Do you ever place yourself into the penalty box?
 

At law school, we had answerman bingo where you had all students in a class on a bingo sheet, rearranged so that you could see who could get bingo first. You would arrange your own sheet.

Then based on who answered you would get to check the square. Moving over to Church, ...

Sometimes in the distant past my exuberance got the better of me, I found myself participating in church class too often. So I placed myself into the penalty box now, for several years. That way, I wouldn't make comments just to make comments. Has anybody else ever self-disciplined him or herself?

I limit myself to one comment per class in gospel doctrine. But sister balloon hand makes 75% of the comments in that class anyway.

I place myself in the penalty box during meetings at work, but not at church. I have a tendency to talk too much when I get excited about something.

In church, about 30% of my comments are inappropriately shot down by people like Tex, so I have quit trying. I have rarely if ever had someone approach me and tell me they appreciate my views. There is very little freedom of speech in Mormonism, except on the internet.

For example, one time turing a lesson on divorce, everyone was bragging about how rarely Mormons get divorced. I raised my hand and said: "Just because people don't get divorced doesn't mean they're happy in their marriages. In some societies, women are afraid to get divorced because they don't have quality education or career opportunities, and so they do not feel like they could survive on their own. Or perhaps some people don't get divorced because of fear that they would be ostracized by society." People didn't like that. Then I got a lot of responses about how I was wrong, and the real reason Mormons don't get divorced as much is marriage covenants.

Then some guy gave a statistic (from a BYU professor, no less) about how 80% of people who don't get divorced are glad they didn't get divorced. I don't really understand what that means anyway. 80% of people whose marriages weren't bad enough to motivate them to go through with a divorce are glad they decided not to get divorced? 20% wish they had gotten divorced but still haven't gone through with it for some reason? The people whose marriages were bad enough to get divorced would be happy if they hadn't gotten divorced? I really don't think much can be concluded from isolated statistics like this.

I'll take this rare moment to agree with Sooner.

Yeah, Paul Dunn didn't like it either.

That's not true in every ward. Hang in there.

HA!

Tex, and other belligerents, may be loud but they really aren't representative of the typical active Mormon (John Dehlin mentions this in his document that's been cited a few times here on CG). You aren't the only one rolling your eyes or feeling like your comments aren't welcome.

For what it's worth, I appreciate your views, Sooner.

Look, if Sooner spews the same made-up stories in church as he does here, he deserves a smack down every so often.

Sooner, I can't remember where I read it, but there are some minor publications out that show how displaced divorced men are in our culture. It may not be true in every case, but many men feel ostracized and lack an adequate support group to endure the very troubling time.

In a nuclear ward, there are many who thankfully have never experienced this stuff and therefore may be insensitive toward it.