- Tom McKnight on On The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and Evolution: “When I was 16 years old, as a new convert to the Church, I first began seriously noticing that there was a conflict here. Either the Gospel was true, or Evolution. The Gospel won out, but I still had to deal with the Evolution issue. Years after mission, graduating from college, and mostly getting the family raised, I did the research I needed for myself. Here it is: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k-WlQUX0m8o3Y2FpLq_aUY8Q_up9BmaagTo2txoV1IQ/edit?pli=1&tab=t.0” May 12, 00:48
- on Pornography, Rape, Child Abuse, and the Future of Sexuality: “There’s a lot more boxes that could be checked–some of which you allude to in the OP–based on the messages pornography sends. You’d want it to not only have been made consensually, but portray getting consent (i.e. it’s not “rapey”). You don’t want it to cause body image issues for its consumers, or create unrealistic expectations about their partners. You don’t want it to create unrealistic expectations about what their partners will want (or even consider acceptable). Expanding on that last point, you’d want it to portray sex that’s realistically enjoyable for both partners, rather than what looks good to the male gaze. Already we’re talking about pornography that would be a lot less popular than what we currently have. But there’s another message that all porn sends to its consumers: whenever you want sex, there’s someone willing to provide it. The bulk of the time, a woman. That’s no small problem given how many women face violence when they fail to meet that expectation, whether from enraged “incels” or (far more likely) dates or domestic partners. That’s what really raises the question of whether there’s such a thing as “ethical porn” even from a secular liberal perspective. Yes, this is very much a minority position on the left. But I’m not so sure I’d call opposition to pornography a consensus on the right either at this point. Among the traditional right, sure, but the tech bros, the Joe Rogan fans, etc., not so much. Our politics are in a very strange state right now and both sides are pretty incoherent.” May 11, 23:37
- on A Review: Prepare Me for Thy Use: “That’s an interesting point about journals – just because some or all of it looks like a journal, doesn’t mean the journal keeper is the author of everything. I’ve seen other cases like that where a journal also functions as a commonplace book and devotional compilation. And the issue is a lot broader than journals and goes back a lot earlier than the 19th century, now that I think of similar cases.” May 11, 17:14
- on On The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and Evolution: “In terms of Adam, it is true that with science we probably need to drop the idea of Adam and Eve as the first two and only two progenitors of the human race, but that assumes that that’s the defining characteristic of Adam and Eve. That they couldn’t have been, say, two universal but not exclusive progenitors of the human race, or prophets that went through some kind of Garden and Fall moment in a celestial realm before being born on the earth, etc. There are a lot of ways to preserve Adam and Even without holding that they were the universal and exclusive progenitors of the human race. Even though that has traditionally been on of their defining characteristics, the temple kind of hits you over the head with the idea that it’s intensely symbolic, so we have a lot of leeway on this.” May 11, 06:22
- on Pornography, Rape, Child Abuse, and the Future of Sexuality: “RLD & Jader3rd: Yes, there’s definitely a discussion happening on the left about (un)ethical porn (e.g. see Nicholas Kristoff’s excellent reporting on how messed up the corporation PornHub is), but for the purposes of this post I’m talking about porn itself. So if we assume a sort of “fair trade” porn where the performers are compensated fairly, treated well as employees and everything was absolutely consensual. Also, evidently a lot of porn plays on racist tropes, so if we remove those as well we could, in theory have something that checks the liberal boxes, and that’s where we’re going to see the division. I’m not saying some liberals don’t hold that this fair trade porn is problematic (e.g. my note about the Icelandic Prime Minister), just that there’s less ideological consensus on this point. To put it in more concrete empirical terms, if anybody is aware of a survey dataset that has a question about attitudes towards porn in general (not legalization or regulation which brings in a bunch of other political ideology factors), I’d be willing to bet that the gender gap among liberals is higher than the gender gap among conservatives.” May 11, 05:05
- on Pornography, Rape, Child Abuse, and the Future of Sexuality: “I don’t think that I agree with Stephen C. that liberals don’t have a framework to talk about porn. The framework supported by liberals is harm reduction. The left is all about harm reduction. From what I’ve seen, “traditionalists” say, “Porn is bad, and if we ever talk about it, that’s all we’ll say about it.” or “Porn kills love, end of discussion”. From the more liberal minded I have seen discussions around how this is something that needs to be studied. There are concepts around “ethical porn”. There are discussions around how it can exist as an industry with the least harm to women. The framework is harm reduction.” May 11, 00:12
- on On The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and Evolution: “I think that most of the conflict comes from outside of the church telling people that there must be a conflict between religion and evolution, and as a show of faith you must flaunt your ignorance of evolution. I wish that somewhere in church studies, we could take the time to point out how this is mostly an outside influence. Brandishing ignorance is not a show of faith.” May 10, 23:56
- on Pornography, Rape, Child Abuse, and the Future of Sexuality: “It’s certainly possible to make a secular liberal case against pornography, as long as you accept that it negatively affects both the person who consumes it and the people the consumer interacts with. That is, of course, something people argue about, and frankly the kind of question where researchers generally find whatever they were looking for to begin with. (For the record, what Therapist to perps describes sounds about right to me.) You won’t find many people on the left making the case against all pornography, but it’s pretty common for even “sex positive” people to argue that some or even most contemporary pornography is harmful (like the Bill Maher quote in the OP). There’s also widespread recognition on the left that porn is an exploitative industry. Politically, porn for the left is a bit like capital punishment for the right: there may be a substantial minority opposed to it (like conservative Catholics who take all their church’s teachings about life seriously, not just abortion) but they know they’re a minority and mostly keep quiet about it so as not to disrupt the coalition and get in the way of what they consider higher priorities. There’s also a renewed appreciation on the left for limited government and not trying to tell people what to do in their personal lives, which has its upsides and downsides. So no, I don’t expect any action from the left on the issue.” May 10, 23:42
- on Pornography, Rape, Child Abuse, and the Future of Sexuality: ““[E]xplicitly socially right-wing commentators…their negative position on pornography is straightforward…” Not straightforward enough to keep them from voting for and supporting someone who’s been on the cover of porn magazines and had cameos in porn films, and whose wife posed nude for porn magazines. Face it–a lot’s changed in the past ten years.” May 10, 19:50
- on On The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and Evolution: “Jack, glad to know the comment didn’t disappear!” May 10, 19:27
