All Activity

I’d vote for you as our next apostle.

My point is that this isn’t happening and despite your assertions to the contrary, there is no reason to believe that it will happen. Just as we don’t need laws to keep litter boxes out of elementary school bathrooms, we don’t need laws to keep men out of the women’s restroom. First, "this isn't happening" is an assertion, not an established fact. Second, “It isn’t happening, so we don’t need a rule” is not an answer to what the rule is. A limiting principle is about who the class is, not about how many scandals have made the news this month. If the permission slip is self-declared identity or “presentation,” the class is no longer female. That is true whether two people use it this year or two thousand. You can think the uptake will stay small. That does not make “whoever says so” a sexed category. Third, we already have sex-segregated rooms. The question is whether we keep sex as the criterion or replace it with "identity." “We don’t need a law” usually means one of two things: (1) custom and ordinary crime statutes are enough, or (2) identity access is fine because abuse will stay rare. (1) only works if the custom is still sex. (2) is a prediction. Predictions are not a limiting principle. Fourth, the litter-box line is a different claim. Nobody serious is drafting a statute about litter boxes. People are drafting and litigating rules that treat a male as entitled to the women’s room if he identifies or presents as a woman. That is not a meme. It is the ordinance / school / HR fight. Pointing at a silly story does not make the category question go away. I am not asking you to prove a national wave of predators by Friday. I am asking you to say, in a sentence that could go in a policy, which males are out. This is what you are steadfastly refusing to do. And I think that is because A) you can't articulate a limiting principle without running afoul of the mobocratic elements of the trans movement, B) your proposal is perhaps a motte-and-bailey tactic that would be undermined by admitting that there are no limiting principles, and that there is a need for them. “Be decent and don’t peep” applies under a sex rule too. It does not tell a staff member or a court who belongs in the room. If your view is that no written sex rule is needed because almost no one will push it, say that plainly. That is a bet on manners. It is still not a limiting principle. Ah. So we are in agreement that, contrary to your prior representations, these others are not “separate issues.” You have just said the same test should run in changing rooms, sports, and prisons. So we're talking motte-and-bailey tactics after all. That is the point of the analogy. I was not claiming you personally want Lia Thomas in the NCAA. I was claiming that a lawyer does not need your permission. If the bathroom holding is “identity/expression is the access rule, and a sex statute does more harm than good,” the next brief will say: same rule, different doorway. Stalls vs lockers will be a fact for the balancing, not a new definition of “woman.” “Don’t pass a law unless there is a need, and don’t let it do more harm than good” is not a criterion for who the class is. It is a reason to regulate less. Applied to a women’s prison or a girls’ locker room, it can just as easily mean “don’t pass a sex law” as “don’t pass an identity entitlement.” You still have to say which males are out. You have said sport can stay sexed. Good. That is a sex rule in one venue. The bathroom argument you have been defending is that a sex rule there fails the harm test. Counsel will ask why the harm test flips when the clothes come off or the points are scored. So I do think it is bad to “extend that same reasoning” if the reasoning is identity access plus no administrable gate. Extending minimal-statute / weigh the harms is fine—if sex remains the thing you are weighing harms to. If “woman” on the door is already a social category, the harm tally is no longer a tally of females. That is the fence I have been asking for. “I like fewer laws” is not it. Sigh. . The natural and foreseeable effect of your proposal is the elimination, either de facto or de jure or both, of sex-segregates spaces. You will not acknowledge this, either because you don't know how the law works, or you don't care how the law works, or you are indifferent to the effects of your proposal, or you are aware of the effects and want them to come to pass. It is this last one that I think is the motte-and-bailey thing. In any event, what I am saying is narrower, and I will keep saying it without the heat: The justification you use for the bathroom—identity or expression as the access rule, and a sex statute as more harm than good—is the same justification other people will carry into lockers, sport, and prisons. That can be true even if you personally would not vote for those outcomes. Analogies do not require you to be an ideologue. They require a court to be consistent. Moreover, even if you are not personally attempting to advance motte-and-bailey tactics, I think other activists and groups are. I glean this from the failure/refusal to articulate limiting principles, the failure/refusal to acknowledge the natural and foreseeable camel's-nose-in-the-tent / motte-and-bailey consequences of letting men into women's bathrooms. “Bad for women and girls” is the disagreement. On my definition, the group those rooms were built for is female. A rule that admits males on identity changes that group. You can weigh harms and think a sex statute is the worse package. I can weigh the same facts and think dissolving the criterion is the worse package. That is a policy fight. I am against statutes that do more harm than good too. The question remains which rule does that, and who counts as the women and girls in the tally. That is the argument, and you are evading important elements of it. Thanks, -Smac

It’s not that you can’t order, it’s that when you go to order they indicate everything is sold out.

I know this is not my subject area Is it possible, that the items being purchased need to be seen before purchasing. Just a thought.

Exactly.

I don't understand why there were so many available for in purchase buying but none online.

The End of Oak Street I'd say definitely worth seeing in a theater. It takes place in the 1980s and is about a family/neighborhood that ends up in another time and place. I don't want to say too much more than that. It's about the people and not about the special effects, which is nice. They do a good job of making the story make sense (because the premise is pretty far out there). There is a third act twist that you really don't see coming. PG-13 so good for tweens and up I'd say.

My point is that this isn’t happening and despite your assertions to the contrary, there is no reason to believe that it will happen. Just as we don’t need laws to keep litter boxes out of elementary school bathrooms, we don’t need laws to keep men out of the women’s restroom. As I’ve made it very clear throughout this conversation, I believe we shouldn’t have laws unless there is a need for them, and that such laws should be crafted in a way that ensures they don’t do more harm than good. I don’t know why you think it would be bad to extend that same reasoning to women’s changing rooms, sports, or prisons. Sigh. I’m against the bathroom law you propose because it is bad for women and girls. Your insinuation that I have some sort of ideological master goal of crowding out women from women’s sports, defeating the purpose of women’s shelters, and causing the eradication of women’s-only spaces is both inaccurate and offensive. If being against laws that do more harm than good makes me an ideologue, then so be it.

I think I did. I think I have answered your questions and explained my reasoning, both at some length. I think my comments responsive to your post were quite relevant to the questions you asked. I said: "They give more credit to academics as a collective than I would. I find much of the prone-to-activism segments of academia to be craven, ideologically compromised, and morally bankrupt." That's not quite the same as "contempt of higher education." And that was in a post that was not responsive to your questions. I have two "higher education" degrees, a BA and a JD, and I taught at a local university for five years. I see its virtues, but also its flaws. My contempt for activist elements of academia is substantial and pronounced. I am gratified at the prospect of there being a substantial contraction of colleges and universities. We have too many, charging way too much, granting far to many not-very-worthwhile degrees, and too many faculty and administrators in them who are less interested in education than in sociopolitical activism and indoctrination. We need to divert time and money and effort toward more worthwhile efforts to help kids gain skills for employment. Trade schools and vocational schools, for examples. Okay. Thanks, -Smac

I would have added to the videos to say that there is now officially a 3-comment-per-class limit for those who don't know how to stay quiet. Also, anyone who walks into class late is required to bring cinnamon rolls the following week.

Yes, I have needed to make a checklist for everything I do daily that must be done because memories and anticipation both create the belief I have taken my meds, etc when I haven’t or in tracking I get convinced that I have exercised, tidied a room, etc more than I actually have. I used to be really good with my lists, but now I forget to check them.

You don’t really answer any of my questions. You only keep pasting your lists without explaining how you can reach those conclusions and skip the hard questions Then you fill the rest of your post talking about totally irrelevant things to the questions I asked including your contempt of higher education. Really? So I guess at this point, after multiple attempts to actually get answers I’m done trying. It seems pointless.

Hi Calm It has happened to me a few times. The thought moving from, I plan to do, to I have done. It can be annoying, as I like to get things done, as I need to do them. I tend to make lists, shopping, and need to do.

I’d rather hear a lecture than listen to my ward discuss. It’s the same 5 ladies who need group therapy but come to church instead 😕

Hi Rory, Thanks for the heads-up. Calm's recommendation of Ostler's book is a great place to start; I can think of only one other 'modern' LDS author that comes close when it comes to a systematic approach to LDS theology : Terryl Givens. Givens' Wrestling the Angel - The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity is excellent and should be read by folk interested in a balanced approach to LDS theology. Grace and peace, David

An article I have found well-written and persuasive: Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles The "and social scientists" bit is interesting. Ideology is playing a role here. "Thereby opposing fundamental biological facts." Seeing a lot of that in this thread. I fully agree with this. Interesting how "sex is a social construct" only purports to apply to one species. "Gender," as these authors use it, is the extra human layer: identity, roles, “man/woman” as social categories. They trace the sex/gender split to mid-20th-century clinical language (Money et al. on DSD / “sex of rearing”). To their credit, they later acknowledge the "flawed notions" of these terms being used. Indeed. One such "alternative truth" is that a man can "become" a woman by "identifying" as one. There are more. Boy, that sure sounds familiar. This thread is replete with such notions. "Astonishing" starts to, but does not fully capture, what has been doing on the last few years. In my signature line I have a quote from G.K. Chesterton: "We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green." Add to it "hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green {or that a man does not 'become' a woman by 'identifying' as one}." "Astonishingly..." "Astounding..." "They ignore or even reject the well-established biological concept of sex and, thus, they ultimately deny fundamental principles of biology." I think these journals are also motivated by less-than-laudable causes, including massive social and political pressure to adopt, on some fundamental issues, ideological frameworks in place of biological/scientific ones. Well, sort of. They are often conflated for equivocation and motte-and-bailey purposes. I think the "gist of the problem" needs to be extended to acknowledging that "flawed notions" are arising, to some extent, by design of ideological activists. I find this both surprising and depressing. Yep. Ideological pressures. And not all benign ones, either. Look at how many participants of this thread have accused me of "bigotry" for not going along with "blurring" the meaning of biological sex, or that sex is a "spectrum." They give more credit to academics as a collective than I would. I find much of the prone-to-activism segments of academia to be craven, ideologically compromised, and morally bankrupt. I recently saw this video and thought it both humorous and painfully accurate: A transcript: Interviewer: Almost every single time bad ideas come from universities. Gad Saad: Orwell answered it one way, so I'll paraphrase it. He said something to the effect of "It takes intellectuals to come up with the dumbest ideas." I wholeheartedly agree with that. Now why is that? Because in many cases, the academic, who literally lives in the ivory tower, is fully decouples from the autocorrective mechanism of reality. Engineering schools have less parasitic ideas because if you build a bridge using postmodern indigenous physics, as opposed to physics, then the bridge will collapse. So some disciplines have an inoculation against these parasitic because reality will quickly catch up to you. But in other disciplines, in the humanities and some of the social sciences, I could sit on top of my pulpit, pontificate about nonsense, and there isn't an autocorrective mechanism, and that's reality, and that's why I become the promulgator of nonsense. Hmm. They don't sufficiently address what I think are the more potent motivating factors, namely, the desire to conform, the fear of getting crosswise with powerful and influential activist groups, the cowardice of mouthing falsehoods to placate mobocratic activists, and so on. Overall a very good article. Thanks, -Smac

Time will tell. Our youth are very "whatever" about most administrative things. It really depends on the teacher. If they love the teacher, they are excited to be with them every week. If they don't, they are mostly ambivalent thus far. After watching last Sunday, I think we'll have much better discussions with the new format. There was less "lessoning" and more discussing scripture and concepts.

No, I don't. DSDs are a medical condition, not a third sex. And yet all of them are still male or female. I have been speaking of biological sex categories. There are only two. Because a person with this DSD has a medical condition, whereas a person with gender dysphoria does not (except for those who have both the medical condition and the mental health disorder). They can look similar at a glance. They are not the same fact. Again, a DSD is a congenital error in sex development. Chromosomes, gonads, or androgen response did not follow the usual script. The body is still on the male or female pathway. Nobody chose a wardrobe or an "identity" and then grew a uterus or testes to match. In contrast, a trans-identifying person, in the cases this debate is about, does not have that error. Typical male or typical female development. The claim is an inner identity (and sometimes hormones or surgery later). That is a psychological and medical-choice path laid on top of a sex that is not in doubt. Let's review the list: CAIS: XY, testes, no uterus. Looks female because the body cannot hear androgens. That is not “a male who identifies as a woman.” It is a male whose tissues never masculinized. Swyer: XY, failed gonads, female-typical outside. Again a developmental failure, not a gender identity. XX CAH: female, ovaries and uterus, virilized genitals from extra androgens in utero. That is not “a woman transitioning to male.” Transition is exogenous hormones or surgery on a body that already finished female development. CAH happened before birth, inside the female pathway. 5-ARD: XY, testes, genitals that may look female until male puberty. The pubertal masculinization is the male system switching on, not someone “becoming trans.” “Sounds like someone who is trans” you treating phenotype as if it is some sort of costume. Medicine already separates them. DSM-5 even has a specifier: gender dysphoria with a DSD, because most gender dysphoria is without one. If the argument is “some bodies are atypical, therefore identity determines sex,” that is the motte-and-bailey again. Atypical development is not a male with ordinary anatomy saying he is a woman. Looks can overlap. The cause, the gonads, and the class do not. Again, this is all motte-and-bailey argument. Ovotesticular DSD is the hardest medical case, but it is still not a third sex, nor is it the absence of sex, and it is not a template for ordinary trans-identifying people. Medical teams look at karyotype, SRY, which tissue is present, ducts, hormones, fertility chances, and cancer risk in dysgenic gonads. “Sex of rearing” can be a clinical judgment. That is not proof that sex itself is arbitrary, and it is not what happens when a typical male identifies as a woman. No one is finding an ovary in him. "Looks like" is not "is of the same kind." A CAIS or Swyer patient has a congenital pathway problem. A typical trans-identifying person has typical male or female anatomy plus an entirely subjective and self-declared "identity" (and sometimes later, hormones or surgery). Putting them in one bucket because both can “present female” is the same error as saying a burned house and a blueprint change are the same building. CAIS and Swyer people with female-typical external anatomy have almost always been raised as girls and use the women’s room. That is a DSD protocol, not a "gender identity" rule. It does not follow that every male who says he is a woman is the same case. I do not have to march a CAIS woman-raised patient into the men’s room in order to keep sex as the criterion for people whose sex was never in doubt. Hard medical files get hard, individualized handling. They are not a warrant for dissolution of sex-segregated spaces, nor do they negate the sexual binary. The "42 million" number is the inflated “intersex” count (the Fausto-Sterling-style bucket that folds in conditions that do not scramble sex). Conditions that actually make sex diagnosis hard are on the order of 0.018%, not tens of millions of “third sex” people. But even if the large number were right, prevalence does not turn a disorder into a spectrum of sexes. There are many people with congenital heart defects. That does not make “number of heart chambers” a spectrum of species. You are saying I “listed a spectrum.” I have not. I have, instead, listed named disorders of two pathways. A list of ways a system can break is not a continuum of new systems. Male, female, and a rare mix of those two is not “a spectrum of sexes.” It is the binary plus pathology. The restroom problem in this debate is not CAIS. It is gender dysphoric males with ordinary male development who want to use the women's room based on subjective "gender identity." Those are different populations (though some very few will overlap in both). Medicine already knows that. Policy should too. Thanks, -Smac

You have dodged the question several times. Still not clear answers. You say there is no spectrum, yet you list a spectrum of sexual possibilities. This is why I keep asking for clarification. You keep trying to pass this off as some very rare occurrence, yet it is estimated that 42 million people have some form of DSD. Let's look at the spectrum of sexuality you presented. How is this different than how trans people present themselves? How is this different than how trans people present themselves? This is someone who has female reproductive organs but can develop external genitalia more typical male direction. How is this different than a female transitioning to male? Female-appearing or ambiguous genitalia A small penis/clitoris-like structure A partially fused scrotum/labia A urethral opening in an atypical location Sounds again like someone who is trans. The hardest one to totally dismiss because a person has both ovarian and testicular tissue, sometimes in the same gonad (an ovotestis) and sometimes as separate ovaries and testes. they have both male and female characteristics. It is only through surgery that can be used to decide what sex they will present. Sometime it is an arbitrarily decision. It seems to me that people who are trans fit into very similar reproductive and presenting as some born with the various conditions you outlined. Trans people are either male or female but present like the conditions you outlined that occurs naturally. And the same problems concerning restrooms occur. While someone may be CAIS (46,XY): male. Testes, no uterus; body cannot use androgens, so the outside can look female. Do you insist that even they also are male, but present femaie use the male bathroom? Swyer (46,XY): Someone who has Swyer (46,xy) male pathway, streak gonads, female-typical external anatomy but are male but present female-typical anatomy from. birth. Do you force them to use a male bathroom even though they have a female anatomy? I guess you could take the position that trans people are either male or female but they choose to present differently than just their genetics. Just like the approximately 42 million people who fall into these classifications. You can dismiss that number as being unimportant, but would you also say that the number of people who identify as LDS is also unimportant? What is clear to me is there is a spectrum as you have listed.

This is an interesting perspective. I would like to better understand it. Back in July there was a By Common Consent article the critiqued the Church in quite the other direction: Hot Take: We Need to Avoid Christolatry I'm not sure either characterization (BCC suggesting we are focusing too much on Christ, your assessment that we are not giving Him sufficient focus) works. I wonder if Latter-day Saints have something in common with Catholicism that is less apparent, or even mostly absent, from Protestant perspectives, namely, a visible, institutional "Church" that is part of their Christology. For example, consider this CatholicAnswers article: Christ and His Church: It’s a Package Deal The author, Hector Molina, argues you cannot take Jesus and leave the Church. They are one package. Christ is the bridegroom; the Church is the bride (Eph. 5 / CCC 796). To love him while treating the Church as optional is like claiming to love a husband and despise his wife. Paul VI and Francis both reject “believing without belonging.” Cyprian’s line does the work: no Church as mother, no God as Father. The Church, in this telling, is not a human club you can shop around. It is the communion God designed, the mother who gives faith. Rejecting her is rejecting him (“anyone who rejects you rejects me”). The Latter-day Saints have their own similar, but still distinctive and separate, conceptualization of the Christ and "His Church." For us, Christ is the head of the Church. The restored Church is the body He authorized. Not a second savior, and not a club one can skip in relation to the covenants He named. Christ leads the Church (D&C 20; 107). D&C 1:30 calls it the “true and living church” because of keys and ordinances, not because only Latter-day Saints are loved. Baptism for the dead exists because they think people outside this pew can still be His. Unlike the Catholic line (“no Church as mother, no God as Father”), Saints do not say you cannot have the Father unless you are on this roll. They do say baptism, endowment, and sealing—the order he restored—are done here, under living prophets. Faith in Jesus elsewhere is real; the wedding ordinances are not. The Church can err. Handbooks change. The claim is revelation and priesthood, not a sinless institution fused to Christ. Protestant Christianity is fairly eclectic and broad in what its constituent parts believe and why. Protestants (broadly) believe that "the Church" is the company of those who belong to Christ by faith; it is not one earthly institution you must join to have Him. The decisive bond is justification by faith, not a roster or a priesthood line. “The Church” in the creedal sense is often the invisible church: all true believers, known fully only to God. Visible congregations, denominations, and buildings are real and useful; they are not the same thing as Christ’s body in the Catholic or Latter-day Saint sense. There is generally no single restored (Latter-day Saint) or Petrine (Catholic) office that holds the keys for the whole world. Authority sits in Scripture, then in local pastors and members (the priesthood of all believers). Sacraments/ordinances matter, but their number, meaning, and necessity vary (Lutheran and Anglican vs. Baptist vs. nondenominational). Our everyday church buildings are fairly modestly appointed. More functional than ornate. Temples, for us, fulfill a different need. I think He would be comfortable in both places. He spent much time with regular people, but He also taught in the temple (Luke 21:37-38). I think the distinction you draw here is different to reconcile with what we believe to be the Church's role and mandate. I want the missionaries—and the rest of us—to bring people to Christ. If the Church is only collecting names for itself, that is a failure of discipleship, not a triumph of organization. The part I cannot grant is the split you are drawing: Christ over here, the Church over there as a brand. In our own account they are not rivals. The restored Church is supposed to be the means he named—ordinances, covenants, a people—not a second object of worship. Drawing someone “to the Church” in that sense is supposed to be drawing them into his order, not into a logo. “Minister from the truths of their lives” is quite right as pastoral posture. Start where they hurt, what they already know of God, the good they already have. Missiology that leads with “our franchise is unique” is often tin-eared. Agreed. “Minister not based on the truth of the organization” is, however, a different sentence. If the Restoration claims are false, then yes: stop centering the institution. If they are true, then the unique elements of its mandates - priesthood keys, living prophets, open canon, continuing revelation, the covenant path - are not a marketing overlay on Jesus. They are how we think He has told us to come to Him. So yes, better training in listening is a good idea. To the extent this is an issue, less "corporate self-reference" and more emphasis on Christ as "the author and finisher of our faith" (Hebrews 12:2). Actually, I think the Church has already been working on this for quite a while. We think the Bridegroom sent us to a particular house. The job is to make that house about Him, not to pretend the house was our idea. And we maintain and make the house His by serving each other. What sort of "spiritual need{s}" do you think are being unmet, and how would you envision missionaries meeting those needs? I appreciate your input here. Thanks, -Smac

I love you I hope you know. (For those who think this is weird, we have known each other a long time and every now and then he says something that reminds me how great it’s been. And I need to let him know that.)

Okay. Well said. You are right. I have been wrong. My mind is changed. It was a ridiculous looking mascot.

To be divine is to possess the nature or attributes of God—such as perfect goodness, wisdom, power, or holiness. I don't view humans as being divine in essence, though they may reflect God's image or be close to God. I like that you state the specific attributes of God as perfect goodness, wisdom, power, or holiness. These attributes are obviously separate from his eternal nature, since the Bible teaches that humans are the same kind of being as God in this regard, but humans currently lack these attributes of perfect goodness, wisdom, power, or holiness. Jesus had these attributes along with God the Father in the beginning. And God is drawing his children unto him and asks us to “be holy” as God is holy (1 Peter 1:13-15), and the fruit of the spirit is wisdom and goodness, and the heirs of God are given power. Don't forget the dual nature of Christ. He is both God and man. And as man, God is his father. That does not make Christ a lesser God. Remember, Jesus was even described as separate and subject to God the Father even from before creation, where he was “given” glory by the Father and “appointed” by the Father to carry out the work of creation, which totally removes the excuse that he had a “dual nature” (if there is such a thing). Jesus (the “word”) was called God (theos) alongside “the one true God” in John 1:1-3. In the Greek text of those verses, God the Father is referred to as “the God” (shown in red below), and Jesus is simply said to be “God”: Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. Check out the link above if you don’t believe me. And Jesus continues to be subject to the Father eternally, as 1 Corinthians 15:28 points out. The resurrected Jesus referred to God the Father as “my God” four times in Revelation 3:12. God is already God before he becomes our Father. God was already perfect in goodness, wisdom, power, and holiness and the supreme being before he became our Father, yes. He was God before he became God in relation to us. As for your other comments, I’m not going to entertain your speculative meanderings. It’s pointless to discuss things that have not been revealed. Regarding Hebrews 2:7 and 1:2, it makes it easier to comprehend when you realize that Jesus and the Father are not two Gods. Actually, it makes it much easier to comprehend when you realize that Jesus and the Father are two Gods. God the Father set Jesus “over the work of [his] hands”, and God the Father “appointed” Jesus to be the heir of all things, and it was by Jesus that God the Father “made the worlds”. “But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” (Hebrews 1:8–9) Jesus has a God and Jesus was anointed by his God. Clearly this is why Philo, and the early Christian Fathers Origen and Lactantius referred to Jesus as the “second God”, and why Justin Martyr said (of Jesus) “that there is, and that there is said to be, another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things” (Justin Martyr, Dialog with Trypho, Chapter 56). And as Origen taught: “And although we may call Him [Jesus Christ] a "second" God, let men know that by the term "second God" we mean nothing else than a virtue capable of including all other virtues, and a reason capable of containing all reason whatsoever which exists in all things, which have arisen naturally, directly, and for the general advantage, and which "reason," we say, dwelt in the soul of Jesus, and was united to Him in a degree far above all other souls, seeing He alone was enabled completely to receive the highest share in the absolute reason, and the absolute wisdom, and the absolute righteousness." (Origen Against Celsus, book V chapter XXXIX). Jesus has a God, and Jesus is eternally subject to the only true God, his God and Father.

It should be pretty obvious why they are different. Women’s restrooms all have stalls with doors on them. Women are allowed full privacy in terms of exposure if staying within current laws. Even in the men’s, no one without a working penis will be using urinals, so biological men won’t be force to unexpectedly see female genitalia on someone who presents as a man, but is biologically female and lacks bottom surgery. I assume their stalls have doors as well. Changing rooms are often open concept, where partial or full nudity is a common occurrence, thereby requiring a less inclusive rule to avoid seeing unexpected genitalia. Stalls explain why a locker room is more exposed. They do not explain why the legal criterion suddenly changes. If the rule for the women’s bathroom is “identity/expression is enough, and a sex rule does more harm than good,” a plaintiff’s lawyer does not have to pretend a gym has stalls. They will say: "You already decided that excluding a male who identifies as a woman is discrimination. The presence of a door on a toilet is a design detail. It is not a different definition of 'woman.'" I think there are a few other potential problems with the stall theory: Privacy is not only “no one saw genitals.” A male in the next stall, at the sinks, or in a restroom with a child is the interest I have been talking about. A door on a stall does not make the room unsexed, nor does it create propriety and separation. Not every women’s room is a fortress of full-height doors. Airports, schools, parks, older buildings. The policy argument cannot depend on ideal hardware. The urinal aside cuts against you. You are using sexed anatomy to sort who uses which fixture in the men’s room. That is the sex rule doing work. I don't think you can switch it off at the women’s door because the fixtures are stalls. You already admitted the principle for changing rooms. When nudity is likely, you want a “less inclusive” rule so people are not surprised by the other sex’s body. I agree with you, as it is a sort of oblique admission that sex, not identity, is what the space is for when bodies are the issue. A bathroom is a milder version of the same fact, not a different moral universe. So yes, lockers are not identical to toilets. Courts still analogize. “Stalls exist” is a reason to prefer better partitions and more single-occupancy rooms. It is not a fence that keeps the bathroom holding from being cited in the locker-room brief. “Because the stalls have doors” will be exhibit A for why they say the exclusion is arbitrary once you have already let "identity" mandate entry through the first door. Thanks, -Smac

I remember. You said, "How he came to be our God was in our relationship to him, and him providing a way for us to advance and become like him. That is the way Joseph Smith taught it in his sermon". In the King Follett Discourse, Joseph Smith does discuss the eternal nature of intelligence/spirits, but he does not explicitly teach that God and a heavenly wife produced spirit children. It does discuss humanity's existence before mortality, but its language is more about intelligence/spirits being eternal than the later familiar LDS formulation of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother having spirit children. So in short, it does not discuss how "God came to be God" (a phrase used in the sermon) before becoming "our God" (a phrase not used in the sermon). But it does discuss how God became God in relation to us, which was his entire point. This is only in the sense of a spiritual relationship. Once a person is a literal offspring of God, he or she remains a literal child. In LDS theology, God continues to be the God (the literal parent) or all those spirit children who supposedly rebelled against him in some war in heaven. Those who became his spirit children were those who participated in his plan, and some of them rebelled by siding against his plan after the plan was presented. Exactly how we are his “offspring” is not defined, anywhere, other than the biblical explanation that we are all literally the same kind of being that God is (Acts 17:28-29) and that God is the “Father of spirits” (Hebrews 12:9). In the Protestant and Catholic views, one God is responsible for creating all planets, stars, universes, and everything relating to them. But that’s not the biblical explanation. The Bible says God the Father (who is the “only true God”, according to Jesus) created all things through Jesus Christ (another God and Lord who is subject to the one God and Father of all). The Father alone was responsible for this act of creation, but he did it through his Son who he appointed to be his agent in creation and other things. Also, this doesn’t change the fact that the God of the Bible has an increase in the number of his creations. It is from zero to one (in the Protestant view), and from “without number” to “without number” plus one, in the Latter-day Saint point of view. Offspring in two ways – [1] being created by God, and [2] in a spiritual sense (being adopted into his family), not in the sense of being born literally as spirit children to a heavenly mother. Wrong, offspring in only one way, which is that we are all the génos of God (the same kind of being as God), but we need to “become” his children in a spiritual sense after that. There is simply no way that the Greek word génos in Acts 17:28-29 can be misconstrued to mean that we are merely created by God. It’s totally foreign to the core meaning of the word. I have discussed this with you many times, and to change the word to mean that we are merely God’s creations totally destroys Paul’s main point. If we are merely God’s creations then we are no different than the gold, or silver or stone from which the pagans made their idols, because gold, or silver, or stone are creations of God as well. But given the true meaning of the Greek word génos, do you see how you are pushing back against the text of the Bible? You are simply reasserting your personal beliefs and are refusing to accept what the Bible says on this topic. This is really quite ironic for these reasons: The Bible says, plain and simple, that we are all the same “kind” of being as God, since that’s what the Greek word génos means in Acts 17:28-29. We are the “genus” of God. You say we are not the génos of God, but are merely creations of God, and God created us out of nothing. The takeaway: The Bible says we are the same kind of being as God, but modern Christians say we are creatures that God made out of nothing that are categorically other than him, which contradicts this biblical teaching in Acts 17:28-29. Not only do these verses dispute the modern Christian views about God’s relationship to man, but they also prove that the idea of creation out of nothing for mankind is not biblical, since to be the same “kind” of being as God necessitates that we have an eternal core (our spirits). In the Bible Jesus taught us how he is “one” with his Father. Jesus prayed for his disciples to be “one” with each other and with him and his Father in the same way Jesus is one with his Father in John 17:11, 20-23. And Jesus “gave” to his disciples the same glory that God the Father had given him in the beginning. Modern Christians believe that Jesus and his Father are “homoousious”, a word that was added to the Nicene creed by the Roman Emperor Constantine. This word has come to be understood to mean that Jesus and his Father are “one being”, a concept that is completely absent from the Bible. The takeaway: The Bible defines how Jesus and his Father are “one”, but modern Christians use a non-biblical concept that was conceived centuries after the Bible took place to try to explain how Jesus and his Father are “one”. The bottom line: Modern Christians believe in a different God than what the Bible teaches, and by proclaiming these beliefs they also reject clear Bible teachings (i.e. we are the same kind of being as God). To paraphrase your words, modern Christians are "spectacularly wrong" on these teachings and are drastically divergent from the teachings of the earliest Christian Fathers (there is little resemblance) and have led Christianity astray for over 1,500 years. The irony here is that you come here to this board to try to claim that we are the ones being led astray toward “another god”, when it is clear that the modern Christian view about God and our relationship to him (as described above) has zero biblical support, the doctrines contradict biblical teachings, and they are the ones who follow “another god”. It’s the difference between a false god and the true God of the Bible (again, using your words). So why should we listen to you? One more thing: The fact that we are also adopted as heirs of God and "become" God's children in some other way does not contradict what Paul taught about our nature as same kind of being as God (his "offspring"), so bringing up that fact does nothing to change what Paul taught in Acts 17:28-29. We all come into this world as "offspring" of God, because God the Father is the "Father of spirits" (Hebrews 12:9). But we must be "born again" and adopted as children of the covenant through Jesus Christ. He gives us the "power" to "become the sons of God" (and according to John 5:18, to be a son of God is to be "equal with God"). Supposedly? Not according to Joseph Smith. See my post to you when you were posting as telnetd, here, here, and here. You're making progress. We don't become God's offspring by being birthed by a heavenly mother. But that’s exactly how you said that Paul’s audience would have understood Paul’s teaching in Acts 17:28-29, as you said in your post on 01/02/2025: “The pagans understood ‘offspring’ in the sexual case of literal reproduction for the Greek gods; like that which occurs between male and female.” Do you think that Paul didn’t realize what he was teaching them? I think Paul knew exactly what he was saying. The question is, why don’t you believe him? Really, why don’t you believe him? God being God from age to age = God being God from eternity to eternity = God being God from everlasting to everlasting. But I see your point if you only want to apply "age" to a human's perspective instead of to God's perspective. Do you see what you are doing here? You are trying to reimagine the Hebrew word ʿôlām to fit your modern doctrine instead of trying to understand how the ancient Hebrews understood the term. In Hebrew the word just means a long time, or as the Young’s Literal Translation puts it, “Even from age unto age Thou art God.” (Psalm 90:2). It doesn’t mean what you are trying to make it mean. This is especially evident in Proverbs 8: 23-25, where “wisdom” is personified and said to have been “set up from everlasting [ʿôlām], from the beginning, or ever the earth was”. Obviously, this can’t mean “eternal” as you want to make it to mean, or how else could wisdom be “set up” and “brought forth” if it is eternal? Here are the verses: “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth”. (Proverbs 8:22–25) Joseph Smith and other LDS leaders taught there were Gods before (above) the God of Earth. Let me know which of the following 12 teachings are false and leading people astray and/or have another intended meaning: You posted the exact same list of quotes last time. So, if you are going to just repeat yourself without engaging in how I responded to what you said before, then I will just repeat myself. You are just making it easy for me to respond to your posts with cut and paste or by referring to prior posts. In this case, see my last post on this from 08/23/2026. And Joseph Smith never taught that there were “Gods before (above) the God of Earth”, as you claim. See my post on 05/26/2025 for complete details, and other comments below. I’ll add one thing that I didn’t say in my last post: I don’t think you are even reading my responses. I say this because you’ve already been called out on your misrepresentation of the quote from the article by the BYU Physics professor in the April 1971 New Era article by attributing the source to Brigham Young (see my post on 07/12/2026 and 05/26/2025 where I discussed that article extensively). But you continue to post it as if it was a quote from Brigham Young. I don’t think you are that dishonest (at least I hope you’re not), so I’ll assume you simply haven’t read what I said before and are unknowingly misrepresenting the quote. But if you keep posting it as a quote from Brigham Young from the Journal of Discourses, I’m sure there’s a board rule somewhere related to the continued posting of a misrepresentation after having been corrected. I am not aware of better LDS sources today which show that the 12 teachings I provided above are false LDS teachings. If you have these better sources, then let me know. By better sources, I mean we have access to the original notes from the only primary source (Thomas Bullock) who was present during that specific sermon of Joseph Smith, and those original notes can be found on the Joseph Smith Papers website. And we can compare those notes to what was published and see what was interpolated from those notes, and we can see where Thomas Bullock may have gotten some things wrong (like the contradiction to the quote from the Book of Abraham). And you do? This is pretty funny, because the early Christians certainly had a different understanding of what the Bible means when it says Jesus is the firstborn than you do. How do you know your interpretation is the correct one? How do you know the early Christians didn’t get it right? You really don’t know, you can’t know, can you? How can you tell? As is the shotgun approach diversion tactic, where the critic attempts to deflect and divert the topic off into a myriad of other red-herring topics by copying and pasting quotes from early LDS leaders on a variety of subjects. I’m not going to entertain that diversion. And isn’t it ironic that you keep trying to divert people away from what the Biblical characters wrote, away from where Paul taught that we are all the same kind of being as God in Acts 17:28-29? There’s a good reason that I have said that the doctrines and teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are more in harmony with the Bible than any other religion on the planet. Regarding digging up obscure quotes from past LDS leaders: People say all kinds of things, sometimes officially, but most often unofficially. But who cares? And we must be even more cautious when the information doesn’t come from firsthand sources, or if the notes are recalled from memory decades after the time and place of the original setting. For example, we need to take into consideration the fact that Oliver B. Huntington was an 11 year old boy in 1837 and never wrote down what he said he overhead Joseph Smith saying until he remembered it over 44 years later, and he is the only source for what he said he remembered. Those kinds of details are important when weighing the accuracy of anything. Right, like the biblical teaching that we are all the génos of God can’t really mean that we are the same “kind” of being that God is, so you need to change that to say we are merely created by God. I'll just focus on one. You quibble too much about whether one considers it a doctrine. Let's focus on whether it's true or false. This teaching of Joseph Smith leads no doubt as to what he intended to mean. There is no ambiguity. "If Abraham reasoned thus—If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and John discovered that God the Father of Jesus Christ had a Father, you may suppose that He had a Father also. Where was there ever a son without a father? And where was there ever a father without first being a son? Whenever did a tree or anything spring into existence without a progenitor? And everything comes in this way. Paul says that which is earthly is in the likeness of that which is heavenly, Hence if Jesus had a Father, can we not believe that He had a Father also? I despise the idea of being scared to death at such a doctrine, for the Bible is full of it" (Teachings of Joseph Smith, 1938). One thing that you continually fail to understand is that when Joseph Smith said that God had a “father”, it is not the same as your claim that there were “Gods before (above) the God of Earth”. Your failure to understand this point is clear from some of the quotes you posted that you tried to claim were saying God has a God above him. And I already provided a full analysis of the quote above and provided commentary in extensive detail in my post on 05/26/2025, which you either ignore or have never read. READ what I posted already before making accusations about my motives and emotions. Saying that God had a father is not the same as saying that God has a God above him, because he would have had an earthly father when he dwelt on an earth, just like Joseph Smith was teaching. I’ll quote from one portion of that post so you can find it easily if and when you go to read it. Part of what I said is this: “I see from Thomas Bullock’s notes of that sermon that the discussion of God the Father having a father was in the context of God the Father’s mortal experience on an earth. His notes show that the statements about God the Father having a “father” are immediately followed by “I want you to pay particular attention to what I am saying. Jesus said that the Father wrought precisely in the same way as His Father had done before Him”. In other words, Bullock’s notes indicate that God the Father’s “father” would have been either his earthly father when he was born into mortality, or that God the Father (as the head of all other Gods) would have appointed some other God to produce him in the same way that Jesus came into mortality. But Bullock also seems to have repeated himself in part of those notes, so it’s hard to tell if Joseph Smith was restating something for emphasis, or if Bullock recorded it incorrectly, or if he did get it correct we need further information and context to draw any conclusions with certainty.” In other words, Joseph Smith was not teaching that God the Father has a God above or before him, and he was consistent in teaching that God the Father was the “head God”, the most high God. Powers can be angelic beings with power. I’m sure you can imagine the “powers” to be anything you want them to be to fit your desired dogma. But what is more important is what the Biblical writer (Paul) said they are in Titus 3:1. He didn’t say anything about angelic beings with power, and he certainly wasn’t referring to Satan (which is what you claimed he was saying). The Bible does not say that Jesus created Satan, period. God foreknew Adam and Eve would sin and bring death into the world. The fall has had severe consequences for mankind and the rest of creation. And the fall was caused by Jesus, according to you, since you believe Jesus created Satan from nothing, and Satan caused the fall. Cause and effect. But you believe Jesus created Satan from nothing. Did Jesus know that Satan would become evil when Jesus created him from nothing? Since Jesus created Satan from nothing, could Jesus have created him to be something other than what he became? Did Jesus make a mistake when he created Satan? It still results in Jesus as the source of all evil when he created Satan from nothing. What a huge mistake. This is why the Bible doesn’t say that Jesus created Satan, because he didn’t. So why believe it?