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Is it a first amendment violation if a school disciplines a student for calling another student the "n-word"? Honest question. I don't know. Is a first ammendment violation if a school punished its students for saying "F*** the mormons" and a football game?

So are you consistent on this? I think so. Discipline from the State? No. None. At all. Private parties generally lack authority to mete out "discipline." No. None. At all. I think so, yes. "{A}llowed to be jerks" seems to presuppose that the State is doing the allowing or disallowing. Are there segments of society, outside of the "trans" community, that is seeking - with some success - to use the coercive and punitive power of the State to compel others to speak certain words (e.g., pronouns, former names, etc.) or be punished for failing/refusing to? I can't think of any offhand, but I am open to any input on this point. The State and its extensions should not regulate speech as to either "preferred pronouns" or "deadnaming." Doing so is inimical to the First Amendment. I am not a big fan of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's "Book of Mormon" musical, as it profanes things sacred to me. However, I would strongly object to and resist any effort by the State to suppress that speech, or punish it, or compel it. If the State were to curb their right to speak in this way, it could do the same to me and my right to speak. Nevertheless, I would be open to hearing what you have to say. Do you think the State - let's say in the U.S. - should regulate speech as to either "preferred pronouns" or "deadnaming"? If so, what sorts of regulation do you have in mind, and on what philosophical/legal basis would that regulation be built? Thanks, -Smac

The prologue and epilogue of Job are believed to have been added later. It makes sense. The prologue and epilogue undermine the whole point of the text. God comes out in the ‘meat’ of the story saying that man cannot comprehend the ways of God and Job is not in a position to question what he endured. We see in the prologue that God made a bar bet with Satan and that is why Job had to deal with all he did. Not really that incomprehensible. Also worth noting that sub divine beings (what we would call angels) in Judaism at the time were often conceived as being opposed to humanity and not their ally. You get texts where angels/divine servants don’t get why God bothered with the foulness that is humanity. You get Merkabah mysticism where the goal is to somehow convince to let you pass or trick or give passwords to dangerous angels when you attempt a mystical descent to the throne of God. Many reportedly died or went insane trying this path because the angels pushed back hard against humanity going where it did not belong.

Our ward in Canada was for awhile all young families who were students at the University my husband worked at (the chapel’s parking lot was often used by students and made fundraising easy by selling spots for football, we had to split it with the rest of the stake though to be fair) and grey hairs. Very few were middle age like us, except a couple of families who had fallen in love with the ward. The cost of housing for what you got was too high.

So are you consistent on this? If someone decides to take their spouse’s last name and someone has a ‘moral’ objection to that practice and deadnames with their old name out of malice that should not result in any kind of discipline? If someone legally changes their name and someone chooses to use the old name out of malice that shouldn’t be a discipline thing? Are you philosophically consistent on this point or do transphobes just get a special carve-out where they are allowed to be jerks?

https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/length-treatment

Why did you put that in quotes? Are you suggesting it is not actually insanity? Based.

Soviet-style Whataboutism. Keep it up Comrade.

I don’t have a problem with critiquing the effectiveness of therapy. We did that a lot in my clinical psychology program. The second reason I decided to I was going research rather than therapist was because of the lack of solid evidence for the various types of therapy and mushy theory imo for the main types of therapy at that time (more evidence for cognitive forms of therapy have come out in the last 40 years…man, I am old). IiRC, Bergin was the department head for part of the time I was at BYU Neither myself nor my husband took classes from him (he served on the exam committee for my husband’s doctorate), but he was referred to some and we still have an article of his that was a required text for one of our classes in our files (have a few other quality psych books from those days for referencing, but all the other texts are gone, including those calculus books I was determined to reread one of these decades). He was influential. I have also had friends who ran into trouble with post graduate work because of their religious devotion, so I am not unaware of that problem in the field either. But I am not seeing anything more solid from Alpert. The APA advises on the length of effective therapy. They are not pushing long term forever relationships. There are people who use therapy as a long term crutch just as there are people who use cosmetic surgery, working out, careers, their church service, politics, etc to avoid change. That does not mean therapists are encouraging or enabling this behaviour in general any more than the LDS Church is encouraging parents to neglect their family by offering and encouraging senior missions and other opportunities to serve….though it happens.

I've only ever heard about it on the internet.

Our old ward used it a lot but my new ward pretends like it doesn’t exist. I actually forgot all about it until you were listing the communication options. (My new ward is pretty geriatric so we don’t really use much technology for anything).

I think the increase in therapy is more tied to the general decrease in optimism and hope in society rather than just being a fad. Also I don’t think this writer understands what ‘boundaries’ are in a therapy context. And what therapist would turn a fear of driving into a feminist things? This kind of thing makes me doubt the writer’s intentions. I suspect that is culture war nonsense masquerading as ‘concern’.

I was going to ask how many times lawyers convince their clients to take their soon to be ex-spouse to the cleaners and to fight for custody even when it does damage to children and further damage to families beyond just divorce. But I decided to be more grown-up than that so I won’t start the controversy 😎

I specifically asked for what he had besides anecdotal evidence and chat ended the above quote with this: Now Chat has to rely on what’s online, so it’s possible that there are empirical studies listed in the books that few, if any, have mentioned, but I would be surprised as I would think that would be mentioned as people love to throw stats around (myself included).

Are you rage-baiting me? I'm sorry, but Circles is what happens when you build a messaging app and treat reliable message delivery as an optional enhancement. Perhaps all the bugs are intentional, and it's really supposed to function less like a messaging app and more like an interactive lesson on faith, patience, and enduring to the end. Or maybe the Church designed it to work like the Liahona, where it's functionality is tied to the faith of the user - so maybe I'm the problem. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not only is the general public getting tired of the "tran hysteria" but the gay community is pushing back at it: https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/08/24/lgbtq-crack-up-human-rights-campaign-slams-log-cabin-republicans-for-rejecting-transgender-activism/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=texas-pastors-gather-as-experts-warn-of-sharia-law-and-islamic-influence&_bhlid=98a6e89f70efd94a44cd75070047aef6552930c9

The way that chat presents this, I read it the same way you did. Then I wondered if “arguments” might imply evidence and data included and not just “him arguing” about why he’s right? I couldn’t tell if there’s more backing up his assertions or not.

A past ward of ours had part of a retirement community and had that same thing. One particular street of nicknamed "Celestial Street" because so many of them lived on it. It wasn't very long. Just everyone moving in didn't end up living long.

I'd just like to add, that beyond the above, it seems to be there are plenty of intermediate steps that could be taken. If people are abusing bathroom access based on gender identification to harass women (something that hasn't been proven as far as I can see), add a restriction that says gender must be changed officially before allowing access. You could require concrete steps to be demonstrated (such as hormones) etc. For locker rooms or other areas where nudity is allowed, you could require bottom surgery. There are all types of steps that can be taken to address these concerns that don't target trans people for vigilantism and additional discrimination.

Since I don’t have Alpert’s book, I had Chat summarize his evidence that therapy culture is contributing to levels of anxiety. I am not impressed. So anecdotal and correlation. Smac, if this was an argument showing being LDS increased anxiety based on a Utah therapist’s own clinical experience, someone who specialized in LDS who were distancing themselves from the Church or who had left, also based in part on extensive claims those who had left the Church saying they were happier and less anxious ( of which there are plenty) using the same type of evidence you would be pointing out all the problems with said conclusion. I need to see more empirical data demonstrating his claims before I invest in exploring your hypotheticals.

I agree. Hence the propriety of the pieces statement here: "It's time to consider the possibility that we've become over-therapized, and examine how this practice, intended to heal, may be making us weaker instead of stronger." It would be interesting to see how causation could be quantified in this context. What are your thoughts about the two books referenced in the article? "Bad Therapy" and "Therapy Nation: How America Got Hooked on Therapy and Why It's Left Us More Anxious and Divided"? Salient points. Worth considering. Alpert published an article in May: Psychotherapist reveals why therapy might be doing you more harm than good "Systems of oppression" is a political concept. Odd to see it deployed in an individual therapeutic setting. "{T}herapists steer conversations toward race, gender and oppression regardless of why they came in." So the question perhaps is not "Is this happening?", but rather "How prevalent is this sort of thing?" This seems like a good point. "The therapy office should not be a political battleground." That sounds right. Thanks, -Smac

My ward here is a little backward so it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a church policy that we just don’t do. My ward is mostly very old people, and they struggle with technology. We haven’t even been here two years yet and I bet we have a funeral every other month from an older person who has passed away.

I'm not sure there can be a perfect system. Bathrooms are a space where everyone deserves to feel safe and respected. Male presenting people in a woman's bathroom can result in women not feeling safe. That's a problem. Bathroom laws like the one in discussion don't fix it. This was a viral case from a few weeks ago. A man accompanied his daughters into the women's restroom at a truck stop: https://texaslegalgiants.com/dad-confronted-womens-restroom-texas-sb8-law/ . Laws based on biological sex allow this and other exceptions like cleaning or caring for the disabled. Additionally, Laws based on biological sex also require trans-men to use the women's bathroom. So under Kansas's law, some men are allowed in the bathroom. Other men are required to use the women's bathroom. In addition it creates a vigilante system of justice that will likely catch many gender ambiguous people in the mix. So under the Kansas regime, sometimes women will see men in the restroom. On the other hand, states like California protect bathroom access based on professed gender identity. To my knowledge (based on limited research) this has not resulted in any increase in bathroom harassment, but if this isn't the case I'd like to know. This means sometimes a masculine looking trans-woman might be in the women's bathroom. How is this worse than a Masculine looking trans-men in the women's bathroom?

I'm assuming if I search, I'll find the OP broad-painting the demographic that was represented in the most violent attack on an LDS congregation in recent history, that happened less than a year ago? Y'know, for consistency.

Correlation is not causation. It’s not like nothing else anxiety producing in our world has changed so it can only be therapy that is driving up anxiety. How about more people going to therapy because for more the level of anxiety has gone up dramatically? This is like claiming the Church makes people depressed because antidepressants are prescribed at a higher rate in Utah. Why don’t I point to the increase of lawyers as contributing to the increase in anxiety? Or maybe I should point to the increase of household debt, obesity, single person households, internet use (possibly contributing to loneliness) and other factors known already demonstrated as contributing to anxiety. This is not to say that all therapists are good or that everyone is helped by therapy. There are some bad therapists out there and there are clients in long term therapy that aren’t benefitting from said therapy. Diagnosis of anxiety going up also does not mean anxiety itself has gone up (see Utah’s example of antidepressant use). People being more willing to admit they have anxiety could be a contributor.