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‘MormonWikileaks’ website launched, seeking transparency in LDS Church

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Re: ‘MormonWikileaks’ website launched, seeking transparency in LDS Church

#41

Post by bediger4000 »

grillvogel wrote: post #11
rokosbasilisk wrote: post #2

Wow cool. I hope the future is more wikileaks sites forcing transparency.

should all information be made public?

Most of it, especially churches, which get special tax and other governmental treatment, at least in the USA. The flip side is that we all need to be more forgiving and tolerant.

Government stuff should almost all be out in the open, way more than is currently. Remember: there's very few real state secrets, but there's a ton of nepotism, self-dealing, dunderheaded blunders, money laundering, fraud and corruption. My guess is that we'd be better off erring on the side of disclosing state secrets, than erring on the side of protecting all the other crimes that probably go on under the guise of state secrecy.

Re: ‘MormonWikileaks’ website launched, seeking transparency in LDS Church

#42

Post by [deleted] »

sbuttgereit wrote: post #36
wavefunction wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Meekness" is encouraged among the faithful corpus. I would agree that I have met many kind and decent members of the LDS church, but I have also seen how the Church urges families to threaten or enact shunning of their relatives who choose to leave the Church, and their forays into political activism are inhumane.

Ehh.... I come from a family with a long Mormon history dating back to at least 1837-39 (depending on source) with multiple divisions of the family migrating to Utah during the mid 19th century from the U.S. East Coast, England, and even Iceland for religious reasons. Point being it's a culture I'm a bit familiar with (I was born and raised in Utah myself). I am not Mormon myself, and never joined the church, though…

[deleted]

Re: ‘MormonWikileaks’ website launched, seeking transparency in LDS Church

#43

Post by cookiecaper »

henrikschroder wrote: post #40
scintill76 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fairly active Mormon... I'm curious what you see as the difference between the leaders and the people. I would think most of the Mormons you know support most of the things you find distasteful in the leaders. (Edit: I don't mean to say the nice Mormons are secretly as horrible as you think the leaders are, although that's one possible conclusion. Just trying to figure out how a group of supposedly-vile leaders…

Here's a leaked video of a briefing for the Q15 about Chelsea Manning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpVh24_wGoY Yeah, let's focus on whether Chelsea Manning is gay or not. Really important. Very enlightened.

The jump cuts in that video are clear. The person who leaked these very likely had access to years and years of daily briefings (which is what these are, they're not discussions/deliberations as some try to claim), and yet was only able to select 15-ish (don't remember exactly how many) short, highly-edited clips to try to concoct a controversy. It didn't work because no one is surprised that a group of 80+-year-old men who preach that homosexuality is sinful are uncomfortable with homosexuality.

This is really the MO of these bitter ex-Mormon groups. They are constantly desperately trying to kick up controversies that just don't have any meat to them, purely out of personal spite. They then express surprise that people without a grudge are uninterested and they have to make their own fake Wikileaks because the real WL knows these standard internal documents are of no public interest.

Re: ‘MormonWikileaks’ website launched, seeking transparency in LDS Church

#44

Post by cookiecaper »

fintler wrote: post #3

Why not just use wikileaks.org? Is there something here that the regular wikileaks.org won't cover for some reason?

WikiLeaks won't publish the kind of leaks we're seeing because they're insignificant to the public interest. They are standard internal documents like those you'd expect to see in any organization.

Re: ‘MormonWikileaks’ website launched, seeking transparency in LDS Church

#45

Post by cookiecaper »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #30

@henrikschroder - Would you mind giving a citation that links Utah's issue of depression with Mormonism? After all, there are a lot of non-Mormons living there too. The last I read, scientists believed that the mountain states suffered from depression due to altitude and thin air ( http://www.livescience.com/50813-low-oxygen-increase-depress... ) Also, I couldn't find any statistics on just teen suicides, but accordi…

Many statistics about Utah are skewed by either pro-Mormon or anti-Mormon bias. For several years, a "study" which used a single unidentified "top 10 paysite" as its source claimed that Utah was one of the largest consumers of paid online pornography in the country.

The study was debunked and mostly stopped being discussed after PornHub released by-state consumption statistics showing Utah ranking in the bottom 10. The author of the fraudulent study appeared to be unhappy about the Church's stance on Prop 8.

I would be hesitant to trust any statistics showing Utah as either unusually good or unusually bad.

Re: ‘MormonWikileaks’ website launched, seeking transparency in LDS Church

#46

Post by wavefunction »

willismichael wrote: post #20
wavefunction wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Meekness" is encouraged among the faithful corpus. I would agree that I have met many kind and decent members of the LDS church, but I have also seen how the Church urges families to threaten or enact shunning of their relatives who choose to leave the Church, and their forays into political activism are inhumane.

Citation? As a member the LDS church, I have never been urged to shun those who have left, and find the idea extremely deplorable.

Many Jack and Jill Mormons in Utah where I lived for a while, and folks there as well whom had gotten themselves stricken from the records.

I also learned from native Utahns that they had been ostracized in high school for not being part of the LDS community.

It happens, we're all human. All we can try to do is do better. I did meet many fine folks there as well, among the best the world has to offer.

Re: ‘MormonWikileaks’ website launched, seeking transparency in LDS Church

#48

Post by 36bydesign »

patch_collector wrote: post #31
wavefunction wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Meekness" is encouraged among the faithful corpus. I would agree that I have met many kind and decent members of the LDS church, but I have also seen how the Church urges families to threaten or enact shunning of their relatives who choose to leave the Church, and their forays into political activism are inhumane.

I come at this as an active Mormon, but I see a consistent effort on the part of the leadership to make it clear that shunning shouldn't happen. I definitely see individuals with issues on this, but I haven't seen it as institutional, even though I've had a number of family members leave the church.

As an exmo, I agree and for the most part I haven't been shunned. Several people unfriended me on Facebook but that was the worst of it for me. Others aren't always so fortunate, but with how many exmo's there are now it has made the transition a lot easier.

Re: ‘MormonWikileaks’ website launched, seeking transparency in LDS Church

#49

Post by 36bydesign »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #21

As a Mormon, I have a hard time imagining this site being very interesting. Between fairmormon.org, lds.org, all the anti-Mormon sites, and the missionary duos, just waiting to knock on a door near you, I think the world already has a pretty clear view into the workings of the Mormon church, their history, and their beliefs. Sure, the Mormon church "hides" things, but most of that stuff has to do with disciplinary co…

Part of the goal is to show the church is fundamentally a business.

Re: ‘MormonWikileaks’ website launched, seeking transparency in LDS Church

#50

Post by sorryisaidthat »

henrikschroder wrote: post #40
scintill76 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fairly active Mormon... I'm curious what you see as the difference between the leaders and the people. I would think most of the Mormons you know support most of the things you find distasteful in the leaders. (Edit: I don't mean to say the nice Mormons are secretly as horrible as you think the leaders are, although that's one possible conclusion. Just trying to figure out how a group of supposedly-vile leaders…

Here's a leaked video of a briefing for the Q15 about Chelsea Manning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpVh24_wGoY Yeah, let's focus on whether Chelsea Manning is gay or not. Really important. Very enlightened.

> Yeah, let's focus on whether Chelsea Manning is gay or not. Really important. Very enlightened.

Chelsea being gay/gender dysphoric is quite relevant to the Chelsea story. It's one reason she joined the army (hoping masculine environment would resolve her dysphoria), it's one reason she was bullied by coworkers and felt unhappy and isolated (augmented by don't ask don't tell).

It was in that environment that Chelsea decided to leak.

The main reason we know Chelsea did the leak is because she confided in Adrian the rat Lamo because he was gay. (reasonable people can disagree whether Lamo was right to rat)

Also, the briefing is about its potential relevance to the Church. In recent years one of the most common reasons people become disassociated from the LDS church is their policies and teachings and political activism regarding homosexuality, it's also one of the biggest criticisms from the mainstream, so it is perfectly reasonable that if a church employee ends up leaking confidential information they stand a significant chance of being disgruntled over homosexual issues.

FWIW: I admire what Chelsea did with the leaks, am saddened that she was so poorly treated/tortured, think she should be pardoned, appreciate that reasonable people can disagree on this, am a believing Mormon, and think homosexual acts are sinful.

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