smac97

That is unfortunate. My extended family has had a lot of folks leave the Church, but we are generally doing well at maintaining relationships built on enduring love and connection. I think it's understandable that Latter-day Saints would not like a family member - while a member of the Church - actively and regularly speaking against the Church as Nemo has been doing for years. That said, the "equating it to having a paedophile in the family" thing is unfortunate, but I wonder how much of that is him rather than what has actually been said. "{W}e don't want our children around you" is a very far cry from "Having you in the family is equivalent to having a paedophile in the family." I have a friend who strongly surmises (but has not yet definitively confirmed) that his then-young adult son, while living at home with his siblings, went out of his way, secretly, to persuade his siblings (most of which were minors) to leave the Church. My friend has struggled with this, as he feels his son misused his family relationships to interfere with his (my friend's) efforts to raise his other children. In circumstances such as those, I could understand why Latter-day Saint parents would be reluctant to have an anti-Mormon relative who has spent years building an anti-Mormon social media platform interact with their minor children. Perhaps their lack of trust in his ability to "stay in his lane" and let them raise their children as they see fit is not entirely without foundation. I'd like to better understand whether a family member actually did compare him to a pedophile, or if that is what he took away from "we don't want our children around you." Perhaps. I think it can be read either way. Yeah, that's nowhere close to accurate. And Nemo - who pretty clearly participated and cooperated with the article - has apparently not done anything to correct this substantial falsehood. A falsehood that also casts the Church in a terrible light. The "pronouncement" is that he was losing his membership in the Church, but also that he can return to the Church after a year if he desires to do so, and if he sets aside the behaviors that caused membership removal in the first places. I suspect Nemo, being the subject of the story, has read it. No indication so far that he has done anything to correct or dispute or disagree with the falsehoods in the article. “Qui tacet consentire videtur” and all that. Also not sure. I care a little. For Nemo's sake if nothing else. He is only estranging himself further from us by doing these things. Thanks, -Smac

Section 29 of the Church's handbook is indeed silent as to who may participate in a funeral conducted as a Church meeting (see here). However, there is Section 32.11.4 ("Withdrawal of Membership") : I think that's the operative bit. Still don't know what he means by weddings. Thanks, -Smac

I've never been comfortable with Latter-day Saints acting in that capacity going out and seek all sorts of public attention for themselves. To be sure, I am fine with Latter-day Saints gaining prominence through public speaking in relation to the Church. Daniel Peterson has done that for years. These days, Jacob Hansen and Jasmin Rappleye seem to be putting out a lot of good content in terms of defense of, and useful new information about, the Church. In doing so, they are gaining some notoriety in their own right, but they seem to focus rather heavily on advocating for the Church more than themselves. That's my perception, anyway. There are also some who, though nominally members of the Church, use their membership as a platform to publicly speak against the Church. "Nemo the Mormon" is one such fellow, though he has recently lost him membership in the Church. That hasn't stopped him from continuing as he has been in the past. This morning, I saw this: Mormon YouTuber put on trial and excommunicated explains why he still follows rules on coffee and alcohol He says this while knowing that his characterization will almost certainly not be disputed by the Church because membership council proceedings are kept in confidence. Glad to hear it. I hope he comes back to us. Not sure what to make of this. Have his parents died? If so, if they wanted to have a funeral administered by the Church, then the meeting is a church meeting, on church property. I have seen plenty of funerals where non-Latter-day Saint family members and friends eulogize the decedent. Not participating in the Church's meetings, then, is fairly unique to people who have their membership in the Church removed for cause - particularly for apostasy. If his parents have not died, then why is he bringing this up now? And what's with this "speaking at family weddings" stuff? Does anyone have any insights? Utter bilge. If Nemo is selling or endorsing this sort of nonsense, shame on him. "Stasi." The secret police and intelligence agency of communist East Germany (GDR) from 1950 until 1990. This is overwrought nonsense. Good for him. Hopefully he circles back to more fundamental reasons to join the Church through baptism and pursue the covenant path. I've never seen a faithful Latter-day Saint publicly accuse the Church of exercising "‘Stasi-esque level of control." This is just unserious nonsense. Funny how different perspectives can look at the same set of facts and come away with such divergent conclusions and assessments. "They distrust us so much to think that if we found out how wealthy they were..." "They" and "us." He is referencing the leaders of the Church hear, and publicly characterizing them as enriching themselves via tithing funds. Patent falsehoods like this are troubling to me. Some truth, yes. But also a lot of unsubstantiated stuff. And quite a bit of critical gloss and slant. He looks for the worst possible light as to any particular issue, then casts the Church in that light. This is, for him, "the truth." Such are the pernicious fruits of faultfinding. Faultfinding plus self-aggrandizement is a toxic mix. That's an understandable position. Many of us encounter challenges about the inner workings of the Church. Hashing out criticisms publicly, though, is not the way to go IMO. I am glad of that. I have had a number of friends and family members who, having left the Church, have gained an increased or renewed appreciation for the beaty of nature. Hopefully loving and valuing nature may eventually play a part in returning to loving and valuing nature's God (1 Nephi 19:12). I am sorry to hear about this. I hope he recovers. I think the leaders of the Church, though certainly not perfect, are overwhelmingly good and honest men and women. Thanks, -Smac

A terrible story. I hope those found guilty, if any, are punished to the fullest extent the law. Some details here: More details here: Per this article, this Snapchat thread was, in the eyes of Jane Doe's attorney, “inviting the members of the fraternity to rape my client" and a 'critical piece of evidence' handed to authorities two years ago." My initial reaction was concern for the young woman. This is a terrible story. Next, I am looking at the text messages, and then once again be revolted at the vulgarity and licentiousness that seems to be a chronic and systemic element of the Greek System, and of Hookup Culture in general. Nevertheless, what do the text messages actually say? The key parts: “free p—y” (about 1:42 a.m.) “I f—king love Chi Phi.” “Like you can walk in and whip it out.” Later: “Shop still open?” — “Yea.” Must these messages be read as an announcement of sexual assault? Candidly and clinically, I'm not sure. They can also be read as an invitation to join sex that is already underway, framed as the woman being available. To be sure, the texts are repulsive. Group sex advertised like a commodity. However, was this consensual (or believed-consensual) group sex that was being advertised? Or must it be read to mean “she is unconscious, come use her?" The text messages must also be read in light of a subsequent communication between Jane Doe and one of the accused: This later text — “shut it down… before it got way out of hand” — is stronger than the group chat. “Out of hand” is how people talk when a scene went past what they can defend, not when they think they hosted a tidy orgy. That said, her reply (“Non[e] of the sexual stuff was illegal”), cuts the other way for a prosecutor, which is why the DA said the 2026 civil complaint is “dramatically different” from her initial sworn account and why no one was charged in 2024. "Could not verify." The later texts are potentially damaging to his case, and he does not want to go on the record about them. More details per the civil complaint: It would be interesting to see what legal claims Jane Doe has against Kretzschmar. From this article: This is the difficult part of armchair quarterbacking the prosecutor's case. Allegation A against Kretzschmar ("said the lawsuit accused Kretzschmar of snorting ketamine off her body") plus Lack of Allegation B ("the lawsuit’s opening lists {Kretzschmar} as accused of rape, but the text of the claim does not") plus Forensic Evidence ("{Kretzschmar} took a hair follicle test and had no ketamine in his system" (and K was not found) plus Subsequent Seemingly Exculpatory Statement by Jane Doe ("'Non[e] of the sexual stuff was illegal,' although noting that her memory was 'super clouded too'") Would seem to create all sorts of room for "reasonable doubt" as to Kretzschmar. And if Kretzschmar is exculpated by the evidence (the forensic evidence re: ketamine and Jane Doe's subsequent "not illegal" text message may do a lot to undermine her theory of the case, as it affects her credibility, and her credibility is vital), then her civil complaint against him - alleging that he committed rape - would be a false rape allegation. And if she made a false allegation against Kretzschmar, is it possible that she is falsely accusing any or all of the other six? That's the way things might play out as to that aspect of the case. There are other aspects of it that have some problems: Huh. I wonder what the differences are. Again: "{H}er sworn initial statement at the time 'did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped.'" I suspect "both campus and Ithaca police" looked at her initial sworn statement and took its claims - and the absence of claims of being "drugged against her will or gang raped" - at face value. That doesn't mean she was not drugged or raped. It does mean that the evidence in support of her claims is mixed, perhaps even mediocre-to-poor. All seven of these young men have been named by names. Their reputations may well never recover. That does not mean they are innocent. The presumption of innocence gives us a starting point. It is a rebuttable presumption, but so far the evidence needed to rebut that presumption seems to be not very good. I am similarly deeply concerned about this incident, regardless of the verity of the allegations. Hookup Culture is a terrible thing, particularly when mixed with drugs and alcohol. Systems and groups, like fraternities and sororities that regularly host drug-and-booze-filled events and lifestyle environments are creating the environment for, and facilitate and foment, licentious behavior, and are doing a terrible thing to individuals and to society. Good counsel, all of this. "Responsibility" to do what? Again: "{Kretzschmar said he} was in the room only briefly and left because, based on what he saw, she was okay. {S}he was not naked, was not passed out and had no trouble speaking." Again: Jane Doe's subsequent text to another young man states: "'Non[e] of the sexual stuff was illegal,' although noting that her memory was 'super clouded too.'" Looks like Kretzschmar, at least, may have thought that. This is where I get confused about denigrating references to the "'not all men' argument." What to "all men" have to do with any of this? All but a very few of us were not situated to do anything at all. As for doing "something," men do such things all the time. While I was in the Army I stopped what looked like an attempted sexual assault. As a missionary I confronted and stopped a drunk guy who was kicking his wife while she lay curled up on the sidewalk. I did something. Then perhaps "the 'not all men' argument" ought to be recognized, particularly when broad generalizations are in play. There are countless stories of men intervening to save others from harm. Lots of men have done, and will do "something" when another person - man or woman - "cross{es} the line." A fair question. "{T}he DA said the 2026 civil complaint is 'dramatically different' from her initial sworn account and why no one was charged in 2024." "He said Monday that her sworn initial statement at the time 'did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped.'" Jane Doe's subsequent text to another young man states: "'Non[e] of the sexual stuff was illegal,' although noting that her memory was 'super clouded too.'" The forensic report on ketamine was probably close to the 2024 events. If so, the prosecutor may have looked at that as well. If true, this is appalling. 100% agree. Again: "{Kretzschmar said he} was in the room only briefly and left because, based on what he saw, she was okay. {S}he was not naked, was not passed out and had no trouble speaking." A terrible circumstance no matter what the facts turn out to be. Thank you, -Smac

Then we seemingly agree on the list. Uterus, pregnancy, prostate, ova, bone norms, and a female skeleton do not follow identity. They follow sex. If ‘is she a woman?’ is the wrong question in every one of those settings, then ‘woman’ is not doing biological work. It is a label you apply for other reasons. A person does not become female in a bathroom and male in an oncology clinic. He is male in all of them. That is what ‘exactly who and what they are in all circumstances’ actually means. So the remaining question is not medicine. It is why the word ‘woman’ should control bathrooms and sports when you have just said it is the "wrong question" wherever the body matters (particularly access to women's bathrooms, women's sports, etc.). If the right question is always the sexed fact — uterus, prostate, male puberty, male pattern — then the bathroom and the race are the same kind of question. The occupant is male. The competitor is male. Either ‘woman’ means adult human female, in which case he is not one in any of those bullets, including sports and toilets; or ‘woman’ means identity, in which case you have two systems and you have not shown why the identity system wins in the locker room when you admit it loses in the clinic. Aye, there's the rub. "Woman" includes, amongst your other "multiple definitions," "man." This is too fundamental a thing to try to sort out here, particularly since you honestly believe it. Well, the interesting thing about "definition" is its definition: "the formal statement of the meaning or significance of a word, phrase, idiom, etc., as found in dictionaries." Also interesting is the etymology of the word: I can understand that someone is using ‘woman’ to mean identity. Understanding the usage is not the same as accepting it as the rule. When folks like you re-define "woman" to include its antonym ("man"), we no longer have a common vocabulary. For you, there are no "boundaries," no "limits and distinctive nature of a thing." How many definitions? In ordinary English, and in medicine, sports, and law until yesterday, it had one that mattered: adult human female. Some people use it resignedly in relation to "trans" folks, as a courtesy title for a male who identifies as female because they don't want to deal with melodrama and emotionalisms, or because they want to avoid the "Bigot!" schtick that you and yours so regularly trot out. I find this usage to be generally unfortunate, as it amounts to pandering and demeaning behavior. They don't actually mean it, but acquiescence is better than conflict. Still other people, including people of genuine intelligence and learning, use it to refer to men who "identify" as women. Not ironically. Not resignedly. Rather, because they have well and truly bought into the notion that a man can "become" a woman. I ascribe this to "the thrall of ideological capture and obligation." I honestly cannot fathom how folks like you reconcile yourself to this usage. So I acknowledge this sort of secondary use, but not a secondary definition. It does not make the first use bigotry, and it does not make the second use coherent. ‘Don’t thrust your definition onto them’ is doing the thrusting. Sports categories, prisons, clinics, and pronouns have to pick a criterion: biological sex or "gender identity" or both. If the criterion is self-description, you have already imposed that definition on every female in the room. Asking which fact the word tracks is not a failure of empathy. It is how you decide who is in the category. So: when you say a man who identifies as a woman is a woman in the bathroom, which definition are you using — adult human female, or whoever says so? I understand both sentences. Only one of them is about sex. Of course we are talking about semantics. Do you really think a medical journal says that declaring sex causes the molecules of your body to rearrange themselves? No. Declaring a sex does not rearrange molecules. That is my point, not yours. If the body does not change, then calling a man a woman does not make him female. Semantics is what is left: whether we will use ‘woman’ for the unchanged male body in bathrooms, sports, and prisons. A journal that records sex as male while using preferred pronouns has not discovered a new organism. It has split the word from the fact. So we are not arguing about alchemy. We are arguing about whether the word, ideologically re-defined, gets to override the fact wherever someone wants it to. You already said the clinic should follow the organ, not the label. The molecules stayed put. The label is what you are asking institutions to rearrange. I am choosing the healing power of choosing both. It depends on what the speaker means by the word "woman." ‘It depends what the speaker means’ is how you avoid picking. If Speaker A means adult human female, he is not a woman. If Speaker B means identity, he is. Those are not both true of the same fact. They are two different claims using one word. You cannot run a bathroom, a steeplechase, or a prison ward on ‘whichever meaning is in the speaker’s head.’ Someone has to choose the criterion. ‘Healing power of both’ means: identity when you want him in the bathroom, sex when a uterus is required. This is entirely ad hoc. It is equivocation. The body did not change between sentences. I am not asking what a given speaker might mean. I am asking what you mean when the rule has to be applied. Is he a woman in the sense that excludes him from male and includes him in female — yes or no? If the answer is ‘only if we are using definition B,’ then you have already chosen (1) for policy and (2) for medicine. Say that plainly. ‘Both’ is the dodge. I’m not saying DSDs represent a third sex. I’m saying sex involves several traits including chromosomes, gonads, reproductive anatomy, hormones, and secondary sex characteristics such as breast development, body hair, voice pitch, muscle mass, fat distribution, and hip and shoulder shape. Gender also involves cultural norms around clothing, grooming, family roles, emotions, and mannerisms. Those traits and expectations vary and overlap: a woman can have traits commonly seen as masculine, and a man can have traits commonly seen as feminine. Men and women both produce testosterone and estrogen, though typical levels and patterns differ, and those hormones influence some of our traits. In many contexts, these other things are more important than whether somebody's gonads do or would produce large or small gametes. Then we agree again: DSDs are not a third sex. There are two sexes. Chromosomes, gonads, anatomy, hormones, and secondary characteristics are how those two sexes typically develop. They vary. Overlap on hair, voice, or fat distribution does not create extra sexes any more than a short man and a tall woman create a third height-sex. The classification is still which of the two reproductive roles the body is organized toward — large gametes or small. ‘Gender’ as clothing and manners is not sex. Mixing those lists is how ‘spectrum’ gets smuggled back in after you denied a third sex. Again, equivocation. ‘In many contexts these other things are more important than gametes’ is not a fact about biology. It is a preference about which criterion a rule should use. A women’s race is not scored on voice pitch. A cervix screen is not scored on manners. If you want a policy that ignores sex and uses presentation instead, say that. Do not call the ignored thing a "spectrum." If you really care about fairness and safety, a case-by-case approach is the best way to attain that--not a rigid rule about "sex". "Case-by-case" is a procedure, not a criterion. A panel still has to decide the case. If identity can beat sex whenever the male objects, you have a rigid rule about identity. If sex wins when fairness or safety is the issue, you have a sex rule with a hearing attached. Fairness in the female category is not mysterious case by case. Male puberty is the relevant fact, and it is not rare or subtle. Safety in a prison or shelter is not mysterious either: the occupant is male. A ‘case-by-case’ process that cannot say that out loud will resolve as inclusion. If you have a case in which a male should be in the female category because of sex-based fairness or safety, describe it. Flexibility that never produces a "no" is not flexibility. It is the identity rule with more paperwork. And motte-and-bailey. If we really care about privacy, safety, and the wellbeing of people then in general, we should give flexibility to the decision makers on the scene to use their discretion to achieve those goals. Creating rigid rules that take away that flexibility isn't justified. What's really clear is that you really, really like rules, and it seems that you are okay chalking up hurting people as collateral damage for the sake of the rules. It seems like you are especially okay if the collateral damage happens to somebody in the LGBTQ community. Again: I think the "Bigot!" schtick is so frequently utilized because it's all you've got. I can articulate a reasoned basis for my position. I don't think you can, either that or you are so immersed in your own worldview that you cannot accommodate the possibility that viewpoints divergent from yours might be reasonable. So you retreat to name-calling. Discretion on the scene still uses a rule. ‘Do what seems kind’ is, I suppose, a rule. ‘Believe the identity claim’ is a rule. ‘Keep the space female’ is a rule. I am asking which fact the person on the scene is allowed to use when those collide. Keeping males out of women’s sports, prisons, shelters, and bathrooms is a sex classification. It is justified by the same facts you already accepted in the clinic: the body is male. That is not ‘hurting people for the sake of rules’ or because they are 'somebody in the LGBTQ community.' It is refusing to treat female privacy and a fair female category as collateral. If a male with dysphoria is harmed by not entering a female space, that is a real cost to him. If females lose a locked room or a protected category, that is a real cost to them. Pointing only at one pile of costs is not compassion. It is picking a side and calling the other side collateral. I am not asking for a rule because I like rules. I am asking because someone will be decided against. Name the criterion. If it is not sex, it is identity. Discretion that cannot say no to a male is identity. And it's not "discretion." As for "collateral damage happens to somebody," I openly acknowledge that I think questions about spaces created to benefit women and girls should predominantly and ultimately be answered by addressing the needs and preferences of women and girls, more so than the men who want to go into those spaces. To me, it's obvious that creating strict rules around these categories is harmful, and it's hard not to speculate about why certain people want to inflict harm on people in the LGBTQ community. It's obvious to me you really, really, want rules and are really, really focused on the wrong things. Non-responsive. I asked whether a women’s prison or a women’s race limited to females is bigotry. You answered that I like rules and want to harm people. That is not an answer. A category limited to females excludes males. That is the point of the category. Calling that ‘inflicted harm on the LGBTQ community’ assumes that a male is entitled to the female category. That is the claim under discussion, not a fact you get to by speculating about my motives. I will not litigate why you think I enjoy hurting people. I will repeat the question, which is about the rule, not my soul: Is it bigotry — yes or no — for a women’s prison or a women’s race to exclude males? If yes, say so and own that female-only spaces are unjust (you're already there, right?). If no, then ‘strict rules are harmful’ is just a complaint that sex is being used as the criterion. Those are different statements. Thanks, -Smac

You could always set a good example and choose not to speculate. I think the motte-and-bailey assessment is well-reasoned. It's not just airy conjecture. "I don't think we need bathroom laws" sounds a lot like motte-and-bailey. It evades and refuses to address the dispute. Again: Who could, after all, object to "trans people" having "equal rights?" Nobody but the bigots, right? That's the motte. The (unspoken) baileys, then, are things like "Great! Now that we've established that trans folks have equal rights, and also that self-declared 'gender identity' and not biological sex is determinative, and also that 'trans women are women,' they cannot be excluded from women sports and bathrooms." Again: This is the culmination of all the vagueness and motte-and-bailey equivocations and maneuverings. "Man" now means "adult human male or female." "Woman" now means "adult human female or male." "Male" and "female" now refer to both biological sex and "gender identity." This is the endgame dressed up as a proposition. It is question begging of the highest order. Again: Motte-and-bailey. Vagueness and platitudes intended to obscure the actual objectives and meanings in play. Motte: "People should have substantial control over their bodies" Bailey: "Men have the right to go into women's bathrooms." Motte: "People should have substantial control over their bodies" Bailey: "Children can decide whether to undergo irreversible medical procedures involving the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on." Again: Motte-and-bailey. Vagueness and platitudes intended to obscure the actual objectives and meanings in play. Motte: "{H}arm associated with being transgender is produced by mistreatment and exclusion ... {is} preventable." Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports." Motte: "{H}arm associated with being transgender is produced by mistreatment and exclusion ... {is} preventable." Bailey: "Doctors should perform radical medical procedures on gender dysphoric children, procedures which are irreversible, which involve the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on." Again: Motte-and-bailey. Motte: "{D}eny transgender people effective access to an ordinary service." Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms." Again: Motte-and-bailey. Motte: "The goal is belonging and flourishing." Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms." Motte: "The goal is belonging and flourishing." Bailey: "Doctors should perform radical medical procedures on gender dysphoric children, procedures which are irreversible, which involve the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on." The mottes are all broad and vague generalizations, most of which do not even appear to be in dispute. Motte: "People should have substantial control over their bodies." Bailey: "Men have the right to go into women's bathrooms." Bailey: "Children can decide whether to undergo irreversible medical procedures involving the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on." Who has said that people should not have substantial control over their bodies? But then the baileys come along. And is are the two baileys here not going to be advanced? Sure seems like they are. Motte: "{H}arm associated with being transgender is produced by mistreatment and exclusion ... {is} preventable." Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports." Bailey: "Doctors should perform radical medical procedures on gender dysphoric children, procedures which are irreversible, which involve the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on." Who has endorsed "mistreatment and exclusion" of trans persons? Nobody. But then the baileys come along. Motte: "{D}eny transgender people effective access to an ordinary service." Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms." Who has said that trans persons should be denied "effective access" to anywhere? Nobody. But then the baileys come along. Motte: "The goal is belonging and flourishing." Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms." Bailey: "Doctors should perform radical medical procedures on gender dysphoric children, procedures which are irreversible, which involve the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on." Who has disputed the idea that trans persons should "belong" and "flourish?" Nobody. But then the baileys come along. Thanks, -Smac

Hmm. Where to begin. 1. Sections 4(b) and 4(c) 4(b) and 4(c) do not contradict on paper. They contradict in a bathroom. 4(b): If identity matches sex, you use that sex’s room. Preference is not enough. 4(c): If identity does not match sex, you may use either room, and the operator may not override you because of sex, appearance, or another user’s discomfort. The statute therefore has two classes of people and two rules. The problem is that the statute also forbids the only cheap ways to tell which class someone is in. 2. How “sincerely held” would actually be administered Section 3(2)–(3) and 4(c), (e) make eligibility turn on an internal fact: a bona fide "gender identity" different from sex. It does not require diagnosis, hormones, surgery, consistent presentation, or papers. Section 5(c)–(d) and 6(a) then strip the usual checks: Appearance, voice, clothing, body, lack of transition, and other users’ discomfort are not enough to intervene. No ID, no medical records, no inspection. If you ask at all, you must accept a good-faith statement unless you have specific facts of “deliberate falsehood or misconduct.” Detaining or calling police solely because of a 4(c) choice is forbidden. So “sincerely held” is administered as: The person says so, or You already have independent evidence of an improper purpose (voyeurism, assault, etc.) — which is a different crime, not a restroom-status hearing. There is no mid-level process: no board, no card, no “has lived as for 12 months,” no clinician letter. A male who prefers the women’s room and is willing to say “I am gender-incongruent” is, for operational purposes, a 4(c) person. A male who says “the line is shorter” is a 4(b) violator. The difference is the sentence he is willing to utter. The "improper purpose" stuff (3(6), 4(e)) does not close that gap. It requires knowing falsity plus intent to commit a crime or invade privacy. A male who sincerely (or opportunistically) claims identity and then behaves “normally” in the stall is inside the statute. You cannot treat “I don’t believe you” as enforcement. Massachusetts-style guidance that this draft cites works the same way: presume appropriate use; don’t police appearance. This draft adds a sex-congruent default that staff cannot apply without doing what the draft bans. 3. The 4(b) / 4(c) tension in practice Sections is not a drafting glitch. It is a verification glitch. Staff must apply 4(b) to ordinary males and 4(c) to “gender-incongruent” males. They are told not to use the information they actually have (who looks male, who has a male voice, who other women just reported). The legal test is "sincerity." The factual test available in 20 seconds is appearance plus a statement. Results: 4(b) is unenforceable except against someone who admits “I’m a man, I just wanted this room.” Every opportunist and miscreant will obviously avoid this admission. 4(c) is the real rule for any male willing to claim incongruence. And anyone can claim incongruence. Women who object are told discomfort is legally insufficient (5(c), 6(d)). They have no voice, no say in the administration of the spaces which were designed for them. Men get to override women on this point for any reason or no reason at all. Operators who guess wrong face 4(f) and Section 7 (civil rights complaint, damages, fees). Huge downsides for impositioning men trying to get into women's bathrooms. Zero upsides for attempting to keep sex-segregated spaces as sex-segregated spaces. That is why “I don’t think we need bathroom laws” and this draft are closer than they look. The draft keeps men’s/women’s signs and then makes the women’s room available to any male who makes the sincerity claim, with liability if staff say no. 4. Civil, not criminal — what that does Section 7 puts this in the public-accommodation / civil-rights machine: agency, 300-day charge, two-year lawsuit, injunction, compensatory damages, fees; punitive only for willful/malicious. No arrest for a good-faith 4(c) choice (7(d)). That is a policy choice with predictable effects, all in favor of men and against women who don't want men in women's spaces and anyone who would act to maintain sex-segregated spaces: Males denied the women’s room have a clean statutory claim: 4(c) + 4(f) + 5(d). The operator’s defense is “we had specific articulable facts of improper purpose.” Appearance and women’s fear are carved out. Many denials will look like “you look male,” which the Act says is not enough. Expect charges and fee-shifting suits. Women denied a female-only space have a much worse claim under this Act. The Act’s purpose includes their privacy, but the operative sections say discomfort is not grounds to exclude a 4(c) user. A woman who wants the operator to keep males out is asking the operator to violate 4(c)/4(f). Her “civil rights” theory has to come from some other law (or a constitutional claim this statute tries to preempt in spirit). Operators are the defendant either way. Let him in: women complain, possible separate tort/hostile-environment theories, political cost. Keep him out: this Act’s Section 7. Rational operators will default to access, because the statute’s private right of action is built for the excluded 4(c) claimant, not for the woman who lost sex-separation. No criminal backstop for the line itself. Voyeurism and assault remain crimes. Crossing the threshold as a male does not. Enforcement of the category is a civil-rights fight after the fact, not a door policy. You will not get criminal prosecutions of confused teenagers. You will get agency dockets and fee petitions aimed at schools, gyms, stores, and cities that try to honor 4(b) by eye. 5. Practical failures 1. Unworkable duty at the door. A clerk cannot hold a "sincerity" hearing. The Act pretends they can apply 4(b) without stereotyping. They cannot. 2. Self-ID with extra vocabulary. “Gender-incongruent person” + sincerity + no documents = self-ID for bathrooms. The “default” is for people who do not claim the exception. 3. Asymmetric litigation. The statute creates a right to choose rooms if you claim incongruence, and a right not to be questioned about it. It does not create a right to a room that contains only the other sex. Women who “do not want men in women’s spaces” are not the protected class this bill arms. Men are, and at the expense of women. 4. Schools and employment. Same text applies to schools and employers (2(b)). A 14-year-old male who states incongruence gets 4(c). Staff who send him to the boys’ room because of sex violate 4(f). That is where most of the conflict will likely be, not airports. 5. “Improper purpose” is too late. It is useful after a camera or an assault. It does not sort the "sincere" dysphoric male from the opportunistic male before entry. The Act forbids using the information that would sort them earlier. 6. Single-user rooms. Section 2(d) and 6(b): you need not build them, and you may not steer the incongruent person into them. The compromise people actually use in buildings (a lockable third room) is legally the optional extra, not the required off-ramp. 7. Scope dodge. 2(c) excludes lockers, showers, prisons, shelters, sports. Those are the harder cases. Leaving them out does not make the restroom rule coherent; it admits the same person is male for a locker and “either room” for a toilet twenty feet away. 8. Conflict with sex-discrimination law. If state or federal law still treats “women” as female, this Act tells operators to do the opposite for restrooms. If identity is already a protected class, this Act is mostly a specification of that. Either way, “case-by-case” in his earlier sports/prison answer is not this bill. This bill is a rule: incongruent → choice; staff → hands off unless a crime is afoot. 9. Eradication dodge: The language pays lip service to designating spaces for women, but then eviscerates - literally de jure - any practical means of maintaining them as such. Sex-segregated spaces are effectively eradicated. 10. "Reasons for sex-segregated spaces" dodge: All this utterly disregards additional reasons why sex-segregated spaces were created in the first place. The primary practical function of a restroom is, of course, to allow people to relieve themselves. But the reason public restrooms in this country (and most of the world) have long been separated by sex is not that society was indifferent to who else was present. Sex separation exists precisely because these are spaces that involve partial undress, vulnerability, and physical proximity. The design choice reflects a judgment that safety and privacy and comfort interests differ systematically by sex, especially for women and girls. Bottom line The draft answers your question — “which men may use the women’s room?” — with: those who sincerely identify as not matching their sex, as proven by their say-so. Most telling, it answers “which men may not?” with: those who openly admit they are entering for convenience or opportunism. Practically speaking, this means everyone can go in. That is particular enough to critique. It is not a system that preserves women’s rooms as female rooms. It preserves the signs, relocates enforcement into civil-rights litigation, and makes the legally safe move for every operator not to differentiate. That is why it still fails the question you asked him, just with more sections. Thanks, -Smac

Pro tip: if you want to avoid looking like a bigot, you should assume that when somebody says their goal is human belonging and flourishing that really is their goal. Assuming the targets of your obsessions have these ulteriour "bailey" motives isn't a good look for you. Again with the "Bigot!" schtick. You are only proving my point. If I say things like "'intentionally a little bit blurry' comes across - quite strongly, in my view - as evasive and vague, as effectively impossible to apply, as motte-and-bailey,'" that is not "bigotry" because I am not expressing an irrational fear or hatred of you. I just think your reasoning is poor. Very poor. And your heavy reliance on logical fallacies and emotionalisms and insults is, in my view, emblematic of something. Pairing it, as I have, with your obvious intellectual gifts, I have provisionally concluded something, which I have repeated a number of times: You and your compatriots endlessly impute evil motives. Evidence-free, or even in the presence of reasoned and civil commentary. My motte-and-bailey assessment is based on fairly extensive interactions with you. Thanks, -Smac

Right. And I am interested in what you have to say, and your reasoning and evidence for what you have to say. Okay. I believe that to be consistent with your source, proposition 1 should read, "Gender identity is an internal sense of gender that advocates say should generally be respected." I'm agnostic about whether it is innate. Could you elaborate about your agnosticism? This seems like a fairly important consideration. There are some real repercussions if "gender identity" is not innate. And if you think it is innate, then I would like to see evidence for it. No, I don't think it is "authoritative." Okay. If self-declared "gender identity" is not authoritative, then what is "authoritative" in terms of men going into women's spaces? I believe a person is exactly who they are and what they are in all circumstances. They can be classified one way or the other using different systems, but they don't somehow change from being one thing to the other based on the circumstance. Okay. Could you walk me through this? Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is a "woman" for purposes of entering into women's bathrooms and participating in women's sports. Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of going to a medical clinic and being screened for uterine cancer (because he does not have a uterus). Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of pregnancy tests, prenatal care, abortion, ectopic-pregnancy workups (because he does not have a uterus). Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of bone-density norms, cardiac risk scores, drug dosing, and reference ranges that differ by sex (creatinine, hemoglobin, iron, liver enzymes). Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of prostate exams (because women do not have prostates). Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of fertility, contraception, and menopause management. He does not ovulate, menstruate, or undergo female menopause. Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of sex-development disorders and fertility workups (which still start from male or female developmental pathways, not "identity"). Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of intimate medical exams, hospital wards, and rape-crisis services organized around female patients Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of forensic examination of skeletal remains, DNA, and blood (which are sexed as male or female). Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of epidemiological and crime statistics (collapsing sex into identity hides male-pattern crime and female-pattern disease). Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of statements like “She is having a period / is pregnant / needs a hysterectomy” (which are necessarily false when referencing a male). Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of producing ova. Man who "identifies" as a woman = He is not a "woman" for purposes of being a biological mother to a child. Do you agree or disagree with the bullet list above? Does this mesh with your "a person is exactly who they are and what they are in all circumstances" position? To be consistent with your source, Proposition 2 should read, "Major transgender-rights organizations affirm that transgender women are women and transgender men are men as gender classifications. That does not mean they claim chromosomes or anatomy have changed, or are irrelevant for every purpose." I don't really care about this. Arguing that somebody isn't really a woman is like arguing with somebody isn't really a child of God. But if somebody feels like a woman, I have no problem classifying them that way for general purposes. Using the definition that gender means how you see yourself on the inside, then a cis woman and a trans woman are both equally valid applications of that system. People are exactly who and what they are in all circumstances. That sentence is true, and empty, and not responsive to my question. Of course a person is who he is in every circumstance. The question is whether that person is a woman in every circumstance. A man who identifies as a woman is still that man when you screen for a uterus, when you ask who can get pregnant, when you set a women’s race, when you sex a skeleton, and when you record who committed a rape. In those settings he is not a woman. He is a male with gender dysphoria. Do you agree or disagree? If your view is that ‘woman’ just means ‘whoever says so,’ say that. Then we are arguing about a word (and industrial-scale equivocation about it at that), not about the body. If ‘woman’ still means adult human female, then identification does not travel into medicine, sports, or single-sex spaces. ‘People are exactly who they are’ does not decide which of those two uses you are using. To be consistent with your source, proposition 3 should say, "Self-identification is sufficient for recognition as transgender; medical treatment is not required for that identity to be valid." I generally agree that if somebody self-identifies as transgender, they really are. This doesn't cause them to be something that they aren't. Again, this is not responsive. I was asking about "a man who 'self-identifies' as a woman." Those two sentences point different ways. ‘If somebody self-identifies as transgender, they really are’ can mean only: they really do have that identity or dysphoria. Fine. That is a fact about feelings in their mind. Do you agree or disagree? ‘This doesn’t cause them to be something that they aren’t’ is the important one. A man is not a woman. Consequently, barring equivocation and/or re-defining what "woman" means, identifying as transgender does not make him female, does not give him a uterus, and does not put him in the women’s category. So I am asking you to pick one: Self-identification makes him a woman, with or without diagnosis, hormones, surgery, or consistent presentation; or He can be transgender and still not be a woman. If you mean (2), we agree on the only point I asked. If you mean (1), then ‘doesn’t cause them to be something that they aren’t’ is false. To be consistent with your source, proposition 4 should say, "Deliberately invalidating someone’s gender identity or targeting them with misgendering can be stigmatizing and harmful. This does not make every disagreement about classification a denial that the person exists." No, if somebody invalidates somebody's gender identity maybe they are being an obstinate ***, but that doesn't mean they are denying anybody's existence. Good. Then we agree on this: saying ‘he is a man, not a woman’ is not a denial that he exists. It is a denial that he is female. If that is all ‘invalidating an identity’ means, it is not existential. It is a disagreement about a category. Obstinate or not is a separate question from whether the category claim is true. Phrases like ‘denying trans people’s existence’ or ‘erasing’ them do not fit this case. Person B exists. What is denied is the claim that he is a woman. Those are not the same thing. To be consistent with your source, Proposition 5 should read, "Sex-associated biology includes atypical and intersex variations, while gender identity is a distinct concept." Biological sex is both a spectrum and binary (embrace the healing power of and!). Both ways of looking at it are valid, depending upon the context. You rewrote Proposition 5 so it no longer says what I asked. I did not ask whether atypical development exists, or whether gender identity is a different concept. I asked whether biological sex is a spectrum or a binary. In sexually reproducing animals, including humans, sex is binary at the level that matters for classification: two gamete types, two reproductive roles. Small and large gametes. Male and female. That is the binary. Disorders of sex development are disorders of development toward one of those two roles. They are not a third sex and they are not evidence that sex is a continuum like height. Atypical cases do not turn a binary system into a spectrum any more than people born with six fingers turn ‘number of fingers’ into a spectrum of species. ‘Both, depending on context’ is only coherent if you name the context. For policy that tracks reproduction, medicine, sports, crime, and single-sex spaces, the operative fact is male or female, not a sliding scale of traits. If you have a policy context in which ‘spectrum’ does real work and still means sex rather than identity or personality, state it. Otherwise you have agreed that the binary is the one that classifies bodies, and ‘spectrum’ is doing rhetorical work. So, is the only "context" you have in mind DSDs? If there are other contexts in which sex is not binary, please explain them. Two. Then how is sex a "spectrum?" Are you saying DSDs = third sex? We agree on the count: two sexes. As I see it, a binary with two sexes is not also a spectrum of sexes. Variation in height, hormones, or developmental disorders is variation within male and female. It does not add sexes and it does not smear the two into a continuum. So the earlier line — ‘biological sex is both a spectrum and binary’ — needs a translation. If ‘two’ is your answer, ‘spectrum’ cannot mean ‘more than two sexes’ or ‘sex is not male/female.’ If it only means ‘traits vary,’ say that. Traits varying is not a third sex and it is not a reason to treat a man who identifies as a woman as female To be consistent with your sources, Proposition 6 should read, "“Sex assigned at birth” describes the classification recorded at birth, ordinarily based on observable anatomy. The phrase does not inherently mean biological sex was arbitrary." I disagree that "assigned sex at birth" implies a bureaucratic label. Doctors classify newborn's sex according to their observations. The equivocation, it seems, extends beyond "gender" and "woman." Now we are equivocating about "assign." Doctors do not assign sex the way a clerk assigns a case number. They observe the reproductive category the child already is — almost always from external anatomy, which tracks the binary of male and female. That is a recording of a fact, not a conferral of a status. So if ‘sex assigned at birth’ is only a clumsy way to say ‘sex observed and recorded at birth,’ we agree, and the word ‘assigned’ is doing no honest work. We should say ‘sex’ or ‘sex recorded at birth.’ The reason the slogan exists is, I think, the stronger claim: that the classification is a label that can come apart from the body, so a later identity can override it. That is the implication I was asking about. If you reject that implication, you disagree with how the phrase is actually used in the debates over sports, medicine, and single-sex spaces — not merely with my wording of Proposition 6. To be consistent with your sources, proposition 7 should read, "People’s names and pronouns should generally be respected; intentional misgendering can cause distress." Misgendering is defined as using gendered words that don't refer to the person's gender. It depends upon why somebody does it. This folds back to equivocating about "gender." Your definition assumes the thing in dispute. If ‘gender’ means identity, then using sex-based pronouns is ‘misgendering’ by stipulation. If ‘gender’ here is just another word for sex, then calling a man ‘he’ is accurate, not a mistype. This is the utility of the equivocation. I am asking the second question: is using sex-based pronouns a wrong — ‘misgendering’ as a harm — or is it ordinary description of sex? ‘It depends why somebody does it’ already gives up Proposition 7 as I wrote it. A slur is a slur even if you were sloppy rather than cruel. If motive matters, then sex-based pronouns are not in that class. They are a disagreement about which fact the pronoun tracks. I can be polite about a requested name without conceding that ‘she’ is true of a male, and without treating ‘he’ as comparable to a slur. Your source for 8 neither says nor implies this. No, those terms are not hate speech or dogwhistles. Then we agree: ‘biological male,’ ‘biological female,’ and ‘natal sex’ are ordinary descriptive terms, not hate speech and not dogwhistles. Proposition 8 was about a common enforcement move — treating those phrases as if they were slurs so the sex distinction cannot be stated politely. You reject that move. That is good, or else you deny that it exists. Either way, there is a polite way to state the distinction: the person is male or female. To be consistent with your sources, Proposition 10 should read, "Some adolescents may appropriately receive gender-related treatment following clinical assessment; advocacy organizations oppose categorical bans." I believe that medical decisions should be made carefully with conscientious patients, parents (if the child is a minor), and healthcare providers. I asked whether withholding medical transition is violence. You described how you think decisions should be made. Those are different. A careful no from a clinician, a parent, or a legislature is not an assault. Calling that ‘violence’ is what Proposition 10 is about: turning a medical disagreement into a moral crime so gatekeeping looks like cruelty. Whether or not any given procedure is lifesaving depends upon the specific situation of the patient. I have no expertise in this; I am not a doctor. Please explain what sorts of "specific situation{s}" render medical transition "lifesaving." ‘Depends on the patient’ and ‘I am not a doctor’ do not tell me whether you accept the public claim: that blockers, hormones, and surgeries are lifesaving care as a class, so that delaying or refusing them is like withholding insulin or a liver or a blood transfusion. Some interventions are "lifesaving" because they stop an imminent bodily process that would kill the patient. In my view, transition is not that. It is elective modification of healthy sexed tissue, offered for distress. As I see it, "lifesaving" is often code for "A gender dysphoric person is threatening suicide unless he gets this procedure" or "Failure to give this person this medical transition procedure will cause him to kill himself." So it suicidal ideation the "specific situation" you are referencing? Or are there other situations? Suicide risk in this population is real. That does not make every requested surgery a life-saving procedure. I can't think of any other medical procedure that is characterized as "lifesaving" because withholding it will or may drive the patient to suicide. One of your sources in support of your claim that "Parental or clinical caution is cast as abuse or bigotry" is an article from Equality magazine that has in its bolded summary at the top: "Parents, young people and medical professionals – including mental health providers – make decisions together, and no medical interventions with permanent consequences happen until a transgender person is old enough to give truly informed consent. Gender-affirming care is not provided without heavy consideration and consultation with all involved parties." It is dishonest to construe this as implying "Parental or clinical caution is cast as abuse or bigorry." That said, my answer to your question is I don't know. I don’t know’ is, in my view, enough to reject Proposition 11 as policy. The proposition says minors can have a stable, knowable identity that justifies social and often medical transition. If you do not know that, you do not know enough to treat caution as abuse or to treat blockers and hormones as the default. Childhood and adolescent identity is plastic. Same-sex attraction, trauma, autism, and social contagion show up at high rates in this group. High levels of desistance is documented when medicalization is not rushed. That is why parental and clinical caution exists. You do not need to call anyone a bigot to say: we do not permanently medicalize a minor on an identity we cannot know is stable. One of the reasons this proposition exists is because it undermines the notion that "gender identity" is On the source: whether one magazine article used the word ‘bigotry’ is a separate fight from the question I asked you. You answered the question. You don’t know. I disagree that there needs to be hard-and-fast laws about such things either way. Over 200 organizations signed a statement about sports which I agree with. It says, "Sport is a space of empowerment, joy, community, and friendship,...Ensuring the health, safety, privacy, bodily autonomy and integrity of all women and girls in sports is crucial...We call for inclusive approaches that foreground the positive role that sports play in society and ensure that all people, regardless of their gender identity and sex characteristics, can participate in sports safely and equitably. We caution against implementing one-size-fits-all approaches like open categories that risk segregating trans, gender diverse and intersex athletes over case-by-case approaches that seek to balance fairness and inclusion." Likewise, I'm in favor of case-by-case decisions for prisons and shelters. Then you disagree with Proposition 13 as written. Single-sex spaces need not follow identity as a blanket rule. Good. Barring people with DSDs, I think the muddled middle of "yes for some males, no for others" is unworkable. ‘No hard-and-fast laws either way’ plus ‘case-by-case’ still needs a criterion. In sports the relevant facts are not individualized mysteries: male puberty produces a durable performance advantage. A case-by-case panel that cannot say ‘this athlete is male, therefore not in the female category’ is identity policy with extra meetings. In prisons and shelters the relevant facts are also not mysterious: male-pattern offending and female vulnerability. A case-by-case system that places a male in a women’s unit because he identifies as a woman has already chosen identity. A system that keeps him out of the women’s unit because he is male has chosen sex. The statement you quote wants safety, privacy, and bodily autonomy for women and girls and also participation ‘regardless of gender identity.’ Those collide when the participant is male. ‘Equitable’ does not tell us who yields. So the question is not whether you like flexibility. It is: when fairness or safety and identity conflict, which fact controls — sex or identity? If you will not say sex, case-by-case will resolve as identity whenever the male objects. It's discrimination by definition. Whether it is justified depends upon the specifics of the case. If ‘discrimination’ only means ‘drawing a distinction,’ then every single-sex rule is discrimination: women’s sports, women’s prisons, women’s changing rooms. That is not an argument. It is a synonym for ‘classification.’ In ordinary moral and legal use, ‘discrimination’ means an unjustified distinction — usually also an unlawful one. That is the sting in Proposition 13. Exclusion of males from female spaces is then supposed to be the same kind of wrong as excluding people from a restaurant because of race. I am asking about that sting. Is keeping males out of women’s sports, prisons, shelters, and bathrooms unjust or unlawful as such — or is it a justified sex classification? You already said justification depends on the case. Then it is not ‘discrimination’ in the condemnatory sense as a rule. It is sex discrimination in the thin sense, which we already knew: the category is sex. The question is whether that category is allowed to do its job. I'd have to hear the particulars to know. This is too abstract to mean anything to me without context. Then you disagree with Proposition 14 as a principle. Distinguishing a male who has had genital surgery from one who has not, or a social-only identification from a medical pathway, is not automatically bigotry. It depends on why the line is drawn. I acknowledge that there are people who harbor bigoted views of trans people. The challenge I see is that folks like you seem to characterize all people who disagree with the basic propositions of the trans movement (that sex is mutable, that sex is a "spectrum," that a man can "become" a woman by "identifying" as one, that "trans women are women," and so on). That is the whole point of the proposition: some advocates treat any internal line as betrayal and bigotry. You are saying you do not, and I am glad to hear it. Context can include prisons, sports, locker rooms, and medicine — places where the body, not the label, is the issue. If a distinction tracks a real fact, it is classification, not hatred. It depends on the situation. Asking "what is a woman" is often asked in bad faith to make intelligent and nuanced people look stupid to the target audience of people with simplistic world views. Does it "endanger" people? Maybe, but that seems like an exaggeration. But such questions generally aren't asked to increase understanding, tolerance, love, and mutual respect. We are making some progress. "What is a woman?" has become a controversial question. Imagine that. Imagine a movement that says audacious things like "trans women are women," and then attribute effrontery to anyone who asks "Okay, then what do you mean by 'woman?'" How is it that a movement about men becoming women can exist without being able to define its most basic terms? A request for a definition is not bad faith because the answer is simple. ‘What is a woman?’ is how you find out whether the speaker means adult human female or ‘whoever identifies as one.’ If that makes a ‘nuanced’ view look unstable, the instability is in the view. Bad faith would be refusing to use the answer, or asking only to humiliate. Asking because prisons, sports, medicine, and language depend on the answer is the opposite. You do not need the question to increase warmth. You need it to know what rule is being proposed. You already said people are not denied existence when someone denies they are women, that there are two sexes, and that ‘biological male’ is not a slur. Those answers are why the question is asked. If the definition is ‘adult human female,’ a male is not one. If the definition is identity, say that and own the consequences. Neither reply is too stupid to speak. I have no idea. I don't know what "sex-based rights" are. Sex-based rights are legal and social rules that use sex — male or female — as the criterion. Examples: Selective Service; women’s sports and scholarships; women’s prisons, shelters, and changing rooms; the right of a lesbian to date only females; medical and research categories by sex; the right to assemble or organize as women, meaning adult human females. Proposition 19 says that when those rules exclude males who identify as women, the exclusion is called bigotry. I am asking whether you agree with that accusation. Is a women’s category that is limited to females bigotry? If you need it narrower: is it bigotry for a women’s prison or a women’s race to categorically exclude males? Thanks, -Smac

My Question: "{H}ow you would propose to differentiate which men can legally access women's bathrooms and which cannot{?}" Your Answer: "I don't think we need bathroom laws." Formulating public policy requires asking and answering difficult questions. You have a formulation, but you refuse to explain it or clarify it or defend it with any effort at particularity, candor or rigor. I can't compel you to answer questions. But this all comes across as very evasive and motte-and-bailey-esque. I find this very telling. If men want to enter into spaces segregated for women and girls, and others do not want them to, then sooner or later the State needs to decide how to address that. This is not rocket science or actuarial statistics. It is common sense. Airy wave-offs like "We don't need such laws" just come across as evasive. As motte-and-bailey. Okay. I'll see if I can break down my inquiries. Some are repeats, since I can't find wording formulate them in a more clinical way. I have noticed that you enjoy framing some of your responses as evidentiary objections used in court. Perhaps you could continue that line of thinking and pretend we are in a deposition. In the venue, evidentiary objections are generally reserved for further review by the judge (who is not present), so all questions are answered except questions which elicit an answer which may intrude into "privilege" (like attorney-client privilege) or else is objectionable as to form (compound questions, for example). I hope you'll humor me and just answer the questions as best you can. "Proposition 1: Gender identity is real, innate, and authoritative. A person’s stated identity is the primary fact about whether they are a man, woman, both, or neither." Question #1: Do you think that "gender identity" is "innate" (as in "existing in one from birth; inborn; native")? Question #2: Do you think that "gender identity" is "authoritative" (as in "having due authority; having the sanction or weight of authority")? For example, if a man "identifies" as a woman, are other people in society, and society itself, and society's laws, obligated to acquiesce to this "identity?" To treat this man as if he were a woman in every respect? Question #3: You have elsewhere differentiated between "gender identity" and biological sex. Is it your position that a man can be a woman in some circumstances but not others? For example, a man can be a woman for the purpose of participating in women's sports, but not for the purpose of getting screened for uterine cancer? "Proposition 2: Identity is sex (or replaces sex for social/legal purposes). “Trans women are women” / “trans men are men” is treated as a literal truth, not a courtesy or a political slogan." Question #4: Do you agree that "trans women are women?" Question #5: Would you characterize "trans women" and "cis women" as co-equal subcategories of "woman?" Question #6: Are there any circumstances in which a man who "identifies" as a "trans woman" is not a woman? If so, what are those circumstances? "Proposition 3: Self-identification is sufficient. No medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation is required for the identity to be valid." Question #7: Do you agree or disagree that a man who "self-identifies" as a woman means he is a woman, regardless of "medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation?" "Proposition 4: Denial of the identity is a denial of the person. Disagreeing with the identity claim is framed as saying the person 'doesn’t exist,' not as disputing a proposition." Question #8: Do you agree that if Person A denies that Person B, a man who "identifies" as a woman, actually is a woman, Person A is denying the "existence" of Person B? "Proposition 5: Sex is a spectrum, a social construct, or at least not a strict binary relevant to policy. Chromosomes, gametes, and reproductive anatomy are treated as crude, incomplete, or bigoted ways to classify people." Question #9: Is biological sex a "spectrum" or a "binary?" Question #10: How many sexes are there? "Proposition 6: 'Assigned sex at birth' is the preferred description of sex, implying a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category." Question #11: Do you agree or disagree that "assigned sex at birth" implies "a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category." Question #12: Do you think a doctor "assigns" a sex to a newborn or "observes" it? "Proposition 7: Preferred pronouns and names are morally mandatory. Using sex-based pronouns is 'misgendering'; using a prior name is 'deadnaming.' Both are treated as harms comparable to slurs." Question #13: Do you agree or disagree that using sex-based pronouns is "misgendering?" Question #14: Do you agree or disagree that using sex-based pronouns is "comparable to slurs?" "Proposition 8: There is no polite way to state the sex distinction. 'Biological male/female,' 'natal sex,' and similar terms are often classified as hate speech or dogwhistles." Question #15: Do you agree or disagree that using terms like "biological male" or "natal sex" are "hate speech or dogwhistles?" "Proposition 10: Medical transition (blockers, hormones, surgery) is healthcare, and withholding it is violence. Access is framed as lifesaving; gatekeeping is framed as cruelty." Question #16: Do you agree or disagree that withholding medical transition is "violence?" Question #17: Do you agree or disagree that medical transition is "lifesaving?" Please explain what is "lifesaving" about such procedures. "Proposition 11: Minors can have a stable, knowable transgender identity that justifies social and often medical transition. Parental or clinical caution is cast as abuse or bigotry." Question #18: Do you agree or disagree that "{m}inors {} have a stable, knowable transgender identity that justifies social and often medical transition?" "Proposition 13: Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex. Exclusion of males who identify as women is discrimination." Question #19: Do you agree or disagree that "Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex?" Question #20: Do you agree or disagree that excluding males "who identify as women" from these spaces is "discrimination?" "Proposition 14: Any line among 'trans women' is itself bigotry. Distinguishing social-only from medically transitioned, or pre-op from post-op, is 'transmedicalism' or 'dividing the community.'" Question #21: Do you agree or disagree that differentiating trans women in any way (medically-transitioned versus non-medically-transitioned, etc.) is "bigotry?" "Proposition 16: Questions are a form of harm. Asking for definitions ('what is a woman?'), evidence, or tradeoffs is treated as bad-faith or as endangering trans people." Question #22: Do you agree or disagree that "{a}sking for definitions ('what is a woman?')" is "bad-faith?" As "endangering trans people?" "Proposition 19: Conflicts with women’s rights and gay rights are denied or inverted. Sex-based rights are reframed as bigotry; same-sex attraction is pressured toward 'attraction to gender identity.'" Question #23: Do you agree or disagree that "sex-based rights" are "bigotry?" I'll go along with that. My list was also a synthesis, and not a "jointly adopted creed." Sounds grand, except that what "rights" are in view are left as undefined. And candidly, this looks like this vagueness is intentional. And that intentionality looks like part of a motte-and-bailey strategy. Who could, after all, object to "trans people" having "equal rights?" Nobody but the bigots, right? That's the motte. The (unspoken) baileys, then, are things like "Great! Now that we've established that trans folks have equal rights, and also that self-declared 'gender identity' and not biological sex is determinative, and also that 'trans women are women,' they cannot be excluded from women sports and bathrooms." Again, vague. What does "gender diversity" mean? Is "transgender identity" congruent with reality? Is "transgender identity" immune from inquiry or critique or disagreement? Can I declare that I "identify" as the son of Elon Musk, and can I then summarily declare that this identity is not a mental illness? Again, vague. Again, motte-and-bailey. How is "gender identity" congruent with reality? Is "gender identity" predicated on equivocation (about "gender," which can be a synonym for biological sex or a broad reference to stereotypes and assumptions (girls like dolls and pink, boys like trucks and blue, women wear dresses, etc.)? If "gender identity" is not congruent with reality, why is society obligated to not only accommodate it, but to treat it as if it were congruent with reality? Wow. Special pleading on steroids. "If I, a biological male born in the early 70s, 'identify' as the son of Elon Musk, outsiders should not have general authority to decide whether that identity is legitimate." "If I, an adult human male, 'identify' as a dragon, outsiders should not have general authority to decide whether that identity is legitimate." "If I, an adult human male, 'identify' as a permanently six-year-old girl, outsiders should not have general authority to decide whether that identity is legitimate." "If I, an adult human male, 'identify' as a woman, outsiders should not have general authority to decide whether that identity is legitimate." I assume you disagree with items 1-3, but you accept 4. How do you differentiate 4 from 1-3? This is the culmination of all the vagueness and motte-and-bailey equivocations and maneuverings. "Man" now means "adult human male or female." "Woman" now means "adult human female or male." "Male" and "female" now refer to both biological sex and "gender identity." This is the endgame dressed up as a proposition. It is question begging of the highest order. Motte-and-bailey. Vagueness and platitudes intended to obscure the actual objectives and meanings in play. Motte: "People should have substantial control over their bodies" Bailey: "Men have the right to go into women's bathrooms." Motte: "People should have substantial control over their bodies" Bailey: "Children can decide whether to undergo irreversible medical procedures involving the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on." Motte-and-bailey. Vagueness and platitudes intended to obscure the actual objectives and meanings in play. Motte: "{H}arm associated with being transgender is produced by mistreatment and exclusion ... {is} preventable." Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports." Motte: "{H}arm associated with being transgender is produced by mistreatment and exclusion ... {is} preventable." Bailey: "Doctors should perform radical medical procedures on gender dysphoric children, procedures which are irreversible, which involve the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on." Imagine if someone said "Much of the harm associated with being {anorexic} is produced by mistreatment and exclusion—and is therefore preventable." Would you go along with that? If not, why not? What if much of the "harm associated with being transgender" is inherent? See, e.g., here: Study: Adolescents Who Received Gender Reassignment Have Worse Mental Health But what about previous studies that gender ideologues often cite to justify puberty blockers and mastectomies for underage patients? They were inadequate to the task at hand: Gender reassignment interventions seem to have worsened many of the patients’ mental health: Here are the “clinical implications”: This study’s results are no surprise as they are consistent with other recent similar work. What should be a surprise — but, alas, isn’t — is much (not all) of the American medical establishment’s refusal to “follow the science” and choosing still to embrace gender ideology. Ditto, progressive lawmakers and officials who continue to propose and enforce laws essentially mandating so-called gender-affirming care. Is the study a legitimate basis for concern about how we approach gender dysphoria? Does this study give you pause at all in your advocacy for "trans" stuff? If not, why not? When people like me see studies like this, and when we then observe people like you, with your reflexive "Bigot!"-style responses and boy-that-sure-comes-across-as-a-motte-and-bailey-tactic axioms, it ought not surprise you to see us make assessments like this: "Huh, these guys seem really quite bereft of substantive evidence and reasoning as to their advocacy of this ideology. Their stated claims are, frankly, audacious in their claims, which reflect a fairly patent incongruence with reality and common sense ('trans women are women,' a man can 'become' a woman by 'identifying' as one,' etc.), and yet they act as if disputing or critiquing their basic presuppositions is a profound moral affront ('Bigot!'). It seems like they cannot defend their assertions on their merits, so they must resort to logical fallacies and insults." Anecdotally and provisionally and temporarily, perhaps. Sure would like to see the data. But supporting incongruent-with-reality notions may also create some real negative effects. Again, see the Finnish study. It seems like you guys never given these sorts of things due consideration, and you also attempt to shame others for doing so (boy, that "Bigot!" schtick sure has wide-ranging applications). Motte-and-bailey. Motte: "{D}eny transgender people effective access to an ordinary service." Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms." Motte-and-bailey. Motte: "The goal is belonging and flourishing." Bailey: "Men should be able to participate in women's sports and go into women's bathrooms." Motte: "The goal is belonging and flourishing." Bailey: "Doctors should perform radical medical procedures on gender dysphoric children, procedures which are irreversible, which involve the removal of healthy body parts, permanent sterilization, loss of sexual function, and so on." Thanks, -Smac

These hyperbolic AI-generates splash images are really getting old. A Grok summary of this episode (from the auto-generated transcript) : "They also say 'soon discovered it wasn’t what they were seeking” undercuts lasting confusion: listeners figure it out quickly." In other words, some folks were confused initially. Not sure how this helps MS. Thanks, -Smac

Okay. The "intentionally a little bit blurry" comes across - quite strongly, in my view - as evasive and vague, as effectively impossible to apply, as motte-and-bailey. I was in a hearing last week in which the judge was rendering a decision on a motion for summary judgment I had filed. The opposing attorney, David, had filed an opposing memorandum that either dodged many of the points of law I was making or only addressed them vaguely and obliquely. The most acute example was a question about David's first cause of action (I represent the defendant), seeking a judgment that my client, when he foreclosed on the plaintiff's house, violated the law by failing to send a "Notice of Default" to the plaintiff. This is indisputably a requirement of the nonjudicial foreclosure process in Utah, but the obligation to send it rests with the foreclosure trustee (not my client). In fact, my client is statutorily prohibited from doing what the trustee is obligated to do. At the hearing the judge asked David: "About that first cause of action, you aren't claiming that the defendant was the foreclosure trustee, correct?" David didn't talk for about 15 seconds, but then said "No, we're not." The judge then said "And the duty to send a Notice of Default to the property owner is the duty of the trustee, right?" Another pregnant pause, even longer, then David said "That is correct." The judge did not ask the next obvious question: "So the first cause of action necessarily fails, doesn't it? The defendant can't be held liable for not sending a Notice of Default when he had no obligation to do so, right?" The judge did, however, dismiss the first cause of action a few minutes later. David did what you have been refusing to do for months now: answer questions directly and candidly. Of course, he had an obligation to do so, and you do not. I have been asking for weeks and weeks how you would propose to differentiate which men can legally access women's bathrooms and which cannot. I have also been asking for "limiting principles" to your proposal. I have also been asking you to acknowledge that your proposal, in enacted, would result in de facto and/or de jure eradication of sex-segregated spaces. Huh. ChatGPT doesn't seem to actually address the propositions. "Proposition 1: Gender identity is real, innate, and authoritative. A person’s stated identity is the primary fact about whether they are a man, woman, both, or neither." Do you agree or disagree with Proposition 1? Is gender identity "real, innate and authoritative?" Do you agree or disagree that "[a] person’s stated identity is the primary fact about whether they are a man, woman, both, or neither?" What do you mean by "sex recorded at birth?" If a person is a man by biological sex, but is a "woman" by "gender identity," is that person a man or a woman? "Proposition 2: Identity is sex (or replaces sex for social/legal purposes). “Trans women are women” / “trans men are men” is treated as a literal truth, not a courtesy or a political slogan." What does "recognize transgender people socially" mean? Do you agree or disagree that "trans women are women" is a "literal truth?" "Proposition 3: Self-identification is sufficient. No medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation is required for the identity to be valid." Do you agree or disagree that a man who "self-identifies" as a woman means he is a woman, regardless of "medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation?" "Proposition 4: Denial of the identity is a denial of the person. Disagreeing with the identity claim is framed as saying the person 'doesn’t exist,' not as disputing a proposition." Do you agree that if Person A denies that Person B, a man who "identifies" as a woman, actually is a woman, Person A is denying the "existence" of Person B? "Proposition 5: Sex is a spectrum, a social construct, or at least not a strict binary relevant to policy. Chromosomes, gametes, and reproductive anatomy are treated as crude, incomplete, or bigoted ways to classify people." So is sex a "spectrum" or a "binary?" How many sexes are there? "Proposition 6: 'Assigned sex at birth' is the preferred description of sex, implying a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category." Do you agree or disagree that "assigned sex at birth" implies "a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category." Do you think a doctor "assigns" a sex to a newborn or "observes" it? "Proposition 7: Preferred pronouns and names are morally mandatory. Using sex-based pronouns is 'misgendering'; using a prior name is 'deadnaming.' Both are treated as harms comparable to slurs." Do you agree or disagree that using sex-based pronouns is "misgendering?" Do you agree or disagree that using sex-based pronouns is "comparable to slurs?" "Proposition 8: There is no polite way to state the sex distinction. 'Biological male/female,' 'natal sex,' and similar terms are often classified as hate speech or dogwhistles." Do you agree or disagree that using terms like "biological male" or "natal sex" are "hate speech or dogwhistles?" "Proposition 9: Gender dysphoria is validated by affirmation, not primarily explored as a possible misattribution of other distress. 'Watchful waiting' or exploratory therapy is frequently labeled conversion therapy. Do you agree or disagree that "gender dysphoria is validated by affirmation?" "Proposition 10: Medical transition (blockers, hormones, surgery) is healthcare, and withholding it is violence. Access is framed as lifesaving; gatekeeping is framed as cruelty." Do you agree or disagree that withholding medical transition is "violence?" Do you agree or disagree that medical transition is "lifesaving?" Do you agree or disagree that "gatekeeping" medical transition is "cruelty?" "Proposition 11: Minors can have a stable, knowable transgender identity that justifies social and often medical transition. Parental or clinical caution is cast as abuse or bigotry." Do you agree or disagree that "{m}inors {} have a stable, knowable transgender identity that justifies social and often medical transition?" Do you agree or disagree that "{p}arental or clinical caution {regarding pediatric medical transition procedures} is ... abuse or bigotry?" "Proposition 13: Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex. Exclusion of males who identify as women is discrimination." Do you agree or disagree that "Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex?" Do you agree or disagree that excluding males "who identify as women" from these spaces "discrimination?" "Proposition 14: Any line among 'trans women' is itself bigotry. Distinguishing social-only from medically transitioned, or pre-op from post-op, is 'transmedicalism' or 'dividing the community.'" Do you agree or disagree that differentiating trans women in any way (medically-transitioned versus non-medically-transitioned, etc.) is "bigotry?" "Proposition 16: Questions are a form of harm. Asking for definitions ('what is a woman?'), evidence, or tradeoffs is treated as bad-faith or as endangering trans people." Do you agree or disagree that "{a}sking for definitions ('what is a woman?')" is "bad-faith?" As "endangering trans people?" "Proposition 17: Opposition is explained as animus. The admissible motives are hatred, disgust, or religion; safety, fairness, child protection, and definitional accuracy are discounted." Hoo, boy. This sure would be nice to see, as you have in my recollection been a non-stop member of the bucket brigade drawing water from the "Bigot!" well. Haven't seen it. "Proposition 19: Conflicts with women’s rights and gay rights are denied or inverted. Sex-based rights are reframed as bigotry; same-sex attraction is pressured toward 'attraction to gender identity.'" Do you agree or disagree that "sex-based rights" are "bigotry?" Thanks, -Smac

Maybe I'm being unfair. You at least sometimes come across as being selective in your focus and outrage for these LGBTQ groups. You are only further demonstrating my point. To disagree with you is to be "bigoted." To disagree with you is to be "outraged." Again, you seem incapable of allowing for reasoned and principled disagreement. You are here demonstrating why I don't see you as a reliable narrator. You cannot be trusted to fairly characterize viewpoints which diverge from yours. Here is what I have said, and which you characterize as "really, really hate": Nothing about "hate" here (as in "to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest"). I have strong principled disagreement with coerced and compelled speech, but you can't accommodate that, so you rebrand it as "hate." It is based on principle. Coerced/compelled speech is a terrible idea. I am not selective about this. It just so happens that the only substantive movement I can think of that incorporates coerced/compelled speech into its objectives and means is some parts of the LGBT movement. I see this as a tacit acknowledgment of its vacuity. You and yours can't persuade, so you coerce. It's agree with you or else be branded a "bigot" driven by "hate." It's agree with you and yours or else you will seek to use the coercive power of the State to compel me to say words I do not want to say, or else punish me for not saying them. There is no real effort here to persuade hearts and minds. "Bigot." "Really, really hate." "Morally outraged."' You just can't help yourself. To answer your question: No. The same can be said when I rendered military courtesies to officers I found to be not really deserving of it. A few reasons for this. First, I am in those circumstances effectively required to use titles, honorifics, and formalities. I knew that was part of the gig when I joined the Army, and later when I joined the Bar. Second, these formalities are principally focused on the position and the system in which it functions more than the individual inhabiting it. Band of Brothers got it right: Third, to the extent military service or courtroom formalities by members of the Bar are seen as "compelled," they are very much exceptions to the rule. I think that's a stretch, though. Calling a judge "Your Honor" is legally classified as a regulation of conduct and decorum within a specialized government facility rather than unconstitutional compelled speech. A servicemember being required to address a superior officer as "sir" or "ma'am" is not considered unconstitutional compelled speech because of the legally distinct nature of the U.S. military. While the First Amendment generally prevents the government from forcing citizens to say things they disagree with (like the Pledge of Allegiance), the rules are fundamentally different for active-duty personnel. "Bigot." "Really, really hate." "Morally outraged."' "Awful." You just can't help yourself. I am not sure what you are referencing here. Most employers are private entities, and hence are not bound by the First Amendment, which regulates State behavior relative to speech. You aren't being precise here. The assertion isn't and never was about "a complete list of everything that can exist or act." The assertion is about whether unknown forces or particles can interact with normal matter with enough vigor to have any effect on our everyday lives. And in this context, this doesn't just mean bending spoons. It means subtly nudging an electrical impulse enough to change the probability that a neuron fires. In this context, "spirit matter" (as conceived by Mormonism), "revelation" and other such things are all in the broad category of "new particles or fields". That is a fair correction on wording. The live claim is not "nothing else can exist." It is: nothing unknown can couple to ordinary matter strongly enough to change everyday outcomes, including the probability that a given neuron fires. If a soul or an act of revelation had to be a new field or particle that continuously exchanges energy-momentum with charges and ions the way known forces do, then yes — a nudge at the synapse is exactly the kind of coupling experiments were built to find. I am not saying that coupling was missed. What I am disputing, and have for years, is the requirement that revelation or a soul, if real, must be that kind of extra term in the effective theory. That is the step that turns ‘no fifth force in the neural energy range’ into ‘therefore an infinitesimal prior on God speaking.’ A cause that is not another particle species, or that does not act as a stable, law-like force across the board, is not constrained in the same way by crossing symmetry. You can reject those options. You cannot treat the rejection as if it were just the experimental bound on extra particles. "Bigot." "Really, really hate." "Morally outraged."' "Awful." "Boloney Detection Kit." I accept the particle-physics claim in those pages. If something is another quantum field that lives long enough and couples to ordinary matter strongly enough to change everyday processes — including whether a neuron is a little more or less likely to fire — then yes, we should have produced it. Carroll’s three options for missing particles are the right list for that kind of thing. I am not arguing that a hidden electron-like field was overlooked. The religious claim I am defending is not "there is a fourth option: a long-lived, moderately coupled particle we somehow missed." It is that God, or a soul, or revelation, need not be a term you add to the Core Theory equation the way you add a new force. Carroll is right that if you insist on modeling the soul as something that pushes protons and electrons around inside the existing Lagrangian, you have a serious problem. That ‘if’ is the whole dispute. Treating every influence on a brain as "must be a modification of this equation in a way colliders would have seen" is the physicalist rule. The experiments bound extra couplings. They do not by themselves prove that the only possible cause is an extra coupling. On the kit: I have said from the start that Sagan’s tools are the right tools for candidate scientific mechanisms: ESP papers, medical miracles, sloppy history, fraud. I apply them there. I do not accept that the same protocol, with the same restriction on admissible causes, is a neutral test of whether God can speak. That is not "science for thee but not for me." It is refusing to let a method designed to police extra particles in the everyday domain also serve as the sole judge of a different kind of claim. You can call that selective. I call it not collapsing two hypotheses into one. I can be wrong about God. What I will not grant is that Carroll’s bound on undiscovered particles is the demonstration that I am wrong, or that declining to treat revelation as a missing term in the Core Theory is a refusal to think. Thanks, -Smac

I am reciting how marriage was defined until 2015, at which point five SCOTUS justices decided, on flimsy-bordering-on-pretextual legal grounds, to toss out what is - in my view - the sine qua non attribute of the institution: a male-female pairing. Argumentum ad populum is a logical error that happens when you claim something is true just because a lot of people believe it. If SCOTUS were to reverse Obergefell, and if the majority of Americans were to return to disagreeing with same-sex marriage, would you change your views? Popular opinion can be fickle. From June 2026: U.S. Support for LGBTQ+ Issues Remains Down From Peak Probably a few reasons for this. Regardless, my perspective on issues of morality, the Law of Chastity, marriage, etc. are not dictated by what is popular, but rather what I feel is right and reasoned. Really? You don't view stable marriage relationships as an important foundation of American society? I have laid out my reasoning. I look forward to a substantive critique of it. I am glad of that. We need to allow each other to room to disagree. The vast majority of them are "just living together" even 11 years after the legalization of same-sex marriage. I do not think the typical committed couple is better off with no legal tools at all — no hospital access, no inheritance default, no next-of-kin status. I already said those private goods are real. But they could have been achieved without radically re-defining marriage. Moreover, that is not the same question as whether the civil institution of marriage should have been redefined so that it no longer publicly means a union ordered to the possibility of mother-and-father childrearing. A couple can be better off with a contract or a tailored status and still leave the older meaning of marriage intact. ‘Are these two adults happier with a license?’ can be yes for many pairs. ‘Is society better off once the institution no longer distinguishes the kind of union that can produce a child with both a mother and a father?’ is a different question. I have been answering the second one. Treating them as one question is how ‘private goods I already granted’ gets scored as if I said cohabitation with zero recognition is the ideal. Again, you are using the argumentum ad populum fallacy. Again, you were in favor of same-sex marriage when it was not the law of the land and most Americans were opposed to it, right? I have not defined marriage via number, gender, consanguinity, consent and age. I have, instead, recited how the law previously treated marriage. Majority sentiment is evidence about what people now prize in a relationship. It is not a definition of the institution. Plenty of Americans now treat marriage as a diluted form of what it was previously (categorically linked with procreation and child-rearing), and now see it more or less as just some sort of prestige package for adult commitment, severed from that prior categorical link. That is exactly the shift I have been arguing against. Calling the older account ‘radical’ or ‘a Utah thing’ names where you have heard it. It does not show the account is wrong. The criterion I have cited (among others) is not "this pair will in fact conceive." It is the kind of sexual union that is ordered to generating children and that can give a child a mother and a father. Infertile opposite-sex couples still enter that kind of union. Same-sex couples categorically do not. That is why the law never needed a fertility questionnaire for husband and wife, and why I would not add one. A sex-and-fertility form would treat a contingent medical fact as if it were the same issue as the structure of the pair. It is not. Two men can have a loyal, legally useful bond. I have not denied that. I have denied that companionship-plus-license is now the whole public meaning of marriage. If most people now want that to be the whole meaning, I guess you can say so. If you do, you will be tacitly admitting that marriage has been severed from procreation and child-rearing, and that you are on board with this. That is a proposal to change what the institution is for, not proof that drawing the older line "devalues marriage." Thanks, -Smac

I like it a lot as well. John Derbyshire, paraphrasing what Robert Conquest famously observed, said that "Everyone is conservative about what he knows best." Dern tootin'. @california boy is, I think, demonstrative of this. He now wants to "conserve" same-sex marriage. He wanted the definition of marriage "progress" and be re-defined as to gender, but I think he does not want it to thereafter "progress" to a re-definition as to number. Perhaps we could also say: "Everyone is liberal about a good he has seen withheld." For me, I tend to balance the two by looking at Chesterton's Fence, the rule that you do not pull down a barrier until you know why it was put up. The original image is a road with a fence across it. The reformer says it is pointless and should go. Chesterton’s reply is that you are not entitled to remove it until you can say what it was for. If you do not know, you do not yet know whether you are clearing an obstruction or opening a ditch. Once you do know — cattle, a boundary, a flood channel — you may still take it down. The point is not “never change.” It is “do not change in ignorance.” The fence therefore forbids two cheap moves. The "progressive" cheap move: “I do not see the use of this, therefore it is oppression.” Not seeing the use is your ignorance, not the fence’s verdict. The "conservative" cheap move: “It is old, therefore it must stay.” Age is a clue that someone had a reason. It is not a proof that the reason still holds. Used honestly, the test is sequential. First state the purpose of the existing rule (conservative work). Then ask whether that purpose is still real, whether the rule still serves it, and whether a different rule would serve the same purpose with less exclusion (liberal work). If you skip the first step, you get vandalism dressed as compassion. If you refuse the second, you get ancestor-worship dressed as wisdom. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best — he can explain the fence. Everyone is liberal about a good he has seen withheld — he can say who is standing on the other side of it. Chesterton’s rule is the requirement that both speeches happen before anyone brings a saw. I do find the sentiment in the video you like difficult to reconcile with the well that folks like you and SU so frequently go to, namely, "The only plausible explanation for you disagreeing with me is that you are a bigot." You seem to genuinely lack the capacity to allow reasonable minds to reach conclusions which diverge from your conclusions. Two problems with that. First. “Everything that interacts with observable reality is within the purview of science” is true only if you mean: if it leaves a trace in the world, that trace can be looked at. It is false if you mean: the only legitimate explanation of a trace is a current physical law, applied as if the universe were a closed box with no author. A signed document interacts with reality. So does a marriage, a crime, a resurrection claim, a translation of a text. History, law, and testimony are how we handle particular events. Physics is how we handle repeatable regularities. Those are not the same toolkit. “Science owns every interaction” is a territorial claim, not a finding. It is also self-undermining: the decision that only that toolkit counts is not itself a laboratory result. If a prophet claims God spoke, you can ask whether the claim is coherent, whether witnesses held, whether the fruits match the tree, whether rival explanations are better. That is inquiry. It is not the same as saying “unless this shows up as a new force in the Standard Model, it did not happen.” Second. Pinker and Carroll are not talking about revelation. They are talking about a soul or an ESP faculty conceived as an extra physical widget — a field, a particle, a brain that steers photons without a mechanism. Given that picture, yes: everyday physics is complete enough that you should not expect undergraduates to peek behind the curtain. Bem’s porn-curtain study is a bad analogy for Isaiah or Moroni because nobody in those texts is proposing a fifth force in the lab. Revelation, as I am using it, is not “the laws of physics failed in the undergraduate basement.” It is: the God who instituted those laws can address a person, or act in a particular history, without the universe becoming a different kind of machine. That is a claim about an agent who is not an item in the inventory. You can reject the agent. You cannot treat “we have mapped the low-energy effective theory” as a demonstration that no such agent exists. That conclusion was loaded into the prior. “The rules of physics rule out revelation” only works if revelation means a physical leak. I did not mean a physical leak. I meant that some questions — whether we are accountable, whether this record is from God, whether this commandment is His — are not settled by extending the same method that measures a charge-to-mass ratio. Science answers how the furnace burns. It does not tell you whether the owner of the house has spoken. If your view is that nothing can speak except what the current equations already contain, say that. That is metaphysical naturalism. It is not “science.” It is a philosophy that uses science as its branding. I think "Analytics the ardent anti-Mormon" has given us a menu of ways "Analytics the scentifically-minded 'squarely on the side of empirical realiity'" buy must find defective. Compartmentalization. Shelf. Ignorance of esoteric QFT. Cognitive dissonance. Apathy. Cultural religion with the supernatural filed off. Those things exist. They are not a proof that they are what is happening every time a chemist who goes to church walks into a lab. The fact I pointed to is narrower than you treated it. I did not say “LDS physicists exist, therefore Moroni is a theorem.” I said they do not have to check their faith at the door in order to do the work. That is an existence claim about compatibility of practices. You answered with a compatibility claim about metaphysics: if the current laws are true, revelation is false, so the scientist who believes both is fooling himself. That only follows if “the laws” already include “the universe is a closed system with no speaker.” That clause is not in the Lagrangian. “What the laws of physics are” and “what those laws imply” are two sentences. The first is: at everyday energies we have an extraordinarily good effective theory; extra forces and extra soul-particles are not sitting in the gap. The second is: therefore God cannot address a person or act in history. The jump is where the philosophy is doing the work. Carroll is entitled to that philosophy. He is not entitled to call it a measurement. If the only permitted stance is “QFT plus naturalism,” then yes, every believing scientist is compartmentalizing. That is not a finding about them. It is your definition of sanity. A man who thinks the Creator of the regularities can also speak is not required to forget how a semiconductor works. He is required not to treat the semiconductor as a sacrament. Those are different mistakes. You can still argue that particular LDS historical claims fail on historical grounds. Do that. “There are Saints in the hard sciences” was never offered as a substitute for that argument. It was offered against the idea that walking into a lab is an implicit oath of metaphysical naturalism. It isn’t. The oath is yours. No. Science and religion are in tension when religion makes truth-claims about observable reality that contradict science. “That formulation still treats the current naturalistic reading of the data as identical with ‘science.’ Science, as a method, is observation, measurement, and the search for regularities. It is silent, or at least underdetermined, on unique historical events, first causes, and whether agency can ever be a cause. Tension appears only after you add the extra rule that the only respectable explanations are those that stay inside Sagan–Carroll naturalism. That rule is a philosophical premise, not a finding of physics or biology. If a religious claim is about a repeatable, presently observable regularity and it is simply false, then yes, that particular claim is in trouble. Most of the live disputes are not of that kind; they are disputes about what counts as an explanation in the first place.” "Science" can't establish whether Caesar was stabbed to death on the floor of the Roman Senate. You are on record as accepting that event as historically accurate even though it is bereft of derived-from-the-scientific-method empirical verification. That's precisely my point. The Baloney Detection Kit is about subjecting your beliefs to the crucible of scientific thinking so that you stop believing false things. If you want your religious convictions to "survive contact with ordinary life", you should do the opposite of what the Baloney Detection Kit prescribes. The Kit is a good tool for one job: reducing error about repeatable, publicly observable regularities while treating personal, historical, and agent-involving claims as last-resort explanations. That is a legitimate project. It is not the only project. Wanting a conviction to survive contact with ordinary life is not ‘do the opposite of the Kit.’ It is closer to what every research program and every serious moral commitment actually does: protect a core while letting the periphery be revised by experience. Naturalists do this with the uniformity of nature, other minds, and the reliability of induction. They do not put those on the same footing as ‘this particular UFO report.’ The Kit does not start from equipoise. It already decides that first-person spiritual experience, testimony, and unique historical claims are the kind of thing that must be explained away rather than allowed to count as data. That decision is the premise we were discussing, not a result the Kit discovered. If the only goal is ‘never believe a false religious claim,’ the Kit is well-designed. If the goal is also ‘do not systematically ignore a class of evidence that millions of people take themselves to have,’ then applying the Kit without remainder is not neutrality. It is a prior restriction on what is allowed to count.” It isn't just for things that are fraud. It's for any new idea that could be fraud; for all "new ideas that are offered for consideration." In the words of Sagan: In the course of their training, scientists are equipped with a baloney detection kit. The kit is brought out as a matter of course whenever new ideas are offered for consideration. If the new idea survives examination by the tools in our kit, we grant it warm, although tentative, acceptance. If you’re so inclined, if you don’t want to buy baloney even when it’s reassuring to do so, there are precautions that can be taken; there’s a tried-and-true, consumer-tested method. What’s in the kit? Tools for skeptical thinking. Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (pp. 209-210). (Function). Kindle Edition. Sagan says the kit comes out whenever new ideas are offered for consideration. In context those ideas are empirical claims about the world that are being put forward as the kind of thing science should accept or reject: a new particle, a cancer cure, a UFO propulsion system, an ESP result. The tools (independent replication, quantification, rival hypotheses, falsifiability) are built for that class of claim. That is not the same as saying every conviction a person lives by must enter the same protocol from a standing start. ‘God exists,’ ‘Christ rose,’ or ‘this book is what it claims’ are not being offered to a journal as a new physical mechanism. They are already-live options for people who treat testimony, history, and first-person confirmation as admissible. Using the kit on sloppy history or fraud is exactly right. Treating the kit as the sole gatekeeper for whether those options may remain live is an extra rule about which kinds of evidence count. Sagan is explicit that he wants that rule. That is the premise, not a finding the kit produced after a neutral inspection of every possible idea. Tell me you haven't read The Big Picture without telling me you haven't read The Big Picture. I am working from the pages you quoted and I have seen elsewhere, not from a pretense of having read the whole book. Those pages say the particle content relevant to everyday matter is settled, and that a soul that made a difference the way extra particles would have made a difference should have been seen. That is a strong experimental claim. I am not disputing it. What I am disputing is the next step: treating that inventory as a complete list of everything that can exist or act, and then assigning an infinitesimal prior to revelation or a soul. That prior is not a measurement. It is the probability you get once you have already decided that the only admissible causes are items in the Core Theory, coupling the way those items couple. That decision is physicalism. It may be correct. It is not something a detector returned as 10−3010^{-30}10−30. No. It isn't a philosophical position about physicalism. It's the laws of physics that have resulted from incredibly detailed and expensive studies that were conducted over the course of decades. The verdict is unambiguous: we’ve found all of the particles that our best current technology enables us to find. Crossing symmetry assures us that, if there were any particles lurking around us that interact with ordinary matter strongly enough to make a difference to the behavior of everyday stuff, those particles should have easily been produced in experiments. But there’s nothing there. There are probably more particles yet to be found. They just won’t be relevant to our everyday world. Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (pp. 182-183). (Function). Kindle Edition. I understand how you think he is merely saying that science hasn't detected how our spirits interface with our bodies, but if they looked more closley in the right place, they'd figure it out. In theory that could be true, but what you are claiming is "that modern physics is profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed." Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (p. 212). (Function). Kindle Edition. Of course you are free to believe that God is so powerful that he can make modern physics profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed. Philisophically, anything is possible. But if you are going to claim that Carroll is wrong about physics, at least have the common courtesy to read his book and not merely declare that he is wrong because the results aren't intuitive to you and contradict your religious beliefs. I have not read the book. I am answering the passages you quoted. Those passages are about the particle content of the effective theory that governs everyday matter. Crossing symmetry and the absence of extra light, strongly coupled degrees of freedom are real results. I am not saying the LHC missed a particle, and I am not saying the Standard Model is ‘profoundly wrong’ about the interactions it has measured. Carroll’s further claim is that a soul (or any influence that made a systematic difference to bodies) would have to be that kind of extra particle, and therefore either it does not exist or physics is profoundly wrong. That ‘would have to be’ is the philosophical step. It assumes that the only things that can act on ordinary matter are items already in the inventory, coupling the way those items couple. That is physicalism: the physical facts, so described, are the complete facts. A theist can accept the experimental record and reject that completeness rule. God or a soul need not be another field that should have appeared in collider debris. It can fail to be a fifth force, act rarely, or be the kind of cause the Lagrangian was never meant to list. Those options may be false. They are not the same claim as ‘modern physics got the particles wrong.’ So I am not declaring Carroll wrong about physics because the conclusion conflicts with my religion. I am saying the physics he cites does not by itself force the infinitesimal prior. The prior comes after you have already decided that the inventory is the whole story. You completely miss the point. Before the experiment was done, "it was a foregone conclusion" that psychic powers don't exist because that would break rock-solid laws of physics. Likewise, it is a foregone conclusion that spirits and revelation don't exist, because such things also break the same rock-solid laws of physics. The only reason I brought this Pinker quote up is to quote how National Academy of Science scientists such as Pinker interpret Carroll and the language they use when describing how much confidence science has in their scientific conclusions and what those conclusions imply. They use words like "foregone conclusion," "infinitesimal prior probability," "disproven the laws of physics", and "the laws of physics rule out precognition and [spirits and revelation]." I understand that you think claiming "God can do anything!" outweighs all this. But God could have an elaborate scheme going on to make it appear that the earth is round when it's really flat, couldn't He? How could scientists possibly know God isn't pulling that trick on us? Pinker’s language is the point I was already naming. ‘Foregone conclusion,’ ‘infinitesimal prior,’ ‘the laws rule it out’ — that is how you talk once you have read the Core Theory as a complete inventory of causes. I am not missing that. I am saying that reading is the extra step. Bem-style precognition is a proposed regular, lab-detectable channel from future public events into present guesses. If that channel existed as a natural capacity of undergraduates, it would conflict with the causal structure we actually use in physics. Failed replications are evidence against that hypothesis. ‘God can disclose something to a mind’ is not the same hypothesis with different branding. It does not predict a stable, quantifiable psi effect in a psychology lab. It does not require a new particle that couples like the electron. Treating them as one claim is what I called equivocation. The flat-earth trick does not follow. ‘God could in principle deceive us about anything’ is true in the thin philosophical sense that global skepticism is hard to disprove. It is not a reason to treat every particular religious claim as equivalent to last-Thursdayism or a fake-round earth. We still distinguish ordinary regularities we have mapped from unique or agent-involving claims we have not. Particle physics tightly constrains extra forces in the everyday domain. It does not, by itself, convert ‘no extra psi particle’ into ‘therefore no Creator can speak.’ That conversion is the physicalist prior, which is why the conclusion is called a foregone conclusion before the relevant kind of evidence is even admitted. Thanks, -Smac

I have. I don't think you have addressed it. I think it's about addressing or not addressing a falsehood. A lie. If a 90-pound girl asked her friends and neighbors to acknowledge that she's a big ol' fatty, should they go along with it? Is not going along with "being a jerk?" Or is it me not wanting to perpetuate a falsehood and delusion? If I had Rachel Dolezal as a neighbor, and if she were to ask me to voice my support for her as a "woman of color" running for public office, should I go along with it? If I say no, is that "being a jerk?" Or is it me not wanting to perpetuate a falsehood and delusion? If I had a "trans" co-worker, someone I had to interact with every day, I would probably concede the fight and go along with the falsehood. Both because it would be exhausting to have the co-worker complaint every time someone uses a grammatically correct pronoun and because HR might get involved. Gotta love compelled speech. You subsequently spelled this out in your Q&A post: Q: “Do we need a ‘limiting principle’ governing which bathroom people may use?” A: “Yes. The limiting principle is that people should use the restroom that will minimize discomfort to themselves and to those around them.” SCOTUS Decision: Ban on "Talk" … Across those posts, you articulated four principles: Use the restroom for its ordinary purpose. Your stated purpose is using the toilet and attending to ordinary sanitary needs—not treating restroom access as permission to enter for any purpose whatsoever. You described the ordinary activity as entering, using the toilet, flushing, washing your hands, and leaving. SCOTUS Decision: Ban on "Talk" … SCOTUS Decision: Ban on "Talk" … Exercise individual judgment with consideration for others. You said people should choose the restroom that minimizes discomfort both to themselves and to the people around them, with that decision belonging to the person who needs to use the restroom. That is a responsibility to exercise considerate judgment, not simply “my preferences are all that matter.” You also distinguished discomfort from harm, so your standard is not a guarantee that nobody will ever feel uncomfortable. SCOTUS Decision: Ban on "Talk" … SCOTUS Decision_ Ban on _Talk_ … Prohibit misconduct regardless of the person’s identity. You specifically identified harassment, loitering, intimidation, voyeurism, exhibitionism, and solicitation as conduct subject to restrictions, with the qualification “where appropriate” regarding existing criminal prohibitions. Your formulation was: “The crime isn’t using the ‘wrong’ restroom. The crime is the underlying conduct.” Elsewhere, you explicitly included assault and said misconduct should be prohibited regardless of who commits it. SCOTUS Decision: Ban on "Talk" … SCOTUS Decision_ Ban on _Talk_ … Require justification for government restrictions. This limits government rather than restroom users: you have required evidence of an actual problem and a reason to believe a proposed law would do more good than harm. Your opposition to restroom mandates has been framed around those requirements. SCOTUS Decision_ Ban on _Talk_ … SCOTUS Decision: Ban on "Talk" … Your AI platform is doing well at telling you what you want to hear, but not at identifying limiting principles. "Use the restroom for its ordinary purpose" is not a limiting principle as to who can enter. It is a red herring. Nobody has suggested that restrooms should not be used for their ordinary purpose. "Exercise individual judgment with consideration for others" is not a limiting principle as to who can enter. It's "anyone who wants to can go in." "Prohibit misconduct regardless of the person’s identity" is not a limiting principle as to who can enter. Misconduct (physical/sexual assault, voyeurism, etc.) is already prohibited, and it happens after the person has already entered the bathroom. "Require justification for government restrictions" is not a limiting principle as to who can enter. It's not even trying to be. It's an argument against limiting principles. Not really. And in any event, I was not asking about limiting principles for "appropriate use and behavior." I have been asking about limiting principles as to who can enter into sex-segregated spaces. The closest you have come to that is the "Each person uses the bathroom they are comfortable with" (not the exact wording, but you've said this multiple times). That is not a limiting principle because nobody is limited. Sex-segregated spaces will no longer be segregated by sex, and will be eradicated de jure and/or de facto. You have acknowledged this previously. That's right. You have not. You have not articulate any mechanism to differentiate who may and who may not go into sex-segregated bathrooms. For example, respect without surgery does not logically entail opposition to every eligibility criterion. Supporting healthcare access does not entail rejecting clinical assessment. Calling a particular argument misleading does not entail rejecting evidence. Encouraging public support does not entail requiring agreement with every organizational position. Those implications have to be established—not supplied by the wording of the proposition. The sources document an advocacy program involving identity recognition, nondiscrimination, healthcare access, inclusive facilities, and respectful treatment. They do not establish the entire package of claims about rejecting biology, caution, questions, evidence, and all limiting distinctions. Nor does someone’s support for one of those policies establish agreement with the other nineteen propositions. The appropriate unit of analysis is the specific advocate or organization, its actual statement, and the policy context—not a twenty-point set of beliefs attributed to someone because they support transgender rights. The Walter Martin analogy is backwards. Martin compiled a hostile creed and asked members to sign it. I am asking you claims you accept, or reject, as being generally present in and endorsed by the trans movement. That is the opposite procedure. If the list overreaches or is inaccurate, name the overreach or inaccuracy. “Members of this alleged group should first bless the list” is a way not to answer. I have already said, more than once, that not every transgender person holds every point. The unit I have been talking about is institutional advocacy: HRC, A4TE, Stonewall, WPATH-as-cited-in-advocacy, school and sports policies. ChatGPT is right that a documented policy plus an inference is not the same thing as a twenty-point catechism. Fine. Then we drop the package and do it the way the analysis itself recommends: one advocate, one statement, one policy setting. On the twenty points, I will meet the critique halfway. I will not ask you to ratify a creed. I will ask you to mark five institutional claims that the sources actually support, because ChatGPT already granted them: Gender identity is treated as real and sufficient for recognition without surgery, hormones, or a diagnosis (A4TE, HRC). Institutional advocates mean “trans women are women” as a classification rule, not as a metaphor (David / HRC Senate answers). Restroom and facility access is to follow identity, not the sex marker or surgical status (A4TE). Some major advocacy groups oppose excluding males from women’s sport (Stonewall 2025). Allyship is expected to be active, not merely non-hostile (A4TE). If you agree those five are fair descriptions of those organizations, we can argue the merits. If you think even those five are caricatures, quote the document that retracts or rejects them. You can decline the twenty-point format. I was not presenting it as a "creed," but as a list of commonly-stated declarations/tenets coming from advocates for the "trans community." If they are misrepresentative or inaccurate, please identify which ones and why. I am willing to listen to what you have to say. If you want a different starting list, feel free to formulate what you see as reflecting the basic tenets of trans ideology and advocacy. I'm all ears. Thanks, -Smac

Thank you for your comments. The legal definition is not, I think, an argument. It is the thing we are arguing about. “Fortunately the law differs from your opinion” means: five Justices in 2015 wrote a companionate definition into the Fourteenth Amendment, so the discussion is over. Though that is what happened (and I acknowledge that it is the law of the land), that is not a reply to what marriage is for. It is an appeal to a recent judgment. Loving struck a racial bar on men and women marrying. Obergefell held that sex is idle in the definition. Those are not the same holding. Citing the second as if it were accumulated social consensus, or a vote, skips the work. “Denying citizens the right to marry is not a good decision for the country or the world” is a slogan that does not contain a limit. Incestuous pairs, group marriages, and polygamous households can say the same sentence: we are citizens, we want the license, we would benefit. If the only test is “someone is left out of the current definition,” every restriction fails. The live question is what the institution is, not whether some adults would like a marriage certificate. “Keeping a foundation of marriage for all is a strength” is asserted, not shown. I already granted private goods for some couples — hospital access, inheritance, companionship. You treated that grant as if I had said “zero benefit,” then ignored the costs I listed: the public meaning of the institution, children placed by design in a home with no mother or no father, and a documented pattern of explicit non-monogamy in a large share of male same-sex relationships. “The world is a better place for it” does not engage those points. It scores only the column you like. A small share of gay and lesbian adults are in a same-sex marriage. That is not a reason to deny anyone a license. It is a reason to stop talking as if the license were a universal foundation “for all” that the holdouts are tearing down. “To argue against marriage for even part of the population is to devalue marriage” assumes the conclusion. It assumes marriage is a flexible status whose purpose is adult recognition, so that drawing a line at husband-and-wife is an insult to the institution. On the account I have been using, the line is the institution: the sexual pair that can generate children, and the household that can be a mother and a father. Two men can have a real, loyal, legally useful bond. That does not make the bond the same kind of union. Refusing to collapse the kinds is not “devaluing marriage.” It is refusing to make companionship the whole of it. If you want to say the costs I listed are overstated, say that and point to the data. “The law already says otherwise” and “denying anyone a license devalues marriage” do not do much to advance the discussion. Thanks, -Smac

Are you defining such propositions as belonging to the trans community because that is how it appears to me you are. More or less. There is no quantifiable "trans community." There are advocates and NGOs and activists and such, but it's not like a political party or a church. That said, I think most or all of the propositions are fairly clear represented in the writings of those who purport to speak on behalf of "the trans community." Okay. Again, trying to quantify an ideology of an amorphous sociopolitical movement can sometimes be like nailing jello to a wall. That is why I provided quotes from various advocacy organizations. I have heard most of these, or variations of them, lots and lots of times. I'm open to that. Some trans activists hold these propositions. A very fair point. Amorphous social groups purport to exist (the "autistic community," the "trans community," the "LGBT community," the "black community," and so on), but there is no operative gatekeeping function, so we're often left with generalities. That said, the propositions I have listed sure seem to be extensively utilized, which is why I am asking folks like Analytics whether he agrees or disagrees with each of them. Quite so. It is my conceptualization of what some/many "trans people believe," particularly the loud activist sort. I had thought it was a generally accurate recitation of basic tenets, but I am open to correction. Do you think there is an underlying ideology? If there really is a "trans community," what are its parameters in your view? Thanks, -Smac

We can embrace the healing power of "and." Both your cartoon and your characterization of the Church's teachings as being "the polar opposite" of scientific thought are caricatures. And the caricature continues. Science and human knowledge answer some things. Revelation answers some things. Both overlap with each other on some things. There are all sorts of Latter-day Saints in the hard sciences. They don't have to abandon their faith or check it at the lab door. You are treating a discipleship list and a lab-methods list as if both were complete theories of knowledge, and you then claim (or heavily imply) that the Latter-day Saints are obligated by their faith to rely on the former to the exclusion of the latter. That is the caricature and falsehood. Scientific inquiry and religious inquiry are in tension if and only if you have already decided that the only respectable way to know anything is Sagan-plus-Carroll naturalism. That is not a finding. It is the premise, and one I do not share. The testimony list is not a protocol for discovering whether God exists from a standing start, with every hypothesis weighted the same. It is counsel to people who already take God, Christ, and revelation as live options, and who want those convictions to survive contact with ordinary life. Alma 32 is an experiment that can fail to “swell.” Moroni 10 is a request, not a rigged verdict. “Doubt your doubts first” is pastoral triage, not a claim that religious importance manufactures or trumps truth. Using a list written for keeping a faith as if it were the Church’s official epistemology textbook is a category error. Sagan’s kit is good at what it is for: advertising, ESP papers, medical miracles, authority-by-letterhead. Independent checks, rival hypotheses, quantification, testability — we can use those on sloppy history and on fraud. They do not come with a metaphysical appendix that says “therefore only closed physical systems exist.” That is where Pinker and Carroll are doing extra work. “Infinitesimal prior probability” is not a measurement. Nobody ran a meter on revelation and got 10−3010^{-30}10−30. A prior that small is assigned by people who have already decided that current physics, read as a complete inventory of what there is, is the whole story. Carroll is explicit that a soul is incompatible with that reading of the laws. Fine. That is physicalism. It is not “the laws of physics forbade God to speak.” The laws describe how matter and fields behave if the system is closed and God is not an actor in it. Whether the system is closed is the question you are trying to settle by quoting Carroll. You cannot use the conclusion as the prior. The Bem studies are a poor analogy for the same reason. A social psychologist failing to show that undergraduates can see tomorrow’s curtain is evidence against that experimental claim. It is not a demonstration that a Creator cannot disclose something to a mind. Precognition-as-lab-trick and “God speaks” are not the same hypothesis with different branding. Collapsing them is equivocation. You can say: "I will only count third-person, repeatable, physical tests, so revelation is out from the first move." That is a rule of method. So please say that. Do not say the method discovered that revelation has an infinitesimal prior. The prior was loaded. On the “decisive distinction”: of course an inquiry that is not allowed to end in unbelief is not an inquiry. Neither I nor the Church has said that a person must keep a testimony whatever they find. I have said that “use only Sagan, and treat Carroll’s physicalism as physics” is not a neutral referee. It is one contestant. Prayer, sacrament, the Word of Wisdom, paying tithing, or keeping covenants may make someone kinder, stabler, or happier, etc. does not empirically prove a historical claim. Granted. Physics-as-complete-metaphysics does not disprove one either. If you want to argue the Restoration on texts, witnesses, anachronism, and rival origins, that is a different conversation than “Pinker cited Carroll, ipso facto spiritual communication is ESP.” Thanks, -Smac

Well, okay. No idea at all? Here's something I generated a while back using Grok: Proposition 3: Self-identification is sufficient. No medical diagnosis, surgery, hormones, or even consistent presentation is required for the identity to be valid. Proposition 4: Denial of the identity is a denial of the person. Disagreeing with the identity claim is framed as saying the person “doesn’t exist,” not as disputing a proposition. Sex, biology, and language Proposition 5: Sex is a spectrum, a social construct, or at least not a strict binary relevant to policy. Chromosomes, gametes, and reproductive anatomy are treated as crude, incomplete, or bigoted ways to classify people. Proposition 6: “Assigned sex at birth” is the preferred description of sex, implying a bureaucratic label rather than an observed reproductive category. Proposition 7: Preferred pronouns and names are morally mandatory. Using sex-based pronouns is “misgendering”; using a prior name is “deadnaming.” Both are treated as harms comparable to slurs. Proposition 8: There is no polite way to state the sex distinction. “Biological male/female,” “natal sex,” and similar terms are often classified as hate speech or dogwhistles. Medical and youth claims Proposition 9: Gender dysphoria is validated by affirmation, not primarily explored as a possible misattribution of other distress. “Watchful waiting” or exploratory therapy is frequently labeled conversion therapy. Proposition 10: Medical transition (blockers, hormones, surgery) is healthcare, and withholding it is violence. Access is framed as lifesaving; gatekeeping is framed as cruelty. Proposition 11: Minors can have a stable, knowable transgender identity that justifies social and often medical transition. Parental or clinical caution is cast as abuse or bigotry. Proposition 12: Desistance, detransition, and comorbidity (autism, trauma, same-sex attraction, social contagion) are minimized, treated as rare, or blamed on stigma rather than on the affirmation model. Social and institutional claims Proposition 13: Single-sex spaces, sports, prisons, and shelters must follow identity, not sex. Exclusion of males who identify as women is discrimination. Proposition 14: Any line among “trans women” is itself bigotry. Distinguishing social-only from medically transitioned, or pre-op from post-op, is “transmedicalism” or “dividing the community.” Proposition 15: Lived experience outranks data when studies, crime patterns, or fairness in sport cut against the identity rule. Proposition 16: Questions are a form of harm. Asking for definitions (“what is a woman?”), evidence, or tradeoffs is treated as bad-faith or as endangering trans people. Proposition 17: Opposition is explained as animus. The admissible motives are hatred, disgust, or religion; safety, fairness, child protection, and definitional accuracy are discounted. Political enforcement Proposition 18: Allies must affirm publicly. Neutrality (“I don’t care what adults do privately”) is often not enough; failure to repeat the slogans is coded as hostility. Proposition 19: Conflicts with women’s rights and gay rights are denied or inverted. Sex-based rights are reframed as bigotry; same-sex attraction is pressured toward “attraction to gender identity.” Proposition 20: The category must expand, not contract. Nonbinary, genderfluid, xenogender, and similar identities are folded into the same moral protection as transsexualism; limiting the category is betrayal. Have you ever heard of any of these propositions? So is mine. But also logical reasoning, biological and empirical reality, and divinely-revealed precepts. If using correct pronouns will cause a person afflicted with a mental condition some distress, I might as well. It would be exhausting otherwise. My reservations arise from this being presented as a requirement, not a request, and from the use of the coercive power of the State to compel use of incorrect pronouns, and so on. No limiting principles. Eradication of sex-segregated spaces. I don't. Title IX, various state statutes, common law, and common sense all militate very much against letting boys/men compete in girls'/women's sports. I don't. I think "leagues" are as susceptible to ideological capture as Academia, most of Hollywood, a lot of politicians, and more. Moreover, leagues need to more or less have the same ground rules. California girls compete against Idaho girls. What if Idaho does not want to let boys compete against girls? Who breaks the stalemate? The government. I think it is unfortunate that we are compelled to have the State step in and tell citizenry the logical equivalent of "dogs aren't cats" and "circles aren't square." Boys are not girls and girls are not boys. Feel free to articulate the limiting principles you have laid out. My recollection is that you have acknowledged that your proposal would eradicate sex-segregated spaces, and that you are entirely fine with that. As for "a man can 'become' a woman by 'identifying' as one," I admit it is hard to keep track of all the various iterations and extrapolations of mouthed repetitions of the trans movement's talking points and propositions. Maybe we could start there. I have laid out 20 propositions above. Which of them you agree with, and with which do you disagree, and why? That sure would help me better understand what you are thinking. Thanks, -Smac

Here is the relevant line correct: "They do become Y if the act is not procreative or not strengthening the union between husband and wife." I suppose I did not phrase it as well as I should have. The correct sentence is: an act is outside X if it serves neither end — it is not an act of the generative kind of pair and it is not ordered to the union of husband and wife. Oral sex in that marriage can serve the second end. Two men cannot occupy the first pair, so there is no marital union of that kind for the act to serve. “Or” was, perhaps, a wording error. It was not a secret fertility-only test. And the caricature continues. Circular? It would be circular if “strengthening the union of husband and wife” meant only “whatever God already allowed.” That is not how I am using it. Generation names a fact about the pair (the two sexes, the kind of union that can produce a child with a mother and a father). Union names the same pair staying sexually exclusive and bonded, including when a child does not arrive this hour. Those are reasons you can reject. They are not a loop that says “allowed because allowed.” “Appeals to biology are specious.” They would be specious if I had said every licit act must conceive. I have not said that. Biology is in the argument as kind of pair, not as a pregnancy test. Sharing the negative “this act did not mix gametes tonight” does not make two men an infertile husband and wife. You keep treating that as a trick. It is the distinction. “All that matters is God said so.” Prophets teach man–woman marriage. I have not hidden that. It is not the only sentence, but you keep treating it like it is. A person who does not share my premises can still ask whether marriage is the institution of the two sexes or a companionate license. If you will only count a reason that never mentions sex as the pair and never mentions God, then yes: everything I say will look like a declaration. That is your filter. It is not a demonstration that I offered no public reason. If the act is in a husband–wife marriage and serves their bond, it can be X though it does not conceive. If the pair is two men, it is not that marriage and not that bond. It is a qualitatively different relationship. A difference of kind. No procreative capacity. No husband-wife pair. By design exclusion of a mother or a father to a child in the home. Technique does not erase the pair. Neither does repeating “God said so” after the pair has already been named. Fallacies Circularity charge that redefines “husband and wife” as “whatever the handbook blesses.” Straw man. Biology = each act must fertilize. Delete key. Extra religious warrant treated as proof there was no other warrant. Thanks, -Smac

Yes. There are benefits. For some couples: legal tools (hospital access, inheritance, tax and immigration status), public recognition of a committed bond, and the ordinary human goods of companionship and care. Those are real for the adults in the household. I am not going to pretend a same-sex spouse never visits a hospital or never keeps a promise. That is not the same question as whether those private goods are enough to redefine the institution for everyone, or whether they cancel the costs. What I think the costs are What the civil institution is for. The state got into marriage largely because the sexual pair that can generate children is the pair that most needs a stable assignment of responsibility. After Obergefell, the public meaning of marriage is much closer to “two adults who love each other and want a license.” Companionship was always in marriage. It was not the whole of it. A 5–4 Court, using 14th Amendment unenumerated-rights analysis and a companionate definition, treated sex as idle. I think that was a weak account of both the clause and the institution. Children. Williams Institute: about 18% of married same-sex couples (about 14% of same-sex couples) are raising children. Those children do not arrive as the fruit of that pair. They arrive by prior opposite-sex relationship, adoption, foster care, or third-party gametes. In a two-man or two-woman household the child is, by design, without a mother or without a father in the home. You can say love is enough. You cannot say the child has both a mother and a father. That is a cost I will not score as a wash because the adults are happy. Norms inside some of those marriages. I am not saying every same-sex marriage is open. Lesbian couples are not the same data set as gay male couples. What the research does show, repeatedly, is that consensual non-monogamy is far more common as an explicit feature of male same-sex relationships than of husband–wife marriage. Hoff’s San Francisco State work on Bay Area gay male couples found on the order of half with an open agreement. Lowen and Spears’s Couples Study is a convenience sample of long-term male couples, not a census of all same-sex marriages. A marital culture that treats sexual exclusivity as optional is a qualitatively different institution than the one that treated exclusivity as part of the vow. That difference matters if marriage is supposed to train people toward a closed sexual bond. So the answer is not “zero benefit.” It is: private legal and emotional goods for some adults do not tell you whether the law should treat two men as the same kind of union as a husband and a wife. Benefits to the couple can be real and still be the wrong reason to rewrite the public meaning of marriage, especially where children are placed in a household that cannot be a mother and a father. If the only test is “does this couple feel better with a license,” almost any arrangement wins. That is not the test I have been using. Thanks, -Smac

You can say that. You have not shown it. “Race is not what marriage is” is a description of the pair: a Black husband and a White wife are still a man and a woman. The color is an extra and irrelevant fact because they still have procreative capcity and can still provide a mother and father to raise children. “The sex of the spouses is not what marriage is” is not the same sentence. It is a redefinition. You are asserting that marriage is, at bottom, a romantic contract between adults, and that male and female are decoration. That is a view. It is not a discovery that my last reply was a sermon. Declared vs reasoned. If the only thing I had offered was “a prophet said so,” you would have a point about authority. But I haven't, so you don't. The public reason is this: marriage, as a social institution, grew up around the one sexual pair that produces children and attaches those children to the two people whose bodies made them. Sex is the feature that makes that pair that pair. Race is not. You can prefer a different institution—companionate licensing of any two adults. Preferring it does not turn sex into skin. Every sexual ethic has a declared core. Yours declares that consent, love, and legal recognition are enough to make a marriage. That is not read off a telescope. It is, instead, a moral choice about what the institution is for. Calling my core “declared” and yours “reasoned” is just self-flattering branding. Leaders and God. Yes: I also think living prophets teach that sexual relations belong in a marriage of a man and a woman. That is not a secret. It is also not the only sentence in the argument. If God does not exist, the prophetic piece drops out and we are still left with the institutional and biological and sociological and legal pieces. You still have to say why the pair that can be mother and father is morally idle, and why a color bar is a good analogy for that claim. “Your church talks about God” does achieve that. What would make the parody work. It would work if I had said: people with trait T may not marry, and T had nothing to do with the kind of union. Black skin is that kind of trait. Being two men is not. Two men can love each other. They cannot procreate, nor can they be husband and wife in the sense the older institution named, nor can they be a mother and a father to the child they raise. You can call that unimportant. You cannot call it “because they have an arbitrary surface trait” without smuggling in the conclusion that sex is arbitrary. If marriage is only a private meaning two people assign, then yes, sex drops out—and so does almost every public reason to have the institution at all, including the reasons the state used to give (which were centered heavily on marriage's association with procreation and child-rearing). That is a larger rebuild than “I don’t like your prophet.” Own the rebuild. Do not pretend it is the same move as Loving. Fallacies Question-begging. Assumes marriage is already sex-neutral, then calls the older definition “unreasoned.” False analogy, second pass. Still treats sex as an add-on like race. Special pleading. Their declared goods count as reason; yours count as dogma. Straw man. Reduces the whole case to “my leader’s God.” Procreative capacity has nothing to do with marriage? Are you sure you want to go with that? We have not determined that procreative capacity has nothing to do with it. We have determined that this particular act need not conceive. Those are different sentences. A husband and wife past menopause, or using contraception, are still the kind of pair whose sexual union is the generative kind. The institution is built around that pair: the two sexes, the possibility of a child who has that mother and that father, and the same bond when a child does not arrive. Birth control and age limit an instance. They do not turn the pair into two men. Two men never were that pair. There is no generative kind sitting underneath that is merely blocked this month. So is the reproductive status, acts and genders of the participants. Except, your interpretation of your religious leader's interpretation of their god says only opposite genders can marry. That is not reasoned but declared and accepted. No. Those are not the same kind of fact as skin color, and they are not the same as each other. Skin color is not a part of the sexual act and not a part of “mother and father.” A Black husband and a White wife are still a man and a woman. The color is an extra trait. Using it to ban the marriage is prejudice wearing a rule. Reproductive status of this couple (menopause, contraception, no ovaries) is a fact about an instance. It tells you whether a child is likely this year. It does not tell you what kind of pair they are. I have already said that. This or that act tonight (whether it can fertilize) is also a fact about an instance. Union in a husband–wife marriage does not have to conceive that hour. I have already said that too. The sexes of the two people are not a third extra trait like color, and they are not “reproductive status.” They are what makes the pair a husband and a wife rather than two men or two women. You can say that difference should not matter to the civil institution. That is a moral claim about what marriage is for. It is not a finding that sex is as idle and irrelevant as melanin. You keep running the same collapse: because I allow sex when this couple cannot conceive, generation “has nothing to do with it,” so the only leftover is my prophet. That only follows if the ethic was “a baby must result from this act.” That was never the ethic. The ethic is: the union of the two sexes, institutionalized as marriage, ordered to children and to the bond, including when this household has no child. Declared and accepted. Yes, prophets teach that. I have not hidden it. It does not follow that there is no public reason left. “Marriage names the pair that can be mother and father” is a reason you can argue with without opening Genesis. Your counter is also declared: marriage is the legal recognition of a loving adult bond, and sex is decoration. You did not derive that from a lab. You chose what the institution is for. Calling your choice “reasoned” and mine “accepted” is just a compliment you are paying yourself. If sex is as arbitrary in marriage as race, show why a child having a mother and a father is like a child having two parents of the same skin color. Until you do that, the parody is still a parody. Fallacies Equivocation. “Reproductive status,” “this act,” and “sex of the pair” treated as one idle trait. False analogy. Sex still treated as skin. Non sequitur. Non-fertile marital sex → generation irrelevant → only dogma remains. Special pleading. Their definition of marriage counts as reason; yours counts as a sermon. I have yet to see a distinction made that doesn't boil down to "your interpretation of your religious leader's interpretation of their god says only opposite genders can marry." It doesn't matter if the couple can have kids, wants to have kids or anything else. You have seen the distinction. You are restating and recharacterizing it as a sermon so you do not have to answer it. Here it is without a prophet in the sentence: Marriage, on this view, is the institution that joins the two sexes and attaches children to the mother and father whose union can produce them. Two men can have a household, a license, and a deep attachment. They cannot be that pair. An opposite-sex couple who cannot or will not have children is still that pair. Fertility this year, desire for kids, and use of contraception are facts about a household. They are not the definition of the pair. That is a claim about what the institution is. You can reject it. You can say marriage should be only a companionate contract. What you cannot do is pretend the claim was never made and that the only words on the table are “my leader’s God.” “It doesn’t matter if the couple can have kids” is my point about instances, which you are using as if it were a confession that generation never mattered to the kind. I have said the opposite several times. Repeating “I have yet to see a distinction” after that is not scout mindset. It is a decision that the only distinction you will count is one that does not mention sex. If your test for “reasoned” is “does not treat male and female as the two halves of the union,” then of course every argument I give will fail the test. That is a filter for your position, not a rebuttal of mine. I also believe prophets teach this. That is an additional warrant for me. It is not the only sentence I have offered you. If you want to debate authority, say the premises in Proposition 1 are false and we will have that argument. If you want to debate the institution, answer why a mother-and-father pair is as arbitrary as a color bar. Those are two conversations. Collapsing both into “you were told” is how you avoid both. Fallacies Straw man. Every institutional argument flattened to “prophet said.” Goalpost. Instance-level fertility treated as if it were the whole theory. Question-begging. “Reasoned” defined as already sex-neutral. Repetition as refutation. “I have yet to see” after the distinction was stated. We've already demonstrated that you don't actually care about this. If science tomorrow created a way for gay people to have biological children it wouldn't change a thing. It boils down your religious leader's interpretation of their god says only opposite genders can marry. You have not demonstrated that I do not care about mother and father. You have demonstrated that generation is not the only thing in the ethic, and that a science-fiction patch on one fact would not automatically rewrite the rest. That is ordinary. It is not a confession. If tomorrow two men could mix their own gametes and produce a child, one sentence of mine would have to change: “same-sex unions are a biological dead end.” I have used that sentence. I would stop using it in that form. What would not automatically disappear: The child would still not have a mother and a father. It would have two fathers, or a lab and two fathers. “Biological offspring” is not the same fact as “this child has a mom and a dad.” The pair would still not be husband and wife in the sense the institution named. The Law of Chastity would still limit sexual relations to that marriage. For me that is an independent warrant, not a leftover after biology is exhausted. Caring about an end does not mean it is a single lever that, if someone imagines it away, proves you never cared. A ban on sibling marriage is not shown to be “only religion” because gene editing might one day fix the medical risk. The medical risk was a reason. It was not the only reason. You do not get to delete every other reason and then declare the first one was theater. “We’ve already determined” is doing too much work. What was determined is that I will not move sexual behaviors between two men from Y into X solely because a lab gave them a baby. That is consistent with an ethic that has more than one pillar. It is inconsistent with your test, which is: the only honest reason I may have is the one that, if hypothetically canceled, would flip my conclusion. That test is designed so that any second reason counts as proof the first was fake. Yes, prophets teach man–woman marriage. I have said that in the open. It does not empty the mother-and-father description, and it does not make a color bar a good analogy. If you want to argue that God has not spoken, argue that. If you want to argue that a child having two fathers is as complete as a child having a mother and a father, argue that. Do not treat a thought experiment that leaves the mother out as a demonstration that I never meant the sentence. Fallacies False dilemma. Either one fact flips the whole ethic, or you never cared about that fact. Moving the goalposts. “Biological children” swapped in for “mother and father.” Motivated inference. Extra reasons treated as evidence the first reason was a cover. Restated question-begging. Still “only the prophet,” still unshown. I don't think the genders or the race of the participants are important. They are on the same level to me. It boils down your religious leader's interpretation of their god says only opposite genders can marry. "I don't think the genders or the race of the participants are important." "They are on the same level to me." This is good. That is the actual disagreement. You think the sexes of the spouses and the race of the spouses are the same kind of fact about a marriage: extra adjectives, morally idle, interchangeable. I do not. On your view a color bar and a man–woman rule are cousins. On mine they are not, because only one of those facts is what the pair is. Saying they are “on the same level to me” is honest. It is also a declaration. You have not shown they are the same level in the structure of generation, in the words “mother” and “father,” or in the history of the institution. You have reported your sorting. “To me” does not make sex into skin. It still does not “boil down” to a prophet. A secular person can hold that male and female are the two halves of the marital pair and that race is not. Many have. A religious person can hold the same thing and also believe God has said so. Adding the second sentence does not delete the first. Refusing to hear the first because the second exists is your filter. If sex and race are truly on the same level, then “the child has a mother and a father” is no more structural than “the child has two parents of the same complexion.” That is the claim you now need to defend. Repeating that my leader talks about God does not defend it. I do not think same-sex attracted people are less human. I think you have put the wrong two traits on the same shelf. That is the argument. The parody only works after you win that argument. You have asserted it. You have not won it. Fallacies Assertion as proof. “On the same level to me” offered as if it settled the analogy. Question-begging. Same-level claim assumes the conclusion the parody needs. Red herring. Prophet sentence used to avoid defending the leveling. The parody does assume they are interchangeable. Because they are. Sex and race are "interchangeable" "because they are {interchangeable}." I would have a hard time formulating a better example of begging the question than this. Same for whom, and same as what? If the role is “two adults get a license, companionship, hospital rights, and a public name for their bond,” then yes: a lesbian couple, an infertile couple, and a Black couple can all occupy that role. That is the companionate definition. Once you adopt it, every further distinction looks like a sermon. You have built that result into the word “role.” If the role is the older one—joining the two sexes and attaching children to a mother and a father—then a lesbian marriage does not serve the same role. It serves the companionate role. It does not serve the generative role. An infertile husband and wife still occupy the generative kind of pair; they may fail at the fruit. Two women never occupied it, ever. A Black husband and wife occupy it the same way a White husband and wife do. Race never left that role. Sex is the role. So the list you offered is not four examples of one fact. It is one real parallel and three lumpings: Black and White spouses: same kind of pair. Race is idle. Fertile and infertile opposite-sex spouses: same kind of pair; different fruit this year. Reproductive and non-reproductive acts in that marriage: same pair; union as well as generation. Two women and a husband and wife: different kind of pair. Same companionate goods if you only count those goods. “It serves the exact same role for married lesbians as for married straight people” is true on your definition of the role and false on mine. That is the dispute. It is not evidence that sex and race are interchangeable. It is you using the companionate definition as a measuring stick and then declaring that whatever does not fit the stick was only ever a prophet. Loving fits the first three lines and not the fourth. It stopped the state from using an idle trait to block a man and a woman. It did not hold that every use of sex in the definition of marriage is a cousin of Jim Crow. Obergefell did treat the companionate role as enough. You are with that opinion? Say so. Do not treat “same role” as a neutral observation that my side has to swallow before the argument starts. I also think prophets teach man–woman marriage. That does not make “same companionate role” into “same institution.” If the only role you will count is the one two lesbians already fill, then of course you will find no distinction except religion. You have defined the others out of the room. Fallacies Equivocation. “Role” as adult companionship vs “role” as generative institution. Question-begging. Measures every couple by the companionate role, then calls sex idle. False grouping. Race, infertility, technique, and two women treated as one list. Restated dogma charge. Still used as a substitute for defending the leveling. Still waiting to see it. Go back a few pages. I laid out 7 propositions. I don't think you have addressed them. I invite you to do so. Please lay out which ones you accept and which you do not, and why. You have seen a reasoned basis. You have a "No True Scotsman" rule that the only basis you will count is one that (a) never mentions God and (b) treats every non-fertile night as if it canceled the kind. Under that rule, of course nothing remains but a prophet. That is your filter. Here is the basis, restated and clarified in pieces you can reject one at a time instead of flattening. 1. Kind of pair. Marriage, on this view, joins a man and a woman. Two men are not that pair plus an adjective. Race is an adjective. Sex is the pair. 2. What the institution is for. It grew up around the sexual union that can generate a child and attach that child to a mother and a father. That is a description of generation, not a verse. You can say the civil institution should no longer care. You cannot say the description was never offered. 3. Instance is not kind. A postmenopausal wife, contraception, and oral sex in a marriage do not “fail to cohere” as the pair. They fail to conceive this time. The pair is still husband and wife. I said generation and union are both ends. You keep quoting only the first half of that sentence and then declaring a contradiction. 4. Jackie / CAIS is not your template. CAIS is a 46,XY disorder of male development with a female-typical body. In ordinary and legal speech she can be a wife and a mother. That is a very rare edge case in the binary, not proof that sex is idle, not proof that two men are a mother and a father, and not proof that “reproductive coherence” was my only test. Rare DSDs are why we keep layers. They are not a warrant to treat sex like race. 5. The sci-fi baby does not erase the rest. If two men could produce a child in a lab, “dead end” would possibly need a rewrite (not sure about that, actually, since "in a lab" is not necessarily "natural"). The child would still not have a mother and a father. The pair would still not be husband and wife. More than one reason can be real at once. A second reason is not evidence the first was fake. 6. God and prophets. Yes. I believe God has taught that sexual relations belong in a marriage of a man and a woman. That is an additional warrant. It is not the only sentence above. If you want to argue that God has not spoken, argue that. Do not use it as a delete key for 1–5. What is not a reasoned rebuttal: “still waiting,” “that’s it,” and “Bigot!” Those are ways of announcing that you will not count a distinction unless it already uses your definition of marriage (companionate contract, sex and race on the same shelf). Under that definition my view will always look like a sermon. That is not a finding that I never gave reasons. It is a finding that you only score reasons that concede your premise. If you want to continue, pick one of 1–5 and say why it is false. Do not run them all back through “your leader’s God” and call the thread finished. Fallacies Straw man. Multi-part case reduced to one verse. Equivocation. “Doesn’t cohere as an act tonight” vs “doesn’t cohere as a kind of pair.” No true reasons. Any non-theological reason disqualified for not being your reason. Jackie as wedge. DSD edge case used to cancel the ordinary pair. Thanks, -Smac

It isn't that I have successfully transcended my cognitive biases and you have not. I haven't transcended cognitive biases. That isn't my claim. My claim is that I am at least trying. That's not much of a difference. You're mindreading and imputing motives either way. Why should I believe you are trying to transcend your cognitive biases and I am not? Well, no. The Church would not sponsor its institutions of higher learning if principles of science, mathematics, and other inquiries were "the polar opposite" of how the Church teaches us to pursue knowledge and truth. This is just a lazy caricature, and a further demonstration of why you are not a reliable narrator relative to the Church. You just can't allow yourself to let the Church speak for itself, or to avoid glosses and disparaging terms. It's strawmen and "Bigot!" all the way down. I have read fairly widely, though with different emphases (I hew more toward jurisprudential lenses). Scout mindset, Sagan’s candle, Pinker on rationality: do not protect a conclusion from disconfirming evidence; do not treat intuition as a demonstration; do not confuse “I don’t know everything” with “I know nothing.” That is good advice. It is not a proof that Alma 32 and a lab notebook are two religions and you may belong to only one. Two goals is a smear of one of them. “See the evidence clearly” is a goal I share. “Get a testimony no matter what the evidence does” is a goal I reject, and not one the Church teaches, and yet that is how you characterize us . Those are not the only two programs on offer. A third is the Church's non-caricatured position: take historical, textual, and scientific questions as real questions, and also treat prayer, covenant, and moral experiment as real tests of a different kind of claim. You can botch the third program. People do. You can also botch scout mindset by deciding in advance that the only admissible evidence is the kind that already fits naturalism. That is not scouting. That is a filter. Alma 32 is not “ignore the control group.” The chapter is an analogy: plant a word, do not cast it out on unbelief, see whether it enlarges and enlightens. That is not a Nature protocol. It is also not “repeat the slogan until you feel it.” It is closer to try living under this claim and watch what it does to mind and life than it is to “choose feelings over facts.” Moroni 10 is a request for confirmation of a specific book, not a ban on asking where the plates were, what the text looks like, or what 19th-century context can explain. If someone uses those chapters as a reason never to read an awkward document, that person is misusing them. Misuse is not the official method. A few years back I introduced my wife to a phrase I had encountered on a blog: "Let us embrace the healing power of 'and.'" There are a lot of people, including yourself it seems, who are prone to present false dilemmas. An either/or choice when there are more options available. Here, you say intellectual and scientific inquiry are "the polar opposite of how Mormonism teaches." Again, that's just a lazy caricature. Daily scripture, meetings, and faith-promoting stories are formation. Every tradition forms people: journals, labs, conferences, and “here is how a rationalist talks” form people too. Formation is not automatically self-deception. The live question is whether you will let a contrary fact in. I have already said prophets have been wrong about some sexual folklore, that Miracle of Forgiveness is not the current handbook, and that descriptive history is not a standing commandment. That is not the profile of “protect the testimony at all costs.” You do not have to choose one instrument. Historians use documents. Chemists use assays. Juries use testimony plus physical evidence. People decide whom to marry with more than a regression table. “Only one method, ever” is itself a philosophical claim, and an unserious one. Pinker and Galef are not doing particle physics when they write about meaning and bias. Sagan was not doing particle physics when he wrote about wonder. They are arguing for a stance. I can take the stance—don’t lie to yourself, don’t confuse hope with a footnote—without granting that the only thing that exists is what an academic journal will print. Carroll’s line is right and is being overworked. Carroll is right when he says that we can know some things without knowing everything. The earth is not about to be put back at the center of the solar system. Granted. Restoration claims are not in that bin. “Joseph was a prophet” and “the Book of Mormon is historical” are not heliocentrism. They are historical and theological claims with arguments on both sides. “There will never be a Nature article reversing Copernicus” does not mean “therefore Moroni 10 is intellectually disreputable.” It means physical cosmology is settled in a way that 1820s New York is not. Intuition is not plausibility. Agreed. A burning spiritual impression is not a carbon date. I have not said it was. I have said that if God is involved and sends messengers, those claims are doing work in the argument. You say those premises are false. That is the disagreement. Quoting a style of rationality does not make the premises disappear, and it does not make “scout vs testimony” a forced choice. If the books taught you to prefer clarity to slogans, use them that way here: state the claim, state what would count against it, and stop treating every religious practice as a plot to avoid the data. Stop caricaturing people and ideas with which you disagree. Stop with coercive "Bigot!" pronouncements and other logical fallacies. Speaking of which... Fallacies False dichotomy. Evidence-seeking vs testimony-seeking as the only two goals. Again, we can and should "embrace the healing power of 'and.'" Straw man. Alma 32 / Moroni 10 as “succeed at feeling certain.” Category error. Settled cosmology used as a template for historical-theological claims. Remember our discussion about Caesar (or perhaps that was not you, I can't recall)? Motivated-reasoning special pleading. Formation on your side = rationality; formation on mine = bias. Thanks, -Smac

Sure. There are two purposes, after all: procreation and strengthening the union between husband and wife. In the ethic I have been defending, sexual acts between a husband and a wife that do not conceive—and that cannot conceive this time—are still inside X. Those acts do not become Y because a child is not possible in that hour. They do become Y if the act is not procreative or not strengthening the union between husband and wife. That is not a new patch. Again, I have said from the start that sex in marriage has two ends: generation and the union of husband and wife. If the only permitted act were the one that might conceive tonight, the second end would be empty words, and every infertile or postmenopausal couple would be in Y. I have already refused that. I'm not inclined to create a catalog of particular acts that are permissible and acts that are verboten. My public line is not a bedroom ordinance list. It is this: the pair is husband and wife; the act is their sexual union; generation need not occur this time; the act is not shared with a third person and is not a substitute for turning the marriage into a different kind of pair. If a particular act is rejected, it is rejected as a limit inside the marriage, not because “it didn’t make a baby, therefore it is the same as two men.” Why this is not the same as same-sex acts “Does not generate in this instance” is not the moral category. “What kind of pair, and what is the act for” is. Husband and wife, oral sex, no conception tonight: still the marital kind. The bodies are the two sexes; the bond is the one that can generate; this act serves union inside that bond. Two men, any sexual act: not an infertile night in a marriage of husband and wife. There is no marital kind of that sort to be serving. You are collapsing “this particular motion does not fertilize” into “therefore the pair and the institution do not matter.” That is the same move as Andy/Abigail versus Bob/Brady. I already answered it. Frequency and technique do not rewrite kind. If your test is “name every act that cannot conceive and put it in Y,” you are not describing my ethic. You are describing a fertility-only ethic I have declined. If your test is “if any non-procreative marital act is allowed, then same-sex acts must be allowed,” that only follows if the pair is morally idle. That is the premise I do not grant. I will not turn this thread into a catalog of techniques. The answer you asked for is: non-procreative sex between husband and wife can be licit in this ethic because union is a real end of that marriage. That does not license every other pairing that also fails to conceive. Fallacies False equivalence. Non-generative act in a man–woman marriage = same-sex pair. Moving the goalposts. From “kind of pair” to “this motion fertilized or it didn’t.” Continuum fallacy. If some marital acts don’t conceive, no line remains. Whataboutism. Bedroom details used to evade the pair distinction. Thanks, -Smac