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So, anyway, with Thriller's recent thread, there's an example. People who fundamentally don't make the connection with morality, with personal ethics and principles worth living by, or with "God" as being a representation of Virtue or Truth, have no regard for either their own character or the well-being of others. This is the malady in the mind of folks who think "Priesthood" is some kind of power or authority over others, rather than figuring it for an obligation to serve others somehow.

The LDS offshoot at Colorado City which is today's Warren Jeff's church, went sociopath in the early depression years with a leader named John Y. Barlow, who began doing things his own way, and bragging about it. The LDS offshoot known as the Kingstons made it's start on the same principle at about that time, too. Big Men, with their own way. Knowing a little about a few of them, I could carry on a civil conversation I suppose, but their followers would just wonder who I was to be giving opinions or advice.

My friend from Long Beach, however, is just "being there" for them, with a little of the material necessities of life, giving them a bridge to tomorrow.
 
The mainstream LDS Church has a little program, a few people "called" to "be there" to assist children from those outlaw families. A sort of delicate issue with the LDS, but they do make an effort to help.
 
I have had some virtually endless debates with anti-Mormons whose information goes to making out Joseph Smith to be a sociopath. At the end of the day, and the discussion, and at the end of Joseph Smith's life, he wasn't.

His wife Emma, his young love, had issues with polygamy to the end of his life, and did not go with the LDS under Brigham Young west after Joseph was killed. Most Mormons of all kinds will do their level best to paint Emma as an honorable wife, and a good woman. But in the weeks leading up to Joseph's death, she broke confidence and spoke to some of his worst enemies, the men who were trying to discredit Joseph Smith. Now I don't know all she said, but it was reported by one that Emma said she was "tired of all the women" in Joseph's life. His enemies made of mockery of Mormon "secret" polygamy. The press that published it was destroyed by city officials, who termed it a "public nuisance". An aroused public saw it as a violation of free speech by a local mayor, Joseph Smith. Some dispute who gave the orders, but it's no stretch to assign responsibility to the mayor. So Joseph fled across the river, to another state, knowing Nauvoo was busted, and would not be anymore. He spoke of going west, to the Rockies.

His wife sent a message to him: "Come back". Joseph said "If my life is of no value to my friends, it is of no value to me". And he went home to face the issue.
 
Joseph Smith whiled the time away, knowing the mob was gathering around his jail and working up the nerve to come get him. With him were his brother Hyrum, Wilford Woodruff and John Taylor. Joseph asked to hear a favorite song, a sort of ballad called "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief", about being willing to help the most useless, despised and misfortunate man you could imagine, even to the extent of giving ones' own life to save the wretch. Not exactly in the sociopath category, I'd say.
 
Joseph Smith read a passage from the Book of Mormon, and turned the corner of the page to mark it.

Apparently still believed it meant something.

Not the way of a man who had made up a farce. . . . well, actually, no fraudster would have stood for a hundredth part of what Joseph stood up to in his life over that issue.
 
Joseph Smith never got ahead money-wise with his preaching. He was involved in starting an idealized little "bank" called an "anti-bank", supposed to be a co-op like a credit union, but it went bust in the Panic of 1837 that took out a lot of banks. Joseph was still paying off the judgments that the courts handed him in the aftermath right up to the end. Died with some debts, no fortune. Emma remarried after his death because she needed someone to support her.
 
Some say he sealed his testimony with his blood, as did his brother Hyrum. John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff lived to lead the Church into the twentieth century.
 
I wonder sometimes about the way things are with the LDS leadership today. How they stack up with the definition of "sociopath" and such. Knowing some of them, and knowing a lot about many of them, there are some issues, I'd say. Some folks really hype the organization and the authority, and make a case for unquestioning obedience. That's a problem. In my experience, there's plenty of LDS people who get the idea of having their own integrity, their own sense of things, their active conscience and principles of living. Often, they sorta give church leaders a pass when they say something really obtuse. . .. wrong. . . and just realize people all have their failings and weaknesses. I'd say that's a good thing to do. Call it "charity".
 
Well, there's a saying among Mormons. "If it wasn't the Lord's Church, the (leaders) would have destroyed it long ago." It's a statement of faith, a reason given why many Mormons stick with it, however hard it can be. If it wasn't for their actual relationship with our Heavenly Father, and Jesus, they wouldn't be there.
 
Well, it would be stoutly protested by Moe, and any self-respecting woman, that I should call the case I'm about to discuss, a "woman". It's like talking about a bank robber or a murderer, and making special note of his sex, as if it proves something about all similarly sexed individuals as a class. Sorta like a troll topic on gays not being as bad as Mormons, somehow, and then describing a particularly sociopathic example and insinuating such things happen naturally as a consequence of a certain religious belief.

I mean, the CC Camp drives boys off the ranch, makes them get jobs in the cities and send the pay home, to keep them safely away from the action. Jacob, in the Bible, mourned the loss of Joseph, and grieved a lifetime for him. No "lost boys" in the family of Israel.
 
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