LDS Freedom Forum

[email protected] wrote: ↑February 14th, 2019, 9:38 pm I used "CEO" as just a example, the actual names and titles of individuals who hold power/authority in those orgaizations is irrelevant, the point still stands. There may always be exceptions to the rule but the fact is you aren't going to find hardly any organizations that don't have one, and only one, offical or defacto individual with the most power/authority. And maybe me using "CEO" specifically as an example was an error since the Chairman of the Board (or majority shareholder) out ranks the CEO (unless they happen to be the same person).

Okay. But my larger point was questioning your whole assumption that a corporation is an appropriate model for a family structure to begin with, and that we can draw any real conclusions from that analogy. The kids are the employees? What's the product? Who are the investors? It falls apart pretty quickly.

We could just as easily say that raising a family is like directing a movie, and point to all the successful co-director teams (the Coen brothers, the Dardenne brothers, the Wachowski brothers, etc.) as evidence that equal partnerships can provide effective leadership. (Some of the best co-directors are literally husband and wife—Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, or Shari Springer Bergman and Robert Pulcini.)

Of course that's a flawed analogy, too, and clearly cherry-picked to support an argument. That's the point. There's no magic formula, no One True Organizational Structure, and I think people are starting to see that in a lot of ways, the scriptures and even the temple ceremonies are descriptive rather than prescriptive regarding such things.

The fact of the matter is that there are all kinds of families organized all kinds of ways, and there are plenty of equal partnerships (or whatever you call a marriage where one partner does not "preside" over the other) that work just fine. And people can see that with their own eyes. That's what makes some of the phrasing in the temple seem irrelevant to modern audiences, compelling church leaders to determine how much of this is actual commandment, and how much is driven by cultural context.

[email protected] wrote: ↑February 15th, 2019, 12:00 am

MMbelieve wrote: ↑February 11th, 2019, 10:21 am

[email protected] wrote: ↑February 10th, 2019, 11:09 pm

Sarah wrote: ↑February 10th, 2019, 10:33 pm Do you think Heavenly Father is concerned about Heavenly Mother obeying him? When Adam and Eve were married in the GofE, did HF tell Eve her role was to obey Adam?

Well...yes? How can Heavenly Father BE Heavenly Father if his own spouse doesn't obey him and he doesn't care? This is what I'm talking about with authority being undermined by having two co-equal individuals running a home, it makes no sense. Another way to look at it, can a company or business have two CEOs? Can a country have two Kings or two Presidents? No. The way that has always made sense to me is if the home were a company or corporation the mother would be the CEO and the father the Chairman of the Board of Directors. The CEO manages the day to day tasks and empoyees (children so to speak) of the organization but the highest authority is the Chairman of the Board. Just some of my thoughts. Also I don't believe in a matriarcy (neither did Bruce R. McConkie) in fact a patriarchy and matriarchy are mutually exclusive. One of God the other is not. Equality as we understand it today is a modern 20th and 21st century notion derived from cultural marxism as taught in our western academic institutions and reinforced in western literature and media going back to roughly the 1930s. It is not of God but I am convinced this is source of much of the "hurtful feelings" with regard to the pre-2019 Temple Endowment ceremony.

Your viewing this whole thing as power. Sorry, but your way off.
FYI, there is no patriarch without a matriarch.

Heavenly father and Heavenly mother are Gods together, he is no God without her ALSO being a God. He is not a God over her, she already has one of those and will not have 2 Gods. What your not seeing is that once people become truly one and perfected and exalted there is zero need to rule OVER someone else who has obtained this WITH you, not despite of you or because of you.

To insinuate that women are to be eternally ruled over and never be free to think or be or act on her own merit then your asking for a host of problems. Its as bad as saying women are perpetually pregnant for eternity placed in Harems of the “gods”.

I suggest you stop thinking you have an ounce of power over your wife. You are to serve her if you want to be more accurate about it, not rule over her as her father.

No its not about power perse so much as its about authority. I am told I am responsible for my family, if my family fails, falls apart, if my kids or wife go astray it will be MY fault...at least to a certain extent. This is what I was taught. If this is true then I have to be able to exercise some authority in certain spirtual and family matters otherwise that just makes me a slave and I will not be a slave. If you were given responsibility for a farm and all the food it produces but given no authority over how its run or shared authority with someone that doesn't have the same responsibility or accountability for the success of that farm that then would make YOU the subordinate slave. I don't know where you get this idea that you can't have a Patriarch without a matriarch, in fact the two are usually mutually exclusive. Do we have Stake Matriarchs? Do we gave Matriarchial blessings? We do not. We do have a division of labor along gender lines in the church, we have men in charge of authoritative, executive and administrative tasks in the church, and we women serving the support roles for those tasks. Its worked fine for thousands of years accross the globe until third wave feminism took hold and told us it was supposedly bad.

Ultimately though, nobody has anymore authority over you than you allow. Not husbands, Bishops, Prophets, Popes, Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers or even God himself. You and I like every man and woman have our own free agency. That is supreme. But if we want to reap the benefits of certain institutions we have to be willing to defer to the authority of others. When we no longer see a benefit from our participation we can cease our participation and leave. That is an option EVERYONE has.

Not sure you can separate power and authority. If you have authority, what does that mean - it means you have power to do something. So if you go back through your post, and substitute the word power every time you use the word authority, it makes more sense. You are comparing your family to a farm, but your family is made up of people who are just as smart and opinionated as you, and are meant to act and not to be acted upon. So the ideal way to look at things is that you have power and authority to use your priesthood to bless your family. You have power to direct family counsels to ensure unified decisions are made, with everyone's agency taken into account. But it appears that you want he authority to tell your wife what to do and not have her question you, without considering that she has just as much right to have input and direct family life as you do.

I think you need to let go of the fact that you are solely responsible. The Proclamation says that parents will be held responsible for their children. You can't control your wife, or your children after a certain age. Real power comes through persuasion and unconditional love, and when you learn those things then others grant you authority. It's like when all the people wanted Nephi to be their King. He didn't feel entitled to it just because of who he was, the people gave him their allegiance, and ultimately, that is what you want for your wife and children, to give it freely, without them having to be told to give it to you.

Right now we are given gifts by God to test us to see what we will do with them. Men are given more power and authority just because they are men. Women are given power and authority over their children, and they are given more freedoms now-a-days under our constitutional and more balanced governments. We are all being tested on how we use these gifts of power and freedom, and whether we choose to learn correct principles from them. Most people can't handle power or freedom, and they choose the evil. If we don't use our freedom and power appropriately, it will be taken away. Ultimately, no one is going to be given gifts of power and authority unless they have truly earned those things, and others are freely willing to follow you without having to be commanded to do so.

We command our children, because until a certain point, they usually prove to be disobedient, and lack self control and knowledge of good and evil. Eve and women were cursed to have the status of a child in relation to God and man, because she disobeyed first, and was more child-like in that sense. But the curse will one day be lifted, and we need to see women in the patriarchal order (not the church order) as equal in authority as men.

Sarah wrote: ↑February 15th, 2019, 10:35 am

[email protected] wrote: ↑February 15th, 2019, 12:00 am

MMbelieve wrote: ↑February 11th, 2019, 10:21 am

[email protected] wrote: ↑February 10th, 2019, 11:09 pm

Well...yes? How can Heavenly Father BE Heavenly Father if his own spouse doesn't obey him and he doesn't care? This is what I'm talking about with authority being undermined by having two co-equal individuals running a home, it makes no sense. Another way to look at it, can a company or business have two CEOs? Can a country have two Kings or two Presidents? No. The way that has always made sense to me is if the home were a company or corporation the mother would be the CEO and the father the Chairman of the Board of Directors. The CEO manages the day to day tasks and empoyees (children so to speak) of the organization but the highest authority is the Chairman of the Board. Just some of my thoughts. Also I don't believe in a matriarcy (neither did Bruce R. McConkie) in fact a patriarchy and matriarchy are mutually exclusive. One of God the other is not. Equality as we understand it today is a modern 20th and 21st century notion derived from cultural marxism as taught in our western academic institutions and reinforced in western literature and media going back to roughly the 1930s. It is not of God but I am convinced this is source of much of the "hurtful feelings" with regard to the pre-2019 Temple Endowment ceremony.

Your viewing this whole thing as power. Sorry, but your way off.
FYI, there is no patriarch without a matriarch.

Heavenly father and Heavenly mother are Gods together, he is no God without her ALSO being a God. He is not a God over her, she already has one of those and will not have 2 Gods. What your not seeing is that once people become truly one and perfected and exalted there is zero need to rule OVER someone else who has obtained this WITH you, not despite of you or because of you.

To insinuate that women are to be eternally ruled over and never be free to think or be or act on her own merit then your asking for a host of problems. Its as bad as saying women are perpetually pregnant for eternity placed in Harems of the “gods”.

I suggest you stop thinking you have an ounce of power over your wife. You are to serve her if you want to be more accurate about it, not rule over her as her father.

No its not about power perse so much as its about authority. I am told I am responsible for my family, if my family fails, falls apart, if my kids or wife go astray it will be MY fault...at least to a certain extent. This is what I was taught. If this is true then I have to be able to exercise some authority in certain spirtual and family matters otherwise that just makes me a slave and I will not be a slave. If you were given responsibility for a farm and all the food it produces but given no authority over how its run or shared authority with someone that doesn't have the same responsibility or accountability for the success of that farm that then would make YOU the subordinate slave. I don't know where you get this idea that you can't have a Patriarch without a matriarch, in fact the two are usually mutually exclusive. Do we have Stake Matriarchs? Do we gave Matriarchial blessings? We do not. We do have a division of labor along gender lines in the church, we have men in charge of authoritative, executive and administrative tasks in the church, and we women serving the support roles for those tasks. Its worked fine for thousands of years accross the globe until third wave feminism took hold and told us it was supposedly bad.

Ultimately though, nobody has anymore authority over you than you allow. Not husbands, Bishops, Prophets, Popes, Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers or even God himself. You and I like every man and woman have our own free agency. That is supreme. But if we want to reap the benefits of certain institutions we have to be willing to defer to the authority of others. When we no longer see a benefit from our participation we can cease our participation and leave. That is an option EVERYONE has.

Not sure you can separate power and authority. If you have authority, what does that mean - it means you have power to do something. So if you go back through your post, and substitute the word power every time you use the word authority, it makes more sense. You are comparing your family to a farm, but your family is made up of people who are just as smart and opinionated as you, and are meant to act and not to be acted upon. So the ideal way to look at things is that you have power and authority to use your priesthood to bless your family. You have power to direct family counsels to ensure unified decisions are made, with everyone's agency taken into account. But it appears that you want he authority to tell your wife what to do and not have her question you, without considering that she has just as much right to have input and direct family life as you do.

I think you need to let go of the fact that you are solely responsible. The Proclamation says that parents will be held responsible for their children. You can't control your wife, or your children after a certain age. Real power comes through persuasion and unconditional love, and when you learn those things then others grant you authority. It's like when all the people wanted Nephi to be their King. He didn't feel entitled to it just because of who he was, the people gave him their allegiance, and ultimately, that is what you want for your wife and children, to give it freely, without them having to be told to give it to you.

Right now we are given gifts by God to test us to see what we will do with them. Men are given more power and authority just because they are men. Women are given power and authority over their children, and they are given more freedoms now-a-days under our constitutional and more balanced governments. We are all being tested on how we use these gifts of power and freedom, and whether we choose to learn correct principles from them. Most people can't handle power or freedom, and they choose the evil. If we don't use our freedom and power appropriately, it will be taken away. Ultimately, no one is going to be given gifts of power and authority unless they have truly earned those things, and others are freely willing to follow you without having to be commanded to do so.

We command our children, because until a certain point, they usually prove to be disobedient, and lack self control and knowledge of good and evil. Eve and women were cursed to have the status of a child in relation to God and man, because she disobeyed first, and was more child-like in that sense. But the curse will one day be lifted, and we need to see women in the patriarchal order (not the church order) as equal in authority as men.

Power and authority are easily seperable. Authority gives on the authority to act regardless of their power - so it can give power to act, but power without authority gives someone the power to act, but not the authroity. With authority they have a moral right. Without authority, even if they have power, they do not have the moral right to act.

John Tavner wrote: ↑February 15th, 2019, 10:57 am

Sarah wrote: ↑February 15th, 2019, 10:35 am

[email protected] wrote: ↑February 15th, 2019, 12:00 am

MMbelieve wrote: ↑February 11th, 2019, 10:21 am

Your viewing this whole thing as power. Sorry, but your way off.
FYI, there is no patriarch without a matriarch.

Heavenly father and Heavenly mother are Gods together, he is no God without her ALSO being a God. He is not a God over her, she already has one of those and will not have 2 Gods. What your not seeing is that once people become truly one and perfected and exalted there is zero need to rule OVER someone else who has obtained this WITH you, not despite of you or because of you.

To insinuate that women are to be eternally ruled over and never be free to think or be or act on her own merit then your asking for a host of problems. Its as bad as saying women are perpetually pregnant for eternity placed in Harems of the “gods”.

I suggest you stop thinking you have an ounce of power over your wife. You are to serve her if you want to be more accurate about it, not rule over her as her father.

No its not about power perse so much as its about authority. I am told I am responsible for my family, if my family fails, falls apart, if my kids or wife go astray it will be MY fault...at least to a certain extent. This is what I was taught. If this is true then I have to be able to exercise some authority in certain spirtual and family matters otherwise that just makes me a slave and I will not be a slave. If you were given responsibility for a farm and all the food it produces but given no authority over how its run or shared authority with someone that doesn't have the same responsibility or accountability for the success of that farm that then would make YOU the subordinate slave. I don't know where you get this idea that you can't have a Patriarch without a matriarch, in fact the two are usually mutually exclusive. Do we have Stake Matriarchs? Do we gave Matriarchial blessings? We do not. We do have a division of labor along gender lines in the church, we have men in charge of authoritative, executive and administrative tasks in the church, and we women serving the support roles for those tasks. Its worked fine for thousands of years accross the globe until third wave feminism took hold and told us it was supposedly bad.

Ultimately though, nobody has anymore authority over you than you allow. Not husbands, Bishops, Prophets, Popes, Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers or even God himself. You and I like every man and woman have our own free agency. That is supreme. But if we want to reap the benefits of certain institutions we have to be willing to defer to the authority of others. When we no longer see a benefit from our participation we can cease our participation and leave. That is an option EVERYONE has.

Not sure you can separate power and authority. If you have authority, what does that mean - it means you have power to do something. So if you go back through your post, and substitute the word power every time you use the word authority, it makes more sense. You are comparing your family to a farm, but your family is made up of people who are just as smart and opinionated as you, and are meant to act and not to be acted upon. So the ideal way to look at things is that you have power and authority to use your priesthood to bless your family. You have power to direct family counsels to ensure unified decisions are made, with everyone's agency taken into account. But it appears that you want he authority to tell your wife what to do and not have her question you, without considering that she has just as much right to have input and direct family life as you do.

I think you need to let go of the fact that you are solely responsible. The Proclamation says that parents will be held responsible for their children. You can't control your wife, or your children after a certain age. Real power comes through persuasion and unconditional love, and when you learn those things then others grant you authority. It's like when all the people wanted Nephi to be their King. He didn't feel entitled to it just because of who he was, the people gave him their allegiance, and ultimately, that is what you want for your wife and children, to give it freely, without them having to be told to give it to you.

Right now we are given gifts by God to test us to see what we will do with them. Men are given more power and authority just because they are men. Women are given power and authority over their children, and they are given more freedoms now-a-days under our constitutional and more balanced governments. We are all being tested on how we use these gifts of power and freedom, and whether we choose to learn correct principles from them. Most people can't handle power or freedom, and they choose the evil. If we don't use our freedom and power appropriately, it will be taken away. Ultimately, no one is going to be given gifts of power and authority unless they have truly earned those things, and others are freely willing to follow you without having to be commanded to do so.

We command our children, because until a certain point, they usually prove to be disobedient, and lack self control and knowledge of good and evil. Eve and women were cursed to have the status of a child in relation to God and man, because she disobeyed first, and was more child-like in that sense. But the curse will one day be lifted, and we need to see women in the patriarchal order (not the church order) as equal in authority as men.

Power and authority are easily seperable. Authority gives on the authority to act regardless of their power - so it can give power to act, but power without authority gives someone the power to act, but not the authroity. With authority they have a moral right. Without authority, even if they have power, they do not have the moral right to act.

I can agree with you that one can have the power to act without authority, but how can you have authority to act and that action not be a form of power. I guess I look at any acting or doing as power. So to argue that you have authority but are not acting on it makes your authority meaningless.

Joel wrote: ↑February 10th, 2019, 8:59 pm Mormons are always changing things, they call it continuing revelation. Plus the guy that directed the temple videos admitted to molesting a kid, so it sounds like it was a good time to stop playing the videos and make the changes they wanted to make

Sandy Police Investigating Van Wagenen for Second Instance of Sex Abuse

A document received through an open records request by the Truth & Transparency Foundation (TTF) from the Sandy Police Department has revealed that Van Wagenen is currently under investigation for a sex offense.

In February, the TTF released a recording in which Sterling Van Wagenen, a noted executive producer and director of various film projects financed by the Mormon Church, admitted to molesting a 13-year-old boy in 1993.

At the time of the abuse, Van Wagenen confessed his actions to his local ecclesiastical leaders and received a formal disfellowshipment of 2 years. Additionally, Van Wagenen went to the local police and confessed his crime; no charges were filed.

In the recording, Van Wagenen claims this was the only instance of non-consensual sexual contact with another person. New information shows this may not be true.

The document, dated February 21, 2019, does not contain Van Wagenen’s name and the location of the incident is redacted. However, the request yielding the document asked for any recent “initial contact reports” involving Van Wagenen.

Initial contact reports differ from police reports and are always deemed public under Utah’s Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA). The amount of data found in them vary from agency to agency. In this particular report, the Sandy PD offers very limited information, only indicating the date, offense, location, priority, and officer assigned to the case.

Further, two other GRAMA requests were submitted by the TTF requesting all other police reports and investigative files involving the perpetrator. The investigative files were denied by Sandy City’s Chief Administrative Officer, Matthew Huish, saying the investigation is ongoing and the “release of the investigative files can reasonably be expected to interfere with an investigation and enforcement proceedings, and would be irresponsible and contrary to generally accepted practices.”

Because of the denial, the status of and the facts surrounding the incident are unknown. A response concerning the release of the requested police reports is yet to be issued by Sandy City.

Van Wagenen did not respond to a request for comment before the publication of this story.

Elder Bednar; that is all.

Joel wrote: ↑April 6th, 2019, 8:53 pm

Joel wrote: ↑February 10th, 2019, 8:59 pm Mormons are always changing things, they call it continuing revelation. Plus the guy that directed the temple videos admitted to molesting a kid, so it sounds like it was a good time to stop playing the videos and make the changes they wanted to make

Sandy Police Investigating Van Wagenen for Second Instance of Sex Abuse

A document received through an open records request by the Truth & Transparency Foundation (TTF) from the Sandy Police Department has revealed that Van Wagenen is currently under investigation for a sex offense.

In February, the TTF released a recording in which Sterling Van Wagenen, a noted executive producer and director of various film projects financed by the Mormon Church, admitted to molesting a 13-year-old boy in 1993.

At the time of the abuse, Van Wagenen confessed his actions to his local ecclesiastical leaders and received a formal disfellowshipment of 2 years. Additionally, Van Wagenen went to the local police and confessed his crime; no charges were filed.

In the recording, Van Wagenen claims this was the only instance of non-consensual sexual contact with another person. New information shows this may not be true.

The document, dated February 21, 2019, does not contain Van Wagenen’s name and the location of the incident is redacted. However, the request yielding the document asked for any recent “initial contact reports” involving Van Wagenen.

Initial contact reports differ from police reports and are always deemed public under Utah’s Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA). The amount of data found in them vary from agency to agency. In this particular report, the Sandy PD offers very limited information, only indicating the date, offense, location, priority, and officer assigned to the case.

Further, two other GRAMA requests were submitted by the TTF requesting all other police reports and investigative files involving the perpetrator. The investigative files were denied by Sandy City’s Chief Administrative Officer, Matthew Huish, saying the investigation is ongoing and the “release of the investigative files can reasonably be expected to interfere with an investigation and enforcement proceedings, and would be irresponsible and contrary to generally accepted practices.”

Because of the denial, the status of and the facts surrounding the incident are unknown. A response concerning the release of the requested police reports is yet to be issued by Sandy City.

Van Wagenen did not respond to a request for comment before the publication of this story.

Director of Mormon Temple Videos Charged with First Degree Sexual Abuse of a Child

On April 2, 2019, Sterling Van Wagenen, noted film director and producer, was indicted in Utah on a single count of aggravated sexual abuse of a child. An arrest warrant was issued on April 4 and Van Wagenen posted bail of $75,000 on April 8. The charge is a first degree felony which, according to the charging document, carries a 15 year minimum sentence and up to life imprisonment if he is convicted.

Van Wagenen has had a long and successful career in film, starting with the co-founding of the Sundance Film Festival with Robert Redford in 1978. In more recent years, Van Wagenen worked on many high profile projects for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon Church.

In February, the Truth and Transparency Foundation (TTF) published an audio recording in which Van Wagenen admits to sexually molesting a 13 year old boy in 1993. In the audio, Van Wagenen states that he has never engaged in sexual activity with any other minor. The news of this admision led to Van Wagenen resigning from his current position as a film professor at the University of Utah.

Earlier this month, the TTF reported that Van Wagenen was under investigation for an instance of sexual abuse. At the time, few details were known. With this new charge, we now know that he was being investigated for sexually abusing a child under 14.

According to the probable cause statement contained in the charging document, Van Wagenen “rubbed” the genital area of a female between the ages of 7 and 9 on two occasions between 2013 and 2015.

Subsequent to the two instances of abuse, Van Wagenen was alone with the child and asked her if the touching made her feel uncomfortable. According to the victim, during this conversation he told her that this was same way he touched his wife. The victim expressed that the touching made her uncomfortable and he told her that he would stop.

According to the court docket, which has been viewed by the TTF, Van Wagenen made his initial appearance after the warrant was issued on April 8, the day he posted the $75,000 bail. The next scheduled court date is May 2, 2019.

David (not his real name), the young man Van Wagenen molested in 1993 informed the TTF that he was surprised by the charge. When he met with Van Wagenen last year and discussed his own molestation with him, David left that conversation convinced that Van Wagenen was being honest and sincere in his declaration that he had never had sexual contact with any other minor.

David goes on to say, “More than anything, my heart breaks for the victim in this case and I sincerely hope there are no other victims out there.”

Requests for comment have been sent to Van Wagenen, his attorney, Steven Shapiro, and the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office. Shapiro declined to comment.