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Public schools, being funded by the State, are extensions of it. As for "respectfully addressing people," I assume you refer here to using preferred pronouns, instead of biologically/linguistically accurate pronouns. See the above Bloomberg summary. I'm not sure what you mean by "power of violence." Your distinction here - the State arresting people for their speech versus the State punishing people in some other way for their speech ("disciplined at a university"), that is a difference of degree, not kind. Both involve the State punishing speech, just in different ways. The First Amendment limits the power of government, not only the criminal code. A public university is the government, a part of it. When it suspends you, fails you, fires a professor, or withholds a diploma unless you say particular words, that is state compulsion. West Virginia v. Barnette was about a school pledge, not handcuffs. Janus v. AFSCME was about a union fee. Meriwether v. Hartop was campus discipline: None of those cases asked whether anyone had been booked into jail. “Violence” is a narrower idea than “state power.” The state has many tools short of a nightstick: grades, housing, employment, professional licensure, remaining enrolled. Those tools are why public schools and public employers have always been First Amendment defendants. Two distinctions still matter: Public vs. private. A private college can generally enforce a speech code without a First Amendment problem. A state university cannot treat “say these pronouns or face discipline” as a mere house rule. Harassment vs. compelled affirmation. A school may punish targeted ridicule. That is not the same as requiring every student or employee to use designated pronouns as a condition of staying. So if the worry is only “no one is being arrested,” the constitutional concern is already in play at a public university. The question is whether the institution is stopping abuse or conscripting speech. Those are different things, and only the first is an easy First Amendment win for the school. Thanks, -Smac

Broadly, yes. I think that would depend on the application of the Tinker test: So is using a person's "temple name" better analogized to a racial epithet (which are generally regulated by schools) or to preferred pronouns (which are generally not regulated)? Under Tinker, schools may discipline speech that invades other students’ rights or that they can reasonably forecast will materially disrupt school. Mocking someone with a sacred, private name is the kind of personal attack anti-harassment rules are typically built for. Preferred-pronoun cases (including the Sixth Circuit in Olentangy) draw that same line: schools may punish bullying—severe, persistent, or objectively offensive conduct—without being able to compel a political or theological statement. Using “he” or “she” for a student’s sex is ordinary English. It is how speakers have referred to males and females for as long as the language has existed. Students cannot talk without pronouns. A mock temple name is not ordinary address. It is extra, acquired for the purpose of humiliation. Thanks, -Smac

Usually no, not if it is a public school acting on on-campus (or school-controlled) speech directed at another student. The First Amendment applies to public schools as government actors. Private schools generally are not bound by it. Public-school student speech is protected, but not as fully as adult speech off campus. Under Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), schools may discipline speech that would substantially disrupt school or invade the rights of other students. Calling a classmate the n-word is routinely treated as the second category: targeted racial harassment, not political debate. Courts have repeatedly upheld discipline for slurs and similar personal attacks at school. Regarding "preferred pronouns," the Supreme Court has not issued a clean nationwide rule, and the federal circuit courts appear to be split as to teachers, but for students, recent appellate law is moving against compelled pronoun use. Public schools can still punish harassment; they are on much weaker ground when they treat ordinary refusal to use preferred pronouns as punishable speech. See, e.g., here: The Latest Legal Battle of the Pronouns A little long, so here's a Grok summary: But see here: Policy Requiring Teachers to Use Preferred Pronouns Upheld And here: Trans Students’ Rights Suits Will Test Split Circuits in 2026 A Grok summary: Thanks, -Smac

No, it is not. It is a first amendment violation if you end up prosecuted for it. You can see the transphobes trying to come up with stories to stoke the hysteria so they conflate a university with the government and run with it because they can’t find any actual government persecution. They do the same with their imaginary bathroom and locker room invasions and spin hypotheticals about the dangers of Drag Queens because they don’t have any good incidents of it actually happening. It is like the Satanic panic as those warning about the dangers of cultists have to accept the flimsiest stories since they can’t find any real ones. This isn’t a spoof.

I don’t think a university having rules about respectfully addressing people counts as ‘the STATE’. If people were being arrested for deadnaming people I would be concerned. Getting disciplined at a university? That is not using the state’s power of violence to force speech.

Now that is an interesting question.

Further let’s say I know when someone was endowed and find their temple new name. If I mockingly address a Latter-day Saint classmate with this name, is that protected first amendment speech? The school should not be able to do anything about that?

[Deleted... the path will inevitably lead to darkness.]

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.