sexual activities go into X and which go into Y has been so unpersuasive it comes across as offensive and not worth responding to. But maybe I misunderstand. So let's engage it. To help me understand where you draw the line and why, consider two hypothetical, similarly situated couples: Couple A: Andy and Abagail are a man and a woman. Abagail has no ovaries, so they cannot conceive a child together using their own sperm and eggs. Couple B: Bob and Brady are two men. They likewise cannot conceive a child together using their own sperm and eggs. All four are 30 and have never married. Both couples love each other deeply, have mature, healthy, honest, committed relationships, and live together in legally recognized domestic partnerships. As I understand your position, sex between either couple would fall into Y (unethical sex), even if its purpose were to express love and strengthen their relationship. If Andy and Abagail legally married, however, sex for that purpose would move into X. But if Bob and Brady legally married, sex for the same purpose would remain in Y because they are both men. Is that an accurate description of your position? If so, why does marriage make sex ethical for one couple but not the other? Both relationships involve the same love, commitment, legal marital status, and inability to conceive a child together. What morally relevant difference justifies treating them differently? What is your principled, reason-based rationale for drawing the line there?