BYU Bans Protests on Y Mountain

[smac97]

17 hours ago, ttribe said:

As to the facts comment, it was in direct response to SMac's not-so-thinly-veiled insult directed at @jkwilliams, that he has an inherently jaundiced view on Joseph Smith that isn't trustworthy because he doesn't (allegedly) follow his own advice about not assuming the worst about people. 

I noted the apparent inconsistency and asked if jkwilliams' reasoning applies to Joseph Smith.  It seems quite clear, based on his and your statements, that it does not apply.  Why?  Dunno.  Neither he nor you have any explanation.

17 hours ago, ttribe said:

If you follow the conversation backward, John's comment was specifically about Joseph's dishonestly relative to Emma.

Which was a spectacular non sequitur, since the topic here has not been Joseph or Emma.

17 hours ago, ttribe said:

My comment was specifically about that; it wasn't generalized. 

The topic here is the Law of Chastity, BYU, the Honor Code, and so on.  Kinda hard for you to say your comment "wasn't generalized" or applicable to the topic.

17 hours ago, ttribe said:

How about you drop the victim card? It doesn't work for you.

Huh.  I think it was Hamba who is pointing out and commenting California Boy's use of "the victim card," characterizing it (correctly, I think) as a form of emotional blackmail.

Let's review:

1. California Boy once again railed against the Church and BYU for presuming to believe in and teach the Law of Chastity and instill its precepts in the Honor Code: "Not only should someone who is LGBT should be looking for another university to go to.  They should also be looking for another Church to go to.  One that actually. follows the teachings of Christ."

Right.  To teach sexual ethics that do not conform to socially popular, and increasingly licentious and tenuous, trends is to abandon "the teachings of Christ."  To have beliefs that contravene California Boy's personal opinions is to fail to follow "the teachings of Christ."

That's how I took this statement (kinda hard to take it any other way).  It's a rather flabbergasting thing to say, both as to its viewpoint intolerance and its remarkably unironic departure from the basic sexual ethics that have been taught in most of Christianity for the last 2,000 years.  But since it's from California Boy, it's pretty standard fair.  Ho hum, even.  

2. Speaking of the Honor Code and its associated with the Law of Chastity, and responding to California Boy, I responded: "The Law of Chastity is not secret.  It is not hidden.  It is not unknown."  I made this comment in relation to students and faculty who act all hot and bothered when they are called upon to keep the Honor Code despite knowing all about it well before matriculation.

3. jkwilliams then responded with the following fairly spectactular combination of non sequitur and tu quoque and ad hominem: "Tell that to Emma Smith. Heck, she wasn’t even able to give consent. Some sexual ethics. Sheesh."

4. I responded in what I thought was a fairly measured tone:

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I think Laura Hales' treatment of this topic merits some attention. 

There is a strong temptation in our "Cancel Culture"-saturated mileu to reduce the entirety of a historical person's life down to only his errors, mistakes and worst qualities.  So Moses becomes a murderer.  Noah becomes a drunkard.  Thomas Jefferson and George Washington become slaveowners.  Martin Luther King, Jr. becomes an adulterer and plagiarist.  Gandhi was a sexist and racist.  And that's all they were.

Or . . . not.

5. jkwilliams obliquely responded: 

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But, you know, pointing out the hypocrisy of justifying such unethical behavior while lecturing people about “sexual ethics” — why, that’s just cancel culture, or something. It takes a special kind of shamelessness to make such an absurd argument. 

6. I responded:

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I have no idea what you are talking about.

Some time ago you said, speaking of the Ryan McKnight: "I like life better when I don’t think the worst of people."  You said this while we were discussing his extensive efforts to persuade employees of the Church to secredtly steal the Church's materials and surreptitiously send them to him.  I responded:

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So do I. Unfortunately, we sometimes run across people whose behavior tends to frustrate those efforts.  So when a fellow comes along and brags about how he's devised a plan to induce other people to engage in unethical or immoral behavior for him, and when he brags about how he is going to get away with such things without suffering any consequence to himself, while simultaneously throwing his patsies under the bus, well, the natural consequence is going to be to not think very highly of that sort of person.  That's not cynicism. That's just surveying repellent and unseemly behavior and coming to a grim conclusion about it.

Seems like we are all a bit subjective in terms of when we grant someone the benefit of the doubt.

Does "I like life better when I don’t think the worst of people" apply to historical figures?  Like, say, Joseph Smith?

No response so far from jk.  

7. Hamba, responding to the same post from California Boy I responded to (items #1 and #2 above), and also responding to me, said:

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It's a textbook attempt at emotional blackmail. Based on the number of times that it has been deployed in this forum, I get the strong impression that it probably works in other contexts. That it doesn't work with most of us appears to be a source of perpetual (and possibly growing?) frustration. 

And here:

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One of the most common forms identified by Forward and Frazier is the 'sufferer':

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This is the voice of a victim conveying guilt on the partner if they do not do what is demanded. If they don’t comply, there is a suggestion that their suffering will be the others’ fault.

 

Hamba can certainly speak for himself, but I think by "emotional blackmail" he was referring to California Boy's long-term and ongoing efforts to foment estrangement and division by telling LGBT people that there is "no place" for them in the Church.  See, California Boy has a very long track record of doing this.  Many years.  Back in 2018 I commented on it this way (the discussion was about then-recent comments made by Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons fame) :

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I am really interested in what members that object to how this issues is being brought up mostly by other members like Reynolds think should happen.  

Again, let's stop grossly mischaracterizing the Church's teachings and policies regarding LGBT folks.

Let's stop with the vitriolic and over-the-top rhetoric.

Let's stop with the efforts by you and yours to alienate young gay Latter-day Saints from their faith and their families by asserting - falsely - that we hate them, that we hate gay people and their children.

Let's stop putting the worst possible spin imaginable on the policy changes.

Let's stop having enemies and critics of the Church presume to speak for the Church to LDS children about what the Church teaches and believes, and let's stop saying horrible and false things to those children about the Church's teachings.

Let's stop having enemies and critics of the Church putting false words into the mouths of the leaders of the Church.

Quit working nonstop to publicly foment anger about and discord within and hate against the Church.

Let's give the Church some room to, you know, teach what it sincerely believes, and then let those teachings stand (or fall) on their merits.

Let's give the Church room and time to work with the policy changes (much as it has - with generalized success - with its nearly-identical policies regarding children of polygamous families).

In the same thread, I also commented:

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The current state of acrimony and high tension is not attributable to the November 2015 policy changes, but to the sensationalized, agenda-driven, I-hate-the-LDS-Church-so-much-I'm-willing-to-inflict-fear-and-anger-and-confusion-on-children-and-then-exploit-their-reactions-and-weaponize-them-against-the-Church style of controversy ginned up by the Church's critics and opponents.

Hamba responded then as follows:

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I wish you were wrong here, smac, but you are not ... and I fear people will hate you for pointing this out.

But history is filled with victims who were led both to and over the brink of destruction by those who found power or influence or even self-identity and purpose by setting themselves up as the self-proclaimed champions of those they harmed.

So . . . yeah.  I think the "emotional blackmail" thing is utilized quite regularly by California Boy and others when they go around presuming (in the worst possible sense of the word) to tell others - most particularly young, impressionable, emotionally-vulnerable Latter-day Saints - that their Church and its members hate these youth, that there is no place in the Church for these youth, and that the only thing they can and ought to do is leave BYU, leave the Church, and so on.

It's an ugly, ugly thing going on with these efforts.  And sadly, the folks advancing them have been doing it for years, so we can't really write it off as a slip of the tongue or a heat-of-the-moment thing.  

I think it's a pretty appalling thing to spend years trying to alienate youth from their families, friends, and faith.  I think it is appalling to instill in them feelings of insecurity and fear, of being hated, of having no place in their community.  I think it's wrong.  Manipulative.  Bad.  The same goes with people who run fomenting fear and panic and angre and hatred by falsely accusing the Church and its members of fomenting gay suicides (hat tip to the Mama Dragons).

Thanks,

-Smac