The future is almost here.

[_Droopy]

Of course. And since Blacks were born black that is part of the weaknesses they had to bear and suffer with while the priesthood and temple blessings were withheld. Except that weakness could not be made string BC as the verse teaches. Nor can homosexuality be made strong if it is inborn. The person is as much homosexual as you are hetero. So it is not in the class of weaknesses that Ether 12:27 speaks of.

Its sad that Jason has to be this intellectually facile, as he's quite capable of better than this. Many of us are born with inherent characteristics that, depending upon time, place and culture, can be seen as either boons or disabilities. That black people are born black, and that black skin is an inherent genetic endowment, is not arguable, and linage was the issue for church doctrine, not "race" per se.

That homosexuals are born homosexual is much more problematic (as there isn't any scientific evidence of such a condition), as homosexuality is a set of behaviors, or a behavioral syndrome, not a clear morphological attribute.

In addition, it seems a cruel God to make someone a certain way then forbid any opportunity to have loving relationship.

This is about as facile as it gets Jason. Interesting how cafeteria Mormonism leads inevitably to ever more exotic culinary tastes, isn't it? I predicted such years ago, but you have always bristled and protested that you are as much a "faithful" Mormon as I or any other TBM.

Now you "come out" so to speak, as pro-homosexual marriage in defiance of core Church doctrine, the Brethren and the scriptures.

Funny how things work out sometimes, isn't it?

[_Droopy]

As usual, the best most can do here is to ape the typical Huffington post op-ed, complete with all the pc boilerplate one would expect there on the same subject.

Move along, nothing to see here.

[_Droopy]

Nothing to do with what I said. I also have no idea what you mean but the 'last couple hundred years'. How involved religion is with marriage has varied throughout history from culture to culture. A 2nd century Jew and a 2nd century Roman marriage were both heavily religious.

What the hell are you talking about? Even in feudal Europe the lowest of the low (serfs) married.

I don't think you or Porter with his ignorant 'ice-burn' trolling have any concept of history.

If you mean to suggest that marriage has only recently become religious I suggest an overview of marriage rituals in different cultures throughout history. Except in a few modern atheistic cultures marriage has almost always involved religious customs, obligations, and rituals.

As for marriage only belonging to the elite, I have no idea what you are trying to say here. Every culture in history has a concept of marriage and while there are occasionally those excluded from it (usually slaves and usually not even them) it is everywhere at every level of society.

Harmony has not the slightest idea what she's talking about. All she's doing is regurgitating the classic secular leftist revisionist history regarding marriage that no one who has ever actually studied history takes seriously.

Marriage, across numerous cultures and civilizations, has for thousands of years been profoundly influenced by religion, if not having been, for the most part, profoundly religious in its own right.

Really, if unfortunately, only the word "stupidity" can do this kind of claim justice, as well as "chutzpa" when one considers the kind of mentality that would actually expect an intellectually serious adult to take such claims seriously.

[_Darth J]

As usual, the best most can do here is to ape the typical Huffington post op-ed, complete with all the pc boilerplate one would expect there on the same subject.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Dear Droopy:

Since you have taken it upon yourself to decide what the board is allowed to talk about, please provide us with substantive answers to the following questions:

1. Please explain why you feel free to call Jason Bourne facile, based on your statement, "That homosexuals are born homosexual is much more problematic (as there isn't any scientific evidence of such a condition), as homosexuality is a set of behaviors, or a behavioral syndrome, not a clear morphological attribute," when in fact your statement does not accurately reflect the consensus on this question among biologists and social scientists.

2. Please provide a link to the Huffington Post op-ed that is being "aped."

3. Theodore Olson, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, is a conservative. There is also currently a federal lawsuit pending that was filed by a conservative group, seeking to overturn the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on Equal Protection grounds. There are also numerous gay conservative groups, such as Log Cabin Republicans. Please explain a factual basis for your assertions that anyone who believes that homosexuals are deserving of equal protection under the 14th Amendment is a leftist/liberal. Please do not rely on an assertion that you get to decide who is or isn't a conservative or that you unilaterally get to define what "conservatism" is.

4. You frequently assert that there is no right to "marriage qua marriage" in the Constitution. Please show us the words "Judeo-Christian tradition" within the text of the United States Constitution.

Also, please do not respond by telling us how lawyers don't know anything, how apostates are all liberals, how everyone who disagrees with you is a liberal, and how you are so vastly more erudite and intelligent than everyone else on this board. We have seen these substitutions for substantive support of your assertions already.

Until you provide substantive answers to the above, I will necessarily conclude that you are incapable of doing anything other than parroting AM radio talking points, and I will continue to post this message in response to what you say.

[_harmony]

What the hell are you talking about? Even in feudal Europe the lowest of the low (serfs) married.

A short history lesson: Prior to the formation of society, there was no marriage. Only with the advent of the concepts of property, inheritance, and blood lines was it necessary for marriage to be invented. The Catholic Church was a bit late on the timeline, but they did finally get around to declaring marriage a sacrament:

The Catholic Church got involved around 1215 and defined marriage as a sacrament. Even then, though, the rules of the church were fuzzy because folks used the "private consent" option, which created problems in the ecclesiastical courts.

from http://marriage.about.com/cs/history/a/ ... rriage.htm

Then the Protestants got involved:

So Protestants required that marriage would no longer be a private institution. It became one that was done publicly with a ceremony, priest, witnesses, and parental consent. They also started registering births, deaths and marriages.

Finally, the government got involved:

In the 1500's, different governments and nation-states started controlling the legality of marriage.

In the early history of this country, a couple just had to say they were married:

Common law marriage was the norm in most of the U.S. in its early history

Then the reformers woke up (I wonder if Brigham and company had anything to do with this?):

In the 1870's this created a lot of concern and a marriage reform movement began. They called for publicity, formal ceremonies, licensing, and registration.

Since serfs in feudal Europe were property. Serfs/slaves had no rights, weren't considered human, did not marry, and were sold and traded like...well... horses. And the further back in history you go, the fewer marriages there were.

The rich, the nobles, the merchants... they married. And they married with as much pomp and circumstance as they could afford, which usually was religious and always was legal. As the influence of the Catholic church grew, the rich tended to follow. But for the average guy, the serf, the slave, the freeman laborer... there was no marriage. It was too expensive and not needed. If you go back far enough, you find that only those who had a legal reason married (inheritance, property rights).

[_JohnStuartMill]

JSM--

I"ll do a line by line response so I seem more catty and nit-picky.

Great! Catty and nit-picky is more my style, anyway. ;-)

Darth, I think you underestimate the speed with which religions can evolve, especially when they're subject the intense societal pressures that the Church is about to experience.

That's true, but I'm not talking about the speed of change so much as the enormity of change. For the LDS Church to really accept gay marriage, it would mean accepting gay temple sealings (eternal marriage). To do so would require an almost total reworking of LDS concepts about God and godhood. This would be comparable to the Roman Catholic Church trying to redefine the Trinity after 1,600+ years (I'm alluding to the church councils where the creeds about the Trinity were promulgated for my time frame).

I guess I just don't see such a theological reworking as so improbable. In fact, the Church already has distanced itself from fundamental doctrines, e.g., "As man is, God once was." Maybe you think of this backtracking as a mere shift in public posture that has no effect on what the Church will teach in secret? That's more plausible, but if it were true that the Church's private teachings could not substantially change, then there would have been no revisions to the temple ceremony. (And yes, such revisions DO constitute a radical reworking of Mormon doctrine -- after all, the temple ordinances are thought to be just as necessary for salvation as celestial marriage.)

Let's continue with your War in Heaven example: that was just as integral a part of Church doctrine as the idea of Heavenly Parents. If the former can be reworked so much as to be almost unrecognizable in a mere generation, why not the latter?

The war in heaven is still an integral part of LDS doctrine. A summary of this doctrine can be found here: http://www.lds.org/library/display/0,49 ... -6,00.html.
[...]
The above teachings have not changed.

Prior to the priesthood ban being lifted, LDS leaders taught that during the war in heaven, some of the spirits were sort of neutral or "less valiant" than the ones who really wanted Jesus to win. These spirits are born to black (Negro) parents who are "cursed" with a dark skin as an outward sign of their lukewarm attitude during the war in heaven. I've posted examples of LDS leaders teaching this doctrine here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13385&p=330724&hilit=negro#p330724

When the priesthood ban was lifted, the Church did not repudiate these teachings, and still has not done so. LDS apostle Bruce R. McConkie said:

Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world. We get our truth and our light line upon line and precept upon precept. We have now had added a new flood of intelligence and light on this particular subject, and it erases all the darkness and all the views and all the thoughts of the past. They don't matter any more.

He never said that it wasn't true. He just said, "Never mind." (Alternatively, you could conclude that LDS prophets and apostles can't tell the difference between inspiration and their own ideas, but that's a very troubling stance for a believing member of the LDS Church.)

Anyway, the core doctrine didn't change. Neither did the "less valiant" doctrine; it just got ignored because "it doesn't matter anymore." However, the "less valiant black people" idea is not necessary for the core doctrine of the war in heaven to remain in place. The concept of two gay gods somehow making spirit children is substantially more problematic for LDS theology than "never mind about the black people."

I agree that the priesthood ban has never been explicitly repudiated, and that this should vex any Mormon with a conscience. But it would also be inaccurate to say that the priesthood ban is still doctrinal. Modern General Authorities contradict it all the time; there are routinely articles in the Ensign preaching complete racial equality; any local leader would be swiftly rebuked and/or removed if he publicly taught that blacks were less valiant in the preexistence; etc. The Church's past racist teachings are functionally dead, even if the GAs are too embarrassed to properly bury them by addressing the issue openly.

But I'm glad we're fleshing this out, because I think the racial doctrines imbroglio gives us a good model to predict the Church's future stance on homosexuality. Let's go back to that McConkie quote. Can you imagine the President of the Church in 2050 saying the following about gay marriage?


Forget everything that I have said, or what President Gordon B. Hinckley or President Thomas Monson or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world. We get our truth and our light line upon line and precept upon precept. We have now had added a new flood of intelligence and light on this particular subject, and it erases all the darkness and all the views and all the thoughts of the past. They don't matter any more.

I can. Why not?

The only reason you've articulated is that the limited possibilities of biological parentage, combined with the Church's reproductive conception of the purpose of marriage, require it to restrict marriage to heterosexuals.

Well, no. The Proclamation on the Family indicates that both sex (male and female) AND gender (traditional male and female social roles) are part of our eternal spirit identity. It is pretty vague about how exactly a god and a goddess make spirit children, but it is abundantly clear in LDS doctrine that it takes a male and female for it to happen.

This is indeed a point I overlooked. But again, we've already seen the Church relent on very foundational teachings for the purpose of appearing more mainstream. There's even evidence of doctrinal evolution with regard to teachings about gender in particular: fifty years ago, a Mormon woman working outside of the home, or having fewer than four children, would have been seen as flouting divinely-mandated gender roles. Today, such behavior is commonplace, and inspires no ecclesiastical opprobrium. So I'd offer that fundamental doctrines about gender roles are more mutable than you might think.

But science is expanding the possibilities for mortal reproduction, so it's not clear that the biological constraint on this aspect of Mormon thought will be around much longer. And why should scientific possibility be such a roadblock in the first place? There have always been Saints who have been obviously infertile in mortal life: the ad hoc presto-change-o that grants those people the ability to procreate in the afterlife should work just as well for gays and lesbians.

But now you get to, "why does sex matter at all if you're a god?" According to the LDS Church, it matters a lot. You have to understand, too, that believing LDS members don't see these concepts as philosophical ideas that are being debated and explored. They are eternal truths revealed through prophets.

If the Church were to someday take the Bruce R. McConkie mulligan, and just say "never mind; we were speaking with limited knowledge" about the Church's core doctrines regarding the nature of God and of exaltation (attaining godhood), then what confidence are believers supposed to be left with that anything that the Church teaches is ontologically, eternally "true"? That's a substantial problem, too.

I agree that there's an enormous inconsistency between the Church's claims to epistemological primacy, and its ambivalent attitude toward its past errors. But I don't see that as an impediment to the Church's continued existence, because I don't think most Church members think about their beliefs as systematically as you or I do. Members are already required to believe many flat contradictions; what's one more?

I think that doctrines with culturally-ostracizing implications will slowly become less adverted to over time, and that members will gradually forget that they ever existed. You seem to be taking the position that this is inconceivable. Personally, I can't rule it out -- not when most Mormons my age aren't aware of the Church's past racist and sexist teachings and policies, or that plural marriage was believed, as a point of eternal doctrine, to be more desirable than regular marriage. These close analogues suggest that Mormons a few generations from now will be oblivious to the current teachings of the Church regarding homosexuality.

[_Darth J]

JSM:

Now I'm going to go like this:

/snip

That means I didn't read what you said, but I'm replying anyway. :)

I agree with what you're saying that it's doable, and some hypothetical expediencies that could be relied on to make it work. My main point is why it isn't being done today.

There is also a personality aspect to this whole thing. As has been pointed out,

As gays are, blacks one were
As blacks are, gays may become

Some of the Bretheren were not willing to budge on the priesthood ban, which is probably why it wasn't until after they conveniently died that God changed his mind. With respect to the current policies toward gays, there is a whole lot of social inertia in the leadership and in the rank-and-file against this big of a theological change, which is somewhat similar to, but much greater in scope than, removing the priesthood ban.

I guess what I'm driving at is that if this changes, it will more likely be evolution, not revolution.

[_JohnStuartMill]

Sounds like we were in agreement the whole time! Oh well, I think some useful ideas were elucidated in that exchange regardless.

[Guest]

1. Please explain why you feel free to call Jason Bourne facile, based on your statement, "That homosexuals are born homosexual is much more problematic (as there isn't any scientific evidence of such a condition), as homosexuality is a set of behaviors, or a behavioral syndrome, not a clear morphological attribute," when in fact your statement does not accurately reflect the consensus on this question among biologists and social scientists.

Please Johnny, let's not play these games. The claim that homosexuality is in any way inherent, or that there is a discreet and discernible "cause" of homosexual behavior and identity that can be traced to predetermining genetic/biological factors has not a shred of empirical scientific support, and never has. The "gay gene" theory of Levay et al was discredited before its ink was dry many years ago.

There is evidence, and has long been, that biological factors may be, for at least some subset of the homosexual population, important as influencing a predisposition or bias regarding development of same sex attraction (and much else), but these factors cannot be disentangled from the deeply complex psychological and social factors or matrix of factors that also play influential roles in psycho-sexual development (and personality development generally).

There is no evidence of a distinct and definable biological "cause" of homosexuality, or of many other things (like addiction).

3. Theodore Olson, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, is a conservative. There is also currently a federal lawsuit pending that was filed by a conservative group, seeking to overturn the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on Equal Protection grounds. There are also numerous gay conservative groups, such as Log Cabin Republicans. Please explain a factual basis for your assertions that anyone who believes that homosexuals are deserving of equal protection under the 14th Amendment is a leftist/liberal. Please do not rely on an assertion that you get to decide who is or isn't a conservative or that you unilaterally get to define what "conservatism" is.

Did I ever make the claim that everyone who supports homosexual marriage is a leftist? If I did, I beg your pardon, as all I'm aware of ever stating, or implying, is that it is leftist, overwhelmingly, who supporting it. Some "strong" libertarians do as well, but many of their social views are indistinct from leftist views (although their motives may differ from those of the Left).

The homosexual marriage issue has nothing whatsoever to do with the 14th amendment, as marriage itself has nothing to do with the protections of the Bill of Rights and the Federal constitution.

4. You frequently assert that there is no right to "marriage qua marriage" in the Constitution. Please show us the words "Judeo-Christian tradition" within the text of the United States Constitution.

Were I to attempt that, I would be in substantive contradiction to my main contention: that marriage is not a constitutional right and is a matter for the states and the people to decide. None of this is a federal, constitutional matter. Nor is the Judeo/Christian soil in which the Founding took place a constitutional mandate. It is true that the Constitution, as the Founding itself, is deeply grounded in a Judeo/Christian social/moral/philosophical framework that assumes the importance of religion and metaphysical moral absolutes as the ground of a free, civil social order. It also assumes there will be differences of opinion regarding things outside the scope of the federal constitution, a great many things, indeed, which are circumscribed by the 10th amendment.

Homosexuals have no more "right" in a federal constitutional sense, to marry than I or you do. Marriage is a privilege and deeply portentous social institution mediated by tradition, custom, longstanding social mores, and ages of experience. Homosexual marriage is a contradiction in conceptual terms; it is, as an idea, a violation of the core concept. Hence, no "right" exists to marry one of the same sex anymore than a "right" exists to marry one's siblings, parents, or dog.

The 14th amendment argument is a red herring, and its assumptions are can and have been easily argued against.

[_karl61]

Cool - EA and CC on this thread - love their thought process.