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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   27768 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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Update to prior CW topic, in another round of America's favorite game Everyone Has a Sex Scandal Eventually: Vice reports that Tim Ballard’s Departure From Operation Underground Railroad Followed Sexual Misconduct Investigation

From Vice's reporting:

Tim Ballard’s exit from Operation Underground Railroad earlier this year followed an investigation into claims of sexual misconduct involving seven women, according to sources with direct knowledge of the organization.

Sources familiar with the situation said that the self-styled anti-slavery activist, who appears to be preparing for a Senate run, invited women to act as his “wife” on undercover overseas missions ostensibly aimed at rescuing victims of sex trafficking. He would then allegedly coerce those women into sharing a bed or showering together, claiming that it was necessary to fool traffickers. Ballard, who was played by Jim Caviezel in the hit film Sound of Freedom, is said to have sent at least one woman a photo of himself in his underwear, festooned with fake tattoos, and to have asked another “how far she was willing to go,” in the words of a source, to save children. These sources requested anonymity because they fear retaliation. The total number of women involved is believed to be higher than seven, as that would only account for employees, not contractors or volunteers.

OUR states only that:

Tim Ballard resigned from O.U.R. on June 22, 2023. He has permanently separated from O.U.R. O.U.R. is dedicated to combatting sexual abuse, and does not tolerate sexual harassment or discrimination by anyone in its organization.

The Mormon church meanwhile chips in to scold Ballard as well:

Last week, a spokesperson for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement to VICE News that contained a pointed rebuke of Ballard. The statement accused Ballard of inappropriately using the name of a church elder, President M. Russell Ballard—the two are not related, despite sharing a last name—“for Tim Ballard’s personal advantage and activity regarded as morally unacceptable.” The church did not specify in its statement what activity it regarded as “morally unacceptable.”

Prior thread on Ballard's film here; My own prior comment here

My read on all this is that it is a human psychological tragedy, Ballard got lost in his own masculine heroic fantasy. Good men nearly all carry the fantasy of, as they say, wishin' a nigga would. We want a reason to give our World of Cardboard Speech. We have the urge to engage in violence and adventure, but we want justified violence, righteous adventure. We want to fight, but fight for the right. Ballard found it in child trafficking investigations. He got to play James Bond in real life!

And what does James Bond do? He sleeps with every woman he sees, "as part of the mission." One can see the logic, if these OUR operatives were in an undercover role pretending to be a couple, that making love would be important. Blowing their cover could cost their lives, could endanger the children they are there to rescue, so whether they want to is irrelevant, they have to! But that was also part of the fantasy for him: he wanted to have to, he wanted an environment where he just had to sleep with these women, which he would then enjoy. No doubt, in his mind, the women involved shared the same fantasy. After all, while else would they join OUR and put themselves in these operations?

Ballard never meant any harm to anyone, he never meant to take advantage, he just thought he had found a moral loophole, an opportunity to enter a morals-free zone for a good cause. Apparently the women involved, the rest of the organization, and the Mormon church disagreed.

We should be wary of our fantasies of righteousness, as men. Engage in self-criticism, when we want to have a reason to use righteous violence, sometimes we just want violence. Which itself isn't necessarily a fatal flaw, there is value in harnessing masculine urges in positive ways, that can be seen as the basis for all social function. But we can't let our fantasies obscure our real mission, or harm those around us.

So the charge is that he, an adult man, tried to convince adult women to engage in consensual sex with him?

I’m getting sick of this thing where every shot a guy takes which doesn’t land is somehow seen as a sexual assault. Do people realize that women have agency as well, and also engage in these sorts of fantasy? “Oh no I guess I have to sleep in this bed with this big strong man who is out here saving the children for the sake of the mission” is the plot of like 90% of female targeted erotica. “We had to shower together to convince the cartel that we were married” sounds like it was literally written by a female erotica writer.

Human adults have sex with each other. Sometimes there is a period of courtship. Sometimes, and in fact just due to pure statistical reality, most times that courtship fails.

That is not a scandal.

The scandal is that these people just cannot understand that the scandal is the fact that adults want to engage in sexual activity with CHILDREN.

Go to a drag show? No problem. You do you.

Go to a drag show, with children? Problem.

Engage in a gender fetish? No problem. You do you.

Engage in a gender fetish with children? Problem.

Make erotic literature? No problem. You do you.

Make erotic literature for children? Problem.

The scandal is that these maybe actual pedophiles don’t understand the demarcation between “sexual activity among consenting adults” and “sexual activity with children.”

Seriously -- if sex-positivity is a thing that needs to be discussed/encouraged with 9 year olds by their teachers, then I think grown women are going to need to learn to handle a dude asking them "how 'bout it?" from time to time.

Do you think the Mormon church is sex positive or has liberal views on promiscuity? He's being cancelled for being a hypocrite.

Do you think that 'Vice Magazine' is likely to reflect the interests of the CJCLDS in any way?

Liberals calling out conservatives for their hypocrisy about promiscuity, homosexuality and so on is as old as time, what's your point?

"Look at this self-identified Mormon conservative trying to sleep with his interns against the core tenets of his church" is a story, sure.

And liberals being explicitly pro-promiscuity and pro-homosexuality is even older so who's the real hypocrite here?

Not the employees or readers of Vice, who will agree with you that cheating on your wife is bad.

I don't know how clever you think you're being here but my reflexive response is the old Cole Phelps "press X to doubt" meme

More comments

"Look at this self-identified Mormon conservative trying to sleep with his interns against the core tenets of his church"

Well, actually...

It could be argued that any righteous Mormon man (and what could be more righteous than rescuing children from sex slavery) has the right, nay, the obligation, to share his righteousness with as many celestial wives and spirit children as possible.

Take that page with a heap of salt. Much of it is outright falsehood, and much of the remainder more misleading than not.

For example, there's a whole section about how women can't be exalted except through men, and are thus otherwise denied salvation. This is false on two levels:

  1. Salvation is different from exaltation. People are saved with no regard to marital status, making the second half of the claim an outright lie.

  2. Men also cannot be exalted without women, making the first half misleading enough that it is essentially a lie. The implication is that righteousness flows forth from men to women, when the reality is just that marriage to a member of the opposite gender is a commandment for everyone. It would be just as accurate to claim the exact reverse, that righteousness flows from women to men.

A quick google suggests that is not the case any more:

Today Church members honor and respect the sacrifices made by those who practiced polygamy in the early days of the Church. However, the practice is outlawed in the Church, and no person can practice plural marriage and remain a member.

The standard doctrine of the Church is monogamy, as it always has been, as indicated in the Book of Mormon (Jacob chapter 2): “Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none. … For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.”

In other words, the standard of the Lord’s people is monogamy unless the Lord reveals otherwise. Latter-day Saints believe the season the Church practiced polygamy was one of these exceptions.

These sorts of public-facing nonbinding documents are often missing important context which committed members understand. Everybody knows that the banning of polygamy was a reaction to political circumstances (Utah wanted to become a state, and congress was reluctant to condone polygamy), not a reaction to divine revelation about the nature of the eternal law. If a man's celestial wife dies, and he remarries in the temple, he now has two celestial wives for eternity. I couldn't find anything definitive, but it seems like there are certain circumstances where a man may be sealed to multiple living women at the same time, even if they aren't civilly "married".

"The living man, after being granted clearance, can then be sealed to a second living woman in the temple. He is legally married to only one woman, but on the records of the church, he is then sealed to two (or more) living women. Any children from either sealing are “born in the covenant” with him, and are sealed to him.

It dawned on us that despite my husband’s explicit wishes and request, he would continue to be sealed to his first, living wife. If he wanted to be sealed to me, his actual legal wife, I would have to agree to be part of a polygamous family for eternity."

More comments

Was he proposing marriage before sex?

For all we know he may have been. Others in this thread have noted the lack of any actual touching. Maybe he did just want to share a bed together in the temporal realm. It's not any weirder than soaking.

EDIT: To be clear, I still think the default hypothesis is that he was trying to get his dick wet, but I don't want to completely discount bizarre-sounding Mormon explainations.

More comments

Liberals calling out conservatives for their hypocrisy about promiscuity, homosexuality and so on is as old as time, what's your point?

"Look at this self-identified Mormon conservative trying to sleep with his interns against the core tenets of his church" is a story, sure.

This. See that Biden scandal is not about "look at this degenerate druggie pervert", but "look how so called servants of the people abuse their position for personal enrichment".

A servant of the people abusing his position is bad in a non-partisan way independent of any hypocrisy. To make that analogy work, you'd need a weird situation where Democrats care about political corruption, Republicans do not, and the Republicans are criticizing Biden only for the hypocrisy in being corrupt, not for being corrupt per se.

Being a hypocrite about adultery also doesn't seem serious enough that you should try to prevent someone from making money from a movie. Notice that the headline calls it "sexual misconduct", not "hypocrisy", because on some level Vice understands this. "They're just after him for being a hypocrite" is the motte to their bailey.

"No enemies to the left" is more succinct.

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