You call that profanity? Hmmmm, strange!

On Legally Bankrupt, Angela posted this comment – ‘I can appreciate that your post was personal opinion, and that my disagreement may have been a knee-jerk reaction.’ I applaud your honest response, Angela. In light of this assessment, why not bring The Spirit of the Law back and redeem us all?

Smallaxe #50 “Do you live the Law of Chastity?”
I don’t see this question as being vague, perhaps what’s required is a clear explanation of what chastity is beforehand.

I agree there seems to be a lean to the “LEFT” in lenience, however it strikes me that those on the “RIGHT” propagate such an intolerant tone that the battle line is already drawn.

I simply feel obligated to defend a site like Mormon Therapist that is doing so much important work, not just writing blowhard opinion pieces. I’ve also deemed the decision to boot SotL an overreach that lacked objectivity (#11), so I’m not really arguing about the merit of the decision; I just don’t see how you’ve demonstrated that a double standard was applied.

Well said. And Utah did support that war criminal George W Bush at higher percentages than any other state. The war criminal who invaded a sovereign nation and caused the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, many more so that Saddam H ever did.

So yes they would vote for Satan (Rep -U) and they’d probably justify it by saying: Its about the Leadership, since Satan has already lead a third of God’s children while Obama has never lead any!! But doesn’t the book of mormon talk about something like this happening?

Anyway, I’m ranting now, so I’d better stop!

“It’s inflammatory and not really relevant to the gospel” Dude, its a [profanity] blog, it aint the gospel!

Yes it was very pro republican but isn’t about 60% of mormondom pro-republican? Plus they had a comments section there where you could go and complain.

If you thought that was bad you should see what some people will do here in mormonmatters to those of us who consider homosexuality a sin!

I dread the day when church HQ gets to censor what is said or written in these bloggs. Let us suffer that in the millennium or CK -for now just let it be free, open and fair exchange of ideas by people in the church or in someway related to it (as former, relatives are members etc) As for the aggregator, well he should resign and go back to seminary!

“December 03, 2009
Anonymous said…

The Spirit of the Law is no longer allowed on the Mormon Blog. Are you afraid you are next? Molly did show a picture of Brother Reid with middle fingers, and you do believe that he is not a true Mormon. It seems that you are right on the line for what James did by saying Obama supporters are not worthy to hold a temple recommend.”

I was even more surprised when I discovered (from this response) that “The Spirit of the Law” was delisted. We share a common political viewpoint, and I have, in fact, found the blog controversial, which is another reason it appealed to me. Living in the real world dictates that we live with controversial and varying topics, political views, religious views, etc. It doesn’t mean that we agree with them. We can choose to walk away and not participate, which is apparently what mormonblogs did.

FWIW, all of us have a certain level of intolerance for differing viewpoints.

To address #2, the complainee’s comment:”I didn’t feel like it was something that should be trumpeted as representative of Mormon belief or thought because it only vaguely addresses the gospel and almost all posts are anti-Obama.” Our blog is ENTIRELY anti-Obama. We question his every move and will continue to do so. Some of our posts NEVER address the Gospel. This doesn’t make me less Mormon, less faithful, less valiant. It makes me conservative.

It was a mistake to remove the blog. We vote bring it back. We conservatives make good liberal blog fodder during a liberal administration. It’s a healthy opposition.

I don’t think we should go down without a fight. Let me know if we’re delisted and need not have any hard feelings.

James, let me ask you two questions.

1. Is a member of the Church who believes that abortion be legal (as Obama does) in opposition to a teaching or position of the Church?

2. Is a member of the Church who believes (as Obama does) that the GLBT community should have all legal rights as others, with the exception of SSM, in opposition to a teaching or position of the Church?

If the answers are no, then please explain how a Church members who agrees with Obama regarding GLBT rights and abortion is in disagreement with the Church?

Seriously? O_o Wow, I would’ve been blocked from my mission, then later from getting married in the temple. I haven’t ever heard of that happening for french kissing.

I have seen the trend of extremely liberal Mormon blog posts being more acceptable than extremely conservative ones. Or at least they are taken more seriously and not ridiculed as much. I don’t agree with the post (blog) in question, but I wouldn’t have banned it. As Geoff said, though, the owner gets to decide what is acceptable and what is not. So there you have it.

1. Obama does not support SSM; the only GLBT issue on which the Church has taken a stand is SSM. One can completely agree with Obama with respect to the full extension of other GLBT legal rights, and not be in “opposition” to a teaching or position of the Church.

2. While the Church is opposed to abortion (with limited exceptions) it has not officially taken a position on abortion legislation (including partial birth abortion or whether and when abortion should be legal or illegal). One can completely agree with Obama with respect to the legality of abortion, and not be in opposition to a teaching or position of the Church (because there is no teaching or position on whether abortion should be illegal).

MH is correct that the question was added to weed out those who affiliated with polygamous breakaway sects and were attempting to gain access to the temple despite belonging to those splinter factions. I asked the intent of the question when I first went through the temple because I immediately saw the difficulty of a broad interpretation. That is what I was told as well. Leaving the question deliberately vague for all this time is either a mistake that should be corrected or is working as intended because most people only ally with groups that meet their own definition of Mormonism. IOW, they don’t always see the ideological split between groups like Evergreen and the LDS church or between the ERA and the LDS church.

“Do you live the Law of Chastity?”

I know some bishops will not give single adults a TR if they french kiss. This is particularly difficult in situations where someone is getting the interview to be married soon and it involves postponing the wedding (or being married outside the temple). It’s complicated even more if the bishop of the person s/he is marrying does not interpret this question the same way.

Also, at no point did I suggest that you were advocating that bishops and stake presidents ask about a person’s stance on abortion in a TR interview. But your question, “How is being apposed [sic] to abortion intolerance?”, followed by your comments “As Mormons our beliefs are always going to set us apart from the world and that’s a good thing. I don’t feel we need to apologies or hide the fact that we don’t agree with these practices” communicate to me an intolerance for members of the Church who do not see eye-to-eye with you on “these practices”. As I mentioned previously, I’m not sure your ideas about abortion and homosexuality are in line with official Church policy, because from your comments it sounds like you believe that the Church never supports abortion and doesn’t believe homosexuals should have the same rights and privileges as others.

As for your comment “The real question I think is would all these left leaning members who are upset with James’s post had been so upset if the post flipped it around…” I think you may find that only a small proportion of the so-called “left-leaning members” who would take the bait. I cannot recall a single blog post from that time period that suggested that those who supported or voted for Pres. Bush were unworthy of a temple recommend because he started a preemptive war against a sovereign nation. The issue here is not about political ideology, republican or democrat. People are bent out of shape because James’ position represents a fine example of religious intolerance that no one on either side of issues such as abortion or homosexuality can conscionably support. It is the effort to exclude minority opinions to promote an artificial consensus that puts off most people, not their hearts being convicted, or the unmasking of their own political intolerances. If those that cry out against such attitudes are intolerant of anything, it is an intolerance for intolerance. And that is something I think we all should strive for. Just to be clear, I respect the right of a person to hold whatever stance they will on a given issue, but as soon as they start to try to segregate a community using that stance as a yardstick for virtue or privilege within the community, they have crossed the lines into intolerance.

My point is switch the hot button issue to something left leaning members of the church don’t like about Republicans and would people be so up in arms?

I think we have to be careful here. I take issue with this because, while I didn’t like James’ post, I wouldn’t have liked it in the other direction either. It is not a safe assumption that those who aren’t Democrat are Republican. I would have been upset with it if it violated my political ideology no matter which party was being attacked.

But having said this, I don’t see why political party has anything to do with this argument. As James himself pointed out, he was not attacking Dems.

The First Presidency letter stated in 2006 and 2007 that “Principles compatible with the gospel may be found in the platforms of all major political parties.” (The Democratic party platform has not changed significantly in the past year.)

Was the First Presidency lying?