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I don’t believe it is selfish to want to say goodbye or want to be able to take one’s time and make more memories to hold on to…and if he is still able to give you meaningful answers, that’s not unselfish either to want to get some resolution or family history or just complete the picture of your dad, filling in the gaps that might be left that you weren’t aware of because it takes you experiencing life to realize you don’t know something or whatever those questions are about. It sounds like you have thought about it carefully and it’s not just an emotional refusal to accept their new reality as can happen when death approaches even when one wants what’s best for our loved ones. I hope and pray that you get your time and answers that you need. I would have loved that for myself.

As I type this, OpenAI is rolling out their latest/greatest model, Astra 6. It is hyped as being especially good at complex, multi-step problem solving. As a demo and FWIF: Prompt I want to design a policy governing access to publicly accessible, multi-user restrooms that minimizes harm to biological women and girls and protects their safety, privacy, dignity, and practical ability to use those facilities. Treat “women and girls” in that objective as biological females, so the analysis does not obtain its answer by silently expanding the defined population. Evaluate effects on transgender people, intersex people, caregivers, parents, businesses, employees, law enforcement, and other restroom users separately, because harms to those stakeholders still matter when evaluating the policy’s overall consequences. Compare at least these alternatives: 1. Access determined by sex assigned or recorded at birth. 2. Access determined by sincere gender identity. 3. Access determined primarily by gender presentation and ordinary social judgment. 4. A conduct-based or hybrid rule. 5. Continued informal discretion under existing laws against harassment, voyeurism, exposure, assault, and disorderly conduct. Consider foreseeable benefits and harms under each policy, including crime, harassment, unwanted exposure, subjective discomfort, mistaken challenges, compelled placement of masculine-presenting transgender men in women’s restrooms, bad-faith claims, enforcement errors, bathroom avoidance, vigilantism, administrative costs, lawsuits, and effects on social norms. Do not assume that the presence of a transgender woman is inherently harmful. Do not assume that objections to her presence are inherently irrational or big prejud. Distinguish discomfort from violations of privacy, and both from physical danger. Account for the frequency and severity of each outcome rather than relying on isolated anecdotes or theoretically possible abuses. Limit the primary analysis to ordinary public restrooms. Do not assume that the same rule must govern locker rooms, communal showers, competitive sports, shelters, or prisons. Discuss separately whether the restroom policy would create legal precedents affecting those settings. Use the best available empirical evidence, identify its limitations, and distinguish demonstrated effects from predictions and value judgments. Explain how bad-faith cases would be handled and who would have enforcement authority. State what evidence would cause you to choose a different policy. Define what you mean by “optimal,” then recommend the policy most likely to produce the best overall results, giving particular attention to its effects on biological women and girls. Steelman the strongest objection to your recommendation before answering it. Astra I recommend a hybrid policy for ordinary public restrooms: retain women’s and men’s facilities, permit access consistent with sincere gender identity, strengthen bodily privacy, and give staff clear authority to address threatening or intrusive conduct. Provide private facilities wherever reasonably feasible. This is a provisional judgment about expected consequences. Existing evidence does not establish that this policy uniquely minimizes harm to biological females. It also does not establish that birth-sex restrictions improve their safety enough to offset those restrictions’ foreseeable harms. “Optimal” means the feasible policy with the lowest expected harm, giving particular priority to biological females’ safety, privacy, dignity, and practical access while explicitly considering everyone else. Frequency, severity, duration, enforcement errors, and costs all matter. Assault, repeated intimidation, intrusive questioning, and momentary discomfort should not receive equal weight. Biological females remain the defined population. That includes transgender men and female nonbinary people, whose outcomes should also be reported separately. Transgender women’s outcomes belong in the other-stakeholder assessment. Overlapping categories should not produce double-counting. If exclusively female occupancy is an overriding requirement, birth-sex eligibility follows more directly. But that stipulates sex exclusivity as the objective rather than demonstrating that it best minimizes harm. The most directly relevant published study compared Massachusetts localities with and without gender-identity-inclusive public-accommodation laws. Using police reports involving assault, sex crimes, and voyeurism in restrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms, it found no statistically significant increase associated with those laws. Hasenbush, Flores, and Herman That finding is informative but limited. Police records miss unreported incidents and most discomfort or avoidance. Rare events limit statistical power. The study combined facility types, did not comprehensively measure female-specific outcomes, and examined legal changes that might not substantially change actual usage. Its observational design also limits causal inference. “No detected increase” does not mean zero additional risk. A 2025 Williams Institute review reports another analysis finding no increase in stranger violence following inclusive laws. However, the cited manuscript was unpublished, and its outcome was broader victimization, not specifically violence against females in restrooms. The review also documents transgender respondents’ reports of harassment, denied access, and bathroom avoidance. Those surveys establish relevant experiences but cannot isolate a law’s causal effects. Review A frequently cited school study associated restroom/locker-room restrictions with sexual assault among some transgender youth groups. It was cross-sectional, and assaults were not necessarily in restrooms. It does not prove that restrictions caused restroom assaults. Murchison and colleagues The central evidence gap is reliable comparison of biological females’ total experience under competing policies: victimization, exposure, mistaken challenges, discomfort, avoidance, and practical access. The five alternatives have different strengths and weaknesses. First, birth-sex eligibility preserves a female-only entitlement, reassures users who value sex separation, and permits intervention against an ineligible entrant before misconduct. However, it directs transgender men into women’s facilities unless alternatives exist. Enforcement based on appearance can target masculine females. Documentary verification creates practical burdens, while bodily verification would itself threaten privacy. Light enforcement relies heavily on appearance and honesty; intensive enforcement increases costs and mistakes. Second, sincere-gender-identity eligibility avoids directing transgender men into women’s rooms and accommodates transgender women’s ordinary use. Its weaknesses are unverifiable sincerity, dishonest claims, and some females’ discomfort or loss of confidence in sex exclusivity. It is an access principle, not a complete safety policy. Third, presentation and ordinary social judgment often permit unobtrusive use without formal verification. But as an official rule, this makes eligibility depend on stereotypes, “passing,” and the observer. It burdens masculine females and visibly transgender people while remaining vulnerable to convincing disguises. Fourth, a conduct-based hybrid targets threatening behavior and privacy intrusions while reducing identity investigations. Its weaknesses are concealed harmful intentions, inconsistent staff judgment, implementation costs, and unmet preferences for female-only occupancy. Fifth, continued informal discretion under existing laws offers flexibility and low transition costs. Where it works well, sweeping legislation may be unnecessary. However, unclear standards can produce arbitrary exclusion, neglected complaints, and uncertainty about preventive intervention. These comparisons are mostly operational predictions, not measured effect sizes. Each alternative should receive the same feasible privacy improvements and resources; otherwise, architecture gets confused with eligibility. Physical danger, bodily privacy, and discomfort must remain distinct. Assault and confinement concern danger. Peering, recording, and unwanted exposure concern bodily privacy. Unease can exist without either, but persistent distress causing bathroom avoidance is a consequential access problem. An interest in sex-exclusive space also deserves recognition. It may reflect modesty, religion, trauma, or a preference for female association. It is neither proof of danger nor inherently irrational. My value judgment is that it warrants meaningful accommodation without automatically overriding another person’s ordinary restroom access. Private facilities address much of this concern, though they do not reproduce female-only shared space. The recommended policy would operate as follows. Retain women’s and men’s designations and permit sincere identity-based access without medical treatment, prescribed clothing, or documentary proof. Clearly communicate eligibility, including a usable option for nonbinary people. Require working locks, effective stall screening, discreet menstrual-product disposal, and prompt repairs. Improve enclosure during renovations and provide accessible private facilities where feasible. Preserve capacity so improvements do not worsen women’s queues. Prohibit filming other users, peering into stalls, deliberate intrusive exposure, sexual harassment, threats, blocked exits, and unauthorized entry into occupied stalls. Accommodate legitimate assistance, disability-related needs, and ordinary bodily functions. Staff should act on specific observations or credible reports before injury occurs. Repeated attempts to look through a stall gap or following a particular child can justify intervention without waiting for assault. Appearance or transgender status alone should not. Permit necessary accompaniment by parents and caregivers, plus emergency and maintenance access. A private family facility is preferable when available, but its absence must not make essential assistance impossible. Anyone may report concerns and receive respectful assistance. A sincere complaint is not harassment. Patrons should not interrogate strangers, demand documents, photograph them, or obstruct them. Managers handle ordinary complaints and substantiated violations; security assists when necessary; police handle suspected crimes or immediate danger. Disputed exclusions should receive review. Authority must operate within applicable law. Identity supplies neither proof of safety nor immunity. A person credibly shown to be making a dishonest claim solely to bypass eligibility can be redirected. Massachusetts guidance illustrates that inclusive access can include an improper-purpose limitation. Guidance Nevertheless, a quiet liar displaying no concerning conduct may gain access. That is a real vulnerability. Presentation rules likewise admit convincing disguises, while birth-sex rules reduce this vulnerability only insofar as verification occurs. Stakeholder effects require separate accounting. Females gain better bodily privacy and fewer appearance-based challenges, but some lose confidence or avoid facilities. Girls and trauma survivors may particularly need private options. Transgender people gain usable access. Intersex people avoid public adjudication of anatomy or records. Caregivers gain clear assistance rules. Businesses bear training and renovation costs. Employees gain clearer standards, while police focus on conduct. Effects on other users, including displacement into men’s facilities, also matter. Social norms may change in either direction. Inclusive rules may normalize unobtrusive transgender use or weaken confidence in sex boundaries. Restrictive rules may reinforce boundaries or encourage surveillance of unfamiliar-looking women. These remain predictions. This recommendation does not determine policy for showers, locker rooms, sports, shelters, or prisons. Those involve different exposure, fairness, residential vulnerability, or confinement concerns. Legal spillover is possible but not automatic. A facility policy generally creates no judicial precedent; statutes and rulings can have broader implications. Bostock expressly reserved bathroom and locker-room questions. Narrow statutory scope and context-specific reasoning reduce spillover without preventing future litigation. Opinion The strongest objection is that female-only access supplies a preventive safeguard. Inclusive eligibility weakens that boundary, admits dishonest claims, and asks females to identify threatening conduct after entry. Small studies cannot establish that this trade is safe. That objection is substantial. The answer is that a boundary must be evaluated through actual enforcement. Birth-sex rules admit masculine-presenting transgender men, need assistance exceptions, and can expose females to intrusive scrutiny. The decisive question is how much additional protection they deliver relative to their consequences. Current evidence does not establish that balance in their favor. I would change the recommendation if credible comparative evidence showed that restrictions materially reduced serious harm to females after accounting for enforcement mistakes, avoidance, displacement, and costs. Substantial female avoidance despite privacy improvements, recurring exploitation of identity claims, or demonstrably effective and minimally intrusive verification would also warrant reconsideration. Evaluation should combine confidential surveys and incident records, separating discomfort, privacy violations, threats, assaults, denied access, queues, and costs. Serious incidents warrant immediate investigation and targeted correction; general policy changes should follow evidence about preventable mechanisms and comparative risk.

For the record: A: Toileting is a biological function we all must perform regularly. Locker rooms are used for planned activities that are not biologically necessary and often involve changing clothes or communal nudity. Sports are organized competitions with their own safety and fairness considerations. Prisons involve involuntary confinement by the state and require individualized security assessments. Those factual differences justify different legal rules. Different statutes apply, different governmental interests are involved, and courts decide the particular dispute before them. I am proposing that gender identity matter when deciding which public restroom someone should use. I am not asserting that gender identity replaces biological sex for every legal purpose. No legal principle requires a restroom rule to travel automatically to sports, prisons, or locker rooms. A: My proposal concerns ordinary public restrooms, not every facility designated for women. People should ordinarily use the restroom most appropriate to their identity, presentation, and circumstances, with the individual making that decision. Someone may be removed for voyeurism, harassment, lewd conduct, threats, or other behavior that would justify removing anyone else. Facility staff, security, or law enforcement may intervene based on credible evidence of such conduct. Mere suspicion about someone’s biological sex would not be enough. Yes, that line leaves room for judgment. That is intentional because people and circumstances vary. Calm and other women have explained that they do not want masculine-presenting transgender men required to use the women’s restroom. I am listening to them. Our disagreement is that you want the state to impose a universal biological-sex rule, while I think ordinary discretion and conduct-based laws usually produce better results. A: Sincere self-identification is a limiting principle. It excludes biological males who do not sincerely identify as women, including men who invoke gender identity merely as a pretext. I agree that under my proposal, a women’s restroom would not be exclusively limited to biological females. But that does not mean women’s restrooms cease to exist. They remain designated for women, and ordinary men remain excluded. You are treating any exception to biological-sex exclusivity as the eradication of the category itself. That conclusion does not follow. In practice, nearly everyone would make the same restroom choice under either rule. Most transgender people also try to avoid confrontation and use the facility where they attract the least attention. Your argument treats the possible harm from allowing transgender women to use public toilets as decisive while disregarding the harm caused by legally requiring masculine-presenting transgender men to enter women’s restrooms where they generally are neither expected nor wanted. Both consequences belong in the comparison. A: The premise of the question is disputed. You have identified possible effects, but you have not established that all of them follow from my restroom proposal. Employers should not discipline women merely for expressing a good-faith privacy concern or requesting an accommodation. They may discipline employees for harassment or for refusing to follow lawful workplace policies. Whether a particular disciplinary action is justified depends on what the employee did, not simply on the existence of a gender-identity access rule. My proposal does change the access line for public restrooms: biological sex would not be the sole criterion. It does not make biological sex unusable or abolish it as a category. Sex can remain relevant in medicine, sports, prisons, and other settings where different interests are involved. I do not support automatically applying the same rule to sports or prisons. Sports raise questions of competitive fairness and physical safety. Prisons require individualized decisions about safety, vulnerability, security, and confinement. Federal prison regulations already use case-by-case assessments rather than gender identity alone. Any actual adverse consequences count. So do the harms caused by your rule, including compelled mismatches, public scrutiny, mistaken challenges, and bathroom avoidance. The question is not whether consequences count. The question is which policy produces less total harm. A: Reported crime is not the only interest that matters, and I have never said it was. It matters because safety is repeatedly offered as a justification for a new coercive law. If the law is supposed to prevent a safety problem, asking for evidence that the problem exists is entirely appropriate. I also care about privacy, dignity, and comfort, including those of biological women and girls. That is why I oppose a law that requires masculine-presenting transgender men to use women’s restrooms and encourages people to scrutinize women who do not look sufficiently feminine. Privacy includes being left alone while using a toilet. I discard none of these interests. I disagree with your assumption that they can be protected only by categorically excluding every biological male. My proposal asks which rule protects privacy, dignity, and safety better in actual public restrooms, after counting the harms caused by both policies. A: It doesn’t answer Questions 1–5 by itself, and I have never claimed that it does. It addresses one important empirical issue: whether gender-identity access laws are associated with increased reported assaults, sex crimes, or voyeurism in restrooms and similar facilities. The study found that such incidents were rare and did not significantly increase after the laws were adopted. That does not prove that no incident ever occurred, measure every form of discomfort, decide sports or prison policy, or supply a complete legal rule. It does, however, bear directly on your repeated predictions that gender-identity access creates serious safety and privacy harms. Those predictions are factual claims, and the available evidence does not support them. The study is one part of the analysis, not an answer to every question. A: I am willing to set aside accusations about you personally and address the substance of your arguments. I will not promise never to describe an argument, policy, or pattern of conduct as bigoted if I believe that description is relevant and can explain why. But I agree that the label should not substitute for evidence or reasoning, and I will not use it that way.

I was in work getting ready for a shift change over. Being in the UK, made it after midday when it was happening. Myself and colleagues turned on a small TV as the news was coming through.

Prayers said for Ray

OOOPS! I fixed it.

Because I believe he has more fight, this is so sudden. The siblings are planning pilgrimages. They need time. Not have him go while it's just me here. I have my own affairs to wrap up soon this year before he goes anywhere. I seek a new stable plateau, which is entirely possible with a little luck and good fortune. A little hard to explain, but like the 100 questions I wanted to ask my mom before she passed. God gave me that and a year longer than doctors said. Selfish? Maybe, but I think they'd still have wanted that.

Prayers for Ray, dad of Pyreaux. And prayers for Pyreaux, son of Ray. And when the times comes, consolation for all loved ones of Ray.

Is there a reason why you want it delayed or are you just not ready yet to let go (a valid reason and I am not telling you praying for this is wrong, but as someone who has an excellent chance of facing dementia and having seen my mother and grandmother experience it, my belief for me and my family is sooner is better).

It was a Tuesday morning and I was with a co-worker in a car travelling from Phoenix to a client's office in California (near the Arizona / California border). I don't recall if we first heard the news on the car radio or if someone called us on a cell phone, but it was fortunate that we were travelling by car and not by plane that day. It was hard to work with the client that day because everyone was distracted by the news, and it was eerie to see no air traffic in the sky on the drive back home.

Will do.

My dad Ray has dementia and had an asphyxiation incident (the state or process of being deprived of oxygen), as well as recent bowel troubles. I'm hoping he doesn't pass tonight, or tomorrow or this weekend. I believe in the prayers of many, it has worked all my life. Priesthood blessings, not so much. Prayer circles, many times. So, I have plenty of faith in it. Thanks, in advance.

September 11, 2001, my sister barges in my room to exclaim "A plane just hit the world trade center!", but its nearly the tone where she's known to keep me from sleeping in by falsely exclaiming in a non-serious tone, "Wake up, the house is on fire!". So, all I thought was, "That's a random thing to say". I go down stairs, the news people are still assuming it was some accident, so they were filming it live, so we saw the second plane hit. And that is when the news people 180° and were fairly certain it wasn't an accident. It's about time I started watching news, then realizing CNN was only 2 hours of news on loop... It made it really easy to remember my sister's birthday

I wasn’t even a twinkle in my grandfather’s eye, I am guessing. 😛

Where was I? Well, you might guess it. I was in the Sarasota, FL LDS Family History Center on S. Beneva, doing research on some long-forgotten aspect of LDS history. I was sitting, working on the computers, when the ladies turned on the televisions in the center. You may not remember that on the same morning, President Bush was also in Sarasota, reading to the children at Emma Booker Elementary. My wife was teaching her gifted kids at a different school in town. I remember well how they shut down almost all of northern Sarasota to get the president safely to his plane at the airport. It was a chilling morning; I shared with new LDS friends, putting aside our mutual interest in LDS history and focusing on the history that was unfolding in front of us. The impact on Sarasota was significant. It was one of a thousand mornings I have probably spent in LDS history centers, but it most likely was the most memorable one for me. best, Navidad.

I put up a short post but thought I could share a little more about Utah in particular. Here is a breakdown of water inputs and outputs. While that is a lot of water to donate it a minor hedge. The biggest loss of water is just the lake evaporating and there is not that much that can be done about it. I heard there were ideas to try to shade portions of the lake with solar panels or something similar but it is just not viable. Putting metal things and human construction in general near really briny water destroys the thing pretty quickly. Short of arresting climate change not much can be done. The other big drain is agriculture and the biggest water consumer is alfalfa. We should probably grow a LOT less of that. It needs a lot of water and is primarily used for livestock and not human consumption. Alfalfa growth to human calories consumed it is very inefficient. All the consumer level water conservation of replacing lawns and the like won’t move the needle. The biggest move that can be made is cutting back on the alfalfa growing which would of course mean a bunch of alfalfa millionaires (probably including the Church) would fight tooth and nail against it. Also the statement saying the only thing we can do is hope for more rain is defeatist and silly. As the Great Lake dries up there will be less rain. Hoping for a miracle or a short term rainfall of extra rain isn’t sustainable. I also really don’t know how you write a piece like that without mentioning climate change unless you deliberately are trying not to mention it.

It will be interesting what they do with odos (way). Christ says He is the road, the path. In the New Testament, its most common meaning is a road or path. Now that is a means to a destination, so it is easy to understand it metaphorically, as are both other words. Just for me, their discussion was a bit too literal an interpretation of aletheia. It is like looking for a door on a heart. Christ says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. It obviously necessitates a metaphorical interpretation, as do the terms in John 14:6. Best, Navidad . . . . oh and no, I am not literally Christmas!

The whole Southwest is in trouble. Lake Powell is approaching critical levels and it is likely to come down to either keeping Lake Mead or Lake Powell viable and it will almost certainly be Lake Mead that survives for a while. We need to cut water use in all of the southwestern states but everyone largely accepts the need to do that as long as it has no impact on them specifically. It is political suicide to try to make the harsh cuts needed to arrest the problem so the can keeps getting kicked down the road.

They did another podcast on how Jesus is the Way and then a third on how Jesus is the Light. I need to go and listen to those as well to see how they attempt to take a more literal look at those parts of that famous verse.

Perhaps I have assumed too much. I have been working on avoiding such accusations. I have apparently failed. I think the endless accusations of "Bigot!" from folks like you and SU are not so much offensive (they've long since lost whatever rhetorical potency they may have had) as they are - to me - indicative of you following some sort of informal advocacy playbook (present men in women's spaces as something naturally correct, refuse to identify any limiting principles, refuse to address adverse consequences for women and girls, refuse to address - or even outright deny - the foreseeable legal and social consequences of the proposal (including the eradication of sex-segregated spaces), etc.). Hence the inference that your comments in this thread have intentionally been aligned with what I see as motte-and-bailey tactics which I have been observing for years. I think "subversive" intent is perhaps the more accurate term. I am willing to grant that advocates of this approach sincerely think of themselves as being on the side of the angels. As George R.R. Martin has observed: “Nobody is a villain in their own story. We're all the heroes of our own stories.” Having observed legal and social developments along these lines for many years (and presupposing that others, such as yourself, have done likewise), I have concluded that the motte-and-bailey strategy is precisely what is going on in some circles of of trans advocacy groups and individuals. The strategy and tactics and terminology, together with the obfuscations and evasions and failure/refusal to identify any limiting principles and near-total disregard for the interests of women and girls (for whom these spaces have always been intended), have materially contributed to this conclusion. I admit that it's my personal view, but it seems warranted, both because of some public statements from trans advocates and because the near total failure/refusal to address the foreseeable consequences of this proposal (which is generally presented as a demand, not a request) more or less compels such an inference. As to public statements, see this article by GLAAD (under the header "Legislation") : Fact Sheet: Misleading Narratives About Transgender People and Restrooms, Locker Rooms, and Other Single-Sex Spaces This fact sheet on “restrooms, locker rooms, and other single-sex spaces” puts toilets in the same paragraph as sports restrictions, identity documents, and prison placement. It quotes the ACLU: transgender people should be allowed to “use facilities and participate in activities that match who they are,” and that this is “legally required by statutory and constitutional bans on sex discrimination.” That is a central principle covering facilities and activities. The article does not even bother to articulate a justification for males going into these spaces, and instead treats such entry as axiomatic, as a foregone conclusion, and any opposition to such entry as outrageous and beyond the pale. No treatment at all of the rights of women and girls to sex-segregated spaces. The ACLU’s long-published know-your-rights materials had already treated school restrooms, locker rooms, and sports eligibility as the same Title IX/gender-identity package, and said gender-neutral toilets are not an adequate substitute for using the facility that matches identity. To some extent, my conclusion about the motte-and-bailey tactic may be outdated. The Obama Administration's 2016 "Dear Colleague" letter shows that this strategy has been in place for at least the last ten years (thus making it less secretive than it is, but also demonstrating how profoundly subversive it is). It is the cleanest official statement of the theory: a student’s “gender identity” is the student’s “sex” for school facilities. Once that reading is accepted, locker rooms follow bathrooms; sports follow locker rooms unless a separate carve-out is written. That letter shows that the the interlinking of these topics - bathrooms, locker rooms, sports, prisons - was policy, and was no longer a hidden strategy. From the above link: The entire article is worth a read, particularly the section titled "The Quiet Revolution." After tracing how “gender identity” got into medicine, law, administration, statistics, and schools, the author names what those changes added up to. In a short span, institutions installed a new “principle of vision and division” of social life. Gender identity began to compete with, redefine, or displace sex. Because sex is among the most basic organizing categories there are, that is a large change. It happened with almost no public fight and little public notice until about 2015. That combination — structural change plus low visibility — is why he calls it a quiet revolution The strategy was intentionally quiet and subversive from the get. The author analogizes it to John Skrentny’s “minority rights revolution”: rights expanded less through mass protest than through insiders — agencies, courts, professional bodies, HR offices — reinterpreting old statutes and stacking small rules. Change was incremental, cross-referencing, and often shielded from voters. “Institutional leapfrogging” and a “politics of alignment” let each domain treat the last domain’s policy as settled fact. Fortune 500 nondiscrimination clauses, medical guidelines, data categories, and school policies cited one another. The 2016 Title IX Dear Colleague letter, telling schools that "identity" is "sex" for the purposes of access to women's facilities, became the public capstone of that private process, not its start. While the category was treated as a private, self-regarding fact, almost no one objected. Once it became actionable — something a child or adult could use to demand medical transition or entry to sex-separated spaces and sports — other people’s interests came into view: women’s privacy and safety, athletes’ fairness, parents’ concern about irreversible treatment. That is when the quiet phase ended and the loud one began. The revolution, then, was not a conspiracy so much as a category that outgrew the niches in which it had been planted. The above article (published in 2025) is, I admit, not fully congruent with my surmise. The author's articulation about the mechanism is different from mine: first, the category was institutionalized without a public mandate; second, the controversy arrived late, when the category started reallocating other people’s spaces, sports, and children’s medical care. However, my conclusion is, I think, also plausible. The pre-2015 path was quieter than a civil-rights march: guidance letters, settlement agreements, Fortune 500 alignment, medical SOC updates. This is all documented. After the "Dear Colleague" letter, state bills, Gloucester, sports cases, and European medical reversals, the public cost of the explicit claim rose. Some institutions responded by softening slogans (“inclusion,” “best practice,” “case by case”) while keeping identity-as-sex in handbooks. This progression looks like tactical quiet after exposure (IOW, motte-and-bailey). The article's author would more likely call it the old embedding machine still running in places the election does not reach. The movement, as a whole, saw the national and local backlash, decided a return to the quietly subversive motte-and-bailey approach was a better national strategy. As to the foreseeability aspect of all this, it has been - for me - one of the more potent indicators of subversive intent. The social and legal ramifications of the overall proposal, particularly the cross-pollenization (policy on bathrooms affects policy on locker rooms, sports, etc. and vice versa) and the eradication of sex-segregated spaces and the problematic impositions on the rights of women and girls, have been obvious for years, and yet the proposal's advocates pretty much always ignore them. Refuse to acknowledge them in any way. Act as if they don't exist. Act as if the proposal is axiomatically correct and justified. Accuse anyone who raises concerns about these consequences of bigotry. And so on. Sound pretty familiar. Sounds like what has been going on in this thread. Right down to the various and repeated accusations of "bigotry" ("I can’t help but wonder whether the real problem is them and involves something that rhymes with spigotry"). Present a "proposal" that is facially controversial and subversive ("Women's bathrooms should be open to men who 'identify' as women"), and act as if it is not, and that it is instead the moral and right thing to do. Ipso facto, anyone who disagrees with it is a bigot. Refuse to identify any limiting principles. Both because broadly-accepted tenets of trans ideology categorically reject any such limitations, and because any such limitations will almost immediately expose the real-world adverse ramifications of what is being presented as innocuous and harmless to everyone (except "bigots" - that is, anyone who questions or disagrees with the proposal). Refuse to address the foreseeable consequences. The eradication of sex-segregated spaces. The massive impositions on women and girls, the very people for whom such spaces were created. The avalanche of lawsuits and necessary upheavals to and profound reordering of workplaces, public spaces, schools, physical facilities, religious organizations and properties, and so on. These things just don't exist. They don't matter. They need not be addressed. And anyone who raises them as a worthwhile point of debate is a bigot. Endless "We must get on the right side of history" and "Hey, what we're proposing is totally unobjectionable, obviously correct, just a manifestation of 'ordinary grace, and who could not want that?'"-style posturing that presupposes the legitimacy and value of the very issues being debated. And, of course, anyone who does not toe that line or disagrees with it is a bigot. FWIW, I think you and yours should consider setting aside the "Bigot!" schtick. It's not a show of strength or moral superiority and virtue. Instead, it comes across as desperate and contrived and ad hoc, particularly when its rolled out during substantive discussions such as what we have been attempting here. It comes across as "Well, we aren't winning on substance and reasoning, so let's pull the 'Bigot!' card and see if we can distract from or shut down the conversation, and/or silence the people disagreeing with us." On this point I am reminded of Out of the Half-Light, which was episode 11 of season 1 of Law & Order. From IMDB: See also here: Eaton protests that his actions were not about his own political agenda but about bringing the fact of racist police officers and the injustices of the criminal justice system regarding African Americans to national public prominence. The confrontation ends with this exchange: Here's the clip on YouTube: This is more or less how I view trans advocates who throw what they must know will be molotov cocktails into society ("Hey, let's give men the legal right to enter into women's bathrooms, locker rooms, sports, prisons, etc."), act as if the proposal is innocuous, refuse to articulate any limiting principles, ignore the foreseeable adverse effects and profound societal ramifications and impositions, and distract from or shut down any contrary voices by labeling them as "bigots." Not only is this stuff corrosive to the fabric of society and public discourse, it is counterproductive. You and yours should, by now, be at "the hearts and minds stage" now. I have some further thoughts on why we don't see much of that (pronouncements about one's own position as exhibiting "ordinary grace" come across as rather hollow when, in the end, that same position is defended by endless "Bigot!" ad hominems), but that can be a discussion for another day. As a non-activist, and as an "on the outside looking in"-type observer of the trans advocacy movement, and having observed this stuff or some years now, here is what I think: The movement is built on a sense of profoundly unearned moral certainty, on the absolute conviction that its advocates are completely right, despite having done none of the intellectual or ethical heavy lifting required to actually understand the issue. I say this because the idea of putting men into women's spaces is radical and subversive, but they treat it as normative and innocuous. As if those objecting to or even expressing concerns about it are obviously and axiomatically out of bounds. I say this because these advocates will not or cannot answer entirely legitimate questions about proposals such as this. I say this because there are no limiting principles, and because advocates will not acknowledge that there are no limiting principles. Motte-and-bailey all over the place. I say this because the movement's go-to response before, during and after any discussion with someone who disagrees with them is "Bigot!" Not just that. A smart guy who nevertheless refuses to articulate any limiting principles, who insists that “It isn’t happening, so we don’t need a rule,” but then refuses to articulate what the "rule" is or should be (that is, who is and is not excluded from women's spaces under your proposal). A smart guy who refuses to acknowledge that his proposal results in de facto and/or de jure eradication of sex-segregated spaces. A smart guy who nevertheless declares obvious cross-application of his "proposal" to women's locker rooms, sports and prisons does not exist, and that these are entirely "separate issues." A smart guy who acts as if his radical proposal is innocuous, and who refuses to address - or even acknowledge the existence of - foreseeable and profound and adverse effects on the rights of women and girls, for whom sex-segregated spaces were created, and also on workplaces, public spaces, schools, physical facilities, religious organizations and properties, and so on. A smart guy who regularly utilizes ad hominem slurs to distract from or delegitimize or silence viewpoints which differ from his (e.g., "I can’t help but wonder whether the real problem is them and involves something that rhymes with spigotry"). A smart guy who refuses to acknowledge that there is considerably more at stake, relative to the interests of women and girls, than just "safety" (either that or explain why there is nothing else at stake). It's your smarts and your actions/inactions in this thread that have created the basis for my assessment. No, your comments in this thread are evidence of what I see as a calculated motte-and-bailey strategy. I may be wrong. I had assumed your proposal was a studied and carefully formulated thing, rather than an off-the-cuff, throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks idea. The questions I have been presenting for weeks now are not obscure nitpicks. They are what any lawyer or judge or legislator or what-have-you would ask about the potential consequences of enacting your proposal. I have been asking you to address these real-world ramifications, and you aren't obliging. It's dodge after dodge, peppered with "Bigot!" I had chalked that up to calculated strategy, but perhaps you simply have not given the matter as much thought as it deserves. Again, we all know you're a smart guy, so I don't know how else to account for the various and extensive and substantial deficiencies in your defense of your own proposal. Simple: Answer my questions. Stop evading and ignoring. Stop changing the subject and answering questions I haven't asked. Stop calling me a bigot for raising these questions. I'd like to see more than "those are 'separate issues.'" That needs to be demonstrated, not just asserted. I'd also like to see you either A) articulate particularized limiting principles which apply to your proposal, or B) admit that there are no such limiting principles. As it is, you are doing neither. I'd also like to see you acknowledge the foreseeable consequences of your proposal, including either A) a clear acknowledgment that your proposal necessarily results in the eradication of sex-segregated spaces, or B) a reasoned explanation as to how such spaces can be maintained when you refuse to articulate any meaningful limiting principles as to who can and cannot enter those spaces. I would also like to see you address at least some of the legal repercussions of your proposal (see, e.g., here), or else explain how you think these repercussions will not happen, or that if they do happen they do not matter (to women and girls, to society in general, etc.). I'd also like to see you acknowledge that there is considerably more at stake, relative to women and girls (again, the exact group of persons for whom sex-segregated spaces were created), than just "safety," or else explain why there are no other considerations in view. I'd also like you set aside the accusations of bigotry. It's just a thought-terminating cliché that diminishes your argument in ways you do not seem to appreciate. Yes, I've probably been falling short of my aspirations in this thread. I'll work on that. Again, I had assumed your "proposal" was a studied and thoroughly-evaluated-in-advance sort of thing, rather than an off-the-cuff thing. If it was, then I would think you would be both willing and able to defend it, address its real-world ramifications (such as the eradication of sex-segregated spaces), articulate its parameters, identify limiting principles or explain where there should not be any, and so on. If it was not, then my assessment of your arguments has been off, and I should apologize. For such an apology to be sincere, I'll need clarification on this. Have you given your proposal any real scrutiny prior to presenting it here? Why have you refused, for weeks now, to either articulate limiting principles or explain why no such principles are needed? Why have you refused to acknowledge that your proposal will result in the eradication of sex-segregated spaces? These are all reasonable and obvious inquiries, and yet you have treated them as arising from "bigotry." Again: (Emphasis added.) The Massachusetts study is not an answer to the legal analysis. It counted police-logged incidents in restrooms and locker rooms in a few Boston-area towns around local gender-identity ordinances. It found those recorded incidents were rare and did not clearly rise with the ordinances. That is one narrow result under one set of assumptions. It does not measure women who stop using the room, girls who change in a stall or skip PE, employees told that objecting is a policy violation, or the same identity-as-sex rule applied to sport, shelters, and prisons. An empty or flat police file is not “what actually happened.” It is what that paper chose to count. The design is also markedly thinner than the citation implies. The treated sample is small, record systems differed by department, and matching is limited. A 2026 methodological critique in Theory and Society, The Not-So-Curious Case of the Bathroom Safety Study: Ideological Bias and the Erosion of Scholarly Scrutiny, argues the study cannot support the press-release claim that such laws “do not jeopardize safety,” only that police-logged incidents did not clearly jump in three Boston-area jurisdictions relative to their pairs. That cannot retire a statewide or national rule, and it cannot speak to institutions the authors never observed. You also have the access rule backwards. A sex-based rule does not “force manly-looking people into the women’s room.” It puts females in the women’s room and males in the men’s, including a female who looks masculine and a male who looks feminine. Self-ID is what makes sex and appearance legally irrelevant and treats a woman’s objection as the problem. If a bearded female is wrongly challenged, that is a courtesy and training failure. It is not a reason to make male admission the default. And yet again, a safety-from-reported-felony concept is not the only interest these spaces exist to serve. They exist so women and girls can undress and relieve themselves without a men in the room (I know, I know, "trans men are men" and all that is your borne-of-"empirical-reality" position, but it's not mine), and so they can say so without becoming the subject of an HR or civil-rights complaint. Those are not hypotheticals stacked against “the evidence.” They are why the category “women’s room” exists. A rule that turns admission on self-description abolishes that category whether or not next year’s larceny count moves. You are not addressing this. If your position is self-ID for bathrooms and sex for sport, shelters, and prisons, that is a carve-out you have to write into the law. The proposal under discussion does not. It uses one rule: identity governs access. A paper about restroom crime in a few towns does not make that rule harmless, and it does not make the other consequences disappear. Well, you could answer my questions instead of evading/ignoring them. Question No. 1: How, other than by assertion, are women's locker rooms, sports, and prisons “separate issues” that a self-ID bathroom rule will not reach? What legal distinction keeps identity-as-sex from traveling to and from these various points? Question No. 2: What is the limiting principle of your proposal—who may be refused entry to a women’s facility, on what showing, by whom—or do you concede there is none? Question No. 3: Does self-ID without a limiting principle extinguish sex-separated spaces in a de facto or de jure way, or both? If not, how is a “women’s” room still sex-separated when admission is the entrant’s subjective self-declaration and nothing else? Question No. 4: Which of the legal and institutional effects already identified (employer discipline of women who object, collapse of a usable sex line, the same rule in custody and sport) do you say will not occur, and why? If they occur, why do they not count? Question No. 5: Why is reported restroom crime the only interest that matters? Sex-separated spaces were built for privacy and dignity for women and girls, as well as safety. Which of these interests do you discard, and on what grounds? Question No. 6: The Massachusetts paper measured police-logged incidents in a few Boston-area towns. Why does that result answer questions 1–5? Question No. 7: State whether you are willing to set aside accusations of "bigotry." My inquiries are about the your proposal. You have already made it clear what you think of me as a person, so there's no need to keep beating that dead horse. Just answer the questions posed to you about your own proposal. I have been blunt and, to an extent, accusatory in this thread, in ways that do not conform with the Habits of a Peacemaker approach I have been attempting to implement. I will work on that. Thanks, -Smac

If it quacks like a Nazi……..

I know this is an odd topic, but I've re-watched this video several times because the design and mechanics of these wings are so beautifully done, so I had to share it. It's mesmerizing to see them function so effortlessly. And birds make these all the time all on their own! (I think there is intelligent design behind them of course). It makes you appreciate the design of actual bird wings.

Smac, I’m done. Your motte-and-bailey accusation goes well beyond saying my proposal would have harmful consequences. You are accusing me of knowingly pursuing a broader agenda, treating its harmful consequences as intended features, and concealing it behind a more defensible position. That is an accusation of both dishonesty and malicious intent. And a central piece of your evidence is that I’m a smart guy. Apparently, I’m too smart to honestly disagree with your predictions, so I must secretly know you’re right. As if your confidence in your conclusions is evidence of my dishonesty. I’ve explained why restrooms need not have the same rules as prisons, shelters, or sports. You treat those distinctions as camouflage. If I explain myself, I’m defending the motte. If I deny your accusation, I’m retreating to it. What could I possibly say that you wouldn’t interpret as further concealment? You said you were working to improve your conversations by following Steven Collis’s Habits of a Peacemaker. You specifically highlighted resisting the temptation to caricature another person’s position. How does assigning me a malicious agenda, then dismissing my stated beliefs as a cover story, put that into practice? That is an extraordinarily cynical way to treat someone who has spent weeks explaining himself to you. Your catastrophe analysis fails to engage with the Massachusetts evidence we’ve discussed. It doesn’t settle everything, but a long list of things that hypothetically could go wrong doesn't change the evidence about what actually happened when we allowed manly-looking people to use the women’s restroom rather than forcing them into the women’s as you want the law to do. I’ve been sincerely trying to explain my point of view. You’ve chosen to treat those explanations as concealment of something sinister. There’s no productive conversation left under those terms.

@bluebellI watched the podcast today. I enjoyed it. I may not be in exact accord with their claiming that Christ was personifying Himself as "the truth" in the Johanine passage. I might see it more as He was declaring Himself to be the Revelator of the Truth of His Father's plan for humanity as contained in what we call the plan of salvation. The Greek word aletheia signifies an unhiding of what has been hidden. So in that sense Christ is the unhider of what was hidden about God's plan for humanity. I ordered the book they mentioned that has been written by two BY affiliated folks. I look forward to reading that. Thanks for bringing the podcast to our attention. I'm in favor of truth as a verb and have used it in my book. It is more important that we truth (as a verb) than that we think we have the truth. I guess that is my bottom line. Thanks again and best wishes. I think I have something you asked me the other day left unanswered. I will try and go back through the threads and find it. The topic of truth is very complex indeed. All of my grammar checkers do not like me using truth as a verb. They seem to be programmed not to recognize such. Take care.

There is some historical tension with the church's portrayal of this. Yes, there are two competing theories, or perhaps three: Theory 1: The priesthood ban originated with God via revelation. Theory 2: The priesthood ban originated with man, and arose not by way of revelation, but due to historical circumstances and prevailing racialist sentiments of the mid-19th century. Theory 3: We do not have a clear, definitive picture either way regarding the origins of the priesthood ban. The Church hews toward Theory 3, and strongly denounces past theories and characterizations intended to advance Theory 1. Yes. So can I. We both agree it is possible that there was no revelation instituting the ban. We have no record of it, and we are a record-keeping Church. Consequently, Yes, our preservation of records was not complete, hence the viability of Theory 1. It's possible. I wonder how many LDS members even read the church's article about Elder Stevenson or the above sources you mention. We can all do better, but the original point was about the Church trying to "hide" its history. I just don't see that happening. Whether the Church should apologize is an unestablished premise and value judgment. I think the origins of the priesthood ban are best characterized as "theory" until and unless we get more information. Indeed, the Church is now coping with past leaders making comments not based on information / documentation / revelation. "Leading people astray." I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that. He needed to add context so people inside and outside the LDS Church would know who the ban applied to. Not sure about that, but I'm content to leave the matter unresolved. Either the priesthood ban was from God or it was from man. Either God put a skin of blackness on the Lamanites and cursed those who married them in the same way or he did not. Either Jesus is the Eternal God or he is the first spirit child of heavenly parents who became a God. Wrong teachings lead people astray. I don't think erring in doctrine is what Pres. Woodruff had in mind. Thanks, -Smac