#but then again i doubt her family is exempt from its prejudice..)

[mamorigami]

thinking about utahimes forehead...

[nerdygaymormon]

Homophobias warning: I had a friend who was confused when I told her that a lot of gay people usually felt the spirit telling them they can date or like the same gender. She just said that it was contradictory to the church and was probably just Satan. I didnt really know what to say so I just left it at that. Do you or anyone have any suggestion on how to respond to this type of comment?

To understand where she’s coming from, the Church teaches that members can receive revelation, but with these 3 caveats:

You have to be living worthily

Inspiration is restricted to your personal life & family matters, or to your calling in Church, or to confirm Church teachings & leaders.

No one will receive inspiration that contradicts Church teachings & policies

If someone is getting answers that conflict with the Church, then they must be unworthy. That unworthiness means either they’re being inspired by the Devil or they’re just confusing their own feelings to want to sin.

————————————————————— 

I disagree with this teaching that there’s no variance. This implies that the Church and its leaders are never wrong. And yet we have a recent example.

In November 2015 a new policy was inserted into the handbook of instructions used by local leaders. This policy came to be known as the Policy of Exclusion (POX) because it required same-sex couples to be disciplined and cut off their children from the Church.

It was interesting to see many members say that this didn’t feel right to them. Then Elder Christofferson came forward to say that it is a new policy approved by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Most members immediately fell in line.

Except it wasn’t accepted by most LGBTQ+ members, nor many of their family & friends. They felt certain this was wrong.

After President Monson died, President Nelson became head of the Church and declared the POX to be a revelation.  

In less than 5 years, this policy/revelation was completely reversed.

Could it be that those who voiced their opposition to the policy had been correct? I don’t think the Church leaders will ever officially say they were wrong and the dissenters to this policy were correct. However, that’s how it looks to me.

————————————————————— 

And here’s the thing, the Church has been wrong on LGBTQ+ topics time and time again.

When I was growing up, the Church was teaching that people experienced gay feelings because they were molested or they didn’t have enough faith or even because of masturbation. A person could be excommunicated for saying they are gay. 

Science proved that homosexuality is part of a person’s biology. It has nothing to do with masturbation, being molested and a person can’t change their sexual orientation by desire or faith. Now the Church says it has no position on the cause of same-sex attraction, and it’s okay for people to use the labels lesbian, bi or gay to identify themselves.

________   

This reminds me of African-Americans who had a very strong belief & confirmation that the Church’s racist policies were wrong. They should not be excluded from holding the priesthood and getting temple blessings.

The Church now has an essay that says it was wrong. Church leaders of the past were blinded by the racism of the time.

—————————————————————

The General Authorities teach general principles in General Conference, but when it comes to my individual life, not always do general principles work. God can clarify those teachings for me, or even modify them or give me other answers. Even if the Church isn’t ready for the answer, God can give me specific answers because they directly impact my life.

In answering a question about divorce in Matthew 19, Jesus declared the general doctrine is that a man get a wife and be one, never to be torn apart.

But then Jesus gave an exception. a man can divorce his wife if she commits adultery.

Then Jesus gave another exception, said it was going to be hard for people to accept this answer, but there are certain men who are exempt from having to marry a woman. 

The general principle and doctrine applies to most people. But when it comes to application, there are some adjustments that had to be made.

________   

I have had a very powerful experience that God loves me and my orientation. In the temple I’ve received revelation that it’s okay for me to seek a relationship with a man.

Your friend would say I’m inspired by the Devil or I’m just wanting to sin.

However, these experiences, thoughts and inspiration have all been accompanied by feelings of the Spirit.  

“Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?” (D&C 6:23.)

A feeling of peace & calm is the most common ways the Spirit confirms things. Sometimes it just seems that things become very clear in my mind. Other times it’s a strong feeling of love.

Only later when wondering if I’m sure about this, am I just fooling myself into getting an answer I was hoping for, that’s when I will I feel unsure. This is a spiritual sign that I’m wrong about these doubts

When I again receive the same inspiration, there is no doubt at those times, and the feelings of the Spirit are clear.

————————————————————— 

Derek Knox on the Beyond the Block podcast had a useful analogy about revelation. (episode 43):

So you’’ve got sort of three approaches to a window.

You’ve got the fundamentalist. You’ve got the skepticist, or the skeptic. And then the realist. Okay. And all, there are three approaches to how revelation works.

Now, fundamentalists think of it very naively. They think of it, of revelation as looking out a window and the window is perfectly clear and as long as it’s sunny and as long as you’re looking out the window, you can see exactly the way things are. And that’s how our prophets and apostles work. They can just look out and seek clearly into the mind of God. Whatever’s there is there, there’s no filter. There’s no processing. It’s a beautiful, clear, clean window that they can look out. That’s the sort of naive approach.

Then the skeptic’s approach is that the window is actually a mirror and all you see is a reflection of yourself, your own biases, your own prejudices. There’s no actual revelation. Skeptics don’t think that revelation is real. They think it’s all just a repackaging of your own ideas in your own self, and, and that’s what it is. There’s no window. There's no truth out there. There’s just a mirror.

And then the third approach is the realist approach to say, yes, there’s a window. And there is something real on the other side, revelation, is real. But that window can be a little bit warped. It can be a little bit dirty, it can be a little bit obscure in some places. And you can see your reflection in the window. Not only can you see through the window. But you can also see your reflection in the window and you have to be careful to separate those and keep them apart.

I think that is the most realistic approach to revelation in our church. If you look at every revelation in the history of our scriptures, it’s going to be light from God filtered through a human with limitations and liabilities and a particular language at a particular time and place, and you’re going to get some of their human fingerprints, even if it’s just the style of the vocabulary.

Derek goes on to explain this is why we need a variety of people with different experiences looking out the window  together. We each will have our biases and weaknesses, but the parts we can all view is the part that’s most likely the actual view through the window free from our self reflection.

[remnantoforario]

Ok then...

So a little while ago I did a post about my thoughts on the newest RWBY manga. It was mostly a bunch of scattered ramblings, but essentially i broke down why I believe it was better than the show (at least starting out). 

I originally wanted to do all the chapters up to now in that post, but since I spent so much time on the first chapter alone, I thought it best to just do a post for each chapter as I reread them. You guys seemed to like my thoughts on the first one, so here we go with chapter two.

Heads Up: This will not be a review of the chapter itself per se, it will be a comparison between the manga and original source material. As such I will be spending most of the time going over the character interactions, slight world-building changes, and anything else I see different. Cool? Let’s get started then...

So chapter 2 of the starts out just as chapter 4 of the show did, though with a noticeable change in Ruby’s attitude. 

In the original she was practically bouncing off the walls, excited by the prospect of fighting monsters. Here she is much more somber, reflecting on what happened the previous day, as well as expressing apprehension with teaming up with what are essentially a bunch of strangers. 

I like this change very much honestly. It makes Ruby a much more relatable and realized character, which is something the show didn’t readily do until way later. She’s in a completely new environment (one she still feels she doesn’t fully belong in), and her first interactions with people that aren’t her sister have been less than positive. It makes sense that she would be worried. 

I think Yang also comes off a bit better in these scenes. Before she was kind of treating Ruby as a bit of a pest. Sure she wants her to be more sociable, but there it seemed more like out of a desire to not have her little sister “cramp her style” while here she’s doing her best to encourage her. So good job there.

Next we get a better look at Jaune (who briefly appeared in chapter one) and are formally introduced to Pyrrha. Not much to say here since the scene is pretty much the same, but I will point out that Jaune speaking french was a nice little touch given his character origin. 

Ruby’s face is also great here. Really makes her feel like an outsider looking in.

I also wanted to highlight this little nugget:

The fact that anyone is jealous of Jaune about anything is hilarious.

The next crucial scene is when Weiss and Ruby meet in the Emerald Forest. Now the way this happens in canon is fine for what it is, but how this plays out in the manga speaks more to the characters. 

Weiss (like in the original) walks away, but instead of chasing her, Ruby simply lets her go; and is relieved to have done it, telling herself that they didn’t see one another. Remember, so far established in the story these two DO NOT like each other. To Weiss, Ruby is nothing more than a child that lucked her way into Beacon, and to Ruby, Weiss is a stuck-up, rich jerk. It makes sense that they would not want to pair with one another. They just can’t get along. It’s the same as in the series, but the manga does it much better in my opinion because of one thing: consistent character arcs.

Ok this is going to get a little long (too late). When Ruby is first introduced into the series, she had a Flat Character Arc (at least from what I perceived). For those who don’t know, a Flat Character arc is one in which said character does NOT change for better or worse; they are well...flat. They have come to terms with themselves and thus have been fully realized before the story even starts. So if they will not change, the world instead changes around them in an attempt to challenge or reinforce those beliefs. Examples of this are Son Goku and Saitama from One Punch Man.

The main crux of the flat arc is “The truth that the character believes”. It is a truth that they know to be real and will not waiver from, no matter what the plot throws at them.

Goku’s truth for example, is that he can always be better than he was yesterday. That no matter how strong he gets, there will always be someone stronger to fight. That is why he trains and how he overcomes his problems, through this truth to be better and force of will. 

Ruby’s truth was that no matter what she would be a hero. She would protect people and become a Huntress like in her stories. 

Which would have worked fine...if the show kept to that ideal. 

In the beginning, Ruby was flat. She never really experienced any setbacks, she was never in the wrong, and she was never really challenged by anyone. Her team pretty much went along with everything she did without question and she never really had a problem in any fight she was put in. She was essentially...a mary sue (even chibi pointed that out). She didn’t have to learn how to overcome her prejudices like Weiss, face her past like Blake, or even shoulder the familial burdens that Yang had to (who was also kind of flat but thats another discussion). Ruby pretty much had nothing to worry about, until V3.

Volume 3 is where the story shifts. Our characters are met with an action that provides lasting consequences: The deaths of Penny, Pyrrha, and Ozpin, the destruction of the school, Yang losing her arm, Blake confronting Adam and running away to Menagerie, Weiss going home, etc. 

In a flat character arc, Ruby would learn from these experiences and acquire a new skill (silver eyes) in which to reinforce her beliefs and defeat the Lie of the world (Salem’s forces)...but she doesn’t. Ruby waivers and does nothing while the Lie continues to spread, this is where her character begins to fail. 

Her teammates (as well as everyone else around her) are experiencing their own arcs whether they be positive (Yang, Blake, Weiss, Jaune, Ren, Nora, etc.) or Negative (Emerald, Adam, Raven, and Salem). Ruby remains static, but not in a way that is compelling. She doesn’t change the world, she’s just in it. As such she remains stagnant. 

Miles and Kerry wrote her arc in reverse. They started flat, but then tried to go positive. That doesn’t work because it challenges everything that came before it and in turn makes Ruby worse. Looking back, her progression from Volumes 4-6 was a (somewhat) good example of a positive character arc. She saw problems that changed her and allowed her to overcome (Tyrian, Battle of Haven, Brunswick Farm, Cordovin, and the Leviathan). The problem was that volumes 1-3 were spent with her being completely flat. The dichotomy only made things frustrating to watch from an audience perspective because the flat arc was not presented in the right way for the story to build on it. 

Switching back to the manga (finally): Kinami instead switches things around and gives Ruby a positive character arc. This arc is all about “the Lie the character believes” as opposed to the Truth of the Flat Arc. In the manga, the lie Ruby tells herself is: “I don’t belong.”

She skipped two grades, was forced into a place she doesn’t know, and is constantly told by others that her dream is childish and she should go home. This is what leads to her more dour and self-deprecating personality (as well as her already socially awkward behavior). She is constantly challenged and thus continues to doubt herself, which strengthens the lie.

Weiss is not exempt from this either: 

Upon leaving Ruby she tries to find a partner, leading her to Jaune (hanging from a tree as in the show) who she also refuses. In the show, she goes back to Ruby in another humorous moment, but in the manga she doesn’t. The Lie Weiss believes is that she must be perfect, and thus only the perfect partner (notably Pyrrha or someone similar) will aid in that Lie and let her achieve her impossible goals. Without perfection, she is nothing.

The conviction in the belief of this lie nearly leads to her death when she is ambushed by Grimm. 

This leads to the most climactic moment of the chapter.

Ruby saves Weiss, but she still isn’t friendly with her. She tells her that she didn’t want to be her partner, but letting her die would not be right and she wouldn’t be the Huntress she wanted to be if she let that happen. That new resolve all stemmed from this moment earlier in the chapter:

Like Weiss, Ruby thought to leave and find her sister, but it was Yang’s words that made her rethink her action: “Remember what you’re here for. This is to become the Huntress you dream of being right?”

This is the first step towards Ruby’s positive character change. Again it turns a comedic scene serious, but its all in service of the characters and makes them better. She goes back to defend and team with someone she decidedly does not like, because it furthers her goal. It helps dissolve the Lie, and forces them to work together. 

 Chapter 2 is just as good, if not better than chapter 1. We get a much better look at the characters, but we also start to encounter the manga’s one major flaw; but we’ll get into that in the next part.

[maxwellyjordan]

Wednesday round-up

The justices have one oral argument on their agenda this morning, in Lomax v. Ortiz-Marquez, about whether dismissal without prejudice for failure to state a claim counts as a “strike” under a federal statute that limits prisoners’ ability to file lawsuits without paying the filing fees. Margo Schlanger previewed the case for this blog. Emma Horne and Nicole Jaeckel have a preview at Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute.

Yesterday, the justices boosted their disposition rate for the term, releasing opinions in four cases. In Hernandez v. Mesa, the court held 5-4 that the family of a Mexican teenager who was killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a cross-border shooting cannot sue the officer for damages under the Constitution. Amy Howe has this blog’s opinion analysis, which was first published at Howe on the Court. At Fox News, Ronn Blitzer and Bill Mears report that the court held that “precedent regarding lawsuits against officers, known as ‘Bivens claims,’ does not apply to cross-border shootings’: [Justice Samuel] Alito noted the high standard of extending Bivens to a ‘new context’ and gave several reasons why it was inappropriate in this case.” At Capitol Media Services (via the Arizona Capitol Times), Howard Fischer reports that “Tuesday’s ruling is virtually certain to quash a nearly identical lawsuit filed by Araceli Rodriguez following the 2012 shooting death of her son, Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez.” For The New York Times, Adam Liptak reports that “[i]n a concurring opinion, Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, called on the court to overrule the Bivens decision entirely.” Additional coverage comes from Kevin Daley at The Washington Free Beacon.

At PrawfsBlawg, Howard Wasserman notes that “[i]f any case not on all factual fours with Bivens represents a new context, the majority gets where Justice Thomas wants to go, without the political cost of overrulings.” At Vox, Ian Millhiser argues that “[t]he Supreme Court’s decision in Hernández transforms the Bill of Rights into a paper tiger in many cases involving law enforcement overreach.” Tuan Samahon wonders at PrawfsBlawg whether “[a]fter Hernandez, … Congress [is] ready yet to codify Bivens.” Kym Stapleton discusses the opinion at Crime & Consequences.

In another 5-4 decision, the court ruled against a death-row inmate in McKinney v. Arizona, holding that a court of appeals, not a jury, can reweigh aggravating and mitigating circumstances on collateral review. This blog’s opinion analysis comes from Amy Howe, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. At Crime & Consequences, Kent Scheidegger writes that “[a] great deal of post-conviction litigation in capital cases consists of claims that some marginally relevant mitigating evidence, often with no connection to the crime, was erroneously omitted from the sentencing process,” and that “[a]llowing the state collateral review court to say ‘even assuming that was an error, the aggravating still outweighs the mitigating, and the sentence is still proper’ would go a long way toward mooting those claims relatively early in the process.”

In Monasky v. Taglieri, the court ruled unanimously that under the Hague Convention on international abductions, a child’s “habitual residence” depends on the totality of the circumstances, not on categorical requirements such as an actual agreement between the parents. Amy Howe analyzes the opinion for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. In another unanimous ruling, Rodriguez v. FDIC, the court held that a judicially created rule about how courts should determine ownership of a tax refund paid to an affiliated corporate group is not a legitimate exercise of federal common law rulemaking, and sent the case back for the lower courts to apply state law.

Adam Liptak reports for The New York Times that during yesterday’s argument in United States v. Sineneng-Smith, the court “seemed doubtful that a 1986 federal law that makes it a crime to ‘encourage’ unauthorized immigrants to come to or stay in the United States could be squared with the First Amendment.” At Education Week’s School Law Blog, Mark Walsh reports that “[t]he lively hour-long argument … touched on the roles of sanctuary cities and advocacy groups in aiding undocumented immigrants, as well as other areas in which speech inducing someone to commit a legal violation might be at issue.” For The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Jess Bravin reports that “[s]everal justices questioned whether the statute could be read more narrowly, limiting its application to clearly criminal conduct and sparing the court from having to strike down the law as unconstitutional.” At the Constitutional Law Prof Blog, Ruthann Robson observes that the argument “criss-cross[ed] the lines between conduct and speech, between criminal law and the First Amendment, and between constitutional avoidance and judicial ability to redraft a statute.”

Noah Sachs analyzes Monday’s argument in U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association, involving the power of the Forest Service to grant rights of way through lands traversed by the Appalachian Trail, for this blog. Ellen Gilmer reports at Bloomberg Environment that “[t]he Atlantic Coast pipeline appears likely to clear a major legal hurdle after a majority of Supreme Court justices seemed to lean in favor of allowing the project to cross the Appalachian Trail.” At E&E News, Niina Farah reports that, although the outcome “will remain unknown until the Supreme Court issues its opinion in the coming months, legal experts said they largely expect the justices to overturn a lower court’s finding that the Forest Service could not authorize the trail crossing.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondents in this case.]

At Fox News, Edmund DeMarche reports that “[i]n a remarkable public rebuke, President Trump late Monday called on Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse themselves from any cases involving his administration over their past comments.” Robert Barnes and Ashley Parker report for The Washington Post (subscription required) that “Trump interpreted as biased a dissent from Sotomayor about his administration’s tendency to seek emergency interventions from the Supreme Court” and “[h]e reminded Ginsburg of remarks she made about him as a candidate in 2016, for which she has expressed regret.” Mark Sherman reports at AP that “[j]ustices decide for themselves when to step aside from cases the court is considering, and it is highly unlikely either justice would sit out cases involving Trump, including two cases the court will hear on March 31 over subpoenas for Trump’s tax, bank and financial records.” At The Washington Free Beacon, Kevin Daley reports that “[t]he justices generally do not disclose why they remove themselves from particular cases, though reasons are sometimes readily identifiable.” At the Constitutional Law Prof Blog, Ruthann Robson comments on ‘[t]he seemingly persistent question of the type of bias of SCOTUS Justices that should merit recusal.”

Briefly:

At the Brennan Center for Justice, Andrew Cohen weighs in on the court’s decision last week to allow the federal government to enforce a new “public charge” rule limiting noncitizens’ access to green cards, the case that triggered Sotomayor’s dissent, arguing that the court has “already has declared itself in Trump’s camp this term, over and over again, using stay procedures as both a shield and a sword for the administration, without paying much of a price in terms of its institutional credibility.”

Ian Millhiser writes at Vox that Fulton v. Philadelphia, a challenge to Philadelphia’s exclusion of Catholic Social Services from the city’s foster care system because the group will not place children with same-sex couples that the court will hear next term, “is a significant escalation from most of the Supreme Court’s previous cases asking when religious people may seek an exemption from the law.”

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