Talk:Temple (Latter Day Saints)/Archive 3

Is including certain details of the Church's temple rites illegal or immoral?

The info following below in this section pretty much sums up the usefulness of contributions from Morven, FearÉIREANN and Delirium so far: not worth crap. None are lawyers. Nor do any of them have a fairly good grasp of intellectual property law (like copyright law or trade secrets) nor a good grasp of the common law right to privacy. Replies (above) to their naive critiques have gone unanswered. The only comments that "lack credibility", are "legally dubious", "spurious" or "bogus" are their own. —B 18:41, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Unless you find a lawyer who is willing to sue us over it, I'd consider it a non-issue. And even then I'd be skeptical. Let's keep the discussion to issues of NPOV. --Delirium 09:03, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

You mean unless the Church chooses to sue over it...there are plenty of lawyers who would represent the Church. It's stupid to suggest that it's a non-issue (legal or moral) just because the Church doesn't choose to pursue legal remedies. —B 17:15, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

User:BoNoMoJo deleted material about LDS temple rites from Temples_of_the_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints, suggesting on the talk page that such material was not only immoral but illegal. Further input would be desirable. -- Someone else 18:49, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

While I am not a lawyer, User:BoNoMoJo's arguments lack credibility to me. Quoting directly from copyright material of the church would obviously be illegal if they refuse permission (subject to rights of fair use, of course) - but the bogus 'right to privacy' he invokes is utter nonsense. If the church makes its members sign a contract before revealing its inner secrets, then it would be a possible breach of contract law and trade secrets law, but the fact is that this information has now been revealed by so many as to be public knowledge. The church could go after members for revealing its secrets, but I do not think it now has the right to have this information removed. --Morven 19:32, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Morven is 100% correct. BoNoMoJo's arguments lack credibility and seem legally dubious, to put it mildly. In the absence of a contract of secrecy involving all members of the Church, the 'right to privacy' argument seems spurious and I would go so far as to say bogus. FearÉIREANN 00:05, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think the cultural issues here may be more important than the legal ones although IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) either. If these were the religious secrets of an illiterate tribal society I think we would have qualms about the article. What's the difference? Please note, I don't mean this as a rhetorical question. I'm not saying I think the article should be blanked. I'm saying I don't know, the question is a real one, and I think we should discuss it and perhaps try to work out a policy. Andrewa 00:11, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

As far as the legal issues, there are almost certainly none. Even if there were a contract of secrecy involving all members of the Church, it would still be legal for us to publish the information. It would be illegal for them to divulge it to us, but once we have it, since we have not signed any contract, we can publish it (as long as it doesn't fall under trade secret law). A similar situation arises with leaks of classified documents: it is illegal for an official to leak classified information, but once it is leaked, it is not illegal to publish it (and in fact classified information is published by major media outlets all the time, citing "anonymous sources"). --Delirium 01:34, Oct 31, 2003 (UTC)

A fair bit has already been said about this at Talk:Temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Why not carry on there? Smokey the Bear says, "Only you can stop forest fires." -- Cyan 01:11, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Good point, and hopefully this discussion will end up there too. There are some more general issues raised here as well, perhaps we need a Wikipedia ethics page. Not sure which wikipedia:namespace is best for it, or the meta, I'm still getting the hang of the namespace and link structure of Wikipedia. Or does it exist already somewhere? If so please someone say where, and let's link to it from wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. Andrewa 18:42, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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