![\"Egypt's](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2017\/05\/Nile_and_Cairo.jpg\")
<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
My wife and I went out to dinner last night with a former student of mine and her husband, who himself recently retired as a professor of biology at a university in Texas.\u00a0 They have been in the MTC lately and will soon begin eighteen months as a Church service couple in Egypt.\u00a0 She was a participant in an intensive Arabic program that I led, quite poorly, for BYU in Jerusalem back in the first half of (gulp!) 1993.\u00a0 We were joined by another student in that program, along with his wife and two of his children.\u00a0 He has had a fascinating career in international business, with residencies in more countries all over the world than I can name right now off the top of my head.\u00a0 Until a few years ago, he was the president of the Church\u2019s Cairo Egypt Branch.\u00a0 Needless to say, the conversation was fascinating, with lots of good information and pointers and discussions about life in Cairo and about the state of the Church there.\u00a0 Good food, good company.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t get much better in this life.<\/p>\n
In the words of the apostle John, \u201cI have no greater joy than to hear that my children [umm, as it were] walk in truth\u201d (3 John 1:4).<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Yesterday, I posted a fairly large number of links about transgenderism that I had been saving up for future sharing.\u00a0 Doing so brought a considerable amount of obfuscatory irrelevance from one commenter who refused to read the links, but also drew some excellent suggestions from other people here for further reading and viewing.\u00a0 I\u2019m very grateful for their recommendations, and I share them with you here:<\/p>\n Hannah Barnes, Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock\u2019s Gender Service for Children<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Jamie Reed, \u201cI Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I\u2019m Blowing the Whistle. There are more than 100 pediatric gender clinics across the U.S. I worked at one. What\u2019s happening to children is morally and medically appalling.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n The Trans Train<\/a><\/em>\u00a0\u2014 a 58-minute Swedish documentary, available for free on YouTube<\/p>\n The writer Jesse Singal was also suggested, but I don\u2019t yet have a specific reference for him.<\/p>\n This seems to me an urgently important issue for the public to be informed about.\u00a0 There are strong social and ideological tides at work right now, backed by powerful social, political, and media elites.\u00a0 But I fear that they and we may be acting like lemmings rushing toward a cliff.<\/p>\n And here, in a rather brighter mood, are four somewhat amusing additional links that are more or less related to the issue of transgenderism.\u00a0 However, you should be warned that the fourth of these contains language that, umm, is not appropriate for either the lips or the ears of good Latter-day Saints:<\/p>\n \u201cEven Hell\u2019s Kitchen?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cBud Light Doesn\u2019t Seem to Understand Its Own Consumers\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cBudweiser Clydesdale Events Canceled as Bud Light Boycott Grows\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe Top Ten Reactions to Bud Light\u2019s Dylan Mulvaney Campaign\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n In the spirit of full disclosure here, I think that I need to publicly declare that I myself will be drinking no Bud Light whatever for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Sometimes the always-urgent search for angles of attack against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> runs into obstacles.\u00a0 It seems that this one won\u2019t be quite as effective as some critics plainly wished:<\/p>\n \u201cArizona Supreme Court upholds Latter-day Saint priest-penitent privilege in sex abuse case:\u00a0Court rules that the confidential spiritual confession made to a Latter-day Saint bishop was protected by Arizona law\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Here\u2019s some very useful background:<\/p>\n \u201cPerspective: Eliminating the clergy exemption can have unintended consequences: Studies on mandatory reporting show these laws don\u2019t always work as intended\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cMandatory Reporting Isn\u2019t the Solution: It\u2019s increasingly common to hear people point towards laws compelling reporting as the answer to our child abuse crisis. Yet the research doesn\u2019t back this up \u2013 highlighting a number of complications that need more attention.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n And here\u2019s a prior blog entry on the topic, with further references:<\/p>\n \u201c\u201cShould a member of the clergy report sex abuse of the penitent? A look inside the priest-penitent privilege\u201d\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m being accused over at the Peterson Obsession Board of having deleted a lengthy exchange, including ten or fifteen posts in which I supposedly assaulted this blog\u2019s stunningly dogmatic resident atheist commenter, \u201cgemli, as \u201cstupid\u201d and \u201cignorant.\u201d\u00a0 Presumably, I deleted it because I found it somehow embarrassing.\u00a0 Now, it\u2019s absolutely the case that I believe gemli to be \u2014 by conscious choice<\/em> \u2014 remarkably and determinedly ignorant of the subjects on which he presumes to comment here, but I have never called him \u201cstupid\u201d and I don\u2019t believe him to be<\/em> so.\u00a0 Much more importantly, I remember no such exchange and I\u2019m quite confident that I\u2019ve never deleted any<\/em> of gemli\u2019s comments nor ever deleted a lengthy exchange<\/em> of comments here, whether with gemli or with anybody else.\u00a0 The accusation was leveled by an individual who routinely invents malicious fictions about me (some of them quite elaborate) for his eagerly credulous audience.\u00a0 As is commonly the case with him, it\u2019s flatly false.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I share with you links to three recent entries from the Neville-Neville Land<\/em> blog.\u00a0 It is sadly evident that Jonathan Neville intends to continue his war of misrepresentation and calumny against those who don\u2019t share his views on the geography of the Book of Mormon.\u00a0 Accordingly, Neville-Neville Land<\/em> will continue to chronicle Mr. Neville\u2019s war:<\/p>\n \u201cThe story of Neville-Neville Land, as told to Robert Boylan\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cMy response to a thoughtful comment by Greg McIver\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/a><\/a>
Wikimedia Commons public domain image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/a>