Clark Gilbert's "Black Box" at BYU: Crackdown

[sock puppet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zx4CAx0NSE

[Wonhyo]

I may be a former Mormon, but I am also a BYU product and care deeply about the university, its sponsoring church notwithstanding.

I don't have anything new or remarkably substantive to add to the discussions triggered by Peggy Fletcher Stack's article in the Tribune. I just have my own two cents to chip in.

Many years ago, I had a class at BYU law with Professor Gedicks, one of the former BYU instructors quoted in the article. It was a class on the 1st Amendment, and I learned a lot. Not that it was very relevant to the subject matter of the class, other than in a religious freedom context, but Prof. Gedicks seemed to be, and apparently is, a believer in Mormonism. Whether in his own nuanced way or in a more orthodox fashion, I never knew. He was a constitutional law authority who didn't let his faith color his professional approach to his area of practice. And he was the kind of instructor that gives merit and ranking to a school like BYU.

If Prof. Gedicks feels that Clark Gilbert and the still-new Ecclesiastical Clearance Office and all of its, as Gedicks noted, Orwellian ramifications is bad for BYU, the university community ought to be paying careful attention.

Crackdowns on orthodoxy rarely end well, not only for those on the receiving end of the inquisitions but also for those who direct and administer them. I believe BYU, at 150 years of age this year, is stronger and more resilient than the whims of Clark Gilbert and his new ECO gestapo. It may take a while, BYU may suffer in the meantime, it could get damned ugly. But it can and hopefully will push back on this nonsense.

Clark Gilbert, young and full of fire, is - like many Seventy general authorities - ambitious and probably hoping for a spot in the Quorum of the Twelve one day, sooner than later. He reads the room and knows what the current top leadership wants in its general church leadership. He may be doing all he can to pad that ecclesiastical resume of his for that apostleship.

But Mormonism is a fickle thing. What it has today in terms of leadership won't necessarily be what it has in a few years. Clark Gilbert, like all of us, is destined at best to be a footnote in history.

[phaedrus ut]

With 2 out of 3 former BYU students eventually leaving the church I think they realized the best way to punish those apostates is by making the BYU on their resume an even greater mark of shame.

Phaedrus

[Moksha]

The TokToker Robert Carpenter was banned from BYU because his interview responses from BYU students made BYU sound too cult-like. Carpenter also does videos from Liberty, Bob Jones, and Utah Valley U.

All BYU students devalued Black History Month and declared they would rather kill puppies and go to war than break the word of wisdom. None of the other Universities threatened him with arrest.

Do you think Elder Gilbert might urge the Ensign Peak fund to build them a Death Star?

[Dr. Shades]

Do you think Elder Gilbert might urge the Ensign Peak fund to build them a Death Star?

Yes, absolutely.

[Boomer57]

Do you think Elder Gilbert might urge the Ensign Peak fund to build them a Death Star?

A whole fleet of them...

[sock puppet]

Clark Gilbert, young and full of fire, is - like many Seventy general authorities - ambitious and probably hoping for a spot in the Quorum of the Twelve one day, sooner than later. He reads the room and knows what the current top leadership wants in its general church leadership. He may be doing all he can to pad that ecclesiastical resume of his for that apostleship.

With hardliners like Oaks and then Bednar waiting in the wings to take the mantle, Gilbert's move here might be well placed for his hopes of landing an apostleship.