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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28112 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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Do they have a history of making statements disavowing tabloid hit pieces against laypeople of the church? Also they are pissed at him about what? His alleged sexual misconduct, which makes up the majority of the piece, or his inappropriately using the name of an elder? They aren't even in the same ball park crime wise, but they are listed together so the legitimacy of the church rebuke can be tied to the allegations of sexual misconduct.

This is certainly somewhat unprecendented (hence why it's sticking around), but there's no reason to assume malfeasance here, a rogue PR agent. It's been out long enough that someone would have corrected the record by now. Usually the Church responds to things through its newsroom portal, in this case they just responded to a request for comment. Not sure why, but also not sure why it matters.

we don't know specifically why the Church viewed his actions as morally unacceptable, but it is true that he has repeatedly invoked Elder Ballards name and the Church is trying very hard to tamp down on various forms of affinity fraud that sadly take in many of our more guileless members. If the sexual allegations are true it's even worse - but for now it's all based on anonymous accounts so idk. But at minimum, using an apostles name to make money is, to me, bad enough.

I don't think the statement was falsified, I think it's unlikely the church will say anything about the vice article. I thought you were falling for a false dichotomy - 'they commented on the elder stolen valor thing, so not commenting on the vice article implies they agree with it'. It kind of looks like you are falling for it again here -

we don't know specifically why the Church viewed his actions as morally unacceptable, but it is true that he has repeatedly invoked Elder Ballards name and the Church is trying very hard to tamp down on various forms of affinity fraud that sadly take in many of our more guileless members.

Because it's true we don't know exactly why the church rebuked him, because they took down the statement they made (which implies they don't fully support it imo, but let's assume they do support it for this argument regardless), but we can be pretty damn sure they were rebuking him for claiming he was good friends with elder Ballard and not the allegations of sexual misconduct, because they speak at length about the elder thing and never say anything about allegations of sexual misconduct. Based on the evidence in this article, there is zero reason to think the church were rebuking him for the sexual misconduct.

To be clear, I don't think anyone in the church has done anything shady at all (except younger Ballard). But I trust vice about as far as I can kick them, and this article only reinforces that.

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