Just Following Orders

From Paul Toscano

To understand the import of Elder Jeffrey Holland’s August 23, 2021, anti-LGBTQ+ address at BYU, it is important to consider several points:

Point 1. The members of the Quorum of the First Presidency do not line up in authority horizontally:

Nelson, Oaks, Eyring

Rather, they line up in authority vertically:

Nelson (first in authority)
Oaks (second)
Eyring (third)

Point 2. The members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles are not members of the Quorum of the First Presidency and they, too, do not line up in authority horizontally, but rather vertically—in order of seniority based on the date of apostolic ordination given their uninterrupted service in the Q12):

Oaks (as President of the Twelve though serving temporarily in the First Presidency)

Ballard (acting president of the Twelve)

Holland
Uchtdorf
Bednar
Cook
Christofferson
Andersen
Rasband
Stevenson
Renlund
Gong
Soares

Each apostle is bound to conform his views to his seniors.
This is how unanimity in apostolic decisions is guaranteed.

Point 3. Holland was required to give his “musket speech” by Oaks and Nelson or he wouldn’t have given it. The text runs against his nature, but he gave it because he is bound to obey the decisions of his seniors as revelation even when it hurts (hence the tears)

Point 4. Holland was sent to give the speech because he is known for compassion; he was chosen in order to let people know that obedience comes first not compassion; this reason is why Uchtdorf was dropped from the First Presidency. One may therefore say that Holland was Uchtdorfed!

Point 5. The reason Nelson and Oaks, through Holland, are doubling down on their policy of “love the sinner but hate the sin of same-sexness” is because the LGBTQ+ community threatens the rigid concepts of family set forth in the 1995 Proclamation on the Family (probably authored by Oaks) which concepts have replaced the Gospel.

Point 6. The Proclamation on the Family teaches that we are saved by being sealed into the family into which we are born. The Gospel of Christ teaches that the we must be saved from the biological family by being born again.

Point 7. The LDS apostles have replaced Mormon soteriological theology with church ecclesiology.

(End quote)

________

I am uncertain to what extent Paul Toscano’s conclusions are correct.

But consider Milgram experiment

The Milgram experiment(s) on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. They measured the willingness of study participants, men from a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of education, to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a “learner”. These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.

Are we ever willing participants in any such real-world examples?

– Tom Irvine

Elder Holland’s “Salt Sermon”