#interview doctrine

[sentientsky]

voice of assad zaman is anyone gonna fuck this old man or am i gonna have to do it myself

[grplindia]

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[joncronshawauthor]

When History Meets Fantasy: An Interview With Author CL Jarvis

Get ready to be transported to a world of magic and science as we talk to historical fantasy author CL Jarvis. With a passion for history and a love of science, CL Jarvis has created a world filled with magic and intrigue. In this interview, we’ll dive into the inspiration behind her world, her writing process, and what readers can expect from her series. So grab a cup of tea and join us on…

[lesbianchemicalplant]

1. he was not "for gay marriage". he literally led the christian opposition to gay marriage in argentina

The law is expected to bring a wave of marriages in the gay-friendly capital, Buenos Aires, though only citizens and residents can wed in the country.

A campaign against the bill by the Roman Catholic church and evangelical groups had drawn 60,000 people to march on congress, with parents in churches and schools urged to fight the plans.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio led the campaign, saying "children need to have the right to be raised and educated by a father and a mother".

(2010)

his position later was, again, that gay couples and unmarried couples are sinners, and that marriage is between a man and a woman. love the sinner, hate the sin

But while the Vatican statement was heralded by some as a step toward breaking down discrimination in the Catholic Church, some LGBTQ+ advocates warned it underscored the church’s idea that gay couples remain inferior to heterosexual partnerships.

The document from the Vatican’s doctrine office elaborates on a letter Francis sent to two conservative cardinals that was published in October. In that preliminary response, Francis suggested such blessings could be offered under some circumstances if the blessings weren’t confused with the ritual of marriage.

The new document repeats that condition and elaborates on it, reaffirming that marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman. And it stresses that blessings in question must not be tied to any specific Catholic celebration or religious service and should not be conferred at the same time as a civil union ceremony. Moreover, the blessings cannot use set rituals or even involve the clothing and gestures that belong in a wedding.

2. I know you fucking hate trans people

In an interview with veteran Italian journalists Andrea Tornielli and Giacomo Galeazzi, the pope compares genetic manipulation and nuclear weapons with gender theory, a broad term for how people learn to identify themselves sexually and how it's transmitted culturally.

Let's think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings," the pope says. "Let's think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation."

"With this attitude, man commits a new sin, that against God the Creator," he continues. "The true custody of creation does not have anything to do with the ideologies that consider man like an accident, like a problem to eliminate."

[tevanbuckley]

some low points from the ry*an g*zman interview because i need you all to feel my pain.

when talking about his celibacy (yes he uses that word): "I haven't entertained any interactions with any other females" — gave me the ick 0/10

uses the phrase "a woman's touch," to explain why women are inherently good at interior decorating(?) and that this skill is how women are able to enrich a successful man's life — side note: at no point do they talk about how men enrich women’s lives.

immediately after this the religious imagery takes a left turn and exits my frame of reference, bc instead of just asking "do you think you still have things to work on?" like a normal person, the host says "I want to know what one Thorn is in your flesh." — someone raised more religious than i was needs to chime in on if this is normal christian doctrine or a sign he might be in a cult. (is it a reference to the thorns in jesus' crown?)

ryan makes a weird comment about how "you've seen civilizations built on [a man in love]" — genuinely idk what the fuck this means — but it leads into a tangent about like, men as providers and how "I would do anything for my women."

"peace is key yeah we got enough problems in the world outside the house and so long as I come back to the house and I get peace," — maybe i'm being pedantic but the way he keeps framing woman as belonging in the home is 🚩🚩🚩🚩

"for the next woman I would have in my life I can see that they navigate their their problems and still offer peace to their men." — again 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

surprisingly claims he has been to therapy, which assuming is true, idk it worked.

the host: "women may be fighting internal battles you know kind of themselves do you believe that a woman still fighting those battles are able to still bring peace" — because remember ladies, no matter what you're going through your job is to bring peace to your man's home.

there's some more brief gender essentialist bs where ryan talks about how men "like to fix things," but are bad listeners, and how "problems within women are so specific to women that I wouldn't even try and and say that I have a grasp on them."

then the host randomly asks him if he thinks men need to be financially stable before entering a relationship or if dating a broke guy is a way to "present loyalty."

weirdly ryan actually kind of dodges this question, but ends up suggesting social media is a good place to get "great examples of what does and what doesn't seem to work." in relationships — and no. no it isn't.

oh and then he starts talking about conor mcgregor for some reason? and how it's bad he disrespected his wife by stepping outside their marriage — and i mean sure, although infidelity feels second to the rape accusations??

says it's harder for a woman to come into a man's life when he's already established because "now the man has proven to himself that he never needed a woman." — which, interesting given how later he talks about how women need to stop trying to do the independent woman thing.

he also gets weirdly possessive over his daughter at one point. does the classic "God forbid I find out that man disrespects my little baby." — idk, on the surface he talks about how he wants her to know her value, but it seems like he has a pretty limited view of what that value is.

the host drops lore about how she moved out of her parents house at 14/15 and how she had to "stop thinking like a woman and start thinking also like a man," but stay feminine and "know what a man wants and how to cater to that but also still be soft." — i mean good lord, i don't even know where to start 🤢.

this btw is the preamble to ryan's rant about "independent women."

and god the more i read the more i am deeply concerned about the woman hosting (i saw someone earlier say she's 21). this woman is barely an adult and has so much internalised misogyny, talking about how "us women don't know how to direct our emotions." and "in today's generation a lot of men are deprived of even the small things because a lot of women are takers."

this whole interview is utterly bizarre and i feel like it's taken years off my life. like i said earlier, this isn't a normal podcast he got weird on, this is straight up christian propaganda

[typewriter-worries]

“Take Me to Church” is essentially about sex, but it’s a tongue-in-cheek attack at organizations that would ... well, it’s about sex and it’s about humanity, and obviously sex and humanity are incredibly tied. Sexuality, and sexual orientation — regardless of orientation — is just natural. An act of sex is one of the most human things. But an organization like the church, say, through its doctrine, would undermine humanity by successfully teaching shame about sexual orientation — that it is sinful, or that it offends God. The song is about asserting yourself and reclaiming your humanity through an act of love. Turning your back on the theoretical thing, something that’s not tangible, and choosing to worship or love something that is tangible and real — something that can be experienced.

- Hozier, in an interview with The Cut

[withacapitalp]

All this was inspired by listening to She’s So Overrated by Madilyn Bailey so fair warning LMAO. Also this got SO MUCH LONGER THAN I MEANT IT TO IM SORRY IT WAS JUST ME WRITING DOWN AN IDEA......

Okay so I’m having thoughts about modern AU lead singer Eddie Munson who’s been in the industry for years with the boys. Corroded Coffin is a staple of the metal industry, but for a few years he’s been feeling really stalled in his career and just stuck in place. He’s still making music, still performing, but he feels like he’s getting farther and farther from that kid who used to scream and sing in his closet bedroom in the shoebox apartment he used to share with Wayne. 

So when he and the boys are in an interview and the interviewee brings up how “King” Steve Harrington from The Four is trying to reinvent himself with the help of former bandmate Robin Buckley, Eddie goes off. He works himself up into a little tizzy, ranting Munson Doctrine style about how a former teen pop star trying to become some second rate folk singer isn’t anything special, and that he wouldn’t be caught dead cashing in like that. 

That Steve’s music is bad (even though he’s honestly never listened to it) and “King” Steve is overrated. How even Beiber is better than him. He’s just bullshit. 

Of course the interview goes viral, and finds its way to Steve and Robin. Robin listens to it first and she doesn’t want Steve to watch it. She knows how close things like this cut him (especially that word), and how he’s been dealing with a lot of hate from everyone even from former fans who are confused by the sharp contrast of his new music- aka the music he’s finally being allowed to write now that he’s broken away from his momager- but Steve makes her show him. 

She’s sure that she’s going to have to spend the next week rebuilding his confidence. 

And instead, Steve’s lip curls into a smile, and he grabs his songbook, telling her to find her guitar. 

Eddie wakes up five days after the interview to a huge flood of social media notifications, a dozen missed calls from the boys and his manager and his uncle. He ignores them all and goes to see what he fucked up this time. 

Eddie opens Youtube and it’s at the top of his recommendations. The thumbnail is Steve and Robin sitting together with a guitar in her lap. The title of the video is just one word. 

Bullshit. 

This can’t be good. 

Eddie listens to it even though he doesn’t want to. He’s a lot of things, but he’s not a coward. Not anymore. He listens to it because he has to know how much he’s fucked up. 

And then he listens to it again. And again. And again. 

It gets stuck in his head. All of it. Not just the song (which admittedly is pretty killer) but also hearing the flippantly mean words he had casually thrown at Steve being shoved back in his face. He had seen Steve as an abstract thing, just a symbol of everything wrong with the industry, not a real person. And now this actual human being that he’s hearing has turned all of that garbage into a song that feels more genuine then most of the music on the last two albums he wrote himself. A song that has heart, joy, and a strong current of pain underneath, especially in the bridge where Steve just sings the word bullshit over and over. 

There’s even more than that. He also sees the way Robin and Steve interact while they’re working the smiles, the jabs, the silly little way Steve bobs his head along as he listens to her play, the way they both collapse into giggles at the end as Steve directly quotes the part of the interview where Eddie said that Steve “is just another laundry basket devil trying to act like a big shot now that he’s too old for teen girls to moon over.” 

He can’t remember the last time he and the boys had that much fun making a song. 

Hell, Eddie even sees their apartment. It’s a pretty nondescript room, but he can see the wear and tear on the furniture, the cobwebs in the corners of the room, the slightly drooping houseplant with the name “Dart” lovingly painted on its pot. It feels like a home, and as Eddie looks around at the bedroom in his far too big mansion, he feels even more like a fraud. 

Eddie listens to the song on repeat for most of the morning. In the afternoon he finally answers everyone, and starts to put his plan into motion. 

By that evening he’s on the phone with Steve asking him and Robin to help Corroded Coffin write their next song. 

[miyagi-hokarate]

Why is Daniel Larusso so fruityy??? 💅like???

I had posted a quote from the book A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation by Nguyen Tan Hoang that interviewed Eric Cho, a filmmaker who made a queer short film based on The Karate Kid called We've Got Moves You Haven't Even Heard Of (Part One), who said, "In the original narrative of The Karate Kid, [Daniel] finds his identity and overcomes his enemies, not by taking up gun in typical 8os Rambo/Chuck Norris style, but by disguising his training, becoming more invisible and turning into a beautiful crane over water, therefore connecting to femininity and feminine wisdom.” Hoang summarizes this point on the queer/queerer reading of Daniel LaRusso, stating, "It is under the tutelage of Mr. Miyagi (Noriyuki “Pat” Morita) that Daniel develops a novel masculine-feminine technique of the self that enables his ultimate triumph over his opponents."

While I don't agree to categorize traditional Okinawan karate itself as "feminine", Cobra Kai, its sensei, and students are certainly promoting a heavily (American) masculine presence and doctrine. So in opposition, Daniel is thematically transcending from American values of militarized, societal expectations of masculinity by training, not by the standards and methods his adversaries are practicing, but his own that merges the physical growth of training with beauty, sensitivity, and disguise — a masculine-feminine technique. While Daniel LaRusso may not be queer according to the text, I argue he's often picked up by such (whether derisively or appreciatively) is because of his thematic transcendence of societal ideals of masculinity.

[the-most-humble-blog]

<div style="white-space:pre-wrap"> <meta villain-integrity="final-boss-coded"> <script> ARCHIVE_TAG="THE_SHREDDER::SLAUGHTERHONOR_VS_MOUSEMORALS" EFFECT: retro myth-making, masculine psycho-coding, shellshocked nostalgia overload </script>

🛡️ BLACKSITE SCROLLTRAP — I Don't Care What the Rat Says. Shredder Didn't Give a F==k.

---

Hello again, children of nostalgia. This one’s for the boys who remember Saturday morning violence as theology. This one’s for the girls who secretly preferred the villain’s voice. This one’s for the men who still carry Shredder’s ghost in their jawline.

Let’s talk about the only ninja warlord who ever mattered.

Before social justice ninjas. Before therapy-coded villains. Before corporations started putting trauma in every backstory like it was soy in protein bars.

Shredder didn’t care about your feelings.

He didn’t blink. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t ask for a flashback.

He was here to shred bloodlines and leave orphans. Not resolve anything. Not teach a lesson.

He showed up for violence and legacy. The two most masculine religions on earth.

—

Now picture this:

Your criminal empire is dissolving. Your top soldier got body-slammed by a skateboarding turtle. And the only being who still knows your fighting style is a f**king rat living in piss water with four reptilian TikTok-aged sons.

Do you back down?

Do you log off?

Do you cry?

No.

You climb a rooftop.

In full chrome armor.

Knowing you're about to die.

And you fight four mutant martial artists — not with gadgets or tech — but with rage, precision, and the ghost of feudal Japan pulsing through your blood.

He didn’t use poison. Didn’t ambush. Didn’t whine about fairness.

He walked into the moonlight like a villain carved from black steel and said:

> “Let’s f**king go.”

—

Shredder didn’t ask for justice. He embodied vengeance without explanation.

Did he lose? Of course.

That’s why he’s mythic.

He died in a trash compactor. Like a war god fed to the machine. It took New York’s full mutant might to put him down.

Even his defeat was more cinematic than 90% of Disney finales.

—

Let’s break this down, because most of you forgot how real this was:

✅ 4 superhuman teenage ninjas ✅ 1 rat who’s literally his spiritual rival ✅ His entire army of orphaned street kids gone ✅ No weapons upgrade ✅ No backup ✅ Just honor, spikes, and suicidal testosterone

He showed up anyway.

Shredder wasn’t a villain. He was a warning.

He was the blueprint for final bosses who don’t monologue. Who don’t heal. Who don’t ask the audience to understand.

He was the ancient masculine archetype wrapped in violence, grief, and steel.

—

And now?

You’ve got Reddit users calling him "one-note." Blue-haired nostalgia reviewers acting like he was too mean. People who think “depth” means a villain has to cry about their parents.

You’re soft. And the world knows it.

Shredder didn’t do interviews. He didn’t podcast. He didn’t write a Medium essay about his mental health.

He trained. He conquered. He shredded.

And when death came?

He met it in armor.

Not in a hoodie. Not in a flashback. Not in an apology.

—

> You train for decades in the deadliest art on earth. > You kill your rival. > You build an army from the angry and forgotten. > You mutate yourself with alien ooze. > You look God in the face and swing anyway.

And you want to talk to me about moral nuance?

> He didn’t lose. > He ascended.

That’s not a villain. That’s a doctrine.

—

So go ahead. Get excited for the next female-coded lightsaber moment. Pretend Shredder was too violent. Pretend your childhood villain was too shallow.

But when the final battle comes? When you're outnumbered and drowning in softboy excuses?

You’ll hear the steel echo in your bones — and realize you needed him.

More than you ever needed the rat.

===

🧠 More masculine-coded warfare posts: https://www.patreon.com/TheMostHumble

⚔️ Mythic villains. Ritual memory. Scrolltrap rhythm as a weapon.

🧬 Stop apologizing for the era that raised you. Honor is a fcking blood sport.

</div> <!-- END TRANSMISSION [HONOR SHREDDERED — COWABUNGA WAS NEVER ENOUGH] -->

[mariacallous]

Along with seemingly everybody else I’ve recently been watching the Netflix series Adolescence. It is a striking film that is masterfully shot and powerfully acted. It has also generated a worthwhile public conversation. Much of this conversation has been constructive; however some of it has been animated by a desire to change the subject - to talk about anything but misogyny and the radicalisation of young men on the internet.

I found Adolescence surreal to watch at times. Since 2018 I have been researching the so-called ‘manosphere’ - a loosely affiliated network of masculinist websites, blogs and online forums. The fruit of my labour, Lost Boys: A Personal Journey Through the Manosphere, is out with Atlantic on 5 June. In normal circumstances a book like this would not have taken so unfathomably long to write. But the years since 2018 have been highly unusual. First the pandemic meant that I couldn’t travel. Then, almost as soon as that was over, my grandmother (whom I was extremely close to) died. Perhaps not surprisingly, I had little desire to re-immerse myself in a culture that got its kicks diminishing women while I was still grieving for the one I loved.

Because it took so long to finish, much of the writing took place under a cloud of uncertainty. I wondered whether the subject matter would be old news by the time the book came out. Back in 2018 there was a lot of interest in incels (involuntary celibates) and Jordan Peterson. By 2022 Andrew Tate was all the rage. I was sure that by 2025 the hyper-masculinity stuff was going to peter out. And then Donald Trump was re-elected and Mark Zuckerberg went on the Joe Rogan Experience to preen about ‘masculine energy’. Adolescence, a film about the radicalisation of a young boy by the manosphere, is now Netflix’s top show globally.

Today I feel a bit like a funeral director in the aftermath of a mass casualty event. I would have preferred things to have turned out differently, but considering they haven’t, I intend to put my knowledge to some practical use. Having spent so much time researching the manosphere - including interviewing and interacting with hundreds of men and spending months at a time embedded on a course which purportedly taught men how to become ‘high status alpha males’ - I feel as if I have something worthwhile to contribute.

It is in the nature of television to over-dramatise things and Adolescence depicts an extreme sequence of events. Murders inspired by the manosphere are mercifully rare (I go over several of them in detail in the book). Yet for every act of extreme violence there are probably countless instances of abuse and coercion that are given moral license by the subculture’s misogynistic doctrines. Indeed, many unpleasant things follow from the proposition that women are not quite fully human, even if some of our professional anti-alarmists would like to wave this conversation away as a ‘moral panic’.

Much of the debate inspired by Adolescence has focused on fatherlessness. It is an interesting jumping off point and conservative hand-wringing about fatherlessness is not without foundation. Yet absent fathers are better than violent ones. Moreover, fatherless homes are sometimes a byproduct of the fact that women nowadays feel less coerced into ‘making it work’ with abusive men.

Anti-feminist backlash can bring to mind a line from It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis’s dystopian novel that enjoyed a resurgence during the first Trump administration. ‘Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on,’ writes the author. As women have thrown off some of the oppressive strictures of the past and entered the labour force as (at least in theory) equal participants, some men have experienced a relative loss of status. Until fairly recently, men who found themselves cowed at work could at least dominate their families in the home. They still can in places like Russia, where a woman is killed by a man in a domestic setting every forty minutes. Vladimir Putin knows he has little to offer Russia’s menfolk besides poverty and war. And so he endows them with a sense of domiciliary lordship and dominion. In 2017 the Russian leader signed a law that partially decriminalised domestic violence.

It wasn’t so long ago in the West that women were treated as a form of property and divided up accordingly. Nowadays they mostly get to choose for themselves and the manosphere is rightly seen as a bilious wail of resentment at the fact.

Yet the ‘backlash’ thesis only takes us so far. The rise of the manosphere should probably also be seen a morbid symptom of the suffusion of market logic into every aspect of life. As is often the case, the clue is in the language. Masculinity gurus refer to a ‘sexual marketplace’ where to succeed men must embody certain characteristics that (coincidentally) also correspond with being an ideal neoliberal subject. Dominance, status, and crippling levels of productivity render a man ‘high value’ (people are frequently made to sound like Ebay collectibles) and audiences of impressionable men are encouraged to view life entirely through the prism of getting rich. Women on the other hand are treated either as ornamental status objects - one of the spoils for a successful performance of masculinity - or as breeding stock for patriarchs.

Jamie, the teenage boy who murders a girl from his school in Adolescence, mentions something called the ‘80/20’ rule. ‘80 per cent of women are attracted to 20 per cent of men. You must trick them, because you’ll never get them in a normal way,’ the 13-year-old protagonist tells his psychologist. In its garden variety self-help guise, the 80/20 rule (sometimes called the Pareto Principle) is one of those sterile maxims whose spiritual home is the jejune world of LinkedIn. The basic idea of this supposed ‘law’ is that 80 per cent of consequences come from 20 per cent of causes. The manosphere transposes the same template to sex and relationships. According to Jordan Peterson, sexual access for males is a ‘Pareto-distributed phenomena where a small proportion of the males get most of the invitations’. During the immersive part of my research, I heard one guru explain it as follows to a group of students who had signed up for his $10,000 ‘alpha male’ course (yes, really):

As we got into monogamous societies, what happened was low-status men got at least one girl that they could have sex with. Then after birth control and the sexual revolution we allowed people to choose more, and what women were choosing was the high-status men, so these men at the bottom became surplus again. That’s why you guys are here.

In other words, women are choosing a small percentage of ‘elite’ men and condemning a flotsam of sexual no-hopers (the 80 per cent) to the status of surplus men. This sort of rhetoric is usually accompanied by claims that western civilisation is going down the tubes because society no longer places restrictions on female sexuality (‘culturally enforced monogamy’, as Peterson has euphemistically called it).

In reality the 80/20 rule is a conspiracy theory that doesn’t stand up even in the world of dating apps. According to a study of user activity on Tinder, while women on the app tend to rate men more poorly in terms of their looks, they are also more likely to message the poorly rated men. By contrast, men tend to rate women better in terms of looks, but a majority are only messaging the most popular third of women.

And yet the 80/20 rule (and the manosphere itself) started to gain traction around the time that image and video-based social media took off. Instagram was launched in 2012; ten years later it would be home to a billion users – around an eighth of the world’s population. Tinder, a place where people are depicted as two-dimensional objects in a catalogue of flesh, launched in the same year. These platforms in particular have helped to distort ideas around what is normal and accepted. The more beauty and abundance on one side of the screen, the greater the sense of material and spiritual impoverishment on the other. We know that social media makes women feel insecure about their bodies; yet the same thing is increasingly true for men. A 2025 study published in Psychology of Men & Masculinities found that adolescent boys were increasingly using anabolic steroids to achieve the muscular physiques idealised on social media. If nobody feels like they are good enough anymore then perhaps it is in part because they are not supposed to.

All of which leads to the creation of material conditions that are propitious to convincing young men that they lack the requisite desirable qualities in the so-called sexual marketplace. In the analog age masculinity hucksters were forced to place their ads in the back of top shelf magazines. Yet thanks to social media, where the illusion of success is indistinguishable from the real thing, their bombastic heirs can enchant young men with telegenic charisma and portrayals of a luxurious lifestyle (in common with other pyramid schemes, the trappings of wealth are usually dependent on the guru’s ability to extract money from his followers).

This is why the wisdom of putting smartphones in the hands of children is so central to the debate around the manosphere. We tend to explain radicalisation by searching for pre-existing vulnerabilities. This is often the most appropriate approach: radicalisation can feed on inner turmoil and insecurity. Yet such feelings are not always organic: the market can play its own role in their generation. Wealth in a capitalist economy is accumulated through the creation of needs as much as their satisfaction. And smartphones are the vehicle through which masculinity entrepreneurs are able to circumvent other forms of socialisation (parents, teachers, approved role models) in order to cultivate their pied piper-like appeal.

When I was at school being ‘cool’ was synonymous with possessing whatever action figure or clothing brand or skateboard the market had convinced you was essential. What makes smartphones different is that the commodity itself is the beginning rather than the end of the story. ‘We look through them into the infosphere,’ as the philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes in Non-things. Venturing into the ‘infosphere’ these days increasingly summons feelings of browsing a sales catalogue of low repute. Search engines try to pull you away from the things you are searching for; social media generates conflict and atomisation; dating apps get rich from perpetual singledom.

This is the respectable face of the internet. It is easy enough to find oneself in the slipstream of less reputable sales funnels¹. Charismatic masculinity influencers reel young men in by hammering away at their insecurities. They then present themselves as saviours and guides. The sales pitch goes something like this: ‘The rules of the game have changed; someone like you will never get a girlfriend; however if you follow me (and buy my course which is $495 for a limited time only) I will show you how to escape the ‘Matrix’ (i.e. by embracing a rigid and cartoonish coda of masculinity).

To be online in 2025 is to be one-step removed from the subterranean world of masculinity demagogues. Adults are free to navigate these waters at their own peril. But I suspect that society will come to regret giving children untrammelled access to the devices through which these toxic Confidence Men can peddle their wares. After all, there are more important things in life than the assimilation of kids into the smartphone market.

[loveerran]

LDS Doctrine, 8yr-old Transgender Children and Policy

One of the most shocking things about the new LDS policies for transgender children, is the policy that appears to deny or severely restrict their access to baptism. I discussed that briefly here (last year and recently). This post looks more at the doctrinal side of the question.

LDS doctrine has been amazingly clear and consistent on the treatment of little children prior to the age of accountability (defined as 8yrs-old in Doctrine & Covenants 68) from the very early days of the church. I honestly feel this issue has some nuance, but the church has been absolutely unwavering in stating the tenet that children under the age of 8 cannot sin, or even if they can their sin is swallowed up in the atonement of Christ automatically.

I might personally believe that accountability for actions is a continuum based on the light and law an individual has received (2 Nephi 9:25-6, Luke 12:47-9, Romans 4:15, 5:13, DC 137:7 – a continuum applying to all individuals, regardless of age). However, LDS doctrine and statements are emphatic in declaring the complete innocence of little children, and that the atonement covers them completely until the child is 8 years old:

Moroni 8:8,11-2,14,19 (verses 20+ are much harsher) “...wherefore little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin… their little children need no repentance… little children are alive in Christ, from the foundation of the world… little children cannot repent; wherefore it is awful wickedness to deny the pure mercies of God unto them…”

DC 20:71 “No one can be received into the church of Christ unless he has arrived at the years of accountability before God, and is capable of repentance”

DC 68:27 “And their children shall be baptized for the remission of their sins when eight years old, and receive the laying on of the hands”

DC 74:7 “But little children are holy, being sanctified through the atonement of Christ; and this is what the scriptures mean”

See also Mosiah 3:16, Mosiah 15:25, DC 29:46-7, DC 137:10, JST Genesis 17:3-11, etc.

Taken together, little children are whole and clean through Jesus Christ until they arrive at the years of accountability and are capable of repentance. And that age is 8 years old. Church leaders have repeatedly restated this:

Dallin H Oaks: “We understand from our doctrine that before the age of accountability a child is ‘not capable of committing sin’” (Dallin H. Oaks, “Sins and Mistakes,” Ensign, Oct. 1996, 65)

Bruce R. McConkie “There comes a time, however, when accountability is real and actual and sin is attributed in the lives of those who develop normally. It is eight years of age, the age of baptism.” (Bruce R. McConkie, “The Salvation of Little Children,” Ensign, Apr. 1977, 6)

And we can even see this in the policies laid out in the current General Handbook of Instructions:

31.2.3.1: Children who are Members of Record

(note: children of record are children whose names are on the rolls of the church prior to baptism at age 8)

"In the interview, the bishopric member ensures that the child understands the purposes of baptism (see 2 Nephi 31:5–20). He also ensures that the child understands the baptismal covenant and is committed to live by it (see Mosiah 18:8–10). He does not need to use a specified list of questions. This is not an interview to determine worthiness, since 'little children need no repentance' (Moroni 8:11)."

(bold emphasis mine)

But for the first time in our history, we have an exception to this rule, and it applies only if the child is transgender. Instead of a meaningful interview with the local bishop or one of his counselors about following Jesus, a transgender child (and only a transgender child) who dresses differently or uses a different name and pronouns must have a worthiness interview with the regional Stake President directly. There is no other ‘sin’ that calls for this, even when little children have somehow perpetrated horrible crimes. If the Stake President finds the child worthy (is this even possible under the new guidelines??), he recommends the child for baptism to the First Presidency. The First Presidency is the highest council/court in the church, from which there is no appeal. The First Presidency then chooses whether or not to permit the child to be baptized. This new policy is spelled out in the Handbook:

38.2.8.9: Individuals Who Identify as Transgender

"Any exception to this policy requires the approval of the First Presidency. To request approval, the mission president, or the stake president for an eight-year-old, interviews the person. If he finds the person to be worthy and if he recommends baptism and confirmation, he submits a request for approval to the First Presidency using LCR."

(bold emphasis mine)

In the past, the church has denied baptism to the children of polygamists and to the children of gays (possibly others). In those cases, it could always be said the child’s parents were at fault, not the child themselves. This new policy is a marked departure from that and, in my opinion, is inconsistent with the church’s doctrine. I hope to see this policy adjusted as other policies have been when they do not align well with our core values and doctrines.

Love,

Erran

[ysmtttty]

"Again"

Chapter 1 || Read on AO3 or below || Chapter 2

Eris week Day 7 @erisweekofficial

Lawyer AU where Eris and Nesta used to be rivals before she got married and decided to leave the field. But now she is divorced and determined to return to the legal field, even if it means working with Eris, not against him.

It was humiliating. Being here, gathering her thoughts, preparing to say what she was about to say, asking for this meeting. Even thinking about what she needed to do was unpleasant.

However, it had been just under seven years since she last looked toward the constitution or any legal doctrines, and, though she didn’t want to admit it, Nesta understood that she was no longer in the form she once was. She had been rejected by dozens of firms to which she had sent her resume. Considering her suspended legal license, this was expected, but something on a prideful level wouldn’t allow her to live with it any longer.

Though the fact that she was currently walking toward Eris Vanserra's office building showed that she didn’t have much pride left.

Passing by blocks of identical skyscrapers, Nesta glanced around, spotting the letter G on one of the buildings’ walls, indicating the block she needed. Tightening her grip on her bag strap, she went inside, heading for the elevator.

As the elevator slowly ascended, Nesta mentally prepared herself for rejection, understanding that her chances were somewhere between zero and one-thousandth. She prepared herself for an argument, already constructing a chain of arguments she could use if Eris started a debate. She also prepared herself for the possibility that they would, as usual, exchange sharp remarks, and Eris would hit her in the most painful spots, as he always did. Just as Nesta did in return.

On the twenty-seventh floor, the elevator doors opened, and Nesta let out a loud sigh, reminding herself that she was Nesta Archeron and shouldn’t fear any interview. Even if it was an interview at Eris’s firm.

The entire floor was occupied by his office alone, no one else’s. Finding the reception desk, Nesta approached a pleasant young woman and mentioned that she had a meeting with Eris. The woman kindly showed her to the right office and offered her coffee, which Nesta declined.

After asking her to wait inside, the woman left, leaving Nesta alone in the spacious office. Panoramic windows, bookshelves filled with various reference books, a few paintings of dogs, a small leather sofa in the corner with a coffee table, and a dark oak desk with organized folders and organizers on it. Nesta smirked mentally, Eris had always been obsessed with order, so the state of his workspace didn’t surprise her at all. Everything was polished to a shine, every item in its exact place.

She sighed and ran her hand over the desk as she walked to an empty chair, taking her seat and thinking about how this could have been her. It could have been her office, her firm, all that she had dreamed of achieving and would have achieved if she had chosen herself seven years ago.

Nesta thought about how her life would have changed if she hadn’t given up then. If she hadn’t listened to Cassian and his endless pleas for her to work less, which later escalated into pleas to give up her career altogether. Not directly, of course, because Nesta would hardly have let him finish such a suggestion. But Cassian knew how to persuade.

He knew how to convince her that she didn’t need this law firm all that much, especially considering that she had gotten pregnant and would have gone on maternity leave anyway. And then... postpartum depression, complications after childbirth from which Nesta had taken too long to recover; constant arguments with her husband about what was best for her and what was best for their daughter; and then the second pregnancy. And so seven years passed, and Nesta was no longer a lawyer. She had two wonderful daughters, whom she loved with all her heart, a broken marriage, and remnants of her former life.

Nesta could never say she regretted deciding to keep the baby. Astrid was the best thing that had happened in her life, just like her second daughter, Callista. Even though they preferred Cassian, leaving Nesta to be content with seeing the kids only on weekends because it was easier for them to stay with their fun dad than their strict mom. And because Cassian had a more flexible schedule than she would have if she actually got the job at the law firm, so it was a logical decision. Logical, even if it still hurt her.

"Nesta Archeron, I can’t believe my eyes," Eris’s voice rang out, and Nesta turned her head toward the door as he entered the office, smiling at her. "When you called me, to be honest, I was completely astonished."

Nesta looked at him, noticing small changes in his appearance. A different hairstyle, he was maybe a few centimeters taller than she remembered, his muscles had grown larger, obviously, he was now hitting the gym. But still the same expensive suits, the same eyes with a predatory gleam, sharp facial features, and a familiar smirk. Nesta had forgotten how handsome Eris was, perhaps because she hadn’t cared about it before, but here she was, single for several months, and maybe that made her a little biased in her judgment of men’s appearances.

"Nice setup," Nesta said, gesturing around. Eris just shrugged and scoffed, as if to say it was nothing special, as he walked to his chair and took his seat. Still the same annoying bastard as always — perfect. In a way, Nesta missed having Eris’s presence in her life, the constant desire to outmaneuver him once again.

"What can I do for you?" he asked, crossing his legs and twirling a gold Parker pen in his hand. "It’s not often I hear you asking for help. I didn’t even know you had that function."

"Funny," Nesta rolled her eyes, feeling like she was back in law school, when she and Eris teased each other at every opportunity.

Back then, she had wanted to take him down a peg and put the smug jerk in his place, while Eris wanted to prove to her that he was here because he deserved it, not because his parents had donated for a new building. And so they both spent nights in the library, preparing for the next exam, occasionally lifting their heads from books to exchange middle fingers across the library.

"I need a job," Nesta said bluntly, not wanting to beat around the bush. Eris raised an eyebrow in surprise, looking at her as if she had said something completely crazy.

"And you’re asking me for a job?" he asked, still not understanding her intent. Nesta sighed loudly and nodded.

"The best law firm in the city," Nesta shrugged, as if coming here had been her first thought and it was completely logical. "You know what happened to my previous one."

Eris studied her for a long time, as if analyzing her and her intentions. Nesta held his gaze, remaining steadfast under those amber eyes. She studied him in return, trying to catch every emotion flickering across his face to convince him.

"I have all the documents with me if needed," she added, adjusting her bag that lay on her lap. Eris gave a bored glance in that direction, then slowly raised his eyes back to her face, lingering a rough extra second at her neckline.

"Tell me something I don’t already know," he scoffed, implying that every grade, every case won, every qualification certificate Nesta had was already known to him, as he had been present in her life during each of these accomplishments.

Nesta frowned, thinking about how to answer that question. She had hoped, banked a lot on the fact, that Eris would be convinced, knowing her. He was the one to whom Nesta had boasted about her LSAT scores, which were one point higher than his own. He was the one with whom they had applied for various internships and worked together as summer associates in firms. He was the one to whom Nesta had always reminded of every case she won against him, every time they faced each other in court, and in her last years of practice, this happened very often. Eris knew how good a lawyer Nesta was.

"Isn’t that enough?" she asked, lifting her chin and deliberately maintaining her confidence.

"You have been out of the field for seven years, Nesta," Eris sighed, surprisingly without the sarcasm and mockery that Nesta expected to hear in his voice. "In seven years, how many changes do you think have happened in the law? New laws, changes in legislative acts, even the smallest shifts in judicial practice. And even without all that, seven years without any practice is not a small problem, Nesta."

"Are you refusing me?"

Eris didn't answer immediately. Instead, he twirled the same Parker pen between his fingers while Nesta awaited his decision. The past version of Nesta would have been deeply disappointed to learn that her future now lay in the hands of Eris Vanserra. Perhaps that past version of her would have slapped her across the face if she had known.

"No," Eris eventually said, to her surprise and relief. "But I will request that you complete a few additional courses for testing and upgrading your qualifications, aside from the ones you are already required to take to reinstate your license. On the company's dime, of course. Until then, I can't offer you an associate position."

"Then what are you proposing I do? Bring you coffee like a secretary?" Nesta sarcastically asked, knowing that mocking someone who had just generously offered her a job was illogical.

"A paralegal," Eris responded calmly instead of getting annoyed, finally setting the pen down on the desk and crossing his fingers.

"A paralegal? Eris, I was a senior associate and the top candidate for a partner role at my last firm. You can't expect me to believe that a paralegal position suits me."

"Nesta," Eris said in a warning tone, "seven years is a long time. This position will be temporary. It will help you integrate into the team, familiarize yourself with our client base, and get used to the legal environment again. I'm not doing this to humiliate you, believe me, that's the last thing I'd want to do to you. You were an excellent lawyer, but that was a long time ago. If you want your position back, prove to me that you're capable of it now."

He was right. To Nesta's deep regret, Eris was right. She was no longer the Nesta Archeron of the past, who could recite entire legal handbooks from memory, intimidate any lawyer in court, and win every case that came her way. So, to her even greater dismay, Nesta had to agree with Eris for the first time in a long time.

The rest of their conversation covered details like salary and schedule. Nesta was surprised that Eris accommodated her not only by offering her the job but also by setting a fairly high salary, despite the limited hours she could work due to her need to balance it with the qualification courses. Though Eris had never been particularly concerned about money.

The following week, Nesta started her job at Eris's firm. It wasn’t something she took pride in, but it was her best option. It was genuinely difficult to get used to a job she had once confidently declared herself the best at, to reenter the rhythm. But over time, she adapted to the new pace, juggling online modules, occasional in-person seminars, and work, while completely detaching on weekends to spend time with her lovely daughters.

Besides, the position didn’t demand the superhuman effort her previous bosses—and she herself—once required when she worked at her last firm, stubbornly trying to prove to them and herself that she was capable of earning the partner position quickly. Working overtime, closing major cases one after another, and building connections with hundreds of people, Nesta had quickly been promoted to senior associate.

But then, she met Cassian. The owner of a sports club located very close to Nesta's firm, fate had brought them together very quickly. Cassian was charming, sweet, and optimistic, while Nesta was perpetually sleep-deprived, grouchy but efficient lawyer, who believed sleep was for the weak.

After a few months of dating, squeezed into Nesta's tight schedule, she agreed to marry him, not thinking that eight months was too short. Her younger sister Feyre had also married quickly, and while Nesta had initially judged that decision, her younger sister's happiness quickly proved her wrong.

For the wedding and honeymoon, Nesta used all her annual leave for the first time, something she had never done before. And during the planning of where and when the ceremony would take place, she found out she was pregnant.

Pregnancy wasn’t part of her plans. She almost filed a lawsuit against the company that produced her contraceptive pills, but Cassian convinced her that the legal proceedings would take too much time and money, especially since they were already tight on finances due to wedding preparations.

Feyre, with a one-year-old child at the age of twenty-one, told her how wonderful it was to be a mother. Nesta didn’t deny that it was wonderful—for her younger sister—but she herself didn’t feel ready for motherhood. Not now. Not when her firm was on the verge of taking on another partner.

But she couldn’t bring herself to terminate the pregnancy either.

After long discussions, she and Cassian decided to keep the baby, trim the wedding budget a bit, and prepare for the arrival of the newest family member.

Looking back on those years now, Nesta couldn’t understand who that girl was who decided to give up her career in favor of becoming a housewife. Of course, Cassian hadn’t wanted to shut down his gym either to become a stay-at-home dad and give her the chance to return to work. Nesta never asked him to. She couldn’t. Not when his eyes lit up with ideas for his gym, always coming up with new ways to improve the business.

But the Nesta who had studied at Harvard Law School, the Nesta who had fought tooth and nail for her position in that field, the Nesta who had obliterated all her opponents in court, wondered why it had to be her. Why did she have to give up her career? Why did she have to give up her dreams when she was perfectly capable of returning to work after a year or two of caring for Astrid?

"Nesta," a voice interrupted her thoughts, and Nesta looked up to see Eris standing over her desk.

"Yes?"

"Is the motion for reconsideration on the current case ready?" He seemed to be asking for the second time.

"Yes," Nesta quickly scanned her desk, found the document, and handed it to him. "I was going to give it to your assistant, but he wasn’t at his desk."

"Probably running the errands I gave him this morning," Eris shrugged, taking the papers and briefly brushing his fingers against hers. Nesta instinctively pulled her hand back quickly, hoping he didn’t notice. If he did, Eris made no comment and retreated to his office, not emerging even when the workday officially ended.

Not that she cared when he left the office. However, working now, Nesta found herself being more mindful of her time, not driven to work excessive hours for the sake of a higher position. Maybe it was because she couldn’t get that position yet, at least not until she finished her courses and Eris was satisfied with the result. But over the years, she had learned how much she needed to value her personal time. Especially when looking back over the last decade, she saw work, she saw family, but she didn’t see Nesta Archeron—only the efforts she made for everything else, but never for herself.

One evening, Nesta decided to step into Eris's office, wondering if he planned to spend the entire weekend there since that’s how it seemed. After knocking and entering, she watched as Eris paced around his desk, phone pressed to his ear, eyebrows furrowed, and lips twisted in irritation.

"Make sure the act is on my desk by Monday. I don’t care what strings you have to pull to make it happen," he said to someone on the phone. Nesta didn’t envy the poor soul on the other end of the call.

A few more minutes passed, and the conversation ended. Eris rubbed his eyes wearily and finally looked in her direction.

"Still the same workaholic, I see," Nesta smiled.

"Do you need something?" he asked politely.

"I'm glad that after all these years, you've finally learned some manners," Nesta couldn’t resist commenting, too used to their usual style of banter.

"Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for you," Eris smirked in return. "Seriously though, why aren’t you home yet, Nesta? Don’t you have a loving husband and child waiting for you?"

Nesta froze. Eris had no idea that she was divorced. And the ring on her finger didn’t help. She was wearing just a regular ring, not her wedding one, purely to avoid unwanted attention from male colleagues who she had no interest in.

"No," she said quietly. "The kids are with Cassian. We… divorced about a month ago."

Eris’s eyes widened in surprise, clearly not expecting that. His gaze briefly fell to her right hand, noticing the ring, then he looked at her questioningly.

"I don’t want unnecessary male attention," Nesta explained, taking off the ring and putting it in her bag.

"I didn’t know," Eris said, referring to the divorce. "That explains your sudden eagerness to return. And… I’m sorry it turned out that way."

Feeling a lump forming in her throat, Nesta quickly swallowed and shrugged. "Don’t be. Divorce isn’t as bad as it sounds."

Eris just grunted, sitting back down at his desk while Nesta stood in the doorway.

"Aren’t you heading home?" she asked, glancing at the clock on the wall. "Not many people stay at the office until nine in the evening, especially on Friday."

"And yet, here we both are," Eris chuckled softly. "For some reason, I’m not even surprised."

Nesta gave a small laugh too, knowing it was true. Neither of them was surprised. This was how it had always been. The two of them, constantly striving to do more, to achieve more, never knowing when to stop. Maybe there wasn’t even an endpoint, just endless work toward some abstract goal that, in theory, should satisfy them and make them stop.

"Drink?" Eris suddenly suggested, holding her gaze.

Nesta didn’t think long before nodding in agreement, knowing it was better than going back to an empty apartment. She watched as Eris packed his things into a black case with his initials, grabbed his coat from the hanger, and headed toward the elevator. After descending to the ground floor, they stepped outside, and Eris led the way to the nearest bar.

Given that the area catered to high-powered businessmen, lawyers, and financiers, every establishment was top-tier, so there was no need to worry about the quality of service. Nesta glanced around, unable to shake the feeling of how much she had missed this life.

Eris spoke to the bar’s hostess, asking if they had any available tables. After casually mentioning his last name, the girl bustled around even more, and within five minutes, they were seated in a VIP booth.

"Tell me," Nesta said, looking over the wine menu, "What have I missed all this time?"

"Well, chronologically speaking, changes to legislation of the year…" Eris began, but Nesta snorted. He chuckled softly too. "But seriously, you missed a lot of boring court procedures. The law is the same—boring and monotonous."

Nesta was surprised to hear that from Eris. For her, it had never been boring. It was a challenge, a new obstacle, a new problem to solve by finding the right loophole in the right law. It had always been interesting.

"Seriously?" she asked. "I thought you enjoyed being a lawyer."

"I do enjoy being a lawyer," Eris nodded, gesturing to the waitress to take their order. "But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s incredibly dull without the right opponent on the other side," he smirked faintly.

Nesta didn’t have a chance to ask him more about that statement, as the waitress arrived to take their order.

"Since we’ve already touched on my disastrous personal life, what about yours?" Nesta asked, amused as Eris winced at the question.

"Nothing’s changed," he said dryly. "Some things are better left unchanged."

Back in law school, Eris had stated that he wasn’t a fan of relationships, never wanted them, and never would. It seemed he hadn’t changed his mind, and Nesta realized he had been serious back then.

"I’ve never understood your aversion to relationships," she scoffed.

"It’s not aversion. It’s a preference for not sharing space or wasting resources and time," Eris rolled his eyes. This was a debate they’d had several times before. Nesta genuinely did not understand his stubborn position, and Eris defended that stubborn position even more stubbornly. "Besides, can you imagine me falling in love with someone? Losing my head over a person?”

"I don’t know, maybe you should have at least tried before dismissing the idea," Nesta shrugged. "Falling in love isn’t as complicated as you make it out to be. It’s a lot easier than drafting a corporate merger agreement."

The waitress returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses, pouring them each a glass, and then returned with plates of cheese, tartlets with caviar, and other snacks.

"I tried," Eris said quietly. "Didn’t work out."

Nesta didn’t push the topic any further, understanding that if he asked about Cassian, she wouldn’t want to answer either. Instead, she raised her glass, watching as Eris did the same.

"To things staying the same," she smiled faintly, for some reason happy that Eris smiled back.

"To things staying the same," he echoed, clinking his glass with hers and taking a sip.

It was strange to sit in a bar with someone Nesta once thought she despised. Eris used to be far more sarcastic and venomous, perhaps as she had been too. They couldn’t last five minutes in the same room without throwing insults at each other, except in court—there, instead of insults, they used dry legal jargon and countless arguments. And now, here they were, sitting together, drinking wine, and catching up on life. Maturing, she thought.

"I'm glad you're back," Eris said around his fifth glass. Nesta looked at him with surprise.

"I thought you'd be glad there’s no one left to fear in court," she smirked. Eris rolled his eyes.

"I never 'feared' you, just so you know," he scoffed. "But when you left, I did get a bit bored. Few could match you, and those who could were not even nearly as pleasant to look at. And at the same time, I’m glad you’re now working for me, not against me. I'm at the age where you could easily give me a few gray hairs if you faced me in court."

Nesta couldn’t help but laugh at his words. "And you call that not being afraid of me?"

"Just trying to hold onto a bit of pride," Eris grinned.

The rest of the evening, Nesta spent asking Eris about the partner position, thinking that it wasn’t too late for her after all. Later, Eris called them a taxi, giving her address first, then his, despite her protests that it would mean a longer trip for him across the city.

tag list: @chairofchaos

[vague-humanoid]

Evangelical Christian leader Russell Moore revealed this week that many evangelical pastors have become alarmed that their Trump-loving congregants have become so militant that they are even rejecting the teachings of Jesus Christ.

In an interview with NPR, Moore said that multiple pastors had told him disturbing stories about their congregants being upset when they read from the famous "Sermon on the Mount" in which Christ espoused the principles of forgiveness and mercy as central to Christian doctrine.

"Multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — 'turn the other cheek' — [and] to have someone come up after to say, 'Where did you get those liberal talking points?'" Moore revealed. "And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, 'I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ,' the response would not be, 'I apologize.' The response would be, 'Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak.'"

Moore, who has been an outspoken critic of many evangelicals' embrace of Trump, argues that this has led him to conclude that American evangelical Christianity is now in crisis.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Since he took office as prime minister a second time in 2009, that same Netanyahu developed and advanced a destructive, warped political doctrine that held that strengthening Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority would be good for Israel. The purpose of the doctrine was to perpetuate the rift between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. That would preserve the diplomatic paralysis and forever remove the “danger” of negotiations with the Palestinians over the partition of Israel into two states – on the argument that the Palestinian Authority doesn’t represent all the Palestinians.

[...]

Between 2012 and 2018, Netanyahu gave Qatar approval to transfer a cumulative sum of about a billion dollars to Gaza, at least half of which reached Hamas, including its military wing. According to the Jerusalem Post, in a private meeting with members of his Likud party on March 11, 2019, Netanyahu explained the reckless step as follows: The money transfer is part of the strategy to divide the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Anyone who opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support the transfer of the money from Qatar to Hamas. In that way, we will foil the establishment of a Palestinian state (as reported in former cabinet member Haim Ramon’s Hebrew-language book “Neged Haruach”, p. 417). In an interview with the Ynet news website on May 5, 2019, Netanyahu associate Gershon Hacohen, a major general in reserves, said, “We need to tell the truth. Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.”

[campgender]

Hey hello! Can you recommend any excangelical podcasts? I hope you are doing well!

tysm, i hope you are too❣️ there are a ton of podcasts in this sphere & i often cycle through periods of intense engagement & more distance, so these recs are a combination of luck & personal taste — there are artists & activists like kevin garcia whose work i’ve been profoundly shaped by & whose podcasts i just don’t click with.

i’m also going to mix in the exMo & other deconstruction podcasts i listen to because i’ve found both the emotional experience really relatable as a pastor’s kid & thus someone raised in a certain epicenter of cultiness, & also, because the 1800s politics it reflects are foundational to evangelical doctrines & values, too, Mormon history & theology can be super useful for understanding what were more unspoken beliefs in my upbringing.

exvangelical with blake chastain

a good way to find other artists but not something i listen to more than selectively

combination of reading political commentary essays from his blog (i find the sentence structure of this type of thing difficult to follow, especially out loud) & interviews with other podcasters / artists about their journeys & work

#BadTheologyKills with Kevin Garcia

Andre Henry, author of All The White Friends I Couldn’t Keep

mormon stories with john dehlin & the open stories foundation staff

john changed my life in high school as the first person i’d heard of willing to be excommunicated (largely) due to queer issues as an ally. i don’t always agree with his lens — he has a doctorate in psychology & more faith in the medical establishment than i could ever endorse — but he defends queer youth with his heart & soul & statistics and i have a lot of respect for him + his work.

combination of long-form (like, 3-10+ hours) interviews about people’s journeys in/leaving the church & political commentary / breaking news, usually in panel form, with some church history series with guests.

Ep 1442: Was I raised in a cult or high-demand religion? A self-assessment

Ep 1588: Noah’s Flood with Dr. Simon Southerton (I also recently finished a great book on this topic which i think was on his recommendation? The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood by David R. Montgomery; link goes to my review on storygraph)

REVcovery with justin gentry & rev sarah heath

i started listening to this one when it started because of justin’s other podcast (mentioned later), i find him really relatable in a lot of personality ways (things i associate in myself with being obsessive-compulsive) & i really appreciate the ways he relates those to Methodism, how that environment fosters + rewards those traits.

justin is also an ally who got fired from his pastoral position over being queer-affirming; sarah is an ally who ran an affirming UMC church before retiring from burnout.

there are two main reasons i like this podcast: the focus on (ex)pastors & the Methodist lens. similar to what i mentioned earlier, pastors are deeply “in it,” & i think the experiences of the hosts & their interviewees are relatable to a lot of people who were/are heavily volunteerized &/or publicized in church. like, by the time i was in middle school i was doing as much if not more church work as my dad (who was not a senior pastor at the time), so while some of their more “pastoral” experiences i can only relate to from a level of peer support, most of their discussions resonate directly

interviews about guests’ journeys, almost all (ex)pastors or other religious leaders + conversations between the hosts about a certain topic + practical advice like building a resume when your only experience is in church work

Episode 23: Pay Janice Lagata

Bart Ehrman, acclaimed New Testament scholar & former evangelical

the Bart Ehrman Blog Podcast hosts audio of select posts (his entire posting library is available for an annual fee his organization donates to charity)

a variety of his interviews & audio of his guest lectures can be found across various other podcasts

How Jesus Became God lecture (i also recently finished this book lol)

The Bible as Literature & Media lecture

Bad Words with Janice Lagata

she’s a former longtime unpaid worker in the upper levels of Hillsong

premise is “giving bad theology the read it deserves” — each episode discusses a chapter of a book reflective of evangelical theology/culture

she’s amazing but unfortunately i have trouble with the audio quality of her guests a lot of the time

her other podcast is God Has Not Given

Mormon.ish with Rebecca Bibliotheca & Landon Brophy

exMo & culturally Mormon news analysis & history

Rebecca does Mormon News Roundup which is sometimes cross-posted on Mormon Stories which is how i found her podcast, i find her style really easy to listen to

The LDS “Indian Placement Program” & Its Legacy with Native academic Dr. Elise Boxer (the blurb on the listing is accidentally from the wrong week but it’s the right audio)

LDS International Temple Building: The Same Controversial Playbook? with anthropologist Jason Boxer, about LDS neo/colonialism in Peru & how these tactics are then applied domestically

Go Home Bible, You’re Drunk with Tori Williams Douglass & Justin Gentry

started out with them doing drinking games to bible stories, now a mix of discussing bible stories or evangelical cultural phenomena, alcohol optional. more casual / laid-back vibe

gonna be a pedant for a second, honestly now that they do more cultural commentary eps i prefer those bc as someone who reads a lot of historical-critical biblical analysis it bothers me when they refer to the way they were taught / evangelicals teach the text as the meaning of the text, when there’s cultural/symbolic background they’re not aware of (in those instances; i’m not trying to say they’re uninformed or anything). particularly bothers me when it’s about a story from Judaism

Blessed Are The Binary Breakers with Avery Arden @blessedarethebinarybreakers

more Christian than ex but lots of trans guests + broad experiences of & perspectives on faith

Another Name for Every Thing with Richard Rohr

he’s a Franciscan mystic & panentheist (distinct & very different, as he reminds listeners often, from my pantheism lol)

this podcast discusses his book The Universal Christ, he has other audio projects

i hope some of those are interesting to / helpful for you! wishing you all the best xx

[darkmaga-returns]

Here are some facts from a major new 188 page report. The findings were presented this week to the BBC’s chief executive news editor Richard Burgess. As a result, we know the following about the Beeb:-

The BBC has never mentioned Israel’s policy to kill its own civilians (to prevent hostage-taking) on 7 October - the Hannibal Directive.

The BBC has never mentioned Israel’s longstanding Dahiya Doctrine aka the “mow the lawn” strategy - a 20-year policy to push Gaza back to the “Stone Age”.

The BBC has failed to report the many dozens of genocidal statements from Israeli officials since 7 October. It was completely silent on Netanyahu himself calling Palestinians “Amalek” - a Biblical call for extermination.

The BBC has shut down the use of the word “genocide” by guests on air over 100 times since 7 October. Its own journalists are, of course, not allowed to use the term.

The BBC has reported on just 6% (compared to 62 per cent of the smaller number in Ukraine) of the more than 225 journalists killed by Israel in Gaza, despite it killing more than all other major conflicts of the past 160 years combined.

The BBC has never invited Israeli historian Avi Shlaim - a prominent Oxford academic critical of Israeli policy - on air.

The BBC has dismissed concerns about British spy planes over Gaza operating from the UK airbase in Cyrpus. “I don’t think we should overplay the UK’s contribution,” Burgess responded.

The BBC has profileed Israel victims 30 times more than Palestinian victims.

The BBC has interviewed Israelis twice as often as Palestinians.

The BBC has asked 38 guests to condemn Hamas, none to condemn Israel.

The BBC has mentioned “occupation” 14 times in sampled news articles (0.3%) when providing context to the conflict.

The BBC has covered Ukraine twice as often as Gaza.And one for luck! 13 - The words ‘barbaric’, ‘barbarian/s’, ‘barbaric’ were used over four times as much for attacks on Israelis as compared to Palestinians by BBCpersonnel. The BBC used the words ‘atrocity’ or ‘atrocities’ against Israelis were 17 times more than for Palestinians. ‘Murder’, ‘murdered’, ‘murderous’, ‘murderer/s’ were referenced 220 times by BBC presenters and reporters for actions against Israelis and just once for Palestinians.