Church chooses profits over principles

[secondclasscitizen]

4 hours ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Great insights into what the Marriott's did and great advice from President McKay but we are talking about a hotel owned by the church not the Marriott's.  The Marriott's never taught abstinence of alcohol as a core principle of their corporation where as the church has and does. Are you suggesting that the church should hold to the same principles as the Marriott corporation?  Then I guess porn is acceptable now but only if you profit from its sale and don't consume it right?

Actually porn is acceptable if money is to be made. According to the latest 13F filing by ensign peak, the church owns ~454k shares of Amazon stock which at market close today is $3718 per share. Approx value is $1,687,972,000.

so what right? Well anyone here can go to Amazon and search for sex toys, xxx adult movies and anything else perverted and see that Amazon sells just about everything one can find in an adult book store or smut shop here in the us. 
 

we constantly hear all the hand wringing over porn being a scourge, sex trafficking of women and the demeaning of women being a bad thing which I agree it is. Much worse than alcohol, coffee, tea, weed and so on. 
 

by owning Amazon stock, the church is part owner of that company with voting rights. They are profiting off of porn which is well known for trafficking women not only for porn production, but prostitution as well. 
 

But.. it’s ok if we make money off it and don’t consume it. 

 

Edited July 13, 2021 by secondclasscitizen

[pogi]

15 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

So you agree that when they speak, offer advice and issue pronouncements they are speaking to the entire world and not just to church members? Right?

Nope.  That is like saying that because a CEO is over the whole company, anything he/she says in different meetings to different divisions of the agency should be applied to the whole organization.  Context matters.

It is a fallacy to assume that because they are prophets for all, that everything they say applies to all.  That is evidently false throughout ancient scripture too.

Edited July 13, 2021 by pogi

[secondclasscitizen]

4 hours ago, bluebell said:

I grew up in northern wyoming, where many of the member farmers made a living selling barley to Coors.  These included two consecutive stake presidents (who were wonderful humble men).  You could say that they profited from the sale of alcohol.

It sounds like you would judge these families as hypocrites, but I don't believe that they were.

Idaho is the number 2 producer of hops in the us. Pretty much the only use for that product is beer production or the random herbal medicine.  I have relatives that farm that and awful proud that it goes to beer production. 

[strappinglad]

I don't know why the Church invests in hotels anyway. The big money is in international banking. Apart from that ' usury ' thingy , there is no principle bending problem. 

Drinking alcohol may not be a sin but its abuse leads to sin. 

I wonder how many " mutual funds"  owned by pensions include Amazon stock . Divest ye heathens !!

[secondclasscitizen]

11 minutes ago, strappinglad said:

 

I wonder how many " mutual funds"  owned by pensions include Amazon stock . Divest ye heathens !!

I imagine all of them do. Until they come out publicly bashing porn and admonishing the people investing in their plans not to consume it they are on much higher moral ground than the church is at this time in that respect. 
 

For those who want to throw up the old defense of ignorance to what they are invested in; all those advisors who work at ensign peak and undoubtedly have temple recommends know darn well what each stock they buy for the church does business -wise. It is their job.

If the advisor  has a portfolio suggestion and they choose not to share ( all the relevant info) it with whatever high ranking church leader gets briefed on this stuff then they should be exed for making the buy without doing their fiduciary duty to make sure the client( the church) knows what exactly they are buying.
 

I guarantee not one single one of the fifteen has the nerve to get up in public on the news and defend the church for investing in porn and gay sex toys. They would be made a laughing stock. At some point morals need to be more important than money. 

Edited July 13, 2021 by secondclasscitizen

[strappinglad]

As a member who is currently getting a pension from a union that invested my money into a mutual fund which likely had stocks in Amazon. my hypocrisy is showing. 50 shades of grey indeed. 

[secondclasscitizen]

7 minutes ago, strappinglad said:

As a member who is currently getting a pension from a union that invested my money into a mutual fund which likely had stocks in Amazon. my hypocrisy is showing. 50 shades of grey indeed. 

50 shades lol. That’s mommy night time reading material. Amazon has some stuff that would make that book look like a church approved manual of love relatively speaking. 

[Fair Dinkum]

12 hours ago, secondclasscitizen said:

Actually porn is acceptable if money is to be made. According to the latest 13F filing by ensign peak, the church owns ~454k shares of Amazon stock which at market close today is $3718 per share. Approx value is $1,687,972,000.

so what right? Well anyone here can go to Amazon and search for sex toys, xxx adult movies and anything else perverted and see that Amazon sells just about everything one can find in an adult book store or smut shop here in the us. 
 

we constantly hear all the hand wringing over porn being a scourge, sex trafficking of women and the demeaning of women being a bad thing which I agree it is. Much worse than alcohol, coffee, tea, weed and so on. 
 

by owning Amazon stock, the church is part owner of that company with voting rights. They are profiting off of porn which is well known for trafficking women not only for porn production, but prostitution as well. 
 

But.. it’s ok if we make money off it and don’t consume it. 

 

Again you make a false equivalence.  There is a huge difference between owning a stock in a large corporation that may offer sex toys  (I'll take your word for it as I've never searched for such items online or anywhere else) that make up a fraction of their profits and profiting from direct sales of pornography or alcohol.  I'm going to take a wild guess that the church will draw the line against offering porn on their hotel TV's.  Again I honestly don't care if they own a bar and sell alcoholic drinks to their patrons, its the duplicity that I have issues with.  I'm only asking that they "Stand for Something"  Either be against alcohol or don't but don't attempt to profit from something that they speak so publicly against.  Its duplicitous and hypocrisy

Edited July 13, 2021 by Fair Dinkum

[Fair Dinkum]

12 hours ago, pogi said:

Nope.  That is like saying that because a CEO is over the whole company, anything he/she says in different meetings to different divisions of the agency should be applied to the whole organization.  Context matters.

It is a fallacy to assume that because they are prophets for all, that everything they say applies to all.  That is evidently false throughout ancient scripture too.

So when church leaders speak of the evils of alcohol, alcohol is only evil to members of the church?

[secondclasscitizen]

1 minute ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Again you make a false equivalence.  There is a huge difference between owning a stock in a large corporation that may offer sex toys  (I'll take your word for it as I've never searched for such items online or anywhere else) that make up a fraction of their profits and profiting from direct sales of pornography or alcohol.  I'm going to take a wild guess that the church will draw the line against offering porn on their hotel TV's.  Again I honestly don't care if they own a bar and sell alcoholic drinks to their patrons, its the duplicity that I have issues with.  I'm only asking that they "take a stand"  Either be against alcohol or don't but don't attempt to profit from something that they speak so publicly against.  Its duplicitous and hypocrisy

so you don’t have a problem with the church making money off porn and sex toys but think it it’s duplicitous in selling alcohol? Seems to me to be the same type of duplicity but u are ok with the porn part of it.. ok

[Amulek]

5 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

I'm going to take a wild guess that the church will draw the line against offering porn on their hotel TV's.

I'm going to take a wild guess that the hotel is still going to offer largely unrestricted internet access though.

Do you find that to be hypocritical as well?

I mean, as the property owners / service providers, they could restrict access to all sorts of websites which promote things that the church is "publicly against."

Should they do that though? Do you think they being hypocritical if they don't?

 

[pogi]

41 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

So when church leaders speak of the evils of alcohol, alcohol is only evil to members of the church?

In terms of alcohol being evil in general (therefore a sin), yes - it only applies to members of the church.  We don't believe that drinking alcohol is a sin for non-members, and therefore it is not evil for them (in the general sense).  We don't believe that they will be judged or condemned for it.  There is no law/commandment/doctrine against it.  They are innocent.  

I think we align with the rest of the world (in the specific and non-general sense), however, in acknowledging that alcohol has potential to become an evil, even for non-members when it is abused.  Like everyone else, we hold that it is not a moral /spiritual problem until it is a problem. 

We do believe that the word of wisdom (as written in the D&C) does apply to the entire human race though, in that it is not a commandment, and is therefore not morally or spiritually contraindicated or "evil",  but it is not ideal for physical/temporal health. 

[Fair Dinkum]

34 minutes ago, secondclasscitizen said:

so you don’t have a problem with the church making money off porn and sex toys but think it it’s duplicitous in selling alcohol? Seems to me to be the same type of duplicity but u are ok with the porn part of it.. ok

You've created a false moral equivalency, but I'll play along.  Yes the church should devest itself of any company, including Amazon, who profits from pornography by hosting porn on its cloud services, ONLY if it wants to be taken seriously in its moral stand against pornography, but instead it is choosing to profit from porn instead of devesting.

I think back to the moral high ground taken by universities back in the 1980's who devested stock from South Africa to protest aspartate.  Their moral stand was instrumental in bringing change to that country.  Were the church to take a similar moral stand it might lose a little profit today but could help change the world by making cloud hosting of porn merchants less profitable.

[Tacenda]

9 minutes ago, pogi said:

In terms of alcohol being evil in general (therefore a sin), yes - it only applies to members of the church.  We don't believe that drinking alcohol is a sin for non-members, and therefore it is not evil for them (in the general sense).  We don't believe that they will be judged or condemned for it.  There is no law/commandment/doctrine against it.  They are innocent.  

I think we align with the rest of the world (in the specific and non-general sense), however, in acknowledging that alcohol has potential to become an evil, even for non-members when it is abused.  Like everyone else, we hold that it is not a moral /spiritual problem until it is a problem. 

We do believe that the word of wisdom (as written in the D&C) does apply to the entire human race though, in that it is not a commandment, and is therefore not morally or spiritually contraindicated or "evil",  but it is not ideal for physical/temporal health. 

Pogi, do you live in Utah, I thought you did. What do you think about the church's involvement with the liquor laws in Utah. I think it's widely known that the church is involved. So if what you say is true then why are they getting involved? Not debating, just curious. Or wondering. 

[Fair Dinkum]

28 minutes ago, pogi said:

In terms of alcohol being evil in general (therefore a sin), yes - it only applies to members of the church.  We don't believe that drinking alcohol is a sin for non-members, and therefore it is not evil for them (in the general sense).  We don't believe that they will be judged or condemned for it.  There is no law/commandment/doctrine against it.  They are innocent.  

I think we align with the rest of the world (in the specific and non-general sense), however, in acknowledging that alcohol has potential to become an evil, even for non-members when it is abused.  Like everyone else, we hold that it is not a moral /spiritual problem until it is a problem. 

We do believe that the word of wisdom (as written in the D&C) does apply to the entire human race though, in that it is not a commandment, and is therefore not morally or spiritually contraindicated or "evil",  but it is not ideal for physical/temporal health. 

Excellent points Pogi, so why stop at only one bar.  The church should open a string of bars, heck they could sell franchise's and dot the world with bar, pubs and lounges.  I imagine Tab-Bar-Necle's®  springing up around the world serving spirits, beer, mix drinks and the like, for non Mormon's only of course since its not a sin nor evil for any of them to consume alcohol.  I mean now that the church have their feet in this profitable business, why stop at just one? Franchise baby! 

But let's first start with Utah Liquor Laws, its time for the church to get out of the way and allow liquor to be sold in grocery stores and join the real world just like nearly every other state in America.

The world is truly your oyster when you are willing to compromise your core values for money.

Edited July 13, 2021 by Fair Dinkum

[SeekingUnderstanding]

11 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Pogi, do you live in Utah, I thought you did. What do you think about the church's involvement with the liquor laws in Utah. I think it's widely known that the church is involved. So if what you say is true then why are they getting involved? Not debating, just curious. Or wondering. 

I am pro pot legalization. But I also want strict controls around its distribution. The two can go hand in hand. Just sayin’ 👍 😀

[HappyJackWagon]

1 hour ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Again you make a false equivalence.  There is a huge difference between owning a stock in a large corporation that may offer sex toys  (I'll take your word for it as I've never searched for such items online or anywhere else) that make up a fraction of their profits and profiting from direct sales of pornography or alcohol.  I'm going to take a wild guess that the church will draw the line against offering porn on their hotel TV's.  Again I honestly don't care if they own a bar and sell alcoholic drinks to their patrons, its the duplicity that I have issues with.  I'm only asking that they "Stand for Something"  Either be against alcohol or don't but don't attempt to profit from something that they speak so publicly against.  Its duplicitous and hypocrisy

I was wondering about this. I remember Marriotts coming under some condemnation from members when they allowed the "after dark" versions of pay per view to be rented in their hotels. I really don't know if the church would prohibit such things since having HBO, Cinemax etc are pretty standard and offer their own varieties of p0rn. 

I generally agree with you that it's hypocritical of the church to profit off things like alcohol and p0rn. Like you, I find it interesting to watch people justify it. It was ALWAYS my understanding that the prophet/apostles were the prophet/apostles to the entire world, not just the general membership. I guess I was wrong.

[Teancum]

14 hours ago, pogi said:

You are going to have to explain your logic to me here.  You lost me.  

I agree, they are prophets for the whole world, so you should listen to them when they say that members are beholden to certain extra-biblical or extra-scriptural covenants which non members are not beholden to.

Seriously, if you are claiming hypocrisy, you are going to have to provide the CFR, otherwise retract the accusation.  I don’t have to provide any reference to anything before you are obligated to a answer my CFR, as I am not making any claim that is being challenged.  The burden is yours.

 

You really don't think it hypocritical for the Church to own a business that sells booze?  This board is really an amazing place.  When mu bride and I got married we did not have alcohol served at the wedding reception which was attended by 95% non LDS. The reason?  We thought it would be hypocritical. 

[Bob Crockett]

Devest

[Amulek]

9 minutes ago, Teancum said:

This board is really an amazing place.

I was thinking the exact same thing.

The church's investment arm acquires a hotel property in one of the best places in the country for tourists to visit and critics act like the church is operating a brothel on the edge of Vegas.

It's absolutely fascinating.

 

[Tacenda]

17 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

I am pro pot legalization. But I also want strict controls around its distribution. The two can go hand in hand. Just sayin’ 👍 😀

I agree with you, I want strict controls in place, but side on individuals choosing for themselves at home for medical purposes or recreation, just don't need it on the streets IMO. But really don't know much. 

I mean that the church is involved with Utah laws for both pot and alcohol. The thread has posters saying the church doesn't get involved with non members alcohol consumption. 

 

[pogi]

42 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Pogi, do you live in Utah, I thought you did. What do you think about the church's involvement with the liquor laws in Utah. I think it's widely known that the church is involved. So if what you say is true then why are they getting involved? Not debating, just curious. Or wondering. 

It is clear that they are not advocating for prohibition.  They are also not advocating for zero restrictions (no state is).  They are definitely more conservative on the spectrum, but definitely not against members selling alcohol to non-members. 

[Tacenda]

Just now, pogi said:

It is clear that they are not advocating for prohibition.  They are also not advocating for zero restrictions (no state is).  They are definitely more conservative on the spectrum, but definitely not against members selling alcohol to non-members. 

I never said that really. I just meant, and I am a poor communicator sometimes, that in Utah the church has a lot of sway over Utah liquor laws. 

I'm not saying it's bad, although for years people said it hurt our tourism, maybe the laws have been a little better as of late. All I really meant by asking you in the first place is to show that the church does care what non members do with alcohol, unlike what some posters say about the church and non members drinking alcohol. 

[Tacenda]

11 hours ago, strappinglad said:

I don't know why the Church invests in hotels anyway. The big money is in international banking. Apart from that ' usury ' thingy , there is no principle bending problem. 

Drinking alcohol may not be a sin but its abuse leads to sin. 

I wonder how many " mutual funds"  owned by pensions include Amazon stock . Divest ye heathens !!

Was hoping my husband's included Amazon, I'll check it out. 

[pogi]

42 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Excellent points Pogi, so why stop at only one bar.  The church should open a string of bars, heck they could sell franchise's and dot the world with bar, pubs and lounges.  I imagine Tab-Bar-Necle's®  springing up around the world serving spirits, beer, mix drinks and the like, for non Mormon's only of course since its not a sin nor evil for any of them to consume alcohol.  I mean now that the church have their feet in this profitable business, why stop at just one? Franchise baby! 

Funny.  They likely wont invest more in alcohol because they have other interests and better investments, and because they are super conservative about alcohol - not prohibition conservative, but conservative none the less.  

48 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

But let's first start with Utah Liquor Laws, its time for the church to get out of the way and allow liquor to be sold in grocery stores and join the real world just like nearly every other state in America.

Again, damned if we do, damned if we don't.  Whichever direction we choose to go, you will criticize us.  I don't see their position as duplicitous or hypocritical to be conservative with alcohol politically and with their investments.  The accusation seems absurd to me. 

51 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

The world is truly your oyster when you are willing to compromise your core values for money.

 Once again, CFR that they have compromised their core values.