california boy

The puppies are imaginary. Dan is a real person that you seem to feel it is your duty to go after for subversion and being a wolf in sheep's clothing. You liken him to others who have been excommunicated by the Church for subversion all because he uses his scholarly approach to questions about the scriptures. I'm simply pointing out that if you are looking for faith, visions, the supernatural, you should stick to General Conference and the carefully collated lesson manuals the Church puts out. For those that are interested in a more scholarly nuanced understanding of the scriptures, then Dan may help with that. If you don't like what he writes, then look elsewhere to find someone that already agrees with you. No need to call him names and attempt to rally support in his ousting from the Church. If that is not your intent, what is the reason you feel the need to attack Dan and his methods?

I was commenting on your call to have Dan excommunicated because you think he is subverting members and is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Dan's job is not to tell faith based stories, but rather to give insight, context, understanding of biblical times and how scholars view the origins of the BoM. Others, such as church leaders have a job of making the origins of the BoM faith based and ignore all the data that Dan brings up. I don't think his job is to pick and choose what you want to hear him say because you find his data does and a scholarly evaluation does not support the faith based viewpoint you have or of the Church. Those were my thoughts. You just don't like them for some reason.

If you only want to hear stories based on faith, then listen to General Conference, They will tell you if you just pay your tithing, then even though you couldn't afford new shoes when you didn't pay your tithing, you now will be able to because of your faith. But the data doesn't support that. If you want to hear about 3 Nephites that have been alive since the days of Christ, then got to sunday school. But the data doesn't support that possibility. If you want to hear about how the Book of Mormon was an ancient record revealed by magic stones in a hat, then look to the Church. But the data doesn't support that. In essence you seem to be upset because Dan is not giving a sunday school lesson or a conference talk or a faith promoting story about the Book of Mormon. He is giving you a scholarly evaluation of those things. You want him to no longer be a Biblical scholar and only want him to sit in the back of the chapel listening to faith promoting stories. They are two entirely different objectives. Scholars are not in the business of only telling faith promoting stories. They are interested in context and digging into who said what when and why. If you want to just read the scriptures and ask the General Authorities what they mean, listen to conference. If you want to know the context, what the language meant at the time, how that cross references with known historical data of the time, etc, then listen to Dan. Your choice. But don't make Dan out to be a villain for just doing his job.

i have lived approximately half my life in the Church doing all I was told God wanted me to do. Trying diligently to live a life that I was told God expected me to do. But in so many ways, it was not a life I enjoyed or wanted. When I came out and was severed from the Church, I felt loss and confused. It was like starting the second half of my life all over again, but this time without the Church and a much less structured life of what I was taught God wanted me to do. From where I sit now, I sometimes can not believe how much happier I am and really how joyous my life has become. Certainly finding a companion who I can love completely and who loves me for who I really am and not some forced false version of me. If the scripture that teaches wickedness never was happiness, then it is so difficult for me to think that I am some how more wicked than I was and still be so much more joyful. I learned to not trust God. He seems ok with that as well. Maybe the true test in life is to learn to stand on my own two feet, be responsible for my life and not rely on a God that was not all that consistent in giving me any help in solving what I thought was flaws in my spirit. Turns out, acceptance of reality seems to work better than pretending that God has all the answers.

You accused the minor who was talking with his siblings about why he was leaving the church and encouraging them to also leave the church as subverting their parents efforts to raise their minor children relative to religious instruction. Missionaries do the exact same thing: talking to minors about why they should leave their church behind the parents back, not asking parental permission. The goal being to convince them to also leave their church and join the LDS religion. If it is subversive to the first example, it is also subversive when missionaries do the exact same thing. So YES, using your own criteria. The fact that you seem to be completely clueless that the similarities have little daylight between them tells me you are completely blinded by your own religious point of view.

The WHOLE point of missionary work is to get people to abandon their church and join the LDS church. Missionaries are not required to ask parents of youth permission to present their discussions. Show me in the handbook or anywhere else where missionaries are required to notify parents before teaching the youth the discussions. And QUIT calling me a liar. Look in the mirror. You will find a person who can not support his assertion that parents are required to be notified before youth can be taught.

This is EXACTLY what I am talking about. You got it exactly right. See, not all that difficult to understand my point. SMAC doesn't want to get it, so plays dumb and ignores that I actually stated about parental permission required of minors in order to be baptized. I should have read your comment first, I would have skipped my response. I don't think what I was saying is all that difficult to acknowledge happens all the time in missionary work.

You must be in such denial you can't even see what missionaries are asked to do. Their job is to convert others to the LDS church. That also means leaving their former church in the past. So yes, missionaries are encouraging people to leave their former church and join a new one. Do missionaries teach the discussions to youth without receiving permission to teach their children from the parents before starting the discussions. I think you are being particularly dense on purpose. I'm pretty sure what receive was referring to. But you gotta pick things apart, sentence by sentence until you no long have the context of what people actually say. YES. We were never told to get parental permission to teach youth before beginning the lessons. Most often, those lessons were given in the members home whenever possible. Whether the youth told their parents or not before taking the lessons depended on what the youth wanted to do. Can you honestly tell me you were required by your mission president to get parental permission before giving the discussions to the youth? Can you show me church policy that states missionaries will only give the lessons to youth after getting signed parental approval? YES. I'm stating that missionaries give lessons to minors all the time without getting any parental approval before starting the lessons. Like the example of the child, who tried to convert his siblings to leaving the church without first asking for parental approval to do so. The missionary lessons are specifically designed to convince a person that his current religion is wrong, but the LDS religion is the right one. I never said that missionaries baptize minors without getting parental approval. That is not the issue we are talking about. We are talking about teaching youth to leave their current church and join the LDS church. We are talking about a person teaching. his siblings about what he feels are untruths about Mormonism. He is also not baptizing them into another religion without parental approval. Just teaching. If you can't see that the goal is the same in both cases, then I will leave you to sit in your denial and pretend there is some kind of subtle difference. To me it is the same.

When missionaries go online and start talking to youth who are not members of the church do they 1. Do it with the intent of converting them away from their faith and hoping they will join the LDS church? 2. Do they ask parental permission and receive it before chatting with these youth? My dorm room mate dated in high school a girl (my sisters best friend). She let him know that she could only marry. someone who is a member of the church. So they met with the missionaries at her house. He wasn't told anything about getting parental permission prior to receiving the discussions. After receiving the discussions, he wanted to be baptized, which because he was a minor he was THEN required parental permission. When they found out that he had been meeting with the missionaries, they were livid and forbade him from getting baptized. So he attended BYU which didn't require permission from the parents to attend. When he finally turned 18, against the wishes of his parents, he was baptized. Every member a missionary was a mantra that was drilled into every member when I was growing up. We were encouraged to talk to all of our family and friends to try and get them to have the discussions. NEVER ONCE were we asked if the parents gave permission prior to taking the lessons. You castigated the young man for talking to his siblings about his faith experiences in the church in an effort to persuade them to his point of view. If you can't see the blind spot that you have when you can't recognize similarities, then you have definitely drunk the Koolaid. It's the same exact thing being done. Swaying someone away from their faith to follow your own beliefs without, in many cases, any parental permission. If you want more examples of missionaries trying to persuade youth away from their religious beliefs without parental permission before doing so, I have 2 years of experiences that I can share.

Since I can't give you an upvote on your post, I am reposting it here. You basically have it correct. Mormons believe that the church that Jesus established was taken from the earth, the heavens were sealed, there were no saving ordinances performed with proper authority. While there were people who identified as Christian, they were in no way members of Christ's church. Mormons are taught that other creeds that teach about Christ were corrupt and an abomination to God. They believe through Joseph Smith, that the true church was reestablished. From Joseph Smiths history You're being gaslighted.

YES. That is exactly what missionaries do. YES. We were told to ask new member to give us a referral or invite their family members over for a discussion so they too could become members. The youth were also encouraged to invite their friends to church activities. Sometimes we as missionaries would help set up those activities and attend the events as a way to introduce the gospel to their friends. I don't think this is news to any active member of the church. It wasn't just on my mission that youth were encouraged to bring their friends to church activities, it has always been a part of how the church operates, at least out of the Utah bubble. Are you seriously telling me you have never heard of this kind of behavior????? The exact same thing of trying to lead people including youth away from their current church and get them baptized into the LDS church. Parent permission or notifying parents of non members was never a part of these recruitment type activities. I think you are playing dumb. The missionary program has always been designed to lead people including they youth away from their current church. Then you belong to the wrong church because this effort to lead people including youth away from their current churches is still front and centter in the missionary program including using social media with no effort to first ask parents if it is ok that missionaries contact their youth.

Sometimes I am just amazed at how blind some members are at the things the Church encourages its members to do, while criticizing similar behavior of others. Trying to interest your friends and family into joining the church has been a core teaching for at least a half of century, probablylonger.. As a missionary, I remember being instructed to talk to newly baptized members to introduce their family members to the missionaries and encourage them to help convert their relatives to leave their current church and join the LDS church. Yet when a child does the exact same thing to those he loves, somehow it is subversive and interfering with the parents efforts to raise their own minor children. Does that also amount to a (mis)appropriation and use of family relationships?

You are trying to define what you think marriage should be. But not only does the Supreme Court disagree with you, but by far the majority of Americans also agree, You are definitely an outliner trying to make a case that marriage is all about the plumbing and not the far more importance of establishing a strong legal foundation, committing to a life long relationship and providing a stable environment for raising children. To the majority of Americans, these are the things that bring value to marriage. Pretty ironic that you list polygamous households marriages as being somehow shameful and shouldn't be legalized either. Really? You don't view stable marriage relationships as an important foundation of American society? Well I guess we will have to disagree with that world view. Do you believe gay couples relationship and society in general is better off if they just living together? I am saying plumbing and whether a couple can reproduce are not the only criteria the majority of Americans judge the value of marriage to be. I really don't know many people that share your radical defining reasons for marriage. Maybe it is more of an Utah thing because of the Church's campaign against gay marriage among its members. Do you think there should be a questioner required to be signed stating each partner's sex and whether they will be able to reproduce?

Well fortunately legal definition of what a marriage is differs from your opinion. And the world is a better place for it. Denying citizens of the right to marry is not a good decision for the country or the world. Keeping a foundation of marriage for all is a strength both to those participating in marriage as well as society in general. To argue agains marriage for even part of the population is to devalue marriage and its importance in our legal system and the public in general.

Curious. Do you see any benefit at all for same sex marriage either to the couple or to society in general or both to their marriages?

Let he who has never had sex with the only reason for doing so was to produce offspring cast the first stone

How much of this post do you think actually addresses the fact that there has never been a declared revelation from God on gay marriage in the church?

Except that unlike the prejudicial priesthood ban against blacks, there has never been ANY claim of a revelation from God prohibiting gay marriage. Like the priesthood ban, it is based on conservative religious prejudices that like the prejudices against blacks go back for centuries

If centering Sacrament meeting on Christ requires rearranging the furniture in order for that to happen, perhaps there are bigger issues.

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

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

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 am unclear which lane you picked. What binary lane do you put someone who is born intersexed?

Would you agree that not all people view sex as binary and not as clear cut as you want it to be? Who is correct on what that definition of sex is? Could it be that there is no right or wrong answer, just differences in opinion on what the definition of what a woman is and what a man is may differ with different people's life experiences? It is way more likely that a true blue Mormon would narrowly define sex as you have and a person with a more liberal background would have a more broad definition. Who's right and who's wrong? Given completely different point of views, I would say there are no hard answers to who is right. As proof of this truth, I offer you 21 pages of disagreement. Neither side is willing to change their opinion because language is fluid. Each side feels like they have a right to control that definition when in fact, no one has that power.