Falling out between Dehlin and Kate Kelly?

[_Madison54]

I read that thread. What on earth was so wrong with it that it got her put on limited? And Calm says her topic isn't appropriate for Social Hall? Isn't that subforum their version of the Spirit Paradise/Prison forums here? Where else would it go?!

by the way, Calm gave herself away. She recently stated how in ZLMB she would give long explanations for banning. So now we see Mod-red bans on people's posts, concurrent with long explanations of why the bans "probably" happened in a nearby Calm post. So obvious.

I imagine there aren't many over there who don't know that Calm is at least the head moderator. If they don't know, they at least know she can get ahold of a mod in seconds or minutes and that they always side with her and do what she wants done. But that's naïve to believe, as it's blatantly obvious that she rules over there.

What is so ironic about Calm putting Tacenda on limited for posting a thread in the wrong forum, is that Tacenda did this because Calm banned her from posting on Calm's thread that is posted in the wrong forum

[_candygal]

I read that thread. What on earth was so wrong with it that it got her put on limited? And Calm says her topic isn't appropriate for Social Hall? Isn't that subforum their version of the Spirit Paradise/Prison forums here? Where else would it go?!

by the way, Calm gave herself away. She recently stated how in ZLMB she would give long explanations for banning. So now we see Mod-red bans on people's posts, concurrent with long explanations of why the bans "probably" happened in a nearby Calm post. So obvious.

I imagine there aren't many over there who don't know that Calm is at least the head moderator. If they don't know, they at least know she can get ahold of a mod in seconds or minutes and that they always side with her and do what she wants done. But that's naïve to believe, as it's blatantly obvious that she rules over there.

What is so ironic about Calm putting Tacenda on limited for posting a thread in the wrong forum, is that Tacenda did this because Calm banned her from posting on Calm's thread that is posted in the wrong forum

Yeah..noticed that...what the hell?

[_lostindc]

Hey all,

Hope everyone is well. Count your many Joseph Smith blessings. ____ like that, life is going good here.

Rosebud,

As my history on this board shows, I think Dehlin is an attention whore that def comes across as a self serving ass, but your posts are not a record of anything. Saying something happened and then not clearing spelling it out doesn't help anyone, especially john and you. You need to clearly state what you believe happened and this can help stop whatever it is John is doing and consequentially protect others that may fall "victim."

Clearly some ____ went down and ur family and u were seriously impacted. I am sorry that happened.

Lost,

I trust you. Please ask what questions you think would be valuable. If I haven't already answered them, I will do so. If I have, and people care enough to know the answer, I will ask that they go look.

What I'm not going to do is interpret charges I make as I would expect a judge to. I am not the judge in this case, but a witness. I can say what happened and try to clearly explain what I know is the situation (and the way the law affects the situation), but readers need to decide for themselves. I expect each person to interpret differently based on his or her experience. That's what will happen anyway, right? My objective is to provide more information so more nuanced understandings can be had should people want to take the time to make them.

Thanks Rosebud,

If anything, the continued drama with Dehlin is a form of validation of your feelings and experiences with Dehlin. It appears, others are now starting to come forward and voice concerns. To many of us, Dehlin is clearly a mess. I have encountered many stories of him using individuals to further his cause. This is generally expected in business (I don't agree with this behavior) but not in the world of transitioning out of such as strange faith like Mormonism. People are vulnerable.

My theory, people like John are made in Mormonism. I know another notable figure in the exMo game that is providing a lot of LDS related documents to the public. He has the same BS ego and god forbid if a female has an opinion. I believe a male raised in Mormonism can often have a warped thought process that leans towards some crazy patriarchal belief system and a need to become some sort of valiant savior...basically very narcissistic.

[_lostindc]

JD is not posting on this thread you are.

Rosebud this drama thing you have played with us for years on this board is getting wearisome. Every time a JD thread shows up you tell a bit of the nuanced story. You start and stop and begin again but never all the facts or all the story.

Why don't you take the time and write out the whole story for your therapy and then post all that you can (or burn it or do something to get over this 5 year drama thing) (or sue the SOB) and be done with it. I see no "documentation" trail the way you are doing this or any good coming out of it. Posting a bit and a piece here and there and then being cryptic with the story is not helping you to be understandable. What do you really want to achieve here?

I see a woman scorned, prove your case or let it go.

scorned isn't the correct word. She was manipulated in her vulnerable state. It is a predatory situation. Many do not understand, especially males, because the subtle ways males will exert power, especially sexually based, is something we will not necessarily experience. It is not something necessarily a scenario that a stack of documentation is available.

"Let it go" doesn't happen in trauma, at least it is generally not common.

[_lostindc]

A history of Mormonism from a class perspective has yet to be written and probably won't be in the current "Mormon Studies" climate, but there is certainly something there. One way of looking at the Church is as the function of an aristocracy that was birthed by Joseph Smith. Polygamy is a sign of that aristocracy, and it was no accident in my view that Jeff Flake's and Mitt Romney's ancestors were polygamists—and probably John Dehlin's—but mine weren't. Theirs were settlers, farmers, and ranchers called to their places by the Church leadership that they were connected to by the chain-link of marriages. Mine were day laborers, coal miners, and rail workers: they worked either for the LDS polygamist farmers and ranchers or for the gentiles.

This entire exchange between Symmachus and Kishkumen deserves its own thread, rather than being buried in another JD ____ thread. Great stuff.

My own obligatory exit narrative, which I use in real life but have never posted, has developed along these lines. I'm the first "white collar professional" type in my family. When got out of school and felt what it was like to inhabit the "leader class" of the church, it turned my stomach enough to opt out of the church altogether. My family background is very much like Symmachus' story. Some roots in the early Mormon movement, widely quoted journals, but not really the insider group. A temple artisan or settler here or there, but no GA types. The class-based analysis of the Church resonates.

It also explains why there is so little money to go around in JD's "Mormon Stories" business. He's essentially touching only the leader class narratives, full of dashed expectations that most cultural Mormons never have, and those are the only narratives anybody (few as they are) will pay money to hear (ad nauseum).

For reals.

Not to kiss Kish's ass (get ready for an ass kissing), but I read this board because he provides profound thoughts. For me, this board is still better than all that reddit nonsense because profound thoughts can often be found here. Reddit is essentially a personal journal for newbies coming out of the faith.

[_Kishkumen]

Or maybe a situation of the grass always being greener on the other side. Perhaps I need more world experience, but I've witnessed drama in a lot of different environments, and on the whole the LDS community tends to produce less of it. And maybe that's not true, but I definitely have not seen more or worse from my vantage point. Stuff in the Mormon world is kind of juvenile actually, and the current problems to a great extent are a modern creation which has little to nothing with the legacy of Joseph Smith.

But even within the LDS world, this behavior among the Dehlinites is among the worst. And nobody misunderstand me when I say that. Clearly we can identify individual "Mormons" who were/are pretty rotten people. I'm not saying Dehlin or any of these people are "bad" people. To me they are just human, very imperfect humans. Like me. But as far as patterns of behavior go, way more drama, and way more mean-spirited sort of drama, seems to follow Dehlin around compared to similar sized subculture groups within the LDS world. Take the Snuffer crowd. Or guys like Rock Waterman, Adrien Larsen, Bill Reel, etc. You may think their attitudes about the church, or this or that historical tidbit are wrong, but they are really really nice people and I've never come across a single sole saying anything bad about them. So many of the John Dehlin/Tyler Glenn/Jeremy Runnels/Kate Kelly/ZelphShelf/reddit crowd are raging assholes wallowing in deafening levels of negativity. I'd much rather go to church and sit through an EQ lesson being taught by Bill Reel than hang out with John Dehlin at one of his victimhood conferences.

I don't know, Water Dog. I really have no desire to be unfair. And I concede that my observations on this have very limited value. I have not done any kind of methodical study of the matter. That said, I notice certain patterns in Mormon issues that seem to spring from the nature of the movement as the founder put it together. Is it entirely a coincidence, for example, that the very same group of people who were drawn to a story about a guy who found gold plates in a hill containing a better record than the Bible is also particularly susceptible to perpetrating and falling for affinity fraud and Ponzi schemes? Is it coincidental that the negotiation of Mormon cultural history and strict moral norms within the LDS faith leads to certain patterns in sexual behavior and infidelity? Certain ways of dealing with and making sense out of sexual desire?

Yeah, I have not connected the dots here, and I don't believe that what I am saying is that Joseph Smith necessarily makes Mormonism worse than other faiths. What I am saying is that just as its good points are recognizably Mormon, so too are its bad points.

Take Dehlin again as our example. People who are really obsessed with scholarship make fun of the fact that he is a fairly pedestrian mind. OK, fair enough, but there is also another story in this. It is the story of how Mormonism encourages people to learn for themselves. As much as Mormonism is lampooned for blinding people and creating Morgbots, it is also the church that identifies intelligence as the glory of God and enjoins upon them the duty of seeking wisdom from the best books. In John's case, that did not lead him where the LDS Church wanted him to go, but I credit Mormonism for inculcating in its members a kind of respect for the search for truth, one that is more concrete than in some other traditions. We can tease him for not being a Mormon intellectual superstar like Joseph Spencer or Taylor Petrey, but how many people have actually read those guys? How many people have heard Dehlin interview Terryl Givens or Richard Bushman? Those interviews sprang as much from John's search for truth as anything.

[_Kishkumen]

Not to kiss Kish's ass (get ready for an ass kissing), but I read this board because he provides profound thoughts. For me, this board is still better than all that reddit nonsense because profound thoughts can often be found here. Reddit is essentially a personal journal for newbies coming out of the faith.

You guys are really too kind. I appreciate your words of encouragement. And, you have reminded me that I need to return to my exchange with Symmachus on this thread soon. That guy is a wicked genius.

[_Flaming Meaux]

I haven't read every post in this thread, but here is where Kate Kelly criticized Dehlin (with a screenshot of her Facebook post):

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comme ... _on_blast/

My respect for KK took a hit after she approvingly posted an awful New York Times editorial about strategically defaulting on your student loans---written by a freelance writer with three degrees from an Ivy League university. There's a good conversation to be held about college costs, student loan repayment, and whether any portion of college should be free, but the general public does not owe anyone three expensive degrees from a top-notch, private university.

She has mentioned having $345K in law school debt. I'm at a loss as to how her loans grew so high as she only attended from about 2008 to 2012, and tuition at her law school shouldn't have netted her more than half that amount. Regardless, she seems to think she is owed debt forgiveness just because, even without working a public service job for ten years (PSLF). I think there's a lot of room for student loan debt reform (especially private loans), but I don't think the general public owes anyone graduate degrees from expensive private schools without getting anything in return.

As someone who attended one of those fancy expensive law schools, that is an awfully lot of debt for JUST law school. I'd normally say that perhaps she was referring to her total educational debt upon exiting law school, but didn't she do undergrad at BYU? To get to that level of debt she would had to have had tuition, living expenses (which, in DC would have been fairly high, depending on how many roommates she had), plus books and fees and a laptop, plus an extra $100k for, I don't know, cocaine and booze to get through the stress of it all (I graduated from a more expensive school, though one in a location with a lower COL and escaped with roughly $180k in debt--and I was newly married so I my only roommate was my wife who was also in school). This is also all assuming she paid sticker price to go to American, and why would an informed person do that?

[_MsJack]

As someone who attended one of those fancy expensive law schools, that is an awfully lot of debt for JUST law school. I'd normally say that perhaps she was referring to her total educational debt upon exiting law school, but didn't she do undergrad at BYU? To get to that level of debt she would had to have had tuition, living expenses (which, in DC would have been fairly high, depending on how many roommates she had), plus books and fees and a laptop, plus an extra $100k for, I don't know, cocaine and booze to get through the stress of it all (I graduated from a more expensive school, though one in a location with a lower COL and escaped with roughly $180k in debt--and I was newly married so I my only roommate was my wife who was also in school). This is also all assuming she paid sticker price to go to American, and why would an informed person do that?

If I recall correctly, she claimed that debt was for law school only.

She was at BYU at the same time I was, where tuition was only around $1500-$3000 per ft semester, so that couldn't have driven up the debt that much.

[_lostindc]

As someone who attended one of those fancy expensive law schools, that is an awfully lot of debt for JUST law school. I'd normally say that perhaps she was referring to her total educational debt upon exiting law school, but didn't she do undergrad at BYU? To get to that level of debt she would had to have had tuition, living expenses (which, in DC would have been fairly high, depending on how many roommates she had), plus books and fees and a laptop, plus an extra $100k for, I don't know, cocaine and booze to get through the stress of it all (I graduated from a more expensive school, though one in a location with a lower COL and escaped with roughly $180k in debt--and I was newly married so I my only roommate was my wife who was also in school). This is also all assuming she paid sticker price to go to American, and why would an informed person do that?

If I recall correctly, she claimed that debt was for law school only.

She was at BYU at the same time I was, where tuition was only around $1500-$3000 per ft semester, so that couldn't have driven up the debt that much.

The LDS I knew that went to Georgetown and American law schools went into extreme debt. They maxed out the loans and paid for the cost of living on loans. I knew of quite a few stories of 300,000+ debt just based on law school alone. I assume, besides law school cost of around 55 grand per year, these people took an addition 50 grand per year to live.