Calm

Cool

True, but that’s because I don’t watch reality shows unless it’s a craft…glassblowing, decorating, fashion…and then I skip the drama and just look at the results, lol. I did try once or twice when it first came out. Do they do follow up shows to see if the changes stick or how the person adapts them to their own lifestyle? If I watched anything, it would be that.

The idea that it’s always been a husband and a wife both sharing responsibilities to raise the kids traditionally is not that accurate, especially for the more well to do. Nannies, wet nurses, aunties, older kids, grandparents, etc that spend more time with the young ones than parents have been very common, as have been cultures where the women raise the children with little involvement of the men or fostering where the kids get exchanged or apprenticed before they hit puberty was also not unusual. There are cultures where one daughter was not allowed to get married because she was expected to care for her parents and even run their household. I do believe it’s ideal to have at least one adult man and one woman in the home, who can model (hopefully) healthy relationships between sexes, but to take the so-called nuclear family as proven to be the natural, meant to be pattern or God given pattern because it’s traditional is ignoring a great deal of human history and culture and actual tradition while focusing on a limited time and location. It certainly wasn’t a nuclear family in ancient Israel when the Old Testament was written. Not as familiar with New Testament times, but I suspect many homes were at least multigenerational, if not still including adult sons’ families including all their children as well as any unmarried adult siblings. Jesus’ family likely operated that way given when he was 12 his parents didn’t bother looking for him before they left Jerusalem because they assumed he was elsewhere in the caravan….unlikely if just strangers traveling together or even neighbors imo, but extended family one was used to help raising the kids? Easy to see that happening. A similar caravan at the time of Jesus’ birth is likely, it would have been stupid to travel alone, easy prey to bandits, apparently common in that time period and location (Google). Personally I don’t find the nuclear family to be that healthy, too much isolation and responsibility dumped on two people where family life was much more social in the past with a large extended family living together with shared responsibilities, though then you ran into the problem of favored kids—especially the ones getting the bulk of inheritance—these children getting the majority of attention/training/investment of resources including food with the idea that the family succeeds if this favored son succeeds and other children being neglected or even suppressed to avoid competition in the family.

How did they get appointed?

What about shared custody then? Or adding a third adult to the household to provide the missing parent? Or create households with one male couple and one female couple.

I thought that was Cain

Meaning?

Not if you don’t qualify or can’t afford adoption, but that would likely be a recent change as I am guessing taking unwanted kids in would be relatively easy in much of the past. There is also the issue of health that might limit a couple, but the same would apply to having children in the first place. But I do agree that generally speaking adoption is a possibility and it would seem this applies to the next life as well because scripture speaks of Christ adopting us for God and I assume we count as part of his eternal increase as well. PS: again this does not mean I reject the doctrine it will be male and female couples only, I am undecided at this point if my life. Part of me hates the idea that there is yet another way to remove women from the eternal picture as unnecessary, but also looking at heaven as truly Godly, that logically wouldn’t happen even if creation didn’t require at some point female involvement. God doesn’t require each individual’s involvement for creation apparently, so none of us are inherently necessary to God….except that he appears to have made us so as his children and he invites each of us to participate, so why would women be excluded just because men possibly could create even spirit children on their own?

Yes. Then if we are truly one in the Celestial Kingdom, then why would only the children we produce ourselves be seen as contributing to our own glory rather than all who are of God’s family? Why can’t we also have eternal increase through others having children when we are in total oneness with them as we are with God?

What if you know they are wrong rather than just having doubts? Iow, you know it will be a sin if you do it?

At what point does suboptimal become unlawful in a religious context? So one doesn’t wait to complain, but rejects.

Do you believe God’s eternal increase is only limited to children or does it include knowledge, kingdoms, power, glory, and posterity and likely other things that don’t occur to me now? Does God’s eternal increase include his exalted children’s children and their exalted children’s children, etc or only his own children in your view?

I was wondering why I was so certain it had been explicit about it being husband and wife only (endowed 1980). Plus marriage was always presented growing up in the Church in the context of boy meets girl/girl meets boy, they fall in love and get married. Of course, you teach or assume the context of what you see around you, somethings don’t need to be said because everyone in that culture just ‘knows’. It’s why the Bible is often guesswork on what was originally meant because the unwritten context the authors used, but did not include except at times through references we do not ‘get’ (think of someone who never heard of Star Wars or Tolkien, didn’t have the internet available to look up memes, etc trying to figure out conversations in our culture). Such references likely had massive additional information if only we knew them.

As long as it is legal is a big condition though. Whst would that look like in a religious context?

Never thought this way and very, very grateful for parents that didn’t support this way of thinking. I know it was at least implied, if not taught outright at church, but I have never viewed anyone in my life as a role model that I can remember or someone I admired to the point of accepting them as an authority, I have never idealized people in that way. I have always picked individual aspects out to adapt and adopt rather than assumed because I liked this about them, they must be doing other stuff well as well. When young I did believe if leaders came out and said it was from God, that part of what they said was from God as if God had spoken it, but I shifted smoothly to recognizing they had to interpret the Spirit themselves and then find words to convey that interpretation. Probably at least by midteens, if not a few years before. Mom talked to me a lot about Joseph’s spiritual experiences and I interpreted his experience as more struggling for words to describe and share what he knew through personal experience. Whether this was more a reflection of Mom than Joseph, I don’t know.

Do you view life’s main purpose is evolution? The passing on of DNA? If not, why is the principle purpose of heterosexual sex about reproduction? Because my guess is given the search for and use of many different forms of birth control over the ages as well as the evidence for the frequency of premarital sex (a woman would be crazy in most cultures to attempt to raise kids without a husband because of property issues, physical protection, rights of women or rather lack of them) as well as sexually active women who are no longer fertile, the majority of heterosexual acts in humanity’s existence have been most likely been for the purpose of pleasure, not to produce children and that often they were an unwanted side effect (and thus many were abandoned when abortion was not an option). God and/or evolution may view heterosexual sex as principally about reproduction, but those doing it….much lower percentage. In the 45+ years of my marriage, about 6 months of heterosexual sex was principally devoted to having children with the side purpose of having fun. The rest of the time it’s been about pleasure and companionship. So around 1%.

And what happens with your reasoning when science allows this to change, when two women can create offspring with one of them carrying the child till birth?

Why is there an ordinance required for the bearing of children in your view?

I have heard of someone getting kicked out for marrying someone who was black though. And it certainly didn’t stop racists remarks and treatment from the white side of Bluedream’s family from what she has reported (and I have heard similar things from others). I also know a parent of an adopted young woman who is convinced she will never marry in the Church contrary to the reality. My guess is the nasty bigotry of that parent’s (I know some stories of their childhood, tragic) own parents is embedded in their views so that they end up treating her differently, telling her she is seen as inferior, telling her she won’t succeed, but blaming it on others rather than accepting their own responsibility in conveying to her she is less than (thankfully she is getting very strong support from others members in her family to resist such programming, plus always was a strong, determined individual since I knew her from toddler age). Just because it’s family doesn’t mean they won’t be racist to their own family members. Not that it’s a competition. Bigotry is bad whatever the target. I do think being able to mask, a choice for those who are gay that does not exist for most Blacks, adds a fundamental difference in the dynamics, but that ‘option’ creates both better and worse conditions…masking allows one to avoid the bigotry being directed at oneself but likely still will encounter people exhibiting it and even be expected to join in, the bigots unaware they are insulting the person in front of them. The masking itself is a denial of self, unnatural and a heavy burden to manage, very high cost emotionally, mentally, and physical…masking is exhausting. One does not avoid fear either by masking because there is always the fear of exposure. Not saying here Blacks don’t engage in masking in and out of the Church as I am aware that many do to avoid being seen as different, to fit in; I am speaking specifically to the issue of the Bans in the context of the Church. Very few Blacks could mask their blackness to the point of being able to receive a temple recommend. Any one with same sex attraction could and can mask that attraction and and related behaviour in order to receive a recommend….and many did.

He said claims of revelation, not evidence of revelation…unless you believe that the First Presidency and Apostles stating something is a revelation or a “direct commandment of God”, see above) counts as evidence for revelation. If so, you are wrong about the ban having none such. Sections of scripture were misinterpreted imo to support the claims of revelation for the ban. Why could this not be happening with the sections of scripture used to exclude gay marriage today? What is different? (I do not support gay marriage being accepted in the Church, but I don’t believe we have the certainty of it being against the commandments that is claimed. Added to be clear, I don’t reject it being accepted either, I am currently in limbo on this though the symmetry of male-female half making a whole symbolism appeals to me, possibly because it surrounded my youth in and out of the Church).

And they get the same rewards…nuts.

Dan Brown

Ah, I thought you meant the author.

Dan?

The worse used words that you wouldn’t hear at Church in my youth as I remember, so I think that lowered the number of overall comments, but from what I heard around my kids (my eldest is 45), while not as extreme, juvenile humor did include a lot of derogatory remarks about those in the queer community. I think it could be easy to phrase out and not register because they often lacked the edge, were throwaway lines not meant to be terribly insulting, but that’s the way racism and bigotry can stay in our culture for so long, imo, as it’s dismissed as ‘it doesn’t really mean anything’.