Wife of MP blogs about the missionaries.....

[_Tim the Enchanter]

And then he's also a hard-line, corporate, nothing-but-business style TBM, which makes it worse. He comes off as extremely uncaring, dogmatic, and self-righteous.

Sounds like prime 70 material!

[_Tim the Enchanter]

Are you suggesting that Donald Sterling is being punished for what he said about black people because it was illegal rather than just offensive to those who he engaged in business with?

It should be obvious what I'm pointing out. These days it's popular, even oddly patriotic, to physically assault people over private opinions. Yeah, you are free to say or think whatever you want, but if you exercise that freedom we'll wage economic warfare against you and destroy your life. And not just your life, but the lives of anybody you associate with. We'll go after anybody who in any way has a connection to you. All will be brought into compliance. If you have studied history even just a little bit this mindset should disturb you. Doesn't take a lot of creativity to envision how this could lead toward the sort of laws Nelson speaks of. Such a day is not far off.

Has Donald Sterling been physically assaulted because of his opinions of Black people? How often are members of the church physically assaulted over their private opinions? If these things happen, they are wrong, but I don't think they happen very often. How many people do you know personally who have been physically assaulted because of their private religious opinions? I can think of very few examples of this. In my observation, it is extraordinarily rare. On those occasions, the people who commit the assault should be punished and I hope they are.

There is a critical/huge/enormous distinction between unpopular and illegal speech. I think the church is right to be concerned that some of their speech will grow increasingly unpopular over time. But to suggest that preaching their beliefs is in danger of becoming illegal is—pardon my French—doo-doo.

We live in a society where the Westboro Baptist church is free to protest the funerals of soldiers, promote their "God Hates Fags" brand of religion, and have a Twitter feed with over 42,000 Tweets. Given this (and there are plenty of examples of how much latitude our society gives to speech and belief), do you really believe that the day in not far off when laws would restrict Mormons from preaching their faith?

[_Jesse Pinkman]

I could totally see some of his missionaries running off though, literally just disappearing, buying their own ticket home, enrolling in school or something, and never heard from again. Haha.

That is really not a laughing matter....at all.

[_Runtu]

That is really not a laughing matter....at all.

Remember that this is a guy who thinks "sissify" is synonymous with "weaken." The ultimate insult of a young man, apparently, is to equate him with the feminine. Ugh.

[_Bazooka]

Hey Water Dog, where'd you serve your mission?

[_Phaedrus Ut]

I read a few of the blog entries and all I could think is "why are all these missionaries on medication for depression?" It kept coming up over and over about these kids suffering from depression, anxiety disorders, ADHD, and other psychological problems.

[_No_Hidden_Agenda]

I read a few of the blog entries and all I could think is "why are all these missionaries on medication for depression?" It kept coming up over and over about these kids suffering from depression, anxiety disorders, ADHD, and other psychological problems.

Now we know who Elder Holland's talk on depression was really aimed at ... the young missionaries.

It's an epidemic!

[_cinepro]

Someone posted over at MDB that when they went, they were told "No one is making you go, and no one is making you stay." That should be the mantra for all missionaries.

[_Mayan Elephant]

part of raised-bar standard was to keep missionaries out of the field that required medication for mental illnesses. at the time, i heard a variety of discussions around that. one, was to eliminate the complete drain of time for mission presidents, and two, was to alleviate undue added stress or anxiety to these young people. it seems neither of those reasons really caught on. now they are back to sending stressed kids to doctors and to LDS social services. strange.

if that is a real blog post by a real mission president family, shame on them. it is just as inappropriate to discuss, publicly, the mental health of their missionaries as it is to discuss the narrow urethra, enlarged prostate and suppository medications of the mission president, and the prolapsed uterus of the mission president's wife.

i have heard from couples returning from missions in the last year that the mission presidents are slammed with babysitting nonsense. absolutely slammed. i cannot help but wonder how different it would be if these missionaries were doing real service missions where they were building something and working with real trades for two years.

[Guest]

Someone posted over at MDB that when they went, they were told "No one is making you go, and no one is making you stay." That should be the mantra for all missionaries.

It's one thing to say that. It's another to actually have a church culture that supports that. The church culture doesn't. You can choose to (a) serve a mission or (b) be marginalized. Once on a mission, you can choose to (a) stay on the mission or (b) come home in shame (unless you have a compelling medical reason that cannot be attributed to lack of faith or sin). That is hardly an environment that supports a real choice.