Margaret Toscano was branded an Apostate for talking about Women in the Priesthood, and Mother God.

I don’t think that’s an accurate statement; anyone can talk about those things, but I think hers was a situation where her advocacy grew more and more strident until it led to an adversarial stance towards the authority of the Church.
In the PBS documentary, Maragaret Toscano struck me as being a wonderful person who could not (or would not) accept the basic aspects of our faith that would allow her to be happy in the Church.

One can be excommunicated without being an apostate and one can be an apostate without being excommunicated.

Excommunication is the formal removal of an individual from membership in an organization by that organization’s generally recognized authority.

Emma Smith started her apostasy when she questioned the succession of Brigham Young, she abandoned the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and became an apostate of that organization. To my knowledge, Emma Hale Smith Bidamon was never excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was never re-baptized into any other church.

From what you say Margaret Toscano was excommunicated, I don’t know enough about her situation to say whether she was an apostate.

Margaret Toscano was branded an Apostate for talking about Women in the Priesthood, and Mother God. Two subjects our Church (LDS) fully believes in. There were no questions of authority on her part. I understand the thoughtful and rational thought on your part. But there are other reasons someone is branded and Apostate. In the case of Emma Smith, she abandoned the LDS Church and banded with the RLDS Church. In one Church she is an Apostate. In the other Church she is a Saint.

Thank you for clearing thing up for me Jota G.

Jamie Trwth

Apostasy from a church is the abandonment of one’s adherence to the principals, doctrine or rules by which that church is governed. One does not become an apostate by participating in the act that is forbidden. One becomes an apostate by deciding not to live by a church’s core doctrine, principal, or rule. Apostasy begins with questioning and doubt and ends when one’s questioning and doubt results in a decision that makes one abandon one’s faith. (I’m not making any value judgments as to whether apostasy is good or bad, I’m just saying what it is.)

The fictional Big Love character did not become an apostate when he began to practice polygamy. He does not commit apostasy when he has sex in his polygamist marriage. Assuming he had previously been a member of a church that forbade polygamy, Bill began his Apostasy when he questioned and doubted the authority of that church to forbid polygamy, and he became an apostate the moment he decided that his church lacked that authority. His practice of polygamy and his sex with his polygamist wives are simply a byproduct if his preexisting apostasy.

You interpreted various words and phrases in my message #10 with meanings and contexts that I didn’t intend, and frankly in ways I didn’t expect, given the context of the thread up to that point. And I’ll admit that I didn’t scrupulously specify the exact meanings and contexts I was using, and therefore left the door open for others to ascribe meanings and contexts that I wasn’t addressing.

Since I don’t want to go onto those tangents, I’ll forbear responding to your #13.

Bill, the lead character in Big Love, is labeled by the church as an apostate. This is because he is a polygamist. Is he an apostate because of his polygamy? Or is he an apostate because of the sex in his polygamist marriages?

I keep meeting people who have never had Cottage Cheese (stay with me on this one). I thought everyone eat cottage cheese. But I was wrong. Just as if someone always meets people who are apostates because of a sexual reason. I will stand on this one message to be true; most people who are labeled apostates didn’t do anything sexual to become so.

It is believed, by my humble opinion, that Bill lives the Principle for a higher purpose. He believes he and his family will be exalted in the Celestial Kingdom because of living The Principle. In contrast to the Church’s belief that he will be sent to outer darkness because of living in polygamy.

One persons Principle just might be another persons Perdition.

I’m sure that all sounds very strange, but ultimately it’s the same thought process that leads many gay LDS men to marry in the first place. They want to do what they believe deity expects of them, plain and simple.