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MormonStories.org. So I want to try and just do a little bit more work to come

back to something I've been trying to hear from you or get from you throughout

this whole interview because again I think my goal if I had any goal in this

interview it's to build common ground and to create or discover vistas of

opportunity for you know dialogue in better dialogue and collaboration and this

sort of speaks to the broader role of apologetics in let's just say in our church.

If I were to sort of go with let's just say the liberal stereotype of an

apologist there's just a general feeling in the in the discourse of some Mormon

apologists where there's just sort of hostility instead of empathy towards

people who are you know some would say are struggling with issues of race or

gender or sexuality that are really complex and and very difficult and so it's

tough and I'm just gonna lay a bunch of things out there and then let you talk as

long as you want about it but I think it's particularly tough for an LDS

apologist because you know the church is named after Jesus and if you had to

sort of reduce Jesus to one thing I think we could all agree that the one word

that you would sort of ascribe to Jesus would be love or charity and so it's

got to be tough to be defending things that you think are important which I

respect but it's got to be tough to do that in a way that is Christlike that

...