Say (for purposes of the analogy) I really like the metal band Symphony X. They really speak to me and I feel there’s a lot of truth in their art. The use Latin in some of their songs. And if I find Symphony X more moving and personally meaningful than Virgil. do I therefore decide their Latin is more correct, and declare “well, sometimes Virgil gets it wrong” (even though their Latin is actually terrible – the translations come out as complete nonsense like “a rich man of the feathers tragedy out of”). Should I keep insisting Symphony X has it right (even though they don’t), or is it better to admit that Latin poets are way more likely (by serious orders of magnitude) to have the Latin right than pretentious prog metal bands?

Does that work in extending the analogy?

This particular comment (which seems to be one of the primary points of your post, here) seems indicative of an unstated principle on which the rest of your thinking hinges.

To hazard a guess, this principle is something to the effect of “if my sense of Mormon belief is out of alignment with that stated by the ‘small set of highly privileged informants,’ then I must alter my sense of Mormon belief.” More bluntly, your a priori assumption seems to be: they are right; if I disagree, I am wrong.

Do I read you correctly?

Russell, rather than saying my solution or yours is the more parsimonious overall, the more likely explanation is that our internal models of Mormonism differ in a few ways so that we make somewhat different predictions about what constitutes a well-formed statement about Mormonism (and it probably depends as well on what part of the policy we’re talking about).

It is beautiful and it is awesome.

“Sometimes this involved donations to local judges who were willing to grant a quick divorce which would otherwise take months or years to obtain”

I’m tempted to ask whether bribery of government officials was against the law of the land in those areas. But I don’t need to. I already updated my mental model of what the church really thinks about “obeying the law of the land” years ago.

I’m only seeing this now, and as usual, I find it a sharp, incisive presentation of the sort of thinking which describes how we see the problems before us. Excellent work! However, as one who thinks the policy is foolish and wrong, and yet feels little need to re-evaluate my “internal model of [Mormon] beliefs” solely on the basis of this disagreement, I would plead, in my defense, your own principle of parsimony. Specifically, you write:

When the apostles act with unanimity—as they have now done in classifying entering into gay marriage as apostasy—that is about as strong of evidence as we can get that gay marriage is not compatible with Mormonism (at least, not without generating a set of statements that break the whole system, like: *The prophets are incapable of guiding the church on important issues today).

Yet that is hardly a parsimonious conclusion. It is, on the contrary, a rather expansive one. More correct, I think, would be to say:

When the apostles act with unanimity—as they have now done in classifying entering into gay marriage as apostasy—that is about as strong of evidence as we can get that gay marriage is not compatible with Mormonism (at least, not without generating a set of statements that require a modification of the whole system, like: *The prophets can make mistakes when it comes to developing policies pertaining to sexual identity and family structure when it comes to guiding the church on important issues today).

Yes, mine is more words–but it is doing less stuff with those more words, whereas your briefer words were claiming much more ground. There can, of course, be arguments to the effect that the language of prophetic authority as it has developed in Mormonism is more compatible with your original statement rather than my amended one. But note that those arguments, themselves, arise from an “internal model of [Mormon] beliefs” that we hold in our heads; they are not, to my knowledge, inherently dispositive, one way or another.

The church is not asking an 18 year-old prospective missionary child of gay parents to simply “participat[e] in positive relationships with people, some whose closely-held beliefs and opinions, or some of whose actions, differ strongly.” In fact, they are asking them to be willing to sever those relationships, if necessary. And these aren’t just any people. They are their parents, whose beliefs the church is asking them to disavow in order to serve a mission. And then they are asking them to move out of the home in which they were raised. I don’t live with my friends whose politics or sports-team devotions are different from mine. And even if I did, I wouldn’t have to disavow their choices in order to serve a mission. Or move out.

The stakes in this new policy and the potential that the “positive relationship” will be damaged are immeasurably higher than in any of the situations you raise, and, as far as I know, the church asks nothing similar of missionaries whose parents might be involved in any number of non-church-approved practices.

Perhaps the prospective missionary child herself can pull off the disavowal and moving out because she believes strongly enough in the church. But what of the parent who is left deeply wounded? Or what of the parent who asks the child to choose between them and the church? It seems utterly unnecessary to me to ever put a child or parents in such a position, not to mention utterly unnecessary to be willing to accept the potential for so much injury. I find the disavowal and moving out requirements stunning in their callousness.

I just cannot accept that we can do this in the name of Christ.

Eve: “Really. Not even in cases of abandonment, serial adultery, severe addiction, domestic abuse. Not even in the case of death threats by one spouse on the other spouse and children. That is something.”

Eponymous: (to summarize) The Church never supports divorce of a functional, or salvageable, family, but also supports an individual to protect themself and their family from abuse.

Lyle: Universal statements often contain exceptions. Its hard to describe a 100% accurate theory of anything. Let’s not nit pick. :) [As an example, in many Catholic Countries, LDS Missionaries would help a potential convert obtain a divorce from a legal spouse with whom they had longs since separated from, so that they could marry their current not-yet-legal spouse. So, in this instance the Church did counsel divorce, and encouraged the breakup of a de facto non existent family unit in favor of a potentially functional one. This was seen as helping individuals comply with the Chastity Commandment while also helping to form a stable family unit. Sometimes this involved donations to local judges who were willing to grant a quick divorce which would otherwise take months or years to obtain.]

Daniel Smith (4) commented on your sentence “Unlike human languages, Mormonism has a small set of highly privileged informants about what constitutes a well-formed statement of Mormon belief” by stating:

“There are actually quite a few groups that claim to have this authority over a particular language, for example The French Academy. It’s unfortunate that you didn’t explore this part of the analogy more before concluding with such a limited list of possible reactions to the policy.”

Speaking of comparison… The French Academy, instituted by royal decree in 1634, lost its authority to regulate the French language in 1984. The French government had come to understand that this group of mostly octo- and nonagenarians was bound to lose feeling with the living language and the social forces that drive language development. The members of the Academy, called “the 40 immortals,” remained indeed member till their death, and thus the average age had been climbing and climbing.

Today, the authority for the French language rests with age-limited councils in various francophone countries, such as the French “Conseil supérieur de la langue française” (CSLF), a governmental entity. Their philosophy is not to impose norms but to follow and channel developments in order to maintain unity but also to respect the international diversity of French. For example, the French council proposed a “rectification” of orthographic anomalies, but choose to “let usage decide” over the next decades.

So today a lot of people feel horrible. I’m sorry, and I sympathize. It’s a crummy feeling to think that you understand what your church teaches and to make predictions about the world based on your internal model of those beliefs, only to run into strong evidence that you were wrong, your church is not moving gradually towards what you see as the enlightened view on an issue you care deeply about, and your internal system of belief is not in conformity with church teachings after all.

I do recall reading some blog posts (James Olson’s recent one and Dave Banack’s a while back (which I can’t find)) that seemed to suggest that in the more distant future (25+ years down the road) the LDS church would come closer to accepting gay marriage (based on the belief that since general US society was becoming more accepting of gay marriage, much like they had become more accepting of racial equality and interracial marriage between the 1950s and 1970s, that the LDS church would eventually follow suit). However, I haven’t read anyone predicting the LDS church becoming more accepting of gay marriage in the short-run. Nor have I read any Mormon bloggers’ posts or heard from any believing Mormons who support gay marriage claiming that their acceptance of gay marriage was “in conformity with church teachings.” They all appear fully aware that their views aren’t. I get the sense that believing Mormons who support gay marriage tend to think that they don’t need to parrot or agree with everything the church leaders say in order to consider themselves and be considered LDS members in good standing. What Elder Christofferson said back in March 2015 (that members could back gay marriage on social media without fear of LDS church action against them) appears to confirm this.

Asking this of a child would indeed be asking too much. Even teenagers struggle with this. But adults do this all the time. (Please don’t think I’m putting these examples on the same level, but the principle is the same and some obvious examples should clarify.) Some BYU fans are good friends with UofU fans. Some Republicans have Democrat buddies. Neat-freaks can have disorganized pals. A 2nd-amendment die-hard can be close with a gun-control advocate. A Mormon who believes same-gender sex is a sin can be friends with a homosexual individual who thinks Mormons have some backward religious ideas. Etc.

Adults are all the time participating in positive relationships with people some whose closely-held beliefs and opinions, or some of whose actions, differ strongly. We can only do that by recognizing that the person is more than their, sometimes significant, difference(s) – by distinguishing between the person and their various bits and thoughts and words and actions.