Water Dog wrote:I think where they goofed though is not realizing people would see through it and be upset. I think they thought it would be clever and marketable. They are used to being surrounded by yes-men and fallout really just didn't occur to them. Everybody supported Romney after all. Members have widely opposed same sex marriage. What's the big deal? So, it's a combination of well-meaning ignorance combined with profound incompetence and lack of situational awareness.
Their problem is that all of the FP/12 are hard core LDS (white area) thinker. They only hear repeats of their own words, both from local leaders and addressed congregants after a meeting and those staffers and 70s that support them in their administrative roles. The FP/12 know that there are vocal opponents (those that the FP/12 think in a black area), but consider them few, far between and a threat--like John Dehlin and Kate Kelly. Who cares about them? We ex people that think and vocalize it.
The problem is this whole debacle with the Nov 5 Policy shows that FP/12 did not realize that but for hard core LDS like themselves, there is a vast gray area now in LDS thinking, particularly now on gay rights issues and over which those under 45 in particular are sympathetic. The LDS thinking in this morally enlightened era is more evenly diffuse across the spectrum than the FP/12 have heretofore thought--they hearken for the good old days when luke warmers would be spewn out of Jesus' mouth.
This black-and-white drawn policy against parents that LG live together is being met with severe reaction by the grayer area LDS, and there are more of them than the FP/12 thought there were and they are more wedded to egalitarianism than any prior generations of LDS. Surprising to the hierarchically steeped FP/12 is also how many well educated gray-area LDS are marching with their feet out of the LDS church. But, I think that the visceral reaction by gray area LDS has as much (or more) to do with infusing into the mechanics and impact of the policy an Original Sin concept onto the children living in those households (the sins of the father or mother making the child ineligible for infant naming/blessing, baptism, Aaronic priesthood ordinances, etc.), which is contrary to a basic LDS tenet dating back at least to the Wentworth Letter.
This mypoic view that the FP/12 have of where the LDS population is in 2015 is exacerbated by the lawyers and business types among their ranks. They often can't see the difference in those and their supposed ecclesiastical skill sets; it's much easier for the heart physician-apostles to keep their prior occupational skill sets differentiated--they know that in the temple and elsewhere now while on FP/12 assignments that they don't have a scalpel in their hands nor are they in the cath lab.
The FP/12 are becoming ever more so Pharisaical than before, even though elements have been creeping into the LDS leadership even since the 1830s.
