Calm

So while he intentionally (at the moment) talked like an African slave from the stand, he would never have used Ebonics when mimicking if that was what his friend was using? (I agree he probably won’t now given the reaction to his mimicking).

Some of its ideas, for sure. I agree with those that have been repeated are definitely doctrinal. But other of its ideas have been ignored. I believe people need to be careful not to treat it like a regular conference talk since 1) there are different version that sometimes contradict each other or have unique ideas not confirmed by other versions or other materials from Joseph and 2) it was never vetted by Joseph iirc. He could have misstated something. I would love to see a color coded version where ideas that have been consistently taught over the years, ideas that were present in more than one version, ideas that were present in only one version, and ideas that are contradicted by other versions or other teachings of Joseph are all highlighted in different colors with appropriate footnotes. I could get behind that as a study aid.

And how is mimicking someone doing a bad job of what he thought was pretending to be a slave emulating another’s traditions (this is how he described it himself, see below)? Serious question as I am trying to understand your thought process on this. From the link in the first post.

This is how I am reading the thread. Feel free to correct any misinterpretations I might have, but please consider why I might have that misinterpretation given I believe everyone participating here sincerely abhors violence against women and wants to prevent it. I see Smac and Danzo essentially wanting women (and others) not to judge men as unsafe until they have seen unsafe behavior from them. Myself and I believe several others are wanting women and others not to judge men as safe until it’s more likely than just statistical probability. Both of us are asking judgement to not be made prematurely. It does seem to me though that Smac and Danzo are assuming the only way to not judge a man as unsafe is to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he is safe rather than to just withhold any judgment….because otherwise I don’t see why they are so offended by my stance that caution should be the first response, that we teach awareness there may be danger (not that there is), the person may be a predator (not that they are) as an initial response. In no way have I ever suggested women should treat all men as rapists prior to actual knowledge. I have been saying don’t give the benefit of the doubt, don’t trust until there are signs to trust. Do not make unfounded assumptions based on hopes and a desire to see everyone as good. That in no way means we should be seeing people as bad. That does not mean withhold respect or courtesy. That only means no labels of good or bad until there are solid reasons to label. There is a middle ground between trust and mistrust that is neither of the two, but a wait and see approach. That is what I want taught to women as the starting point.

I believe a lot of leaders feel this way. They believe it will create the best world not only for the Church as a whole, but also and especially for the individual members. I think there are other leaders that are less black and white about it and see members at different stages in life needing different things even if we are attempting to travel down the road together. I think that idea can be harder to convey while still teaching confidence (not certainty) in leaders and commitment to the faith. It is very easy to slip into less nuanced teaching when time is limited, especially if one has taught the more nuanced positions in the past. It can be frustrating to feel like one has to start at square one with each talk instead of building on past talks. I get why leaders are forced to keep it simple though since even here on this board where we have documented conversations, some posters seem unable to grasp greater context and instead focused on certain details as if they exist in a vacuum. Complicated ideas appear to need to be repeated over with all the previous details included and even then they can be misinterpreted by isolating them from surrounding context.

Church leaders are more than just General Authorities in most members’ views, imo. California boy didnt say as far as I remember he was limiting the teaching to official publications only or General Authorities only (he can correct me if I am wrong). My experience is they include bishopric members, EQ, RS and youth leaders and teachers typically in most members’ views. Also stake leaders. Pretty sure that’s how it’s taught officially, but won’t take time to doublecheck right now. Finding documentation that a local leader taught something will be practically impossible. I remember a variation on this theme. A relatively new convert was a Primary counselor along with myself and it was her turn to give the teacher training instruction. She added a small lump of dirt to a cup of sugar and shook it up and then explained if we added anything to what the lesson manuals were teaching in our lessons, we were taunting the truth like the dirt tainted the sugar and made it useless for cooking. I have no way to document that experience. I am grateful that FAIR has stuff up there demonstrating the origin and whether or not it’s actual doctrine (I don’t believe it qualifies). However, that doesn’t mean it didn’t become part of our culture and that it has at times created tendencies to interpret teachings of confidence in our leaders’ inspiration to be certainty, including to the point we can skip looking for personal confirmation. The only way to remove error in our communities in my experience is to realistically recognize its presence first and not be dismissive of its impact just because we are confident it is wrong.

You missed my point. I have been explaining not that every place is inherently dangerous, but that no place could be identified as 100% safe so when entering there one should be able to completely shut off every thread of awareness or caution given the data on where assaults occur. Not known to be safe is not equivalent to known to be dangerous. Even known to be not safe is not equivalent to known to be dangerous though everything known to be dangerous is included in the category of not safe. Safe means low or no risk, not safe means there is some level of risk, but dangerous means high risk. Add to that it being unknown whether it is safe or not, how can you conclude I am claiming all these spaces are dangeroust? Being only known to be safe sometimes does mean known to be dangerous all the times. I still don’t understand why you are always taking it to the extreme, such as assuming I am saying every place is dangerous rather than reasonable caution is always wise until we have enough data to make judgments. I and others are speaking of appropriate levels of vigilance, but you go to describing us as promoting a constant state of hyper vigilance. Why are you reading comments as extreme when they are not? Viewing all men as potential predators is not equivalent to viewing all men as predators. Viewing men as potential predators is not judging them by behaviours they haven’t committed, but withholding judgment until one has sufficient data about their actual behaviour rather than starting out by giving the benefit of the doubt, which is also judging men not by their own behaviours. Viewing men as potential predators is a realistic neutral position imo because it counteracts the tendency in women in our culture to judge men as safe when there is no solid reason to do so besides statistics that cannot provide identifiers for when not to trust the minority of men who are not safe.

You really think the criticism was about cultural misappropriation? Did you miss the repetition of the caricature?

Don’t disagree. Holding up the Old Testament in general as an example of how one should relate to our fellowman when we have resources and tech that allows for much more now is my difficulty. Again treating it like a textbook without the need to adapt it is at least careless and possibly dangerous in my view and not what God intended (continuing revelation isn’t just about adding new knowledge, but also correcting errors of men). The Old Testament is fascinating, but not exactly because it shows shining examples of human behaviour. My mother’s view, who also studied it, was it was in part to show that Christ vanquished all sin, he carried every kind of sin in his bloodline. Sin was his heritage, but he still managed to be sinless himself.

No problem, that gets you to 25 faster. One of the biggest indicator for poverty is a woman with children on her own even in this day and age (perhaps there are countries with social safety nets this is not an issue, but still a massive problem in US). Even if plural marriage becomes unpleasant for a woman with children, getting up and leaving the marriage puts her and her children at greater risk. AI generated because I am lazy, but it’s accurate based on research I have done in the past. Divorced women without children are also high risk to fall into poverty, but not as high as mothers. And the more children one has the worst it gets…polygyny tends to result in fewer children, so that may be one ‘positive’ in this area. Divorced men and single fathers are also more at risk for poverty, but not as significantly as for women. They tend to have higher incomes, for one thing.

Until they have children at least.

When you get to 25 posts, you can edit your remarks.

And unmarried (single or widowed, childless or not) women on their own have often been a large section of the poor.

May I ask why you are a supporter of plural marriage? Speaking purely practically without any spiritual implications…. I can see its usefulness in cultures where women were not supported in independence and were more often treated like children and the most common and only at times safety net was family, but when there are options for financial independence I don’t see the necessity unless a woman desires to marry and have children and there are truly no single compatible single men willing to marry her. The reverse might be true as well, so logically it seems appropriate in this day and age where we have dna testing to determine parenthood, that if a man has no compatibility with any single women and he wants to marry and be a father, plural marriage with a woman who has a husband already makes as much sense.

Then there is the whole problem with why they would need to resort to selling themselves or their children into debt slavery, why the system didn’t have a better safety net for the poor. And how often were debt slaves going to be able to be financially independent enough after 7 years of servitude to avoid debt slavery again?

Here is the page that got posted:

https://publicsquaremag.org/faith/gospel-fare/ces-letter-calculated-deception-2/ For those who are curious about the actual origin story, more details provided in the above link and here: https://www.publishpeace.net/p/were-these-ever-the-sincere-questions The original thread is still up, took me a few minutes to track it down.

Iirc, it was his grandfather who made the offer of his friend answering questions and Runnells’ response was to go online (to the exMormon Reddit iirc, wherever it was you could see the original exchange for years) and outsource editing his draft with stuff he pulled from others (I don’t have an issue with that unless he told his grandfather he had come up with it just by reading faithful material) and gathering as many questions as possible. He was not a believer at the time and sent off a huge list of questions, a very aggressive and insincere imo response if the CES director had actually told his grandfather he would answer questions Runnells had. Pretty clear he was looking to make a name for himself in the community at the very least. I find it hard to believe that anyone who knows the actual story would fault the director for seeing what the reality was, recognizing there was no hope of convincing Runnells to reconsider and what the actual purpose of the letter was and refusing to waste his time playing Runnells’ game. I would not be the least bit surprised if director or someone who knew him and heard of Runnells’ list went online and found out how the list came to be. Would have been easier to find when there was less clutter. When people write FAIR with a list of quite a few questions, we generally pick out a few to answer in detail, sometimes with links if it’s a common question that has been addressed and sometimes with original research or commentary, often both. The majority of those list senders do not respond at all, some do not engage much, but just add more on and a few engage in actual discussion. When someone sincerely volunteers their time and effort, they have a right to expect to be respected even if there is complete disagreement and if not, why should they feel obligated to respond? Burnout happens quicker if efforts are ignored or dismissed without consideration.

Who wanted it sealed?

Reread a bit of the thread. Has forgotten the details. It looks like the claims were primarily founded on recordings of the father allegedly confessing in addition to her recovered memories. So was the lawyer claiming they altered them to make it sound like he was confessing when he wasn’t? Alteration of emails would be easier to prove if he kept his own. If I were a judge and saw proof of altering emails and the defendant claimed the recordings were altered as well, I would likely believe them. But maybe they went further and got them examined by experts who could tell if there was alteration even if they might not be able to testify to what was on them originally. Is this not a public case? I always assume the public nature meant most things were made public knowledge. Never been involved though or researched, so don’t know the rules.

Don’t disagree with you in the sense of treating someone with the consequences of being a rapist if they are not. You shouldn’t Makes no sense. It is about precaution. Never being alone where possible to limit this with someone who can overpower you unless there is very good reason to trust them, avoiding places where possible where one is vulnerable….unfortunately truly safe places are few and far between outside our homes (and even there for some the risk is high). Places that should be safe, that we must encounter…stores, banks, doctors’ offices, gyms, parks, schools, public transportation, private transportation, etc are too often sites of harassment and assault.

Too bad.

Will that be made accessible eventually?

How is this not essentially saying anyone is a potential rapist? (Serious question)

So there are sufficient warnings signs to be aware of in your opinion? How do you know someone is the wrong person to be worried about? Can we ignore the risk of being alone with a genial and respectful uncle or teacher or bishop because we can trust they are safe in your view? Not asking to challenge you, but to understand differences in our views, assuming there will be some differences. Obviously we both see caution as very important. Since I am the one who has brought up preparing to lower the risk the most in the conversation iirc and in fact that is the only value I see in using the “every man a potential rapist” (to really wake up girls and women so they stop being as dismissive of warning signs and precautions, as I have seen myself and so many other women making excuses in our past for very inappropriate behaviour by men of all ages), I do not see discussing ways of being cautious as blaming the victim any more than defensive driving (I used this analogy at the beginning of this subtopic) means an accident is the fault of the driver who is hit….especially since while in the case of driving that at times might be true, it never is in the case of harassment or assault as no one can be forced to do these immoral acts unlike accidental plowing into a car that stopped too quickly or crossed a line.