I wouldn’t come to your house and diss your beliefs in your face. I’m with the church on this totally…

I get that. Just cut me a little slack, Mister. I’m really trying to have a respectful discussion on the topic at hand.

Regarding defensiveness, I’m sure you know that one person’s defensiveness is another person’s “setting the record straight.” Perspective is everything.

It’s clear that I miscommunicated, however. When I spoke of “rampant defensiveness,” I was not trying to imply guilt. The fact is, we’re all very capable of being right, yet reacting to others’ comments in an overly-defensive manner. From my personal perspective, it seems that over the past couple years, the LDS-PA office has been issuing defensive statements on a variety of topics, where they previously would have taken the “don’t dignify that with a response” approach. Sometimes that’s a good and important thing. Other times, it can backfire. I’m personally aware of at least one incident during the past year, where LDS-PA were essentially right in how they characterized the individual actions of a local bishop, yet the tone was such that many reacted with “methinks the lady doth protest too much,” and concluded that the LDS church must be hiding something. In a number of statements during the past two years, the LDS-PA office has seemed to focus on portraying their church as victims in any situation which arises. These sort of things which I was describing by “rampant defensiveness.”

This particular statement doesn’t carry the same air of defensive posturing. It does, however, make some very specific factual allegations, which I’m surprised legal minds would readily approve. Perhaps they really do have everything on video, and are prepared to give unquestionable proof of their claims. In any case, there are inherent risks in making such specific accusations in official PR statements, as I’m sure you know.

For what it’s worth, Geoff, if the description by LDS-PA is accurate (particularly in regard to public “groping”), I agree that it fell clearly into the category of “inappropriate,” even if it wasn’t private property.

I simply would like to point out that I worked with Church public affairs for several years. I know most of the people who work in Church public affairs in SLC, and I know how they operate. I would trust my life with them — without a doubt. In this particular case, given my experience, there is no doubt in my mind that what happened is that Church public affairs and/or Church counsel interviewed the security guards extensively to double and triple-check their story. They decided to release this statement several days after the incident so they would have time to check it. After interviewing the security guards, the Brethren were consulted, and, very likely, several meetings were held to discuss the matter.

If such a statement was released, it is supported by the Brethren completely and has been cleared by probably dozens of people. That’s definitely good enough for me.

I don’t take the statement as absolute truth or absolute falsehood. I do, however, take it as a statement issued by an office who’s job it is to make the organization “look good” in the media (which they’ve been struggling at accomplishing, frankly, due to rampant defensiveness in their statements over the past year or two).

Based on the available information, I personally am more likely to believe the Church version. These guys were drunk and looking for a battle, and they rightly got arrested after getting unnecessarily bellicose.