Martha Beck vs. King Gidorah: The Series

[_Droopy]

You don't go to gynecologist as a virgin and be asked if you want birth control pills, having observed
vicious tears in your vaginal walls.

Thank heavens for small favors.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

This wouldn't surprise me at all in Utah.

You're quite gullible, it seems, when it suits your agenda to be so.

Here's another example: For a significant period of time (nearly 20 years in the 60's and 70's, I believe) women were not allowed to offer a prayer in sacrament meeting. This was eventually rescinded, but I knew a man in my ward who would walk out of sacrament meeting whenever a woman got up to give a prayer. Face it, Dan, no matter how much you'd like to stick your head in the sand on this one, the LDS Church, historically and culturally, has been extremely patriarchal, and what the hairdresser said seems completely believable in that context.

She was not that literal in her book.

"Every now and then, Utah papers record murders with uniquely Mormon flavoring (death by temple-sanctioned methods, for example), and the word that goes out on the Latter-day grapevine is Danite" (p. 190). After learning that Martha intended to write this book, one ex-Mormon friend from Utah responds, "without a trace of levity," "'They'll kill you'" (p. 191).

The pages you cite clearly establish that the conversation began as a joke, then turns to a history of early Danites, and concludes with the example of the Lafferty brothers, who many considered to be akin to modern-day Danites (nut cases on the fringe of the Church, but real nonetheless). No where does Martha write that the institutional Church still employs Danites for assasination assignments.

Other "dissidents" have thought the same thing as Martha. And, let's face it, Church security is full of former FBI and CIA guys.

Uh huh. And you're inclined to believe it. Well, Martha's book was written for folks like you. At least people who've never known much about the Church have an excuse for trusting her.

Martha was not alone. Steve Benson, Mike Quinn and Maxine Hanks also believed their phones were wiretapped by the Church (during the time of the 1990's purge of intellectuals).

Anyway, for those who want to read her allegations of wiretapping and of voices interrupting her phone conversations with thinly-veiled death threats, see pp. 221 and 233-234 of her book. (Her ex-husband, by the way, just as much out of the Church as she is, denies these wiretapping stories.).

John Beck's review on Amazon took issue with just two parts of the book: the portrayal of his parents and Martha's description of "shunning." He did not dispute the wiretapping story in the book.

The Church is different things to different members. Those on the fringe (like Martha) may see things very differently than TBM's (like yourself).

While they have every right to hold their own personal opinions, they do not have the right to invent their own facts.

Nor do you.

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[Guest]

Shhhhh, solo. Quit rocking the boat! Nibley was an icon, a Saint!

Amazing. The secular critics now have their very own baby Anita Hill, and the usual suspects circle the wagons around her the way the Kennedys retreat to the compound when one of their own is caught yet again in another compromise with ethical propriety.

Martha Beck is history for all fair minded people who have given the evidence a fair hearing. The problem is digging up fair minded people in a forum such as this.

Nibley is an icon? Ahh, but look as Martha Beck.

I'm surprised TD hasn't chimed in on this, as her understanding that all men in positions of power or authority (Father, Bishop, Professor etc.) are incipient sex abusers by definition would certainly be relevant to the discussion.

Hugh Nibley is guilty by association in the same way Clarance Thomas was guilty by association: as a male being accused by a woman, he is guilty by association with the accusation. Woman never lie, repressed memories olf childhood abuse are not to be questioned, and while males are always guilty (they are a class enemy, not people who are judged guilty or not guilty based upon real evidence on a case by case basis).

[_Droopy]

Harmony, please tell us what qualifies you to pronounce judgment on Hugh Nibley's scholarship. Your Egyptological studies? Your degree in Greek and Latin? Your intimate acquaintance with patristics? Your diligent study of Arabic? Your deep knowledge of the Hebrew Bible? Your familiarity with the "myth and ritual" school? Your thorough mastery of 1 and 2 Enoch?

Have you even read any of Nibley's scholarship?

Nibley's scholarship must by poor, and uniquely poor, or Harmony's entire worldview, and the substance of her grudge against the Church, collapses.

I think that covers, to a very great extent, the crux of the matter.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Funny, I don't recall a mention - let alone praise, of the old Icon and his passing at the following Conference either.

Deafening !

I don't remember whether his passing was mentioned in General Conference or not. But if you're trying to suggest that the Brethren disdained him, or something of that sort, I would simply point to his funeral in the Provo Tabernacle, which I attended, and which was also attended by the current president of BYU, Elder Cecil O. Samuelson of the First Quorum of the Seventy, and three past presidents of BYU -- Elder Merrill J. Bateman of the First Quorum of the Seventy, and Elders Dallin H. Oaks and Jeffrey R. Holland of the Council of the Twelve Apostles. Elder Holland spoke -- among other things, reading a statement about Professor Nibley from the First Presidency of the Church -- and Elder Oaks spoke, bestowing, among other things, what he termed "an apostolic blessing" upon Hugh Nibley's family and work.

[_Droopy]

f someone were to dress in ancient Egyptian apparel and make recitations from a funerary text in Reformed Egyptian, while simultaneously having sex, wouldn't something have arisen from the Nile and devoured that someone?

No need to bring any skeletons in your family closet into this Moksha

But all seriousness aside, isn't this one of the more obviously, uh...flamboyant claims Beck made. Almost McMasters level, if I do say so myself.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

Funny, I don't recall a mention - let alone praise, of the old Icon and his passing at the following Conference either.

Deafening !

I don't remember whether his passing was mentioned in General Conference or not. But if you're trying to suggest that the Brethren disdained him, or something of that sort, I would simply point to his funeral in the Provo Tabernacle, which I attended, and which was also attended by the current president of BYU, Elder Cecil O. Samuelson of the First Quorum of the Seventy, and three past presidents of BYU -- Elder Merrill J. Bateman of the First Quorum of the Seventy, and Elders Dallin H. Oaks and Jeffrey R. Holland of the Council of the Twelve Apostles. Elder Holland spoke -- among other things, reading a statement about Professor Nibley from the First Presidency of the Church -- and Elder Oaks spoke, bestowing, among other things, what he termed "an apostolic blessing" upon Hugh Nibley's family and work.

I find it interesting that not one member of the First Presidency attended his funeral, and the only GA's who did attend were his former/current bosses.

[_Droopy]

What kinda qualifications does Harmony need to judge Hugh Nibley?

SM, a substantive acquaintance with his work and the subject matter of it, would by a good start.

[_Droopy]

Yeah. Priesthood permission required for women to change their hairstyles, active Danite units out there murdering people, formal shunning ceremonies during sacrament meetings, phone tapping coordinated out of local chapels . . . That's certainly the Church I know.

It has been, over the years I've been here, ZLMB, and a few other similar forums, exactly these kind of claims that have led me to a kind of cynicism regarding certain individuals and certain groups, or types of critics, in the which I have come to the conclusion that these said individuals are probably not LDS at all, or had some fleeting association with the Church, that was later terminated.

I suspected this at the outset about Harmony (but I've taken Jason at his word that she is, indeed, LDS) and especially about Scratch.

I remember finding out some thirty years ago that most of the people who manned the barricades at Decker's Ex-Mormons for Jesus weren't Mormons at all and never had been.

Beck was certainly a member of the Church, but claims such as those she made in her book can only indicate either lack of acquaintance with the Church, or, what has to be the alternative in her case, a willful, knowing attempt to deceive.

We see that around here to a fair degree as well.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I find it interesting that not one member of the First Presidency attended his funeral, and the only GA's who did attend were his former/current bosses.

I don't know why the First Presidency weren't there. My suspicion is that they're rather busy and not always free.

But to attempt to spin attendance at the funeral by two members of the First Quorum of the Seventy, speeches from a sixth of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and a formal statement from the First Presidency into evidence of disdain on the part of the Brethren seems a rather tall task.