webbles

You make a lot of assumptions. I don't see why ministering people would know this. I don't see why he would tell or brag about this. Sure, a few might do it, but not every single person. You may be really social and like to talk and find out about people, but that isn't everyone. I can tell you that no ministering brother would learn about things like that from me. There is no way they would find out. I'm a really private person and I don't care how friendly they get with me, they won't find out. Probably because I won't let them become friends with me. It doesn't matter if they "actually minister" to me. I won't let them know. I don't know if the perpetrator is like me or not but I'm pretty positive that I'm not the only person who acts like this. That is a lot different from trying to track every single member. To cancel a sealing, you have to initiate it. If you don't want to confess every sin you committed, then don't get a cancellation. I'm sorry this happened to you. It never happened to me. It never happened to my sons. Hopefully, those who are still doing this will stop.

Why should his ministering dude from church know? Couldn't the ministering brother have just known that he has a roommate? I've visited people and didn't realize they were in a relationship until much later (one of them was my own sister). You seem to expect that people know all things, but they don't. That's probably the biggest problem with this purge idea. That would require far more invasive knowledge by the church and would harm far more people. The problem you are trying to be solving (membership number is too high) is nothing compared to the problem you are going to create. No one is harmed with the inaccurate numbers but people will actually be harmed with this massive invasion of privacy.

Has there been any thing about the perpetrator posting stuff in social media? The closest I can find is Discord and it was a private chat between him and his roommate. That isn't really social media and I really don't want the government spying on private conversations between people.

He was going to college and had a roommate. Who was supposed to know that he had a trans lover and why should having a trans lover mean automatic purging?

No one but he knew that he was going to keep doing it. He successfully lied to everyone (and maybe himself). But we shouldn't stop believing that people can change just because someone didn't change. There are some behaviors that we, as a society, have started to realize are harder to change. And we are now being a little more skeptical of proclamations of change, but this is a 1993 case and before most of that realization.

Sure, and he was excommunicated about as quickly as you can for a person who was just recently baptized (baptized in Aug 1975, excommunicated by the middle of 1976) Even if the church was purging people, the killer of Charlie probably wouldn't have been purged yet. As you've pointed out, it would be unfair to purge people because that might cause them to be othered and ostracized. So any automatic purging would probably wait till he is older and out of his family home. I'm not sure auto-purging college kids is a good idea for the same reasons you expressed so he wouldn't be purged until a few years after that.

They actually did report it to the police. But the parents didn't want to go through with the case so no charges were filed. They apparently never told their son about the police involvement. https://kutv.com/news/local/lds-temple-videos-director-sundance-co-founder-admits-to-child-molestation-says-website. I think the police would have treated the case a lot differently today. But if he had been excommunicated, he would probably have been rebaptized after a few years. We do believe in repentance and that people can change.

Even if the church had removed him, people would still say that Charlie Kirk was killed by a mormon. Ted Bundy was a member for only about a year and that still crops up.

This kind of defeats your argument. You want people like you to be automatically removed from the membership. But if that happens, your kids will be shunned and othered. So why do you want the church to automatically remove your membership?

Do you have any reference that he is on the rolls of the church? He was sentenced to jail for 6 years. A jail sentence for molestation almost always triggers a court. I would assume that he is no longer on the rolls of the church. I would expect any known child molester would be removed from the membership. Do you have any evidence that there is a known child molester who is still counted as a member?

Baseball baptisms occurred in the 50s. In that entire decade, the church grew less than 1 million (https://www.thechurchnews.com/members/2024/06/08/charts-growth-church-jesus-christ-latter-day-saints-1830-2023-member-temples-wards-stakes/ shows 1 million at 1947 and 2 million at 1963). So even if we assume that every single person in that time period was a baseball baptism, that only accounts for 1 million inactive members. Baseball baptisms are not even close to the reason why only about 30% of members are active. The elimination of the stakes in Chile is an interesting piece of history. One of the main reasons why Chile had so many stakes was to improve member retention. The idea was that by having more callings and smaller geographical stakes, it would make it easier for new members to feel apart of the church. It was semi-successful but it also left members doing a lot of work since there wasn't as many members to carry the load. When the church combined stakes, it actually caused members to stop attending because now they had to travel further than they used to and it was too much of a hassle. https://www.cumorah.com/articles/ldsGrowthCaseStudies/247 is a case study on why the church discontinues stakes. In none of those cases did any purging of membership roles occur. In Chile, the membership count 1989 was only ~300k. It grew quickly to ~500k by 1999. But slowed considerably and only grew to about ~600k by 2009. The total count didn't shrink. Missionaries focused more on retaining members and the baptisms were more focused so the growth was less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints_in_Chile has the membership numbers.

I think the problem with expecting gun control to come out of this death is that the gun used in the death, the perpetrator who fired it, and the situation around it don't fit the paradigm for gun control. The gun used is a hunting rifle with bolt action. It has never been considered an assault weapon and so has never been banned by assault weapon bans. The second link mentions some laws that would reduce gun violence and links to 4 of them. 3 of the laws would have no affect here (ban violent crime offenders, ban domestic offenders, ban alcohol abusers). The fourth might have (require permit to purchase) but doubtful since it appears the perpetrator has done hunting for years so would have owned the gun for years, long before he became violent. Gun control can help, but this specific attack is not a good vector to push for gun control. And that is why I doubt it would be used by those on the victim's side since I don't see them ever wanting to ban bolt action hunting guns.

The Joseph Smith Papers don't go into theology. They also don't compare the differences between the 6 versions of the King Follet discourse nor do they try and create a harmony of the 6 versions. They do explain that 3 of the versions were written down while Joseph spoke and the other 3 were probably written based on notes taken during the discourse. See the historical introduction at https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/discourse-7-april-1844-as-reported-by-thomas-bullock/1#historical-intro

Maybe a different way of expressing it is "what I believe is the truth and so at some point you will believe it is true as well"? But I don't think "what I believe is what you should believe" or "what I believe is what you must believe" has the same meaning to that. Those feel like I'm pushing my beliefs on them while it is more of we want them to learn it of themselves.

The former? I don't think I've ever heard the later as a valid way to express beliefs. If it has been done, I never understood it that way.

I think the minister is a different person from his father. https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2025/09/11/who-killed-charlie-kirk-details/ quotes Trump as saying That sounds like 3 different people. The minister (who very well could be a bishop), a US Marshal (friend of the minister), and his father. But we should find out more in the next hour or so.

Honestly for me, I can count on one hand the number of times that I had an experience that I can definitely say came from God. I'm too skeptical of my own experiences. So, I don't really see spiritual experiences as a valid means to determine truth.

Yeah, it definitely wasn't a trial with a jury. It was in front of a single judge. But that judge could pronounce judgement at that point and have the person forced to hard labor for up to 60 days. So, that sounds like a trial, not just an examination. I think the modern term is a "Bench Trial" and is still allowed for crimes that have a low penalty (I think it has to be under 6 months).

Yeah, it is definitely not black and white. The 1825 treasure seeking with Josiah Stowell has quite a bit of evidence. There is the 1826 case that we are talking about. There is also an 1830 case that brought up things from the 1826 case. Joseph Smith talks about the experience though doesn't mention anything about the stone, but his mother does write about the experience and does say that Stowell specifically sought out Joseph Smith because "he was in possession of certain means, by which he could discern things, which that could not be seen by the natural eye" https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1845/102 That and the Golden Plates are the only two well documented case of treasure seeking. There is a lot of other potential digs that Dan Vogel, D. Michael Quinn, and others have uncovered, but those are heavily debated as they don't have contemporary documentation and are almost always late retellings and usually from an antagonistic person. Were there more than Josiah Stowell and the Golden Plates? Probably but we don't have definite details. The only documentation that he found treasure is the Golden Plates, but then we can argue over whether or not that documentation is valid

The provenance of the record is not very good. Per https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/introduction-to-state-of-new-york-v-js-a/1, this is its provenance: Additionally, the very last part ("And therefore the court find the defendant guilty") is very suspect. We have the original itemized bill which doesn't include a charge for recording conviction, nor do we have any evidence that he was incarcerated. There is a late memory of an attendee (William Purple in 1877) who remembers things that match with what we know but he remembers a discharge, not a conviction. You can read his recollection at https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/appendix-reminiscence-of-william-d-purple-28-april-1877-state-of-new-york-v-js-a/1. He also remembers different witnesses and different statements that are more friendly to Joseph Smith.

There is debate on whether that is a true record of the trial. In the summary about the 1826 trial ( https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/introduction-to-state-of-new-york-v-js-a/1 ), it says: So, there is a possibility that much of what is in that document is made up. We don't know. It is definitely not an exact record of what happened. So what was added, what was removed? Take your pick.

I think the "most likely" is talking about the fact that we don't know why he was tried. The "most likely" reason is for being a disorderly person but no court documents tell us what law he supposedly broke. They do use the term "trial" multiple times (see my above response to Calm).

It says trial in lots of places:

I agree that anyone who says Joseph was convicted is exaggerating. But I also think anyone who says he was exonerated or just dismissed is exaggerating. The evidence is extremely unclear. So I prefer saying that it is unknown and to show both sides. You spoke so absolute ("He was never sent to trial") and I wanted to correct that. There is evidence that it was a trial. And the scholars behind Joseph Smith papers say that it is a trial.

I'm going off of Joseph Smith Papers. I'm assuming that they've done the research. They call it a trial, not a pre-trial.