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This is an interesting perspective. I would like to better understand it. Back in July there was a By Common Consent article: 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.

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?

Indiana is a place name meaning Land of the Indians according to google. Recognizing that Native Americans originally lived there is different imo than calling people Indians who are not. One is recognition of a past, the other appropriation of identity. Add to that the racist caricature that got paired with the baseball name, historically it was insulting. “Indiana” as far as I know never got couple with racist imagery, etc. It would be odd for a baseball team that had no association with the RCC to call themselves the Popes just because they were centered in Rome, Georgia. If the mascot was also something one might find in an anticatholic screed and this gets put on all sorts of merchandise as well as team uniforms, advertising, etc, wouldn’t many actual Catholics get offended by that? I know I would be annoyed if Utah or someplace else had a team called “the Mormons” and used a ridiculous looking missionary as its mascot.

I was visiting another ward this weekend and fear not - the Elder's Quorum still managed to find a way to make 25 minutes feel like forever.

So Wagner ended up having around ten good years with the Cleveland Indians. 25 homers a year. Maybe a little less. But certainly more than 200 home runs. A nice career. I bring that up to scrape the scab that was bleeding somewhere else about name changing. We talked about this Bombay change. So...let's talk about the blankety Guardians who were once supposedly so offensive to Native Americans. Why were American Indians so upset about a baseball team, but everybody is okay with the state of Indiana and its capital, Indianapolis? I propose that we exclude this state from the Union until they drop their racism. Guardianapolis, Guardiana should be acceptable to all sensitivities. I am an old man who remembers Sammy Davis Jr. making jokes about his race with good nature in an era when there was certainly more anti black racism. Now the racism, ageism, and sexism is turned on me. White Boy Boomers are the worst. I sat with the only black kid in our high school at basketball games. But I am a bigot and object of hate because of my age, sex, and race? So just kill me you young people of righteous virtue. Good bye. Sorry for the ranting stream of consciousness...kind of...this is how it feels to be hated...online.

It should be pretty obvious why they are different. For one thing, people are not completely removing clothing in restrooms and they are in changing rooms. Plus there is a difference in how space is divided for privacy…or the lack of it. Women’s restrooms all have stalls with doors on them. Women are allowed full privacy in terms of exposure if staying within current laws. Stalls are also not curtained off where a breeze from a door being opened or just a person walking by could result in an unexpected opening, but rigid metal frames or even actual walls with a regular door. 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. Anyone who is exposing themselves for a purpose other than urine into a urinal is violating current laws, are they not? And it’s pretty obvious the argument ‘I had to show my lady parts!’ is nonsense when the only legal purpose for exposing oneself in the nonstall area of a men’s restroom is to use a urinal….unless there is something going on in men’s restrooms I am not aware of. 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.

Nah, it’s too crowded brains. No room for the new stuff. 😛 Maybe “reminiscence bump”? I never heard of that before, but that came up in a search for ‘remember events from youth vividly, forget what I ate or wore or read recently’

I wrote to FAIR, so hopefully something else will pop up. I also appealed to Chat as much as I hate to ask it about books, seems a betrayal of humanity to do so, lol, and as expected it pulled up Ostler’s book, specifically Vol 2, Chapter 12. It also suggested Andrew Skinner. Then it mentions the 1916 First Presidency’s “The Father and the Son”. I expect you are aware of that already, but if not… https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2002/04/the-father-and-the-son?

Calm, hi. Don't feel bad about your brain drain. I can't remember things from recent days. But I can't forget my old baseball cards from the 60's! My son must know I like to show off my unforgetfulness of the past. He asked me about Leon Wagner the other day. I gave him the history of how the Giants needed to clear out a young outfield full of phenoms, including Wagner, and two Alou brothers, to make space for Willie Mays, Orlanda Cepeda and Willie McCovey to play every day. My GP, who also can talk old baseball, (which means he must be a good doctor), has a word for our phenomenon, but I have forgotten the word! But anyway, it isn't dementia, (if I remember correctly). Take care calm, 3DOP

A distraction? Or you can't answer the question. Yes, a distraction. The real disagreement is not about people with DSDs or more particularly, those exceedingly rare individuals whose DSD remains epistemically uncertain despite all advances in medical testing. The real disagreement is instead about whether we let men - whose biological sex is unequivocal - enter sex-segregated spaces. I have said this, or something like it, several times now: This is a continuation of the motte-and-bailey strategy. Yes, they are either male or female. I have addressed this many times: Traits associated with sex (hormones, height, genital development) can vary in degree. Variation around two sexes is not a third sex and not “sex is a spectrum.” Height varies. That does not make “adult” a spectrum of sexes. The sexual binary is not a subjective claim or opinion. It is an objective fact. There is no spectrum. There is a sexual binary: male and female. That is it. There is no third sex and no sexless kind of human. Every person is male, female, or (in vanishingly rare DSDs) a disordered mix of those two developmental pathways. Surface uncertainty is not a third category. Modern testing resolves almost all of those cases to one pathway. The handful that stay epistemically uncertain are still not a third sex. You can reject the claim all you want. If you can't answer that simple question, then you are just ignoring concrete proof that sex is not always binary. I have answered this many times. I will do it again. People with DSDs are male or female. A DSD is not a third sex. Sex is the reproductive class: the body is organized on the small-gamete path (male) or the large-gamete path (female). DSDs are errors in how that development ran, not extra classes. We sort by the pathway, not by whether every trait lined up. Examples: CAIS (46,XY): male. Testes, no uterus; body cannot use androgens, so the outside can look female. Still the male pathway. Swyer (46,XY): male pathway, streak gonads, female-typical external anatomy. Klinefelter (47,XXY): male. Turner (45,X): female. XX CAH: female. Ovaries and uterus; genitals may be virilized. 5-ARD (46,XY): male. Testes; genitals may look female or ambiguous until puberty. Ovotesticular DSD: extremely rare. Ovarian and testicular tissue—the two pathways in one body, not a third gamete. Often a predominant path is still clear (karyotype, SRY, which tissue works). In the hardest sliver the label is difficult. That is not a new category. How many stay uncertain after modern testing? Almost none of the above. They can look ambiguous at birth. Karyotype, SRY, gonads, ducts, and hormones usually settle it. The leftovers are a tiny sliver of an already rare set: Ovotesticular DSD, when neither side predominates. Some mosaics/chimeras (45,X/46,XY; XX/XY). Most still tilt male or female once you see the tissue. A few stay hard to call. “Binary” does not mean every newborn is obvious to a doctor or nurse or midwife. It means two types, and DSDs are errors inside those types. Down syndrome is not a third species. An extra finger is not a new kind of hand. This also is not the bathroom/sport fight. That fight is about people whose sex is not in doubt. CAIS and CAH do not decide whether an ordinary male belongs in a women’s room. Different populations. DSM-5 even marks gender dysphoria “with a DSD” as a specifier, because they are not the same thing. A person with a DSD is male, female, or, rarely, a disordered mix of those two pathways. A very few remain hard to label. None of that is a third sex. Policy does not get a third box. We aren't talking about allowances. We are talking about people with gender dysphoria, and whether men with it should be in women's spaces, and vice versa. For those exceedingly rare persons whose biological sex remains epistemically uncertain, case-by-case allowances and accommodations can be made. But we all know that what we are really talking about is, mostly, unequivocal males who want to enter into women's bathrooms (and changing rooms, and sports, and prisons). Diverting the discussion to talk about DSDs is a motte-and-bailey tactic. “Intersex” is not a sex, nor is it the absence of one. Rather, it is a label for several different medical conditions. The person is male or female, depending on which condition: 46,XY CAIS is male. XX CAH is female. XXY is male. 45,X is female. You do not get a third answer by bundling those under one word. If you mean one specific patient, please give the diagnosis. “Intersexed” is not a diagnosis, and it is not a third box. My position is based on the sexual binary, but I did not formulate or create it. I am using it biological reality as the basis for my position favoring the maintaining of sex-segregated spaces based on sex. The "if" is not carrying the loan you are putting on it. The honest answer is the one I already gave. I'll say it again. Every human is male or female. “Intersex” is not a third sex. It is a name for conditions where development of one of the two sexes went off-script—or, in the rarest case (ovotesticular DSD), tissue from both of those two pathways is present. That is a disordered mix of the only two sexes there are. The binary is not “every body looks textbook.” It is that we are built around two gametes: sperm (male) and ova (female). There is no third gamete. Ovotesticular DSD, I think the DSD you may be referring to, puts ovarian and testicular tissue in one body. It does not invent a third, mid-size reproductive cell. If that person can make sperm, they are male; leftover ovarian tissue is the disorder, not a second sex. If they can make ova, they are female. Most of these patients make neither. Doctors then infer the pathway from chromosomes, SRY, ducts, and which tissue predominates. A few cases stay difficult to ontologically establish, but that difficulty does not mean we have a third sex. Sterility is not a third sex either, no more than a vasectomy is. A factory that makes only left- and right-hand gloves can still ship a pair sewn together. That is a glitch in a two-line process, not a third glove. A heart defect does not refute a four-chamber plan. Same structure here. So: Sex is binary. People with DSDs are male, female, or (rarely) a mix of those two pathways. None of that is “neither” or "both." If you have a specific diagnosis you think is outside both boxes, please name it. “Intersex” as a grab-bag is not a diagnosis. Thanks, -Smac

David would be the best source for such that I know. We just don’t do theology that much. Also I have been out of tracking the new stuff for a while due to health. I always bought my books at the yearly FAIR conference. It’s much easier to avoid getting seduced when I can’t see or touch them. My ability to concentrate and remember is just very low right now, so not reading much of the few books I have bought. Being reminded my brain is mostly offline these days is depressing, so I don’t even window shop books like I used to. (Got a new GP who is trying to figure out why I get some weird test results, so who knows, maybe that will change a little and my books shelves will start expanding again.) So I am not even aware if there is stuff since 5, 7 years ago unless someone brings it up here or on the FAIR list where we answer questions. Talking about FAIR reminds me I forgot to ask there for suggestions (anyone else ‘remember’ their thoughts on what they are going to do as actually doing it?, I think I visual too well and it ends up looking like a memory rather than anticipation).

So I have been waiting for more LDS input. I thought Ostler was too "classical" for most LDS. Calm, you will remember our friend David Waltz. I just now left a message on his phone. He has a library of LDS books like probably few LDS and no other non-LDS in the world. Ostler is the only recommendation? He is the last word? Surely he is not the only word? Anyway, I will report back if I find out there is any other LDS book that talks about God as an exalted man.

A distraction? Or you can't answer the question. In you binary view on sex, are they male or female? If you can't answer that, then you can't keep claiming that all sex is binary. What has been central to this discussion is whether sex is binary or if there is a spectrum. You can reject the claim all you want. If you can't answer that simple question, then you are just ignoring concrete proof that sex is not always binary. We aren't talking about allowances. The question is very specific. What binary sex is someone who is intersexed. Your whole foundation of your position is that sex is binary. If intersexed individuals are not male or female, but rather both, then it totally disproves that sex is binary. So I am very interested in a real honest straight forward non dodge answer to a very simple question.

I read what ChatGPT had to say. It is, I think, a fairer account of some of your later qualifications than of the rule we have been arguing about. Those are not the same thing. You often describe your view as “do not pass a law assigning every person a toilet by sex,” plus “use the room that minimizes discomfort,” plus “sports and prisons are separate.” ChatGPT took that package as the position and then scored my post as a straw man. The disagreement is not that you have never typed the words “women and girls.” It is that identity access plus no administrable gate / limiting principles is still the operating idea, and that idea does not stay as modest as the qualifications. Some additional thoughts: What I mean by “no limiting principle”: I had thought that by now "limiting principle" would be pretty clear. Perhaps not. “Go where you think is most appropriate” and “don’t harass anyone” are conduct rules. They are not a rule for who belongs in the women’s bathroom. Every existing criminal law against voyeurism already applies under a sex rule too. If the permission slip into the women's bathroom is an individual's self-declared-and-not-to-be-questioned-and-entirely-subjective "identity," or even “presentation”, then the class that may enter is no longer “female.” The class, instead, is anyone any everyone. That is the point I keep asking you to address. What I mean by “bathrooms will not stay in their box”L: I am not saying you personally demand Lia Thomas in the NCAA or males in women’s prisons. I am saying the legal justification and framework you use for bathroom use - "the sexed door tracks identity/expression, and a sex rule does more harm than good” - is the same justification activists and counsel can and certainly will use in those other contexts (changing rooms, sports, prisons). Calling them “separate issues” is a conversational preference. It is not a legal fence. If a school board or a court accepts the bathroom argument, they will be asked why changing rooms are different. “Because Roger said so on page 17” will not be the answer. Whether the discussion continues under your ever-increasing outsourcing to ChatGPT, I hope you will address this. Legal argument often arises from analogy. By way of example: I am currently in a lawsuit about an easement. My client's neighbor is suing her and asking the judge to impose an easement on her property under an "easement by implication" theory. Case law in Utah is very clear that a similar but still distinguishable legal theory, "easement by prescription" requires the claimant to prove the existence of the easement by "clear and convincing evidence." The law is similarly clear that Utah's appellate courts have not yet held that this same - and more difficult - evidentiary standard applies to "easements by implication." In a recent motion I asked the court to made a decision on which evidentiary standard applies, "clear and convincing" or "preponderance." My argument was to compare and analogize the evidentiary standard in Utah for prescriptive easements, and also to cite to other jurisdictions which have adopted a "clear and convincing" standards for implied easements. Essentially, I said this: "The Utah appellate courts have not given specific guidance on this issue, but it has on prescriptive easements, which are not materially distinguishable from implied easements in that in both instances the servient estate gets an easement imposed on it against its will. That's a pretty hefty incursion into property rights, so if 'clear and convincing' applies to prescriptive easements, it should also apply to implied ones. Several other jurisdictions have adopted this approach..." Another example of how analogy and comparison work in the law: Pierson v. Post, a New York state decision from 1805 that has become one of the most famous property law cases in American history. Here are the facts: Here's the majority opinion: Pierson ended up creating or introducing "a coherent principle on how property can be first possessed by a human being." "Determining the rightful ownership of the fox involved the essence of the human notion of 'property' itself and how it is created, and for this reason Pierson v. Post is included in nearly all Anglo-American property casebooks." Pierson is used to establish basic principles of property ownership for all sorts of things, including oil and natural gas (which, like the fox, is ferae naturae, and hence subject to the "Rule of Capture," which is that the person who captures the wild thing is entitled to ownership of it). Here is why I am bringing up this case: If Pierson v. Post, an 1805 case from New York about two hunters chasing a fox, can be used by oil and gas attorneys in Houston in 2026 to make a legal point about an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, then then it is very likely that lawyers suing for men to gain access to women's changing rooms / sports / prisons will argue via analogies to bathroom access. If the law re-defines sex-segregated bathrooms to "any man who claims the women's bathroom suits him better," then why can't that same basis be used to allow men into women's changing rooms? Sports? Prisons? You keep waiving these off as "separate issues." They are not. They are tightly interwoven issues, such that activist progress in one will almost certainly help activism to progress in the others. I have a hard time believing that you are not fully aware of this, both because you are a smart fellow, and because you have ChatGPT at hand, and because I have explained the foreseeable legal reality quite a few times now. My surmise is that ignoring it is part of the motte-and-bailey strategy. What I mean by “eradication”: I do not mean the signs come down next Wednesday. I mean sex stops being the thing by which access to the space is differentiated. Two doors labeled “men” and “women,” with males admitted on identity, are not sex-segregated spaces with a few hard cases. They are mixed-sex rooms that kept the old paint. ChatGPT treats that as merely a small edge-case tweak. That is the baseline motte-and-bailey trick: If the baseline for access into women's bathrooms is “whatever we have now plus self-ID,” then insisting on sex looks “radical,” and dissolving the criterion looks “conservative.” In contrast, my baseline is that using “women” on the door means human females (women and girls). You have said you are using "woman" as a social category. That is a redefinition for purposes of the bathroom, even if you still admit the biology in a footnote. Again, motte-and-bailey stuff at work. On harm to women and girls: Your harm story that ChatGPT liked is mostly: a sex rule would put some passing "trans men" (male-appearing females) in the women’s room and that would scare other females. That is a real awkwardness. It is not the same problem as opening the women's bathroom door to all males, which is the natural and foreseeable result of your policy proposal. Gender-nonconforming women already have a right to that room. The rare passing trans man is a hard case. Hard cases are not a warrant to rewrite the class. On the AI referee: A model asked to summarize your later posts will sound like you. That does not convert the summary into a finding that my concerns are imaginary. I have not ignored your answers. I have said they do not do the work you assign them. I still think the decent shared solution is more single-occupancy rooms and a sex rule for multi-user women’s facilities—not a chatbot’s claim that the sex rule is the radical one. If you have a limiting principle that keeps males as a class out of the women’s room without collapsing into “whoever says so,” I sure would like to see it. However, I think we both know you will not present any such limiting principle, and I think that is because you are ideologically constrained to do so. The second you make any concession which differentiates access by men from access by women, or which differentiates some "trans women" from other "trans women" (which is what CB is proposing), you will run afoul of ideological demands, the advocates of which will brand you a bigot. I have previously pointed this out. From a previous post: I appreciate you sharing your perspective on locker rooms and other places where people are actually undressed. You would restrict those to people who have fully medically transitioned, and you would provide a private alternative. That is a real line. It is also a form of "gatekeeping." That is the piece I want to flag, because it sits uneasily with how this conversation has gone. CB's proposal openly does not treat identity as sufficient. It treats identity plus medical and other steps (physician care, a year of hormones, a doctor’s declaration, a changed ID) as the price of entry. Many advocates will reject that on principle. In that framework, a “trans woman” is a woman because she says so. Requiring hormones, surgery, or paperwork is itself treated as denying her womanhood. You said you don’t particularly care that some people will object. Fair enough. But that objection is not a fringe footnote. It is the mainstream activist claim. You have previously described disagreement with parts of the trans movement as "bigotry." The difficulty is that the rule you are now willing to accept would, by that same standard, put you in the same category. Distinguishing “fully transitioned” males from males who only identify as women is the differentiation I said would draw fire. If drawing that line is bigotry when I do it, it does not become something else when the line is hormones-plus-ID rather than sex. Motte-and-bailey. It's happening all through this thread. Thanks, -Smac

No worries. My post was a meaningless rant itself. I don’t like being treated or talked to like we are 6 and teaching that class yesterday I felt highly annoyed.

Sigh. You are ignoring what I say, fighting against a straw man, and making wild proposals that will harm the people you say you want to protect (i.e. woman and girls--using your definitions). Or so it seems to me. I asked ChatGPT to look at every post in this thread and evaluate this. I’ll put the prompt in a quote box and GPT’s response below in blue. GPT: I read the supplied conversation from forum pages 10 through 23, including the later posts where Analytics and Smac clarify positions that were less precise earlier. I am using “women and girls” exactly as you requested: biological females, regardless of gender identity or expression. Answers 1. Has Analytics addressed the impact of the various bathroom policies on women and girls? How much? Yes, substantially and repeatedly. A recurring part of his argument is that a strict biological-sex rule itself harms females—particularly by requiring very male-presenting biological females to enter women’s facilities, thereby creating fear, confrontation, and privacy problems for other females. My read is broadly consistent with Calm’s later estimate that roughly one-quarter to one-third of Analytics’s posts contained explicit discussion of the impact on females, with the issue implicit in additional posts. 2. Has he argued that Smac’s proposed laws will do more harm than good to women and girls, and that this is one of the main reasons he opposes them? Yes. Analytics repeatedly frames the issue as a harm-benefit comparison, saying Smac’s laws create “real-world problems to solve a hypothetical problem,” questioning whether they do “more good than harm,” and eventually stating expressly that the biological-sex requirement “harms women and girls.” That is clearly one major reason for his opposition, although not the only one; he also emphasizes liberty, harms to transgender people, lack of demonstrated need, and legal/constitutional concerns. 3. Does his preferred bathroom policy require the formulation of a strict “limiting principle”? If not, should he be required to articulate one? No strict categorical limiting principle is logically required by his basic proposal, because his proposal is essentially “don’t enact a law assigning everyone to a restroom by sex.” He nevertheless eventually articulates a softer principle: use the restroom that minimizes discomfort, use it for its ordinary purpose, and obey laws against harassment, voyeurism, intimidation, etc. I would not require him to invent a bright-line sex/anatomy rule merely to defend not having a bathroom-assignment law—although if he were proposing an affirmative legal entitlement overriding property owners or institutional rules, a more administrable legal standard would be necessary. 4. Would expanding Analytics’s reasoning to other settings give men carte blanche to enter women’s changing rooms, shelters, prisons, and sports? No. That is not a fair description of his position. Analytics explicitly says those are “separate issues”; he supports allowing sports organizations to exclude biological males from female competition, and he says prisons and shelters should make context-specific decisions. His locker-room position is more permissive and less sharply defined, but even there he discusses conduct, nudity, and privacy separately rather than asserting an unrestricted right of entry. 5. Is Analytics arguing that the word “woman” be radically redefined? Not as a biological term. He explicitly says that when he calls a transgender woman a “woman,” he is using woman as a gender/social category, “rather than as a synonym for adult human biological female”; he simultaneously says that this does not require pretending biological sex has changed. Smac can reasonably object that this is a broadened social usageof “woman,” but Analytics is not claiming that biological males thereby become biological females. 6. In my opinion, is “the foreseeable effect of Analytics’s proposal the eradication of sex-segregated spaces”? Has Smac provided valid evidence for that view? No, if “eradication” means that men’s and women’s facilities disappear or cease functioning as distinct spaces.Analytics’s policy would admittedly make them less than perfectly sex-exclusive under your strict biological definition, because some biological males could use women’s rooms and some biological females could use men’s rooms; but that is very different from eradicating the two-space system. Smac has provided valid evidence that offenses and privacy conflicts sometimes occur in female facilities, but he has not provided evidence establishing the much stronger causal claim that Analytics’s policy foreseeably causes sex-segregated facilities to disappear; his strongest case for that proposition is conceptual rather than empirical. 7. Which proposal is more radical? Will Analytics’s proposal lead to the eradication of sex-segregated spaces? As a matter of government policy, I think Smac’s is more radical: it takes what historically operated largely through social convention and individual judgment and turns it into a categorical, legally enforced biological-sex rule. Analytics’s position is more revisionary if the baseline is strict biological exclusivity, but overall it leaves the familiar men’s/women’s restroom system intact and changes how difficult edge cases are handled; I do not think it foreseeably leads to the practical eradication of separate men’s and women’s spaces. Representative quotes Analytics: “What is your basis for thinking that the laws you support are doing more good than harm?” Analytics: “The laws you support are creating real-world problems to solve a hypothetical problem. The tradeoff isn't worth it.” Analytics: “The limiting principle should be this: if you need to go to the bathroom, go in to the one you think is most appropriate…” Analytics: “Do sex-distinct facilities have value? Sure. Nobody is arguing against that.” Analytics: “I'd love to hear a professional psychologist explain why requiring this individual to use women's restroom would be psychologically beneficial to women and girls.” Analytics: “Sex-distinct restrooms in free societies have thrived for generations without laws assigning every person to a restroom according to biological sex.” Analytics, on locker rooms/sports/prisons: “Those are separate issues. If we want to analyze them rationally, we should treat them as separate issues.” Analytics, on sports: “If you are transgender and want to swim, then swim with the boys. Or don’t swim.” Analytics: “I was using [‘woman’] as a gender category rather than as a synonym for adult human biological female.” Analytics: “Your preferred solution—requiring people to use the restroom that corresponds to their biological sex rather than their gender expression—harms women and girls.” Smac: “Bathrooms will not stay in their box… there is no principled line” preventing the reasoning from reaching changing rooms, shelters, prisons, and sports. Smac: “There are documented incidents of males accessing female facilities and committing offenses.” He then provides a list of examples. The biggest thing I think the full 14-page exchange establishes is that Smac’s characterization of Analytics as simply ignoring women and girls, opposing sex-separated spaces, refusing any limiting principle, and necessarily opening every female setting to every male is not a good description of Analytics’s actual position by the end of the discussion. Smac has serious substantive objections to Analytics’s position, some of which are legitimate policy questions, but several times he turns a disagreement with Analytics’s answer into a claim that Analytics has not answered the question at all.

Hi MustardSeed. I apologize for my rant about new words and names of places. It distracted from the discussion and I am sorry if it seemed directed at you personally.

Also: https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/113354-scotus-decision-ban-on-talk-conversion-therapy-is-unconstitutional/page/14/#findComment-1210274436 https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/113354-scotus-decision-ban-on-talk-conversion-therapy-is-unconstitutional/page/14/#findComment-1210274474 I am going to stop now, my estimate is a quarter to a third of analytics’ posts that I read through again included explicit comments while some others it’s implied imo.

He has posted a number of pictures of trans men and commented on how well that’s going to go over with women and girls when these trans men are forced to use female only restrooms (or none at all if they are the only ones available). That repeated observation included comments about women’s reactions…which became my primary focus. For example: https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/113354-scotus-decision-ban-on-talk-conversion-therapy-is-unconstitutional/page/11/#findComment-1210274247 This one’s purpose is solely to point out women and girls might not want trans men who present as men in their space: https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/113354-scotus-decision-ban-on-talk-conversion-therapy-is-unconstitutional/page/12/#findComment-1210274294

I don't think Analytics has commented on this much. I should have been more clear about that. My apologies. Thanks, -Smac

Do you mean Mumbai? If so, then I am smiling as I too have moments where I become aware of novelties to me that have actually existed for 30 years or longer. Mumbai became the official name in 1995 according to wiki. So my guess is it was a bunch of fuddy duddies who changed it to be more consistent with a local version rather than the colonial name.