The Brethren and Church Discipline

[_RayAgostini]

Wow! That's news to me, Ray. It would also be news to my active, faithful LDS friends, of whom you are most definitely not one. In fact, you are not even LDS. You are an ex-Mormon who champions the cause of polemicists who attacked their fellow religionists from BYU campus. Hey, that's fine, Ray. If that is who you are and who you want to be, then you are welcome to it. My reading of Greg Smith's hit piece was entirely fair.

So you say. I don't consider it a "hit piece", but at least now I understand what you classify as a "hit piece". Smith is a lot more tactful than you are.

[_Kishkumen]

So you say. I don't consider it a "hit piece", but at least now I understand what you classify as a "hit piece". Smith is a lot more tactful than you are.

No, he is much more sly than I am. The way he insinuates that Laura Compton is a deceived and willful deceiver is not tactful; it is diabolical.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Wow! That's news to me, Ray. It would also be news to my active, faithful LDS friends, of whom you are most definitely not one. In fact, you are not even LDS. You are an ex-Mormon who champions the cause of polemicists who attacked their fellow religionists from BYU campus. Hey, that's fine, Ray. If that is who you are and who you want to be, then you are welcome to it. My reading of Greg Smith's hit piece was entirely fair.

So you say. I don't consider it a "hit piece", but at least now I understand what you classify as a "hit piece". Smith is a lot more tactful than you are.

This last bit here, that I've underlined, gets at one of the biggest reasons why, in my experience, so many outsiders (and heck, insiders, too) distrust or dislike Mormons: it's this sense that you're being attacked or undermined, even though the LDS attacking you is, by all outward appearances, being totally nice. (Though "nice" is, I think, debatable w/r/t to the Smith article.) EAllusion once characterized this sort of thing as "hatred with a smile," which seemed just about perfect to me. Another example can be seen in Margaret Toscano's segment on the PBS The Mormons film, where she says that, in the wake of her excommunication, all the elders in the room stood and wanted to shake her hand. She says that it felt like a "violent" act.

[_Kishkumen]

This last bit here, that I've underlined, gets at one of the biggest reasons why, in my experience, so many outsiders (and heck, insiders, too) distrust or dislike Mormons: it's this sense that you're being attacked or undermined, even though the LDS attacking you is, by all outward appearances, being totally nice. (Though "nice" is, I think, debatable w/r/t to the Smith article.) EAllusion once characterized this sort of thing as "hatred with a smile," which seemed just about perfect to me. Another example can be seen in Margaret Toscano's segment on the PBS The Mormons film, where she says that, in the wake of her excommunication, all the elders in the room stood and wanted to shake her hand. She says that it felt like a "violent" act.

Does the executioner have to shout angrily or wear a grimace in order to commit a violent act?

[_RayAgostini]

This last bit here, that I've underlined, gets at one of the biggest reasons why, in my experience, so many outsiders (and heck, insiders, too) distrust or dislike Mormons: it's this sense that you're being attacked or undermined, even though the LDS attacking you is, by all outward appearances, being totally nice. (Though "nice" is, I think, debatable w/r/t to the Smith article.) EAllusion once characterized this sort of thing as "hatred with a smile," which seemed just about perfect to me. Another example can be seen in Margaret Toscano's segment on the PBS The Mormons film, where she says that, in the wake of her excommunication, all the elders in the room stood and wanted to shake her hand. She says that it felt like a "violent" act.

So you'd classify Mormons (that's a broad category you're using, Scratch, since I thought your beef was mainly with "mopologists") like Greg Smith as a "sheep in wolf clothing"?

[_Doctor Scratch]

This last bit here, that I've underlined, gets at one of the biggest reasons why, in my experience, so many outsiders (and heck, insiders, too) distrust or dislike Mormons: it's this sense that you're being attacked or undermined, even though the LDS attacking you is, by all outward appearances, being totally nice. (Though "nice" is, I think, debatable w/r/t to the Smith article.) EAllusion once characterized this sort of thing as "hatred with a smile," which seemed just about perfect to me. Another example can be seen in Margaret Toscano's segment on the PBS The Mormons film, where she says that, in the wake of her excommunication, all the elders in the room stood and wanted to shake her hand. She says that it felt like a "violent" act.

So you'd classify Mormons (that's a broad category you're using, Scratch, since I thought your beef was mainly with "mopologists") like Greg Smith as a "sheep in wolf clothing"?

No... Where did I say that? I would characterize him as a smear-artist in an academic's clothing.

[_RayAgostini]

No... Where did I say that?

This last bit here, that I've underlined, gets at one of the biggest reasons why, in my experience, so many outsiders (and heck, insiders, too) distrust or dislike Mormons: it's this sense that you're being attacked or undermined, even though the LDS attacking you is, by all outward appearances, being totally nice.

[_Doctor Scratch]

I don't know how you're getting "wolf in sheep's clothing" out of that, Ray.

[_Juggler Vain]

I don't know how you're getting "wolf in sheep's clothing" out of that, Ray.

I think you are misreading him. He wrote "sheep in wolf clothing."

-JV

[_RayAgostini]

I don't know how you're getting "wolf in sheep's clothing" out of that, Ray.

I think you are misreading him. He wrote "sheep in wolf clothing."

-JV

I reversed it intentionally, out of sarcasm, meaning that Mormons are in fact nice people, inwardly, but to some the "wolf" is "very obvious". So "obvious" that you wouldn't see the "sheep" ("mild and meek") in them.

Smith is clearly a "wolf", and his MSR essay proves it!