The Nehor

I knew being gay was bad before I knew what it even was and when I only had a vague idea of what sex was. We played “Smear the Queer” when I was a kid. It is a shame about the name. It was actually a fun game.

The old LDS explanation was that he married a black woman who bore the Mark and Curse of Cain. Thus he had the right to the Priesthood but his children did not. The idea that the Mark of Cain was dark skin is a pretty recent one in Christianity as a whole. The justification for slavery for black people was argued to also be tied to the really weird scene in Genesis where Ham saw his naked father and then Noah curses Ham’s son for it. The idea that Ham married someone and preserved Cain’s curse was not unknown in Joseph Smith’s time. It is possible he copied this idea from them. Joseph Smith weirdly blessed them with things of the Earth and wisdom whereas Noah states that they are good to be nothing but slaves and slaves of slaves. The Genesis account was probably supposed to be part of the justification for the Israelite genocidal conquest of the promised land. I suspect that whomever was compiling Genesis had two accounts. In one Cainan was a son of Noah but in the other the three sons were different. The compiler put Ham in as the son but then needed to fit Cainan in to make the episode make some sense and put him in as Ham’s son without also revising the bit about Cainan serving his brothers (where he was not serving his uncles).

I don’t think that the people who wrote all those scriptures about the seed of Abraham meant all this talk about the spiritual descendants of Abraham nor did they know that if Abraham existed was probably an ancestor to probably everyone on the planet by today so there probably aren’t people who need to have their blood purged. We are all mutts. The most unbelievable part of that awful Da Vinchi code book was that there was exactly ONE survivor that was a descendant of Jesus Christ two millenia later. Sure, Jan. Paul revised the understanding of what it meant to be part of the covenant people but even he seems to have drawn a line between Jews and Gentiles. I also don’t think that the authors of Genesis thought Noah’s line was about priesthood. I have no idea what Joseph Smith meant by this. Maybe he didn’t believe in a global flood? Maybe he was copying talk of Abraham’s seed and backdating it without thinking it through.

I have heard several. I suspect because I grew up in more multi-racial environments. I doubt this. Homophobic banter was endemic in youth culture both inside and outside the church. Unless by “in a church setting” you only mean from the pulpit. Please stop comparing two single men or two single women being interested in each other to unfaithfulness. It is a silly analogy. Yeah, you’re just going on a ‘vibes’ based thing here. Lots of people are uncomfortable with the existence of gay behavior so therefore it must be a sin. Probably why the Torah said some kinds of same-sex sexual behavior was wrong. Why do we ignore about half of the Word of Wisdom and have unofficially added new requirements to it? Also substance abuse was a much bigger problem in Joseph’s day than it is now. Do you know how much alcohol they were drinking? It was also a “problem” in most cultures. Really these days we are doing a relatively good job. Also you gave out the standard bit about same-sex desire not being a sin but that acting on it is. That is a very recent change. The Bible says the opposite. Good old Romans 1 lays out where Paul thinks same sex lust comes from: Paul states that the existence of the Abrahamic God is obvious to all since the creation of the world (lol). Then although everyone knows God exists intuitively some are just perverse and reject him. Therefore God gives them over to shameful lusts so they worship idols and turn gay. God uses gayness as an affliction to punish the wicked. Then Pauls continues on to a litany of other sins. Who knew that anyone who gossips in your ward are all secretly gay? Better keep an eye on them. Many Evangelicals still hold on to this tripe. It is why their worldview is so warped and there is a strange assumption that everyone secretly knows that they are right but just want to sin so bad that they reject it. It is also why a lot of their missionary efforts are so bizarre. LDS don’t generally teach these verses much. At least not anymore. They did hold on to the idea that the main reason for disbelief in the gospel is a desire for sin for a long time and the apostles have recently been beating down that idea. These are all recent changes though. The teachings about where homosexuality came from were baked in with Paul’s reasoning. Of course we know now that Paul was absolutely wrong. The existence of an all-powerful God is not intuitively obvious and history backs that up. Devout believers in the Abrahamic God and Christians specifically are not immune to having same-sex desires. It is not something that belongs to the pagan others that Paul (and other biblical writers) play up as evidence of depravity. This is the same supposed depravity that other biblical writers used to justify genocide of other peoples. Play up them being a bunch of incestuous depraved orgy-havers and you can justify killing them. So what Paul says is factually wrong and those facts are used to justify moral evils. This is why I want a clear-cut revelation. The scriptural references about gay behavior are tainted by hatred, are often tied to fallacious reasoning that has been proved wrong again and again, and is often used as a rhetorical weapon to justify oppression and/or ethnic cleansing. Yet Christianity as a whole and the LDS Church hold on to the part they like while disavowing or ignoring the attached parts that are wrong. We can make it go away. Christianity as a whole decided slavery was wrong even though the Bible is pro-slavery from cover to cover. It is more pro-slavery than it is anti-gay. Or God could speak authoritatively and end this discussion. So God chooses to be silent or no one is listening if He does want to speak authoritatively. Church leaders point to the Bible to condemn us while ignoring virtually everything about those condemnations that is objectively wrong. Why are we still doing this?

The verbal derogatory racist and homophobic comments have mostly left the Church. Treating black people and queer people as an “other” still persists.

So your first point is that I support all this gobbledygook you just made up because I want everyone, including myself, to be as miserable as possible. So I am not human? I have no desire for happiness and desire perpetual misery for myself and everyone I love? Do you realize how insane what you are saying is? Yes, I was born into the world desiring misery and so are all over people fighting for “Marxist” ideas like social justice and equality. Lunacy. A desire for justice and fairness is a desire for misery? So justice and fairness leads to misery? That is a radical take. So the United States was a big mistake? And now I am somehow envious of someone else’s unseen heavenly rewards? What? I don’t envy you. At all. So now not only was I born without any desire for happiness and a lust for perpetual misery I now desire a perpetual safe space where I will never experience any negative emotions ever? Oh, and I lack all ambition for anything. No wonder you live in perpetual fear of these imagined enemies you dream up? They sound monstrous. I could see how this would lead to xenophobia, homophobia, racism, and all the other fun fears about the ‘other’. I would grow up and realize that people actually experience the same emotions you do and have the same desires that you do. This fantasy world is toxic. So really you’re mad about those hellspawned ‘vidya games’ that make people deny Jesus and sap all their ambition somehow. There are no larger structural problems that make people unwilling to struggle to succeed as much as you think they should? It is just the vidya games. You realize this contempt you have for a lot of the people in the world that dehumanizes them to the point that they are just pursuing evil for its own sake is pretty much the polar opposite of charity right?

And it is not working that well. Which is exactly why using AI in a discussion is stupid.

But do you think Grok was correct when it said the LDS Church is generally characterized as a “small tent”? Grok did that because the predictive text shows that is the most popular characterization.

Now try it again while asking Grok questions while implying you think the big tent/little tent dichotomy is useful. I’d bet money Grok won’t call it subjective but will be agreeable and flatter what you seem to like. AI chatbots are designed to be agreeable. One reason they are pretty useless. Two people can hold a discussion and outsource all their thinking to Grok or any AI and it will generally tell each what they want to hear outside of a few limits put in to keep it from going openly fascist or full anti-Semite or whatever. I went ahead and asked Grok if the LDS Church is a big tent or a small tent. So it is not an empirical fact but Grok has an opinion on where it falls. Why are we holding discussions via AI?

Well, that was the stupidest thing I’ve read today. And I wasted time earlier reading about how pyramids are powered by ley lines.

True, I have never met any member of the church that is that pixellated in real life. I for one would like to welcome our new blocky overlords…..

The thing is the 50s are not that similar to the 30s or the 20s or the 10s. There is a tendency by many to pick some golden age and project it backwards as (mostly) contiguous. It is worth noting that religious fundamentalism was created primarily by rationalism and darwinism. No longer needing a higher power to explain reality ironically led to an attempt at a hyper-literalist take on scripture. A failed attempt. It is not a coincidence that fundamentalist Islam showed up at the same time fighting the same thing (plus understandably throwing in a lot of anti-colonialism). The LDS versions tend to come from a similar place. Reactionary and extreme.

“There is a cabal of satanic pedophiles abusing children.” ”There are pedophiles abusing children.” The second is true and has pretty much always been true. The first is not true. We shouldn’t give credit to those saying the first sentence because part of it are correct when everyone knew those parts are correct. They didn’t add anything to actively fighting pedophilia. In fact they distracted from it with their false claims. Hitler claiming the corrupt Jews were controlling everything and only he could stop them. Netanyahu claims that there is a conspiracy behind all of his own legal troubles. There are still conspiracy theories about a cabal within the government that manufactured Watergate to bring down Nixon. Claims like this require evidence. I very much doubt there is anything to this.

Considering Judas Iscariot supposedly made the cut maybe the standard is malleable.

I would hate it. There are many who would gladly embrace it. For some having a job like this for life would be a plus. I don’t understand them but they exist.

Yeah, but it is weird to be obsessed with not being worldly so selectively. There isn’t some kind of LDS DEI replacement plan. DEI programs aren’t perfect but this seems to be a case of saying that there has to be a better way and then not actually finding and implementing a better way. It is an acceptance of the status quo that tries to sound like it wants to be more inclusive.

On racial inclusion: “Absolutely, but mimicking … the world is not the way to do it. The DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs in the world are not the way BYU should do it. We should find a gospel-centered approach. We should be better than we are now, and we should be a light to the world but not replicating the world.” If there is one thing the LDS Church is known for it is being ahead of the curve on promoting racial equality…………nope, I could not keep a straight face. More seriously I am not sure how the gospel is supposed to facilitate this. BYU is not exactly at the forefront of any such efforts. https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/27/us/brigham-young-university-athletics-apology-racial-slurs-duke

This but unironically.

Why? It wouldn’t realistically change anything. They aren’t going to undo making him an apostle.

Were you expecting CES employees to publicly criticize him and get fired?

And that bravery and bold risk taking led to becoming an apostle. Truly a heroic sacrifice. He literally divided faculty into four groups based on their “orthodoxy”. Please stop the whole Socratic innocence pretense where you pretend you don’t understand what anyone is talking about.

A few were fired. Some quit. https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2025/01/06/byu-academic-freedom-religious-salt-lake-tribune

That is what I see a lot of. Combined with talk of Jesus grabbing up illiterate peasants to be his disciples/apostles. Then again historically the apostle that appears to have moved the needle the most and probably ensured Christianity thrived was Paul who was from the privileged elite. Trained as a pharisee, fluent and literate in Greek, Roman citizenship, pretty much the whole elite package. Paul didn’t seem to think much of Peter either. So are the Clark Gilberts of the world the ideal apostles and Jesus just worked with those that weren’t ideal because that is all he had? I dunno.

It takes real guts to go against the grain and act morally by *checks notes* rooting out people not conforming to orthodoxy. Really standing up against conformity there.