Calm

Now that is an interesting question.

Our ward in Canada was for awhile all young families who were married student housing 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 former student families who had fallen in love with the ward. The cost of housing for what you got was too high.

https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/length-treatment

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. Useful things that contribute to health can be misused just like any good thing I can think of. 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 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).

Since I don’t have Alpert’s book, I had Chat summarize his evidence that therapy culture is contributing to levels of anxiety. I am not impressed. So anecdotal and correlation. Smac, if this was an argument showing being LDS increased anxiety based on a Utah therapist’s own clinical experience, someone who specialized in LDS who were distancing themselves from the Church or who had left, also based in part on extensive claims those who had left the Church saying they were happier and less anxious ( of which there are plenty) using the same type of evidence you would be pointing out all the problems with said conclusion. I need to see more empirical data demonstrating his claims before I invest in exploring your hypotheticals.

Correlation is not causation. It’s not like nothing else anxiety producing in our world has changed so it can only be therapy that is driving up anxiety. How about more people going to therapy because for more the level of anxiety has gone up dramatically? This is like claiming the Church makes people depressed because antidepressants are prescribed at a higher rate in Utah. Why don’t I point to the increase of lawyers as contributing to the increase in anxiety? Or maybe I should point to the increase of household debt, obesity, single person households, internet use (possibly contributing to loneliness) and other factors known already demonstrated as contributing to anxiety. This is not to say that all therapists are good or that everyone is helped by therapy. There are some bad therapists out there and there are clients in long term therapy that aren’t benefitting from said therapy. Diagnosis of anxiety going up also does not mean anxiety itself has gone up (see Utah’s example of antidepressant use). People being more willing to admit they have anxiety could be a contributor.

Could it be by state if there is state level privacy law?

We never took our kids. Never were told to in any of the wards we attended. I will have to ask my son if he had his own as a minor once he got a job. He never wanted an allowance for chores. Same with daughter. I tried.

I want to go to your ward….

I think you should drop the Rainbow Monkey as evidence of LGBT+ or Drag Queen. It is as likely to be cisgender as lgbt and it’s not technically drag, I believe. Might be, I am not a drag professional. It’s definitely not stylized female though. Could just use it as a generic ‘let’s keep the risqué adult stuff’ out of Children’s Story Hour. Nowhere in your links did I see the Monkey costume documented rather than just claimed as associated with either Drag Queen hour or LGBT+ history month celebrations. One (spiked iirc) mentioned another event that was, Monkey was in July, not June or February (cheated, used chat so could be wrong). The Drag Queen examples were another event How can they be used as evidence for Monkey? Given the other costumes of the group’s carnival flavor, I don’t think just because it’s Rainbow that means it’s LGBT. They all read much more harlequin/clown to me. A number of costumes actually have a harlequin pattern to them. I love me an intense harlequin design. Quite beautiful imo (the harlequin fabric, I find the monkey even without the genital accessories on the tacky side). Stylized overmasculinized, costumes including animals (especially lions, apes, and bulls) seem like a not uncommon carnival theme from what I can tell never having delved deeply into the subject for good reason. “Rainbow” fits the full color scheme of the Mandinga carnival troupe. Such colour schemes can be seen on obviously nonLGBT or Drag carnival costumes. Carnival is all about intense colours. Caribbean (they mention this as well) decor is often rainbow colors. Now as to that specific costume’s sexual nature…oh yeah, I would have been shocked and disgusted if I saw it, it’s an abuse of a rainbow. But that’s lots of carnival costumes I am guessing based on what I have seen unintentionally over the years The costume, whatever the color scheme, was totally inappropriate imo even if the guy was covered top to bottom (feet or butt) from the picture I saw. No actual skin exposure, just a costume with an oversized fake butt and penis included, not unusual of hyper masculinized carnival costumes from the few times I have looked at them…btw, I have no intention of ever attending or watching a carnival parade. It has never appealed to me even when I liked parades and the idea of being in a crowd (the idea was always better than the reality, so I figured out I actually don’t like crowds). The various numerous exquisite costumes do not justify the graphic or tacky ones, imo. Bottomline for me….I want to see documentation, not just claims it’s LGBT. It seems to be one of those claims with enough people repeating it, that everyone assumes it is a fact. Hypermasculine is not automatically LGBT. Neither is Rainbow (seriously, every time I write this I am hearing ‘taste the rainbow’ and seeing a skittle shower). Lots of cisgendered behaviour falls in the category as well. According to Chat btw, the name was coined by journalists (especially someone called Janice Turner), Mandinga only referred to it as the monkey costume. There were apparently two other animal costumes, one was a frog. The series was apparently called Monkey Business. There’s a pdf I may try to find. I took a screenshot off a site primarily full of ads, so no link. The costume isn’t identical as far as I can tell, but similar. It shows the costume was based in the carnival genre though, imo.

Interesting. The company looks more Cis gendered than anything else. Lots of grey hair too. Agree it’s an over sexualuzed version of a monkey. Carnival for seniors anyone? https://mandingaarts.co.uk/about-us/

I don’t know if it still stands, but someone online offered his services free to Dehlin when this first showed up.

I wonder if drag queen sexualized story hours are actually any more common than non drag queen ones. It’s not like there have never been lines crossed by cis gendered books at the library before (anything to do with sex education for example has likely been involved in a controversy).

Might be more about the attention, also a pride thing, than the money.

This hadn’t occurred to me as I ignore that kind of stuff usually. Here is what Chat suggested as possible because a new upload/reloading does reset ar zero. Looks like there is a valid reason to fight it, though it was his choice to mimic it. I wonder if he offered to do it in future videos. Seems like that would be admitting it is needed and give foundation for the Church to insist, but surely it could be phrased as ‘in the spirit of cooperation even though the current disclaimer is sufficient, we will be adding a written and spoken disclaimer, etc etc.

Given the number of people in my experience who don’t know the difference to begin with (contacting FAIR to complain about it, mentioning it here over the years), the disclaimer needs to be front and center, not just at the bottom of a page many don’t scroll down to see or at the end of a video that many won’t finish or visible only if one clicks “read more”. It needs to be both written and spoken in the beginning of each episode as many will just listen. I watch videos and podcasts all the time (when I do watch them) without reading any info on them and given I am someone who often reads the fine print at least once before signing, I bet there are lots of people who don’t read the extras, possibly a majority. Especially if one is required to click to expand the caption to see it, which iirc one does (I checked it last time this came up). If Dehlin is serious that he isn’t trying to mimic the Church, why wouldn’t he be willing to put a disclaimer that is most easily spotted? Does it cost him any different than putting it at the end unless people are actually confused? (Serious question, maybe there is something that is nonchurch related that is affected). He can do it once and get it edited in for each episode. Not a lot of work and it can’t be more expensive to add the clip to the beginning as the end, surely?

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2026/08/12/aclu-tells-court-toss-out-lds/

Trib: Not the first time he shot himself in the foot, imo. https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2026/08/20/lds-church-rejects-notion-its-case/ The Trib has the filing embedded. Can read it on Scribd as well apparently.

Not sure I understand this part: The ongoing confusion has been since it started from what I have seen. Maybe they mean something specific by “public questions”?

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/getting-it-right-clarifying-trademark-branding-concerns Not sure what his current stance is, but from June: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/28/lds-church-mormon-lawsuit

I am not debating whether it’s a fabricated controversy or not. I am curious how you, smac, would determine if something was fabricated. I think Analytics did a decent job of showing the dominant voice in online media on the subject by far are the conservatives rather than the liberals or transgender communities (granted he chose just a few sources, but quite prominent ones with long reach). Again whether that translates to fabricated controversy, I couldn’t say.

I wonder why mine only needs to be verified when I have not been posting for half a day or more usually. Sometimes it happens with a long post that has taken me way to long to write and proofread before I hit “submit”.

Do you want to know when it was changed or just evidence it was? The latter: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/birth-control?lang=eng Added: oops, should have turned the page, lol

The more I look into this, the more I think you are right, but it’s likely going to take more repetition to rewrite how I automatically think of the antimormon version of Fundamentalists given the decades they and I called them Evangelicals. My experience is that it is difficult to get a Fundamentalist to discuss their own beliefs. They spend a lot of time though quoting what they think mine should be. Of course, that may be because I typically encounter them on forums like this one. Can’t remember if I have asked you this before or not… When a Fundamentalist tells me they are Evangelical, how can I respect their choice while still being accurate in identification? Do you find Evangelical Fundamentalist acceptable even if it’s not correct using the categories you believe and I am leaning towards portray the differences best (since Evangelical is in the same category as Fundamentalist so it would be like saying an animal was an invertebrate vertebrate)? Especially since they could take the label of Fundamentalist as intending to be an insult given how it’s used these days. Most of the time I would likely avoid even mentioning the label to avoid possible offense, but I can see a possible need if I am pointing out differences between them and Mainstreams and Evangelicals (perhaps in refuting a claim a Christian must believe ______).