In 1975 the Church reversed its position on immigrations and baptisms in the United States and dropped from its list of questions of immigrants whether they were legal or not. One could not be baptized prior to 1975 if one were not a legal immigrant.
Today, the Church gives English lessons and financial aid to persons their bishops know full well are illegal immigrants. I am such a bishop. The bishop who shares my building and runs a Spanish ward is such a bishop. We are encouraged in leadership meetings to do so, and are told to not factor in immigration status into any equation. My stake several years ago called an illegal alien to be a branch president. The Church sends illegal aliens on missions within the United States. I have one such sister in my ward. The Church does so knowingly, carefully avoiding calling such persons on missions which would require them to cross international boundaries.
How do you think this factors in with keeping the laws of the land? The bolded portion essentially neutralizes this policy with respect to left and right wing. Might actually be more right wing as it is a "don't ask don't tell" sort of policy.
Does the Republican Party contain platform elements antithetical to the Church?
It was a Republican-dominated Congress that imposed test oaths on Mormons, disenfranchised first women voters in Utah, and then Mormon voters in Utah. It was a Republican Senator and Republican Senate lawyer who demanded that President J F Smith and others divulge elements of the endowment to a Senate committee presided over by a Republican. The Republican party called for the dismembership of the Church in the 1850s.
Non sequitur. We are talking about today.
Examples of where the 2004 Republican Platform deviates from teachings of Jesus Christ and the Church.
The party supports the death penalty for crimes. The only example of an acceptable death penalty in the scriptures comes from a religious society whose leader is a priest or prophet, and only where there are at least two witnesses. The U.S. and various states put people to death on the strength of one witness.
That there can and should be capital punishment is LDS doctrine. No prophet or priest is mentioned as being required. Genesis 9:6, 2 Nephi 9:35. Notice also the separation of church and state for the Alma examples. The high priest had no authority to execute (pun intended) these laws and had to bring such cases to the chief judge.
The party supports jail time for incidental drug use. Nowhere do the scriptures support such a theory and, indeed, we read about agency instead. Sure, we read about people hurting each other and being made to pay, but not for drug abuse. Proverbs speaks repeatedly about the drunkard, but never about criminality.
Okay so there is no deviation from doctrine here simply based on your own statements as far as I can tell.
The party's platform has a clause which would force government agencies to impose the Ten Commandments upon citizens. The scriptures, however, speak about agency in the context of commandment keeping.
CFR. There is only one explicit reference to the Ten Commandments in the 2004 platform.
The party's platform speaks out against "frivolous gun lawsuits." However, the Old Testament speaks a lot about property rights, being made to pay for one's negligence. If you negligently put a gun in somebody's hands, you should pay.
But are these lawsuits mentioned actually the result of negligence or is it really adefense against an agenda to take away agency?
The party's platform says: "Total and complete destruction of terrorism is needed." However, the scriptures condone only defensive war, and I am not aware of a single example of a defensive war in the scriptures conducted entirely on foreign soil.
The scriptures say that unto those where much is given, much is required. The D&C gives us the obligation to defend our friends. who are our friends and by extension, who are our neighbors? GBH himself, in a Christmas address prior to the 2003 resumption of the Iraq war essentially gave his blessing.
The party's platform says that it supports "faith-based welfare grants." This is tantamount to a national religion. Whose "faith" should the government get involved with? Joseph Smith was quite plain in his teachings about the agency of man and freedom from government compulsion. Why should my taxes be confiscated to give to a Episcopalian social system?
Indeed. However, your taxes were being confiscated anyway. The Republicans merely looked to broaden their distribution. A step in the right direction.
Having said all that, the Democrats themselves have serious problems with their platform and the scriptures. Abortion is the key example.
Well, so far I see no doctrinal conflicts at all with the Republican platform and as you seem to agree already there are significant and serious conflicts with the Democrat platform (I consider socialism to be the worse sin, the potential removal of agency from billions of people).
I am a libertarian, but I see the Republican party as the party of compulsion; the Democratic party as the party of libertines.
I can only agree with the latter so far, though I would agree that many individual Republicans have lost their way out of fear of offended what they perceive is their constituency. I am not a Republican by the way.