Today I proudly signed the SUU protest petition seeking to disinvite Jeffrey Holland as commencement speaker. Holland used the intellectual “musket” metaphor in defending LDS Church Doctrines in opposition to the LGBTQ movement.

While signing I had an interesting thought: Why has the LDS Church forgotten it’s very foundation was built on an alternate sexual lifestyle? Comments?

The church hasn't forgotten, it simply wants everyone else to.

hehehe

Might make a right dandy protest sign!

Oh the Hypocritical One! Tears welling in his eyes as he tells church leaders to understand mental illness, work with members who struggle. Oh, if sin is big enough, rocket them out of the church.

Love, compassion, here at the Lord's Church no problem is to big for us.

Love-loving (& what those mean) along with Kindness & Honesty are AWOL in Morland - ChurchCo.

Just how hard is it for all the people involved to remember our Nation needs to keep a tall wall in place for separation of church and state?

SUU should NOT have invited Holland knowing his opinion on LGBT+ people and the recent comments that he made at BYU.

Jeffrey Holland should have said "Thanks, but No Thanks. Find a more secular speaker".

Utah has a lot of amazing citizens who could do the job.

Holland is from St George, and he is a former university president, both excellent points qualifying him to be a commencement speaker at SUU, but his speech to BYU faculty to fall in line with LDS Inc opposing LGBT issues or else was really beyond the pale. The SUU president should have known she was asking for big trouble. Hard to believe she was that tone-deaf.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2023 03:53AM by Brother Of Jerry.

I had to look up the musket metaphor.


"His [Holland's] words were unmistakably a call to arms: Holland used the word “fire” 10 times, “musket” eight times, and made multiple references to “friendly fire,” “wounds,” and “scarring.” In particular, he called for “more musket fire” from BYU’s faculty to defend Mormonism’s official position on the inferiority and social dangers of same-sex relationships and marriages."

(From Slate, 2021)

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/09/mormon-lds-church-gay-rights-controversy-byu-speech.html

*vaporized to conceal my utter ignorance about Utah schools*



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2023 11:52PM by Lot's Wife.

Oh please. Jeffery Holland wasn't referring to getting guns and shooting LGBTQ people. He was talking about being on the same side during debates and arguments. Spinning his comments to be more than they were just makes people look foolish.

I'm seeing a lot of this hyped up rhetoric and it's ridiculous. If you don't like LDS Inc. because it views LGBTQ lifestyles as sinful then that's another point to make.

Your comment is ridiculous. Inflammatory rhetoric by authority figures inflames.

Surely you know enough history to understand that.

I agree. It was inflammatory rhetoric that was deliberately chosen by Holland. I don't think that any public school should be inviting him to speak.

To Rubicon,

You may be an educated person who understands metaphor. You may have taken a debate class. You may be used to how arguments in party politics work.

But there are some who can't peel off the florid and figurative words to understand the core meaning underneath. They hear literally the parts that punch.

When politically savvy people select metaphors, they do so intentionally. Holland was resurrecting the old "war" image: "we are all enlisted till the conflict is o'er." Alternatively, the war in heaven and the war against evil. All of this is vintage Mormonism.

As you note, 90-95% of the listeners won't take him literally. But some may. And then you end up with attempted coups and with Matthew Shepard tortured to death on a fence in Wyoming.

Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me?

Bullshit.

Rubicon's post was pure "he didn't mean it" apologetics and you know it.

And you also know the "it's just metaphor" argument is bunk too. I have a Bachelor's in English; debaters have a novice's understanding of metaphor, writers have a master's understanding.

And Holland was being inflammatory; why do you think he chose the metaphor he did if he didn't want Mormons to think of fighting enemies?

But I suspect you and Rubicon both knew that. So, both of you cut the crap!

Aunt Sukey is, I believe, making the same point that you and I are. She is saying that some people will take the metaphor at face value and interpret it as an order to "punch."

I just get pissed off when I hear "he didn't mean it" arguments. And the "not understanding metaphor" argument riled me up; once an English major, always an English major. Apologies to Aunt Sukey.

I still stand by my comments directed at Rubicon, though.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2023 06:01PM by ookami.

As do I.

I do not believe Holland wanted gay people killed. But his choice of metaphor was highly irresponsible.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I do not believe Holland wanted gay people killed.
> But his choice of metaphor was highly
> irresponsible.

Words matter!

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.” Maya Angelou

“Words: So innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Language creates reality. Words have power. Speak always to create joy.” Deepak Chopra

“No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.” John Keating

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” Mother Teresa

“Words have magical power. They can either bring the greatest happiness or the deepest despair.” Sigmund Freud

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I agree about metaphor. We can't count on everybody all the time understanding everything. That's why context is crucially important too. But in the heat of some moments careful attention to one's language choices is paramount if it's essential to be accurately understood.

If people are riled up already they can easily miss a metaphor and take the actual words at face value. Or, as said above, metaphorical phrases just sail over the heads of some people.

The onus is largely on the speaker to ensure their words are understood as intended.

Topic, audience, purpose, all must be clear.

There are many occasions and venues, particularly in our current day, when militant language is not being understood as only metaphoric, for various reasons.

Words are not innocuous. They can hurt and wound severely. As we've seen this applies to society as well as to people.


Below is a bit of a tangent from the main subject but the principle is similar. And I always like to remind that Words Hurt. The following article applies to words spoken in interactions between humans in families and other groups but the principles have a wider application too, as in the example in the topic of this thread. The common thread is that words have power and we should wield them with care. It doesn't seem that responsible these days to use inflammatory and/or militant language, served either straight up or inside "only a metaphor".


From Psychology Today: Words hurt by Peg Streep (August 2015)

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/tech-support/201308/why-words-can-hurt-least-much-sticks-and-stones

Excerpts:

“Words hurt just like sticks and stones.

“We all know this, despite the adage. When I was writing Mean Mothers, women who were victims of “just” verbal abuse often commented that they wished they’d been hit so that “their wounds and scars would show.” In a series of studies, Martin Teicher M.D., Ph.D. and others have shown that there are physical and emotional consequences of “just” verbal abuse. In one study, the researchers found that the effects of parental verbal aggression were comparable to “those associated witnessing domestic violence or nonfamilial sexual abuse.” In fact, verbal aggression produced larger effects than familial physical abuse. There’s evidence too that exposure to verbal abuse in childhood actually alters the structure of the brain. That was also borne out in another study by Teicher and his colleagues called Hurtful Words. What the researchers found was that especially during the middle school years, when the brain is actively developing, exposure to peer bullying and verbal abuse caused changes to the white matter in the brain.”

“Just because we can’t see the wounds doesn’t mean they aren’t literally and physically there.”

-----

That is beyond fascinating - to think of words having such great impact that they can change the physical structure of one's brain - but it's also completely heartbreaking to consider this type of literal injury, as well as other kinds, in cases of abuse that we know abound in this world.

The power of speech is tremendous and having a receptive audience should compel leaders and speakers to think about their language choices. It's a bit late after the fires have been lit to say my (inflammatory) comments are only metaphors!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2023 07:52PM by Nightingale.

Words truly are powerful. I studied writing because I wanted to learn more about how to work their power into something beautiful or terrifying. Though I'd reserve the terrifying for fiction.

And there are consequences for their misuse as well.

If that makes people look foolish then using not metaphors with guns makes Holland look hateful and stupid. Wasn't it a sword of righteousness? Those can be more for show but to defend any us and them with those kinds of metaphors doesn't make one look like they could address with respect an audience with their enemies of righteousness in it.