Durrant apologized for his son making a bad decision but what he hasn't yet admitted is that he registered a ponderize.net domain on September 4th. It looks like he had a plan all along to market his ponderize merchandise online. Here is the objective evidence of that: http://www.whois.com/whois/ponderize.net
"A week before my address, my son obtained the ponderize.us domain name and subsequently created a website"
The website was created in less than a week? I suppose the merchandise was produced during that week too? BS. This had been planned for months. Registering the website would have been one of the last things they did.
Doubt it will have much effect on the church, but I would bet that Durrant's rise through the hierarchy is over. His next calling will be HP group leader in his ward.
Ole George Durrant is probably beside himself. He's always so close to that Mormon fame and hierarchy, yet so far. He advocates hitting your kids to make them behave and to force them to stay in the church (too lazy for citation, from one of his books). I wonder if Devin will get an ass whipping from George.
His biggest mistake was his lack of subtlety and obvious greed. The guys at the top want yes-men, not entrepreneurs. On the other hand, maybe this will give the top 15 some new ideas on how to monetize conference in the future.
Answer: It won't. This will barely elicit so much as a raised eyebrow among the TBM crowd. This is much less scandalous than the Paul H. Dunn fiasco. It will all blow over in a week.
However, for a few hundred or so Mormons that were already teetering, this could be the thing that causes their overburdened shelves to crack.
Quote: There are still unanswered questions about how involved Durrant was in the venture. According to Whois.net, an website domain lookup tool, Durrant himself registered two other domains in September - ponderize.org and ponderize.net.
In a text message, Durrant told 2News he bought the domains "to protect them." He did not elaborate nor respond to follow-up questions.
As an apostle, he has to be SO embarrassed. Seriously, having screwed up a few times, I know that kicked in the gut feeling you get, especially when it becomes public. For a lot of people, it will become his entire legacy. He's a laughingstock now to many of us. His brethren aren't going to trust him for a long long time.
It will help the members a little bit. They can see just ever so slightly more that the church and its authorities are just a bit greedy, just a bit cynical.
It might allow a random member or two to become more cynical, and that's a good thing.
Perhaps, but their wives, or parents or rich in-laws will haul them back into conformity. Otherwise it's not a cult!
ETA: Seriously... If a kid raised in the catholic church, says to his faithful catholic parents at the age of 21, "I'm done with the catholic church, except I'll go to midnight mass with you on Christmas Eve...", they'll just pat him on the head and tell themselves that he'll repent on his deathbed, and that will be that. But for a 21 year old mormon kid to tell his parents, "Hey, I'm giving this mormon life style a pass for now...", his TBM parents would totally flip out.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/06/2015 02:26PM by elderolddog.