wait. so the CEO should still get his post-bankruptcy-bonus, but his employees should give back some of their paycheck after they're fired? i'm really not following you here.

no offense taken. this has been totally the kind of discussion i was hoping for.

i'm sorry that's what you took away from our discussion. i'm sorry if any of my words were hurtful to you. i'm trying to navigate a really tough space and am not a super eloquent person, so i probably made a lot of missteps.

for what it's worth, i hope i can be clear how horrified i was as a child to learn about this portion of the church's history, and how much prayer and study it took for me to come to terms with it (if i even totally have). it was not something i just swallowed in a heartbeat and skipped on from. my mother was the…

i am okay with that, and with you. this has been a good discussion, i think?

the notion that 2 Nephi 5:21 actually justifies the former priesthood restriction. it doesn't. the group of people described are understood by lds members to be ancestors of native central and south americans, not africans. it has been used by bigoted members of the church to justify racial discrimination, just…

well for one thing, i think the church is always going to be more interested in doing god's will than in maintaining it's public image. nothing any organization does will ever look good to all observers.

i've walked out of a lot of sunday school and seminary classes in my day that were being taught by idiots. i don't think there's anything wrong with that and neither should anyone else. i have seen the way women's roles and qualities are taught and discussed really evolve just in my lifetime in the church, but i…

just fyi, it's also not true.

the doctrines of salvation are not scripture and are not looked to as an authority on question of doctrine (or salvation) by the church today. the three men who make up the living first presidency are the ones who govern the church. that may have been the belief of president fielding smith at that time, but it has…

ok. if you don't desire membership in the lds church, does it affect you? other than an academic urge to understand?

ps, +10 for excellent use of "heck"!

maybe some of my other replies could shed a little bit of light on why a life of faith works for me? maybe not.

i think there's a lot of interesting conversation to be had about choice, diversity of choice, the weight of consequences, etc.

i wouldn't consider it a matter of degrees but more a matter of perspective. i think it's fine for feminists to be anti-abortion. i think it's shitty of them to be anti-choice.

i just don't see a great privilege being bestowed by letting men go on their missions one year before women. what privileges does that give the men that the women don't have? i don't think anybody's saying that dudes are smarter at 18 than ladies are. ask your local mission president.

interesting! i will have to put that joke to rest, i guess.

yo yo yo!

for what it's worth, my mother was in her early twenties when the doctrine changed, and at the time played the organ for a predominantly black congregation. she nearly lost her faith over the issue before it changed. many people did. it's not something that anyone in church takes lightly or believes was no big…

it's problematic for a lot of us. i believe that if they knew why they would say so. but they don't.