Epic Mormonism Live on Rosebud Accusations

[Lem]

Wonder what this means.

I have no idea. I don't know what is going on with the GFM's that she listed on her website. I think the website is still offline. Who knows the mind of Rosebud?

I’m thinking that maybe she realized it was not a good look to have FOUR open fundraisers, two duplicates each for attorney’s fees and for her kids’ education.

[Dr Moore]

The book might as well be titled: “how to turn failure into victimhood.”

That works as a subtitle, given the title is something like “sharing what I learned when a franchise took advantage of me.”

As a business person, I thought you might get a kick out of this. Did you know that her statement about franchise fraud to the FTC actually contains 25 recommendations, all written by her, that she confidently states will revamp the entire franchise economy, and will vastly improve the profitability of small owner businesses in this country? Ordinary grandiosity pales beside her confidence.

I read the whole website. Still laughing too hard to write much more about it all.

[Lem]

You’ll find I’m full of surprises.

i'll remember that next time you tell me that my way of stating an argument is so good that you can't figure out a way to disagree.

[consiglieri]

[Moksha]

Okay, what about just leaving to let Open Stories Foundation sink into obscurity under Rosebud's ambitious leadership and you continue with the successful Mormon Stories on your own. You would have only needed a couple of friends for a 501C tax status.

If you hate me or don’t care about Mormon Stories, this position makes sense.

Sometimes it helps to take a ridiculous position, throw it against the wall, make a 180-degree turn, and realize the answer lies in that direction. For the record, I have enjoyed you and many of the Mormon Stories podcasts. I doubt that the Open Stories Foundation of 2021 would want to be under the direction of Rosebud, but you know there is much fair-weathering and contrariness in the ex-Mormon community. People one minute claiming they love freedom and the next minute wearing the Trump brand.

[Esme]

I've been looking for evidence that Rosebud ever promised to "go away" if things got bad.

This is what I've got. (From the "Earliest Facebook chats" doc.)

Rosebud says:

I don't know much about the future, but I do know that one thing you don't have to worry about is me destroying you with any of this. Not going to happen. No matter what goes on between us in the future -­even if I were to suddenly get really pissed at you (I can't imagine why ... but just making sure I'm clear).

Not super specific, but fitting in with some general promises made on both sides to never hurt the other person and to always support the best interests of the other person.

[Kishkumen]

I think it is quite possible that this or another unelicited promise was at the root of the “agreement” JD was referring to. In his post it sounded more like something he might have made her promise, which looked really bad. This kind of thing—what you see in the Rosebud quote above—is more believable as a background to it. The problem with the perpetrator/victim model, or one of the problems anyway, is that it prompts people to interpret everything in a situation through a distorting lens. Once John is the perp, seeing his words and actions in the worst light is too easy and natural.

[Physics Guy]

I'm not sure the answer to my question a while back, about whether an eagerly consensual romantic relationship between superior and subordinate could be sexual harassment, was really the answer to the question I was trying to ask. I wasn't asking whether that kind of relationship was wrong or suggesting that it wasn't serious. My question was like asking whether arson counts as breaking and entering. I'm fully convinced that relationships like that are a grave breach of professional responsibility, on both sides but more seriously on the side of the superior. Every organization should have clear policies against such relationships and they should not be tolerated.

I'm just concerned about whether framing the charge as one of sexual harassment is correct. I think that kind of consensual relationship is a different flavor of sexual misconduct from harassment. A few online definitions seem to support my own impression that to harass someone is to give them trouble, and so by definition anything that someone wants can't be harassment. It can absolutely be wrong, but just not for that exact reason.

Whether or not the recipient wanted the attention is an important issue in harassment, because it's what makes it harassment to give someone—even a peer—lavish bouquets of roses or other inappropriately lover-like gifts, or pay them inappropriately personal compliments. If whether the gifts or compliments were welcome or not were irrelevant, then the harasser could just ask what was wrong with being nice to someone? The recognition that it's the reasonable feelings of the recipient of the attention that matter, and not the claimed innocent intentions of the harasser, was an important step forward for civilization.

To cut this out of the definition of harassment is a step backwards. The right thing to do is to get other forms of sexual misconduct recognized for what they are, too, along with harassment—not to weaken the protections against harassment by expanding the definition of harassment into too wide an umbrella.

Arson and B&E are both crimes but they are not the same crime. No matter which one is worse, they should not be confused, because if a prosecutor carelessly charges an arsonist with breaking and entering instead of with arson, the arsonist might walk free by proving in court that they never entered the building when they set it alight. I'm really thinking of a couple of generals who ought to be dismissed with demotion for screwing around with majors under their command, but who may well be able to claim correctly that they never sexually harassed anyone. Accusing them of sexual harassment, and trying to bend the definition of harassment until it fits what they did, is only going to divert attention from the seriously wrong things that they actually did.

[Lem]

I'm just concerned about whether framing the charge as one of sexual harassment is correct. I think that kind of consensual relationship is a different flavor of sexual misconduct from harassment. A few online definitions seem to support my own impression that to harass someone is to give them trouble, and so by definition anything that someone wants can't be harassment. It can absolutely be wrong, but just not for that exact reason.

While I don't disagree that a relationship with a power imbalance, consensual or not, represents the possibility of a harmful situation, to me that's irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

The reason this relationship is an issue is because it did cause actual harm, in the form of an involuntary loss of employment as a result of the relationship between the superior and the subordinate. Using the prior consensuality of such a relationship, actual or not, to justify such harm, misses the point. "Promises" made in the throes of romantic love are an extraordinarily shaky base for justifying later behavior that results in harm. To me, it's like justifying breaking into a person's home, on the premise that the person said they would always love you. Such statements shouldn't be used as the equivalent of a contract to allow later harm.

[Meadowchik]

I know you have alluded to Dehlin's "problematic behaviours" before. What are they?

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