Church Surveillance

[_Trevor]

His fate would have eventually been mine had I stuck around at BYU.

And probably mine, had I been offered and accepted a job at BYU. Thank goodness that never happened.

[_Trevor]

As far as members harassing critics on the net, I think that the following constitutes harassment:

1 - letting a critic know that their identity is known by the believer
2 - telling that critic that the believer intends to send their posts to the critic's still believing family
3 - and, in one instance, actually doing so (although making an erroneous attribution in the process)

Crocket did 1 and 2 to GoodK. DCP did number 3 to GoodK.

Will Schryver also went on at length about his desire to find real identities of critics on the net in order to send that information to church leaders.

Critics post anonymously for good reason.

Naturally, I find such behavior despicable, and I have no doubt that the characters doing it feel completely justified.

T

[_rcrocket]

Can I cite anything on this? No. Nothing to my knowledge has been published that refers to these events. BYU took the blog post down. The reports of ecclesiastical action come from folks you probably wouldn't trust anyway. Why? Because they are critics of their Church. I would, however, classify the humiliating process through which certain BYU professors lost their jobs or were pushed to resign is also a form of official harassment. I have given you a good citation to back that claim up. Did you acknowledge it? Did you read the book? Here I give you a cite, and you don't even take note of it. You press on with your accusation that I haven't cited.

I have no interest to sit here and make crap up. Everything I write about is based on my experience of the LDS Church. I have no need to prove to you here as I would in writing a peer-reviewed article that what I am saying can be backed up by a list of specific publications. From what I can tell in my long experience online, such things don't really help that much in the argument at hand. It is easy for you and others to sit around and demand documentation. What I haven't seen much of is those who demand this actually making good use of what they are given, or of them actually providing a lot of documentation themselves.

It is not my goal to smear the LDS Church or treat it unfairly. I try consistently to be relatively careful in my claims.

But, wouldn't you agree with me that your veneer of civility is really very thin? You seem to be a pretty-well educated person otherwise.

Should I not ask you for references when you post a long list of abuses?

[_Coggins7]

I got a call from the SCMC, and they asked me if I knew a "Mister Scratch". I confessed that I did. I said that he was an anonymous coward who posted on Moron Discussions defaming people. They said they knew about him but that he was just a Moronic ego in search of praise from low anti-Mormon intellects who wouldn't know the difference between a dog and an elephant. Case dismissed. And I thought I could become famous!

Funny, a very similar thing happened to me. They called my to the stake center on a Monday night, when they knew most other Mormons would be having FHE and no meetings were scheduled. They took me into the Stake President's office and there was this guy sitting there, bald, with a ugly scar running vertically across one eye, and petting a large, white, fluffy cat. He said, "We want him".

Apparently, they had me confused with someone else in the Stake who had the goods on Scratch, but had gone over to "the other side" and was now working with Jeremiah Films on a new documentary about how the Church is secretly working with the military's HAARP program to cause global warming.

I'm trying to lay low for the time being...

[_The Nehor]

Wow, you really have sunk pretty low, Nehor, having to rely on name-calling of this nature. I know that I have never stooped to such lows as trying to label an opponent a "pedophile" in order to try and score a point. This must be one of those moments where you feel on the verge of needing to step away, eh? I.e., that your frustration and nebbishness are getting the better of you?

No, I'm currently beating my nebbishness to death with a large wooden stick so I'm getting the better of it. It is true you've never accused anyone of being a pedophile. Calling someone an anti-Semite is more your style.

Yes, that's correct, since I actually had evidence to support that label. Where's your evidence, Nehor? And moreover, why are you still sore over that Bill Hamblin episode?

I'm not sore over it, just think you're a git for bringing it up every so often. My evidence for your pedophilia is that there are anonymous people on the Internet who are pedophiles. You're an anonymous person on the Internet. I think the conclusion is completely obvious.

[_Coggins7]

Does anyone else find this story ridiculous? Why in the world would 'Church Security' care where he lived?

Frankly, very little of what Scratch has ever said moves beyond the bounds of either the ridiculous or the implausible. And you know what, I suspect Scratch knows it, at some level.

At least, I hope he does...

[Dr. Sunstoned]

Quinn, in his career as a historian, has unearthed perhaps more embarrassing truths about the Church than anyone---ever. Moreover, it seems that BKP had a personal vendetta against him. I wouldn't be surprised if Elder Packer had personally ordered these Church Security agents to hunt Quinn down.

Come on Scratch. Quinn has unearthed some interesting facts and curiosities, none of which have damaged the Church in the minds of any save those who's sole historical interest is to interpret any such data in a manner commensurate with precisely the desire to damage the Church.

And the meticulous scholar Quinn is not always the substantive or honest scholar his gullible shills like Anderson make him out to be. Same Sex Dynamics is little more than a work of revisionist wishful thinking in the name of a very personal agenda, amongst the worst uses to which history can be put. Both his meticulousness and substance--and his self serving intellectual sloppiness, have been well chronicled by competent LDS critics.

The Quinn groupies, here and on Laverna Fielding Anderson's pro-Quinn whine site, have turned a meticulous, well trained, and also tendentious and deeply narcissistic scholar who has used his scholarship to advance personal ideological and psychological agendas, into an intellectual giant that just does not fit his actual accomplishments or abilities, in my opinion.

[_Coggins7]

Unfortunately, the team Packer ordered after Quinn was headed up by Robert Fundabar. They never located Quinn.

Perhaps their failure was due to over-extending the limited NCSC resource through a presumed massive effort to cover up the Church's complicity in the assassination of both Kennedy and King, as well as by plotting with the federal government to bring down the World Trade Center through controlled explosions and blamming it on radical Islamists, and later manipulate the elements so as to cause hurricane Katrina.

Then again, it may be due to their neglecting to utilize their impressive fleet of black helicopters or army of shape-shifters. ;-)

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

What really bothers me is that the Church won't come clean about Halliburton...

[_Coggins7]

The Nehor has had his butt kicked on here so many times...

Really, I feel a song coming on...

[_Coggins7]

Who has done more of this, more effectively and more diversely, than Quinn? I'll be waiting patiently for you to enlighten me.

Which of his books have been published in peer-reviewed organs?

Oh, yes, and now we come back to this issue yet again. This was hashed out some time ago on, I believe, an entire thread dedicated to pointing out that Quinn's peer reviewed publication history is scant, while his supporters argue that this doesn't matter because Quinn is, well, Quinn.

The bottom line? Virtually all of Quinn's published work has been centered around his personal vendetta against the Church and its teachings, and especially its social teachings, to which he has bent his scholarly abilities. Quinn is a revisionist historian before he is a historian, and always has been. He has shown, over time, a willingness to stretch history and historical evidence, and even invent it when necessary (Same Sex Dynamics) to make his points.