Analytics

I'm not a stakeholder in the church, and I don't care what it does. Just as I don't care about the rules governing the WNBA, I don't care about the rules in the church. I don't complain about women not getting the priesthood, how long church services are, whether garments have sleeves, how old you are when you go on a mission, whether missionaries should be allowed to wear blue ties and call home every day, etc. I really don't care, and I don't recall commenting on such things. I have commented on issues such as the size of reserve funds and whether the church ought to be tax exempt. I have particular expertise on those topics, and since taxpayers are subsidizing the church, I am a stakeholder on those issues. Otherwise, I may have commented on the Church's truth claims and the evidence that allegedly supports it, but that is about whether individuals should believe it, not what the church itself should do. Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence.

I would suggest that until now, the limiting principle in Kansas has always been, "use the facility that best corresponds to your presentation and identity, and let laws against voyeurism, exposure, harassment, and assault continue to apply." Such a limiting principle would meet the purposes of sex-segregated spaces better than ones you support which require Brian Michael Smith (photo below) to use the women's restroom. In the entire history of the state of Kansas, can you give me a single example of creep using the woman's restroom and who deserved to be punished but wasn't because SB 244 wasn't on the books? If there was a real rather than hypothetical need for this law, there should be entire case studies of cops saying, "we wish we could kick him out of the restroom and arrest him, but what he's doing is legal and there's nothing we can do." Or women complaining, "The lady's room has a creep loitering there and he makes me feel unsafe there!" When has that happened? Beyond your theorizing, please provide me some real-world examples of the problems this is intended to solve. Or one. Just one case study. Within the state of Kansas, where is the evidence that the laissez-faire approach wasn't working? Where is the real-world evidence that we needed a new “limiting principle” beyond letting people use ordinary judgment about which restroom made the most sense? There may be something on the order of 75,000 publicly accessible restrooms in Kansas, and they have been used tens of billions of times over the last few decades. Can you show me one Kansas case in which a man—however you choose to define that term—claimed a right to use the women's restroom and then used that access to engage in creepy behavior that was illegal or should have been illegal? That's the part of your argument I don't understand. You keep saying we need a limiting principle, but you haven't demonstrated the problem that this particular limiting principle solves. So what evidence is there that this was causing an actual problem in Kansas? The relevant question is whether the rule improves the outcomes it was supposedly designed to improve. So far, I haven't seen evidence that Kansas had a meaningful restroom-access problem before S.B. 244, while we already have concrete examples of the new law causing real-world problems after its enactment. If you have evidence showing otherwise, I'd genuinely like to see it. Thanks to the law you support, the issue in Kansas is whether every person whose appearance is ambiguous or atypical must be aggressively policed at the bathroom door. Read the NYT article. The boundary Kansas had before this new law was workable. We know that because it worked. If it wasn't working, give me actual empirical evidence it wasn't working. I adamantly disagree with your framing here. One standard is based on common sense and allows for the good-faith judgment of the individuals it affects. That is the standard we've always had, and that is the standard that was working perfectly fine. Now social warriors want to replace that common-sense boundary that had always been working with a rigid one that makes it a crime for people like Marquise Vilsón (image below) to use the men's room and requires them to use the women's restroom. The laws you support are creating real-world problems to solve a hypothetical problem. The tradeoff isn't worth it.

Sports leagues have governing bodies who make the rules, and processes to update such rules with input from stakeholders. The process involves organizations such as the National Association of High School Sports, the Kansas State High School Activities Association, the Wrestling Rules Committees of those organizations, and the people who are elected to run those organizations. As a specific example, those people decided that if you weigh more than 285 pounds, then due to safety and fairness issues, you aren't eligible to wrestle. While I care about safety in an abstract way, I'm not into wrestling and these nuances, and I'm quite happy to allow them to draw the line where they see fit. It shouldn't be a political issue, and in general I trust these guys to make the decisions that are best for their sports, including whether transgender people should be excluded in the same way that people heavier than 285 pounds are excluded. On the other hand, if somebody's never been to a collegiate swim meet in their entire life and doesn't even know how many underwater butterfly kicks you get in the breaststroke after each turn, but suddenly becomes extraordinarily concerned that the NCAA rules are unfair over a transgender issue, then I'd suggest that person look in the mirror and consider whether they are being manipulated by somebody for political purposes.

And for purposes of selecting which restroom to use, not only do you think the person on the right should use the women's restroom, you think there needs to be laws that force them to use it. Common sense says the person on the right should use the men's room. Our society was working perfectly fine letting common sense rule that way. But now you want laws that forbid that. Why do you care? Why do we need laws that force the person on the right to use the women's restroom? Does that make the women's restroom safer? Less awkward? More private? Why can't we just be civilized people in a free society, use the restroom that makes the most sense, and not obsess about other people's bodies? No. The question isn't about what people "are". The question is when an individual needs to use the restroom, which one should they use, and who gets to make that decision. Not only to you want the government to make that decision, you support laws that require people like Buck Angel (picture below) to use the women's restroom! The issue isn't about whether somebody "is" a "man". That is semantics. The question I am talking about is when somebody needs to use the restroom, which should they use, and who gets to decide? I think individuals should decide, and I think common sense should be the guide. In contrast, you don't think individuals can be trusted to choose the correct public restroom and want laws that dictate which they use. And you support laws that say people like Laith Ashley (photograph below) must use the women's restroom and if they dare step into the men's room, they should be subject to penalties up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. How is thinking individuals should be free to choose the restroom that makes the most sense in their particular situation "denying reality"? If the objective is really things like safety and fairness, then common-sense exceptions to the rules should be permissible when making those exceptions promotes safety and fairness. But you are against common-sense exceptions that support safety and fairness. You think that since people like Schuyler Bailar (picture below) "are" "women", they should be legally required to use the women's locker room at the pool. The thing is, your position is creating real-world harm to deal with a problem that is, as far as I can tell, hypothetical. Yesterday, the New York Times published an article on this topic. Despite your weird interest in this topic, you thought the article was too long and didn't read it. That is why you seem unaware of the actual harm the policies you support are causing. Are the laws you support do more harm than good? Here is my attempt at using AI to summarize the evidence: Prompt: Please do a deep dive into specific cases of real-world harm in the state of Kansas that's been caused by transexuals being able to use the restrooms of their choice. I'm not talking about people feeling hypothetically uncomfortable at the possibility of being in the restroom with a transexual. I'm talking real-world harm. Summarize your response in 200 words or less. Chat GPT 5.6 Sol High: After searching Kansas legislative records, local/state reporting, school disputes, and reported criminal incidents, I could not find a substantiated Kansas case matching your criterion: a transgender person who, because they were permitted to use the restroom corresponding to their gender identity, caused concrete harm such as assault, voyeurism, groping, filming, or indecent exposure. In 2023, Kansas reporting specifically noted that legislators advocating restrictions had been unable to identify evidence of such harm occurring in Kansas. (KCUR) The strongest Kansas-specific incident I found was Gardner-Edgerton in 2024. Records confirmed a trans girl had been in a girls’ locker-room situation, apparently contrary to district policy. A parent worried girls might have been seen undressed, but the superintendent said he knew of no instance in which a boy saw girls naked; the published record identifies no touching, photographing, assault, voyeurism, or other concrete victimization. (The Sentinel) Notably, SB 244’s restroom provisions were added in 2026 without a public hearing on those provisions, so no evidentiary hearing established a record of Kansas restroom harms. (KCUR) Bottom line: I found controversy and discomfort, but no verified Kansas case of actual harm meeting your definition. Prompt: Please do a deep dive into specific cases of real-world harm in the state of Kansas that's been caused by the new law in Kansas requiring people to use the restroom associated with the sex on their birth certificate. I'm not talking about people feeling hypothetically uncomfortable at the possibility of harm. I'm talking real-world harm. Summarize your response in 200 words or less. Chat GPT 5.6 Sol High: I found several concrete harms since SB 244 took effect February 26, 2026, although no documented physical injury: Job loss: The New York Times reports that a trans man was fired after leaving the state building where he worked to find another restroom rather than violate SB 244. The report comes from Matthew Neumann of the LGBTQ Foundation of Kansas; I could not independently identify the employee. Workplace enforcement: KU custodian Siobhán Kirchstein was formally reported to HR for using the women’s restroom and instructed to comply with SB 244. This is independently reported by the Lawrence Times and other outlets. (Advocate.com) Interference with legislative duties: Trans state Rep. Abi Boatman missed a call of the House because she was waiting for the Capitol’s only permitted single-user restroom and was subsequently criticized for her absence. Denied restroom access: Another trans Kansan reports being turned away from restrooms because people mistakenly believed SB 244 applied there; she says the bathroom provision is forcing her family to leave Kansas. (The New Republic) Bottom line: unlike my earlier search for harm before SB 244, I can identify actual, measurable harms after enactment—a firing, workplace disciplinary action, impaired job performance, denied restroom access, and relocation costs/displacement. I found no documented assault or bodily injury caused by the restroom provision so far.

I totally agree. Mormons believe spirits have a gender that existed before the physical body. They believe this spirit-gender is a very important attribute of who they are on the inside. And they believe you can learn important truths by listening to the spirit. This means that to a Mormon, "I feel like on the inside I'm really a woman" is an intelligible claim about a real thing, and that the mechanism used to come to this belief is a reliable truth-finding mechanism. Wouldn't that mean Mormons should be especially receptive to the idea that when somebody says they feel like a woman on the inside, they really are?

I don't disagree with you on this point, but I'm quite happy to let leagues figure such things out how they see best. Depending upon the sport, league, and individual, there are situations when the particular individual is pretty average. Should leages be legally required to exclude trans athletes, even if they aren't breaking the curve? I don't know, but if you aren't a stakeholder, it really isn't something to worry about. When I was about 10 I was on a flag football team, and one of the better players on the team was a girl. In terms of size and athleticism, she was above-average compared to the boys in the league, and overall she fit right in. The coaches in that league let her play with the boys, and I think that is the right decision. I certainly don't want the U.S. Congress making laws about whether she should be allowed to play in our league. They aren't stakeholders in it.

They are stable and widely shared. To the extent they are not, who is causing the confusion? For example, you are the person who insists for purposes of selecting which restroom to use that Aydian Dowling (pictured below) is a woman. Sporting events can be unfair for many reasons, including others having genetic advantages. In public restrooms sometimes you see, hear, and smell things that make you feel uncomfortable or even unsafe. If you change at the gym, you are going to see things in the locker room that will make you feel uncomfortable. You might be seen naked by people you wouldn't choose to be seen naked by. If you are incarcerated in prison, you aren't necessarily going to be safe. If you go to a shelter, there might be people there who don't make you feel safe, either. Those are all real issues. But only on exceedingly rare occasions is the person guilty of causing the harm or discomfort transgender. You don't seem interested in talking about fixing these problems in the 99.999% of the time transgender people aren't to blame, and only care about these problems in the 0.001% of the time when transgender people can be blamed. That's weird. What is also weird is your proposed solution: requiring people like Aydian Dowling (photograph above) to have an "F" on their drivers license and legally requiring them to use the women's restroom and the women's locker room. Can you see how your favored solution to this could cause some of the problems you claim you are trying to avoid? What is your basis for thinking that the laws you support are doing more good than harm?

No. Don’t misrepresent the article. From the article, self-identity plus surgical transition = "welcome to use the facility." I still see no reason for there to be a universal limiting principle. Do you think there needs to be a federal law that says that Olympus Spa should be criminally prosecuted or shut down for allowing people who, according to your so-called “limiting principle” are really men? Rather than having a “limiting principle”, why can’t we just have a social contract where: If you are transexual, don’t try to make waves about (e.g. don’t wave your penis around in places where people don’t expect to see penises, don’t participate in competitive sport leagues where your physiology gives you an unfair advantage) If you are a venue, make common-sense accommodations based upon the individual circumstances Show everybody some grace Why isn’t that approach sufficient? Let's be honest. The only reason we are having this conversation is because some politicians have decided this is a useful issue. According to current NCAA policies: Are you okay with that policy? Or do you think the policy needs to be updated with a “delimiting principle” that defines what a woman is, and then determine eligibility for competing based on that definition? For the record, I have no problem with the NCAA's policy. If you are transgender and want to swim, then swim with the boys. Or don’t swim. That is a reasonable compromise that the stakeholders can make. What do you think of the new Kansas law? From today’s New York Times: Do you agree with Kansas law? That you must use the restroom that corresponds with the sex on your original birth certificate and that “any violation of this law may subject the individual to civil and criminal penalties." "Fascism works not only by the passage of arbitrary, dehumanizing laws but by the arbitrary, dehumanizing enforcement of the laws." And that’s how you come across. It seems very, very, important to you that human beings be placed into one of two boxes, either “male” or “female”. It logically follows that if you don’t congruently fit into one of those two boxes, you aren’t human.

Why does there need to be a limiting principle? If somebody looks like a man, acts like a man, presents themselves to the world as a man, and would make everyone around them feel most comfortable if they used the men's restroom, why is it so freaking important to you that they use the women's restroom if they really "are" a woman? Why are you trying to create laws that say certain female-looking people must be inserted into male-only spaces? How does doing that make the world a better place? Why not just trust people to make their own decisions about what's most appropriate for their individual situations? Likewise, that doesn't mean that in terms of choosing clothes, hair styles, activities, pronouns, and bathrooms the underlying biological binary must be of primary importance, set as an absolute "limiting principle" in all cases. Again, why do we need a limiting principle at all? What's wrong with letting people choose based on what makes the most sense in the given situation? If the WNBA wants to admit transexual people based on a uniform rule or a case-by-case basis, I really don't care. I'm not a stakeholder.

What should be noted is that for the WNBA, the only reason this is an issue is because some people who do not identify as women and who in reality do not want to play in the WNBA are pretending they are and do in order to make a political point. For my part, I don't think there is a constitutional right to play in the WNBA, and I'm quite content to let them figure out for themselves what is and is not fair. In high school wrestling, they have a rule that in order to wrestle in the heavyweight division, your weight needs to be between 215 and 285. Is that fair to everybody? I don't know. But I'm happy to let the stakeholders in high school wrestling figure it out. Ditto NCAA swimming. Likewise, in everyday discourse it's easy to make broad declarations that "only biological women are women" and "only biological men are men." But the problems of taking rigid philosophical absolutes and insisting they be rigid "limiting principles" is that the world is messier than these abstract principles. What's wrong with letting people use the bathroom that is most comfortable to them? Why do we need a law that this person must use the women's restroom? Why do we need a law that this person must use the men's restroom?

I’d suggest the event was Constitutionally protected free speech and that the rights of parents outweigh whatever imagined danger to children you may have. Criminally prosecuting this event would have lost, regardless of the statute. The fact that they were able to find a way to win lawfare against them anyway just shows how much power the government has when it is bent on persecuting groups who aren’t straight-white Christians.

The fact that these judges were in the minority doesn't mean their opinions were wrong. And if AI is an incompetent lawyer because it sided with the minority, does that mean the judges in the minority are also incompetent? I'd like to offer a legal dispute that is still in the courts as a case study on whether AI is ready for primetime lawyering. This is a huge sidebar, but I think you might be interested in it because it is in your specific wheelhouse. Case A more detailed AI-generated overview of the case is below, but basically, an HOA of a condo sued a resident because the HOA dues were allegedly not paid, and received a summary judgment. The HOA is now suing to foreclose on the homeowner. That would seem pretty open-and-shut, but the attorneys who took this on didn't know what they were getting into. Rather than giving you my own biased and unskilled evaluation, I uploaded all of the complaints, motions, counter-complaints, etc., into Claude's top publicly available model and asked it the following: Prompt I'd like you to review the attached documents and do the following: First before evaluating these documents, create a brief rubric of how the legal skills of a lawyer may be evaluated from the briefs they write in a civil case. If I was reading a case and wanted to objectively evaluate the legal skills of the respective legal representatives who argue the case, what would I look for? Then, in very general terms and without naming the specific parties, give a very brief, very high-level overview of the dispute. 100 words max. Refer to the parties generically as "homeowner", "condo association", "management company", etc. Next, do a blind evaluation of the legal skills of each party in the above case using the matrix you described above. When applying it, make your own evaluation of the documents and the arguments they make, and also consider whether one side or the other conceded points the other side made and what that indicates about the legal skills of the respective parties. Go full beast mode on this point--maximum effort. How do the respective legal teams stack up? Finally, give a brief overview of the respective legal teams. Don't name any individuals or law firms--just give a general description of what kind of individuals and firms they are--white-shoe international law firms? Respected regional firms? Etc. In your response, relay the court and case number in case somebody wants to look it up, but otherwise keep everything anonymous to the casual observer and search bot. Claude

The Plaza Live case is an ideal case study about whether the new law was necessary: The state's own investigators said the show was raunchy and suggestive, but that there was no genital exposure, no physical sexual interaction with audience members, and no lewd acts. In other words, this was a marginal case. It wasn't marketed as being family friendly, and only three minors were there. They successfully prosecuted this under the old laws--the venue had to pay a $5,000 administrative penalty, and promise that it would forbid people under the age of 18 from attending in the future, even with parental approval. You've successfully argued that in general, there are situations when new laws might be necessary, but you haven't explained why this law was necessary, and have ignored the fact that for these types of events, the old laws were working as intended.

I wrote a fairly long response to this, and it was somehow deleted by the editor when I tried to post it. Rather than trying to retype everything, I offer the following synthesis of all of these related issues. I worked hard to make an unbiased prompt that addresses the real issues, I think Claude's analysis is spot-on. I'll put the prompt in a quote box and Claude's response in the main body so that you can more easily respond to it if you wish. Claude Fable 5 High This is one of the genuinely hard problems in liberal constitutionalism, and the honest answer is that the principle can be applied consistently — but rarely is, and the mechanisms courts use to manage it are imperfect compromises rather than clean solutions. The empirical baseline. The evidence that a minor suffers serious, lasting harm from a single or occasional exposure to sexualized content at a live performance is weak. The research literature on harm to children from sexual content concerns chronic exposure, exposure combined with abuse, or exposure to pornographic material — not brief encounters with adult-themed entertainment. Courts have noticed this. In HM Florida-ORL v. Griffin, the litigation over Florida's SB 1438, judges observed that Florida already had obscenity statutes covering material harmful to minors, and that the new law's vaguer standard ("lewd conduct" in "adult live performances") added little except uncertainty. That gap — between existing narrowly drawn law and new broadly drawn law — is itself evidence about legislative purpose. When a state passes a redundant statute with softer definitional edges, the plausible function is not closing a protection gap but chilling a disfavored expressive category. When is preemptive legislation legitimate? The defensible framework requires three things: harm that is serious, harm that is empirically probable rather than speculative, and means that are narrowly tailored. Obscenity-as-to-minors doctrine (Ginsberg v. New York) already satisfies this for genuinely explicit material. The strongest case for the Florida-style approach is that legislatures may act on reasonable predictive judgment without waiting for longitudinal studies, that community standards about what children should see are legitimately majoritarian within constitutional limits, and that parents who bring children to such events don't extinguish the state's independent interest in child welfare (we don't let parents take children to strip clubs). That argument deserves to be taken seriously; it is not mere pretext in every mouth that utters it. The counterargument: when the asserted harm is speculative and the restricted activity is expressive, the First Amendment deliberately raises the evidentiary bar — precisely because "protecting children" is history's most versatile justification for censorship (comic books, rock lyrics, video games, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants being the canonical rebuke). The parental-rights asymmetry. The criticism of DeSantis-era policy has real force and should be stated precisely: parental rights were invoked as near-absolute against school curricula, library books, and medical decisions the state disfavored, but were overridden when parents affirmatively chose to bring children to drag events or sought gender-related care. A consistent parental-rights theory cannot do both. The fair defense is that no one holds parental rights as absolute — everyone accepts a floor (abuse, neglect) — so the disagreement is really about where the floor sits, and Florida voters located sexualized performance below it. But that defense concedes the deeper point: "parental rights" was functioning as a rhetorical vehicle for substantive value preferences, not as a neutral procedural principle. That's a legitimate way to do democratic politics, but it should be named as such. The religion parallel. Your consistency test bites hard. There is a serious clinical literature on religious trauma — shame-based purity teaching, fear of damnation, high-control environments — arguably better developed than the literature on drag-show exposure. If the state may override parental judgment based on contested predictions of psychological harm from cultural content, nothing internal to that principle protects intensive religious formation. What actually protects it is doctrinal and political: Wisconsin v. Yoder and free-exercise jurisprudence give religious child-rearing heightened constitutional armor that secular expression lacks, and religious majorities hold political power that drag performers do not. That asymmetry is defensible only if one thinks religion is constitutionally special (the Founders did); it is not defensible as an application of a neutral harm principle. The limiting principle. The best available one is procedural rather than substantive: the state may act preemptively only where (1) the harm is concrete and supported by evidence meeting a burden proportional to the liberty restricted; (2) the statute is precise enough that enforcement discretion cannot track viewpoint; and (3) the law is content-neutral in application — meaning a legislature genuinely worried about sexualized content must regulate Hooters, beauty pageants, and cheerleading routines by the same standard it applies to drag. Selective application is the tell. A child-protection law survives the consistency test; a culture-war law fails it visibly. The uncomfortable residue: this framework would also constrain interventions progressives might favor against religious environments, and it permits some genuinely harmful things in both categories to continue. Liberal neutrality buys pluralism at the price of tolerating harms it cannot prove to a demanding standard. Those who find that price too high — on either side — are rejecting liberal constitutionalism itself, which is a coherent position, but one that should be defended openly rather than smuggled in under "protecting children."

Your original post on this topic was based on Ron DeSantis's talking points rather than the actual legal issues of the real-world case. You began your analysis by saying, This misconstrues both the legal background of this case and what this particular law actually changes in Florida. It is parroting what Ron DeSantis said about it ("This shouldn’t even be controversial, yet our law protecting kids required us to fend off lawsuits and win a case before a divided appellate court." and quotes Eric Daugherty saying, "HUGE WIN! Children are PROTECTED in Florida...", as if without this law, children were unprotected). Existing laws in Florida include: Fla. Stat. § 847.013 — Exposing minors to harmful shows and exhibitions Fla. Stat. § 800.04(7) — Lewd or lascivious exhibition before a person under sixteen Fla. Stat. § 847.011(4) — Obscene live performances Fla. Stat. § 847.0133 — Showing obscene material to a minor Fla. Stat. § 800.03 — Exposure of sexual organs Fla. Stat. § 847.012 — Harmful material distributed to minors Fla. Stat. § 827.071 — Sexual performances by children and child pornography Fla. Stat. § 796.07 — Places operated for “lewdness” Fla. Stat. § 823.05 — Public nuisances involving lewdness or illegal conduct Fla. Stat. § 877.03 — Disorderly conduct and breach of the peace I think what is illegitimate and imaginary is Ron DeSantis's claim, which you parrotted, that this particular law shouldn't even be controversial, and the implication that his political oponents are against "limiting minors access to sxualized events." I don’t have an absolute rule. I can imagine sufficiently extreme sexual conduct where the state would be justified in overriding parental consent. But that doesn't answer the real questions surrounding the legal controversy around this law. Agreeing that some line may legitimately exist doesn't tell us where the line should be, whether Florida's existing laws already drew it adequately, or whether § 827.11 makes Florida a better place to live and raise a family. Just as I don't think Florida needs redundant laws, I don't think other states need them, either. As an example, Orlando has an old theatre called The Plaza Live, which is owned by a non-profit called The Orlando Philharmonic Foundation. In December of 2022--5 months before the children of Florida were "protected" by SB1438, they had a show called "A Drag Queen Christmas." According to the Miami Herald: The Orlando Philharmonic settled with state regulators and paid a $5,000 fine and agreed to no longer allow parents to take their children to such shows in the future. Let's summarize: 1- An old theatre had a show called A Drag Queen Christmas. 2- There was a sign at the entrance warning of potentially unsuitable content for those under the age of 18 3- A small squad of undercover state agents went there, secretly recording everything 4- According to the state agents, "nothing indecent had happened on stage" 5- Some parents chose to take a grand-total of three minors to see the show, where they were exposed to [gasp!] "a hip thrust or two", and "bare-chested men who wouldn't have been out of place at a Madonna concert." 6- State regulators went after the venue, who ended up settling for a $5,000 fine and a promise by the venue that it would take away parents rights to take their children to such shows in the future. And what is the reaction to all of this from Ron DeSantis and those who parrot him? We need more laws! Whatever one thinks of that performance, this is why I reject the suggestion that, before § 827.11, Florida was helpless to protect children from sexually inappropriate live entertainment. As this case proves, Florida had laws on the books, sent undercover law-enforcement officers to investigate the show, and initiated proceedings that threatened the venue’s licenses, and imposed hefty fines—all before § 827.11 existed. I would say the closest real-world parallel to Fla. Stat. § 827.11 — Exposing children to an adult live performance is Fla. Stat. § 847.013 — Exposing minors to harmful shows and exhibitions. I believe the importance of a topic like this should depend, at least in part, on how much actual harm it causes individuals and society. I seriously doubt that a young teenager suffers significant developmental harm from seeing “a hip thrust or two” or “bare-chested men who wouldn’t have been out of place at a Madonna concert.” And I have seen no evidence that parents taking children to performances like this constitutes a significant social problem. Given the low frequency and low severity of this, I'm quite happy to allow parents to make the judgment call on how to raise their own families. I think a much more important topic is how politicians have become so skilled at manipulating voters by taking unusual, marginal, and often made-up incidents, portraying them as widespread threats to children, and using the resulting fear to distract voters from the issues that are really important, mobilize voters, antagonize them against their neighbors who have different beliefs and cultures, and justify new exercises of state power that take away parents rights. The inability of so many voters to see what's really going on here is the really big issue that terrifies and depresses me.

I can't tell whether you want to have a serious conversation about this. Florida already had lots of laws that protect children from the things you find objectionable. This new law is clearly about identity politics and throwing red meat to voters who get worked up over imagined social issues. This law is in the same broad category as the proposed F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act in Texas that makes it illegal for school kids to use a litter box--it is addressing made-up problems that are used to manipulate voters. Hamburger Mary’s, a venue that hosts both adult-only and family-friendly drag performances, challenged the constitutionality of the Florida law. The district court, two of the three judges on the original appellate panel, and five judges in the later en banc dissent concluded that Hamburger Mary’s had shown a substantial likelihood of success on the merits and that enforcement should therefore be enjoined while the case was litigated. Those judges identified serious concerns involving vagueness, an unworkable age-specific standard, overbreadth, a severe chilling effect on protected expression, and broad regulatory discretion that could permit arbitrary or viewpoint-selective enforcement. So here is what I would like to hear from you: Was this law actually necessary? What concrete deficiency in Florida’s existing laws did it fix? And do you think it is well crafted when judged by ordinary standards for sound legislation: a real and identifiable problem, clear definitions, workable age calibration, proportional penalties, appropriate respect for parental autonomy, and safeguards against viewpoint-selective enforcement?

I find it more troubling that you trust the government to make these decisions for families rather than trusting parents to decide what is appropriate for their own children.

The offending sentence is in section 4.4 "Secret Non-monogamies". A few pages earlier in section 4.1, it gives some context about the "equally valid" claim. It says "As with gender and sexuality, the implications for therapy are to hold all consensual relationship styles and structures as equally valid, rather than perpetuating a sense of the ‘right’ or ‘ideal’ way of doing relationships. Intersectionality is also key here as the relationship norm described above is a white western norm. Working in a multicultural context, many of our clients will come from cultural and faith backgrounds where, for example, arranged marriages and/or polygamy are the standard way of doing relationships (see 1.3; Rambukkana, 2015)." (emphasis added) If somebody comes from a faith background where polygamy is the standard way of doing relationships, do you think it is the therapist's job to lecture their clients that polygamy is less valid than monogamy? I would think your freedom of religion instincts would say it isn't the role of therapists to tell their clients their religious beliefs are wrong. In its actual context, the document isn't in any way "ratifying hedonism." It is saying that the role of the therapist isn't to lecture people about their gender, sexuality, or religious beliefs are wrong.

Quite honestly, I have no basis to evaluate this, because while the sentence you quoted sounds quite scandalous, I believe it needs to be interpreted in the context of the profession for which it was written, and I simply don't have that background. In order to get a little bit of background on this, I posed the following question to the Claude model "Fable 5: High." (Fable is its latest-greatest model, has only been out a couple of weeks, and they charge you "usage credit" based on how much work it does. Generating the answer below cost about $3.00. With the prompt, I uploaded the manual and content of this thread) Prompt: The poster "smac97" is a real estate attorney in Provo, Utah. He started a thread expressing concerns about the manual "Gender, Sexual, and Relationship Diversity (GSRD)" published by the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy. As far as I know, smc97 doesn't have any background in counseling and psychotherapy and is only aware of this issue because he read about it in an editorial. His concern with this appears to be that this document is a substantial step towards "ratifying hedonism" by "supposedly credentialed 'experts.'" I've never been in a professional psychotherapy session, much less have had any training in psychology. Could you put this document into the proper context? Is it the role of psychotherapists to condemn "secret non-monogamy" and such things? Is the content of this manual consistent with best practices in therapy? Is it in harmony with how psychotherapy is taught at BYU? Please keep your answer to under 1,000 words, and base it on recognized professional standards including, presumably, the professional psychology standards taught at BYU and written about by BYU professors.

I think it’s obvious. If you do this you’ll be part of a powerful dynasty. You’ll be a king. You’ll be a god!

I don’t know what “the historical or religious question” is. The topic of this thread is secret non-monogamy, the way people rationalize their secret non-monogamy, and whether British Psychotherapists specifically and society in general should facilitate people rationalizing and normalizing this behavior. Joseph Smith made a sacred vow to cleave unto his wife Emma and unto none else. He broke that vow. You think this is categorically different than other people who broke the same vow, because Joseph’s motivation was sincere religious belief and not lust. If we want to categorize Joseph’s secret non-monogamous relationships, the category they best fit in is sexual abuse in cultic circumstances, as described by Hava Dayan in her paper “Sexual Abuse and Charismatic Cults,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 41 (2018): 25–31. DOI: 10.1016/j.avb.2018.04.004. Let me know if you’d like me to provide a sample list of religious leaders who convinced sincere believers that God wanted them to have secret non-monogamous relationships with them. The secret non-monogamy of the leaders of new religious movements fits into the broader category of secret non-monogamy in general. Some people rationalize this behavior as coming from God. Others rationalize it because, in the words of Atlantic Starr: Secret lovers, yeah That's what we are Trying so hard to hide the way we feel 'Cause we both belong to someone else But we can't let it go 'Cause what we feel Is also real Personally, if a British Psychoterapist is going to give a moral pass to somebody who breaks their marital vows because they are trying to obey God, I don’t know why she shouldn’t also give a moral pass to somebody who does it because the love they feel for their secret lover “is also real." If anything, having a secret non-monogamous relationship motivated by sincere religious conviction with the leader of your New Religious Movement is worse, because it is less consensual. The question isn’t whether the girls sincerely believed God wanted them to do what they did. The question is were they able to freely consent? “God commanded me to marry you. If you do, your family is guaranteed salvation. If you don’t, an angel will kill me with a flaming sword. It’s your free choice though.” That type of manipulation is sick, regardless of their sincerity and regardless of whether God really was sending angels with flaming swords.

Hold on. Let’s get our terms straight here. “Marriage” is a socially recognized union between two people that establishes a set of mutual rights, obligations, and expectations. This social recognition can come from law, customs, or even religion. But two people can’t call their secret affair a “marriage”--there has to be a recognized status that creates some durable social, legal, religious, or communal rights and obligations. Even if the marriage isn’t disclosed to the general public, some sort of Church or legal authority needs to recognize it and the spouses need to undertake genuine marital duties and obligations. When a secret marriage violates the laws of church and its main covenant is lying to everybody about its very existence, the marriage isn’t a real marriage in any real sense. If one of the marital obligations is “the single promise at the heart of every wedding, to forsake all others,” and one of spouses breaks that single promise, it is called adultery. Now, somebody could try to renegotiate the terms of their marriage so that it becomes some sort of open marriage or whatever. That’s between them. But when somebody secretly breaks those vows, it is adultery. Full stop. With this understanding of these terms, it is abusing the language to call Joseph Smith’s actions the “practice of plural marriage.” His actions weren’t a type of marriage. They were a type of adultery. Calling it a type of marriage is a misnomer. Semantic inversion. Orwillian doublespeak. Newspeak. According to D&C 132, it is about lust, or at least about “desire." "if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another...” (D&C 132:61) The full verse says: "And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else." How many of Joseph Smith’s plural “marriages” satisfied all of these conditions? How many were virgins, had vowed to no other man, and were entered into with the full consent of Emma? His behavior wasn’t nearly as tightly controlled as you are trying to imagine. Jospeh Smith’s secret non-monogamy is a case study in secret non-monogamy, and people who are saying it is categorically different than other examples of secret non-monogamy are being very selective in their judgmentalism.

Rationalizing infidelity is exactly what you are doing, isn't it? You believe that if God commands you to break your wedding vows, which according to your beliefs He does from time to time, you should obey God, right? The only question you are unsure about is whether you should tell your spouse about how you sincerely believe God commanded you to do this.

Every situation is unique. I presume the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy's position is more nuanced than you give it credit for. My assessment of Joseph Smith is that he was guilty of "Secret non-monogamy"--of repeatedly breaking "the single promise at the heart of every wedding: to forsake all others." I think Hale's effort to rationalize Joseph Smith's behavior is a lot like using an "affirming lens" to rationalize behavior that lacked integrity. There are many reasons for "secret nonmonogamy." Maybe you feel you deeply love the other woman. Maybe you are bored. Maybe you just feel you really need sex with somebody different. Maybe for money? Self esteem? Fantasy? Clinging to youth? Or maybe you think an angel with a flaming sword is coercing you to do it. Jospeh Smith's rationalizations, as imagined by you and Hales, is certainly a creative excuse to engage in behavior that lacks integrity in any other context. But ultimately it is just selectively applying a self-serving "affirming lens" to rationalize behavior that lacks integrity. Yes, secret nonmongamy tends to do that. The question is whether we are going to rationalize the behavior of the person causing the pain and look at their destructive behavior through an "affirming lens." Do you think Joseph Smith keeping his promise to Emma to forsake all others would have been as "equally valid" as the choice he made to engage in secret nonmonagamy?

Someone who reveres him as a prophet and believes Section 132 is from God. Right. We should look at Joseph Smith's infidelity through an "affirming lens" because he was just doing what God told him to do. But beyond Joseph Smith and people being unfaithful to their spouses under Joseph's guidance, nobody else should be granted an affirming lens.