“Utah researcher: theory of religious influences in Utah LGBT suicides may be overblown”

Suicide furnishes an issue that more than a few critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have sought mightily to weaponize against the Church.  But it may not be the effective tool that they plainly hope it to be:

“Utah researcher: theory of religious influences in Utah LGBT suicides may be overblown”

Suicide is a terrible, terrible thing, and a tragedy.  It would be a much better world if people didn’t occasionally attempt to exploit it for their own religio-political agendas.

Incidentally, I’m still meditating on what it would mean for a “stance” to be simultaneously “rigid” and “often equivocal.”

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I’m really pleased that she chose to speak out on this subject:

“Rep. Tulsi Gabbard rightly blasts ‘religious bigotry’ of fellow Democrats”

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Every time I think about the fact that this great rhythm and blues singer is a member of the Church, I smile:

“Gladys Knight to Sing National Anthem at 2019 Super Bowl”

And, while I’m thinking about her, I think I’ll share her 1973 hit “Midnight Train to Georgia”:

L.A. proved too much for the man,
so he’s leavin’ the life he’s come to know.
He said he’s goin’ back to find
what’s left of his world,
the world he left behind
not so long ago.
He’s leaving,
on that midnight train to georgia,
and he’s goin’ back
to a simpler place and time.
And I’ll be with him
on that midnight train to Georgia.
I’d rather live in his world
than live without him in mine.
He kept dreamin’
that someday he’d be a star.
But he sure found out the hard way
that dreams don’t always come true.
So he pawned all his hopes
and he even sold his old car,
bought a one way ticket
to the life he once knew.
Oh yes he did.
He said he would
be leavin
on that midnight train to Georgia,
and he’s goin’ back
to a simpler place and time.
And I’ll be with him
on that midnight train to Georgia.
I’d rather live in his world
than live without him in mine.
Go, gonna board, gonna board,
gonna board the midnight train.
Gotta go, gonna board,
gonna board,
gonna board the midnight train.

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“Temple Rededications Announced for May 2019”

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Some of you will find this item interesting, from the inimitable Robert Boylan of Ireland:

“Ronald Hendel and Jan Joosten on the Amulets from Ketef Hinnom Being Pre-Exilic”

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The only alternative to Joseph Smith’s explanation [of the origin of the Book of Mormon] is to assume the existence of a forger who at one moment is so clever and adroit as to imitate the archaic poetry of the desert to perfection and supply us with genuine Egyptian names, and yet so incredibly stupid as to think that the best way to fool people and get money out of them is to write an exceedingly difficult historical epic of six hundred pages.

Endowed with the brains, perseverance, and superhuman cunning necessary to produce this monumental forgery, the incredibly sly genius did not have the wit to know, after years of experience in the arts of deception, that there are ten thousand safer and easier ways of fooling people than by undertaking a work of infinite toil and danger which, as he could see from the first, only made him immensely unpopular.

Hugh Nibley, The Prophetic Book of Mormon, 59