Censorship at Sunstone?

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Lem
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Re: Censorship at Sunstone?

Post by Lem »

malkie wrote:
Thu Aug 12, 2021 3:31 am
When I saw this topic appear, I got in touch with Lindsay Hansen Park, Exec Director of Sunstone.

She is not a member of this board, so I offered to post a statement on her behalf.

Here it is:
Lindsay Hansen Park wrote: I'm happy to offer some clarification.

We were really excited about the tarot event and it was a highly-anticipated session with good presenters. Because we promoted the names of the presenters, several of our attendees went and purchased the decks of different presenters, including Gazelam Ale's deck.

Several days before the session we received two independent complaints about their deck containing images of child nudity. We then began to receive additional complaints from attendees who had found Gazelam's deck through our promotional material.

At Sunstone we have a wide berth when it comes to nudity and art and so we tried to work as quickly as we could to respond to the situation and still give the presenters time to prepare. If this had been naked adults, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Upon review of the deck we found seven cards with naked children and eight with semi-nude children. I understand that these were sourced through nature magazines in Europe, but unfortunately for this situation, we live in the United States under different laws and legislation.

Our Mormon community has a particularly complicated history with underage exploitation and I really wish that the discussion would include an acknowledgment of that fact. Our decisions certainly did and because we didn't want to have our own Mormon purity biases factor in, we consulted both mental health experts, sex therapists, and two lawyers who unanimously told us they found the images concerning. We were strongly advised to cancel the session.

We reached out to Gazelam and let them know we received a complaint, reviewed their work and removed them from our program. As a representative of Sunstone, I stand by this. As Gazelam's friend, it was very painful for me to do. I met them years ago, interviewed them for my podcast and was happy they were presenting. As an artist myself, I can appreciate the complexities of representation.
I don’t agree with Sunstone here but the above was a helpful explanation. The following paragraphs, however, got a little disturbing:
…We would have still removed them from the program since we put ourselves in a position of potentially promoting images that are illegal in the state of Utah.The CD cover was offered with the deck and we specifically referred to it since it was a public image and their tarot deck was not. No one, including those who were upset by the images, felt comfortable sharing those online for fear of committing a crime….
Okay, so it was Sunstone’s goof for what they put up as promotion for a history of tarot presentation. Then why abruptly add this, which seems to be some sort of accusation ?
…In the past (as far as just two years back) we have had presenters be dishonest about what they are going to present, and we no longer can take risks when we bear legal responsibility.

This was not a moral issue, this was a legal one and Sunstone is happy to host a censorship debate and what constitutes art. We cannot host anyone promoting, sharing, distributing or possessing child nudity or pornography on our premises and since the deck was already promoted under our presentation, we felt that the line had already been crossed.

I hope that clears up our position.
Were they worried their friend was going to sneak something into a history lesson that was prohibited, even after they explained it? If it’s not a moral issue but their argument was given to the group in the above manner, I can certainly see why they were hurt and refused further discussion. After Philo mentioned the tarot card presentation I looked at a few of the tarot artists’ sites, Gazalem Ale’s site is beautiful and the work presented is lovely. It’s too bad it had to end up this way.
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Kishkumen
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Re: Censorship at Sunstone?

Post by Kishkumen »

Dr. Shades wrote:
Sat Aug 14, 2021 6:29 am
How does that relate to what I originally said?
I don't know, Dr. Shades. With all due respect, what about your original statement, wherein you harshly judged someone you don't know and a situation you have little knowledge of, is worth engaging with seriously?
"He disturbs the laws of his country, he forces himself upon women, and he puts men to death without trial.” ~Otanes on the monarch, Herodotus Histories 3.80.
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Re: Censorship at Sunstone?

Post by drumdude »

Kishkumen wrote:
Sat Aug 14, 2021 5:43 pm
Dr. Shades wrote:
Sat Aug 14, 2021 6:29 am
How does that relate to what I originally said?
I don't know, Dr. Shades. With all due respect, what about your original statement, wherein you harshly judged someone you don't know and a situation you have little knowledge of, is worth engaging with seriously?
Do you have anything to add or dispute in regards to Lindsay’s account?
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Kishkumen
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Re: Censorship at Sunstone?

Post by Kishkumen »

drumdude wrote:
Sat Aug 14, 2021 6:36 pm
Do you have anything to add or dispute in regards to Lindsay’s account?
There is a lot in this account that I could add and dispute. The art in question was produced between the years 2004 and 2007. The images were sourced from old issues of National Geographic and a European naturalist magazine that were legally sold over the counter in a used bookstore in Salt Lake City, UT. Gazelam themself is a naturalist (nudist). The art was never promoted in connection with the Sunstone session to my knowledge, and it was not going to appear at the session. Having looked at the Utah statutes covering indecent literature and art, or intimate images, I can find nothing in the art that fits that description. But obviously I am not a lawyer.

So, hey, Sunstone chose to be extremely careful, and, at the same time, I think we can't ignore the fact that their version of careful had a very Mormon slant to it. I would be shocked to find that the experts they consulted were not also LDS, and thus they applied their LDS-shaped judgment to the issue. We can also not forget that Sunstone was comfortably the home of Tom Kimball for many years. Here an actual child predator was happily sitting in meeting after meeting of Sunstone, with nary a peep from anyone, selling books. I think there is some irony in this fact. Actual predators hide in plain sight while people panic over the possibility of allegedly indecent images being shown. Actual predators sit in the meeting and ogle at your kids, while the person who produces art that makes people squeamish is kicked out.

It kinda burns. So much misplaced panic. The usual misconceived attempts to try to control situations that are not under control. You could hardly ask for a better illustration of this fact than the contrast between Sunstone's history of treatment of Tom Kimball, serial child rapist, and Sunstone's ejection of Gazelam Ale, hippy Mormon artist who used really old naked pictures in their religious art to symbolize innocence over a dozen years ago.

You want some other interesting irony? The Tarot art already did appear at Sunstone (mind you I do not see any child nudity in this image, hence my willingness to post it on this board):

Image
Last edited by Kishkumen on Sat Aug 14, 2021 7:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"He disturbs the laws of his country, he forces himself upon women, and he puts men to death without trial.” ~Otanes on the monarch, Herodotus Histories 3.80.
Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Censorship at Sunstone?

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Here’s the presentation, I think, because I didn’t see any naked baby tarot cards:

https://www.mormontarot.com/blog

Or a direct link to the presentation:

https://youtu.be/RuUrwRQ99cw
Author, historian, poet and artist, Cheryl Bruno, invited me to present with her at Sunstone this year. Our presentation was officially called "151. Mormon Tarot and its Implications for Past, Present and Future". I focussed my part of the presentation on the evolution of the tarot, why esotericism resonates with some Mormons and how I've been aligning the traditional tarot to the Mormon tarot.

I want to be fair to Sunstone so this is exclusively my portion of the presentation, filmed on my camera and taped with my audio recorder....I am currently editing the full video with Cheryl Bruno's presentation and Q&A. Sunstone will be hosting that video on their platform and the Whova app until the end of the year.

It was so great to chat with Kendall and Camilla! and I think I saw Barbara's name in the Whova app. Were any more of you at the conference or on Whova?...Unfortunately the sound and image quality of the broadcast were sub par so here's a pretty clean edit of what I covered.

Let me know if you have any questions, and feel free to chime in if I got something wrong or if you want to share some tarot facts that I didn't mention.
I’m currently watching the presentation, and so far it’s engaging and interesting.

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Re: Censorship at Sunstone?

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Do I have the right artist/deck?

Image

The artwork is beautiful.

- Doc
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Re: Censorship at Sunstone?

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

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Kishkumen
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Re: Censorship at Sunstone?

Post by Kishkumen »

No, thanks anyway, Doc Cam. This is Josh Baird's beautiful deck. This deck has not been published. I will buy Josh Baird's deck when he has finished it. Josh is a wonderful person and a great artist and musician. It is always worthwhile to promote Josh's great work.

ETA: See my post above for a G-rated taste of Gazelam's Tarot art.
"He disturbs the laws of his country, he forces himself upon women, and he puts men to death without trial.” ~Otanes on the monarch, Herodotus Histories 3.80.
Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Censorship at Sunstone?

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Kishkumen wrote:
Sat Aug 14, 2021 7:23 pm
No, thanks anyway, Doc Cam. This is Josh Baird's beautiful deck. This deck has not been published. I will buy Josh Baird's deck when he has finished it. Josh is a wonderful person and a great artist and musician. It is always worthwhile to promote Josh's great work.

ETA: See my post above for a G-rated taste of Gazelam's Tarot art.
Ah, I think I was drafting my post as you were posting. Thanks for the clarification, especially since I’m not really dialed in to the in real life people behind their screen names. I think Sunstone overreacted, but maybe that’s the kind of thing that happens after the Kimball crap went down.

Shame. :/

- Doc
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Re: Censorship at Sunstone?

Post by Kishkumen »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Sat Aug 14, 2021 7:30 pm
Ah, I think I was drafting my post as you were posting. Thanks for the clarification, especially since I’m not really dialed in to the in real life people behind their screen names. I think Sunstone overreacted, but maybe that’s the kind of thing that happens after the Kimball crap went down.

Shame. :/

- Doc
I think that's exactly right. Gazelam Ale is a kind of atoning sacrifice for Sunstone's sin of hosting a child rapist (T. K.) at Sunstone for decades.

ETA: I am not imputing that conscious purpose to their actions. I just see GA's ejection as the almost mechanical result to follow that horrible realization regarding TK.
"He disturbs the laws of his country, he forces himself upon women, and he puts men to death without trial.” ~Otanes on the monarch, Herodotus Histories 3.80.
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