I am a member of the Mormon Church, a married heterosexual, and a supporter of marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. I am asking you to pause and give sincere thought to the letter from our religious leaders you have heard read, or will soon hear read, over our church pulpits asking you to get involved and oppose marriage equality in California. Please think deeply about this, not only as a member of a particular church, but also as a citizen of a democracy.
1. He may be a member of the Church, but he has "sold out" to the world. Sad, but apparantly common (and the revelations tell us to expect as much in the Last Days).
2. We do not live in a democracy.
To press for an amendment to a civil constitution that would legalize discrimination against an entire class of people is no small matter, but of the greatest significance. When the argument, no matter how well intentioned, is based solely upon a religious proclamation; then, I believe, it is a serious contradiction of the wisdom of our founding fathers. It also does tremendous damage to the great progress in civil rights we’ve made in our country respecting the equal dignity of each person and towards a more certain legal equality for all citizens.
"Discrimination' in and of itself is not incompatible with a representative democratic political order. Our intrepid "Mormon" author here cuts to the chases and dives right into the "rights" talk he thinks will intellectually and morally disarm many of his readers at the outset, and he will then be able to plow through the really thorny problems of homosexual marriage - so he believes - without too much philosophical difficulty, having used the buzz words and slogans of "rights", "fairness", "equality", and "democracy", to grease the skids of his philosophical and ethical capitulation to the Great and Spacious Building (GSB). Being ashamed of Christ, he of course has really no where else to lodge.
You should also know, not all faithful Mormons agree with our religious leaders’ encroachment into political matters. In fact, a growing number of active Mormons, who have gay friends and family members, are coming to the conclusion that our current leaders are as mistaken in promoting discrimination against gays and lesbians as was the Mormon hierarchy in the 60’s when they opposed equal rights for people of color, and our Mormon leaders in the 70’s when they opposed full legal equality for women.
The first claim here calls into question the author's understanding of the therm "faithful" as applied to Latter Day Saints and to their relationship with the Lord's living oracles (of course, you may always stipulate the conditions under which you will accept them as the Lord's oracles, but then we return yet again to semantic difficulties with the term "faithful" as this term is understood among actually 'faithful" LDS). Secondly, our author (who is really a rather typical secular Liberal who's real religion has now come into stark confrontation with his nominal religion) seems to think that LDS general authorities in the 60s opposed 'equal rights" for blacks. This of course, is false (Priesthood being, of course, not a right at all, but a privilege, having nothing to do with novel sixties notions of "equality). Our author is clearly oblivious regarding Pres. McKay's struggles with this matter).
Church authorities never opposed "full legal equality" for woman, but the ERA, which was an instrument of gender feminism in its ongoing war against the family, marriage, Judeo/Christian understandings of sexual morality, and normative gender roles. Certainly, in the authors quasi-Marxian (i.e., liberal) understanding of the term "equality", nothing less then a pure and formal equality of outcome throughout society under the watchful coercive eye of the state will suffice to sooth his soaring grandiose social conscience. Further, the Lord's servants in our day have as much right to "encroach) (whatever he means by this) into political matters as any other organization. This statement would lead one to believe that Latter Day Saint theology has no critique of the social, cultural, and political status of a people and the nature and consequences of political decision making. This, or course, is tantamount to claiming that the Gospel is a purely private matter (the classic Barry Lynn/ACLU position from which our author draws his inspiration) having no relevance to larger socio-cultural matters. In other words, the Gospel has no place in the public square. This is not an LDS position, nor is it arguably a feature of LDS theology, as the scriptures present us with the Gospel as always presenting a critique, many times scathing, of a society's norms, traditions, and politics (how a people shall live together in a coherent political order). Further, political decisions that may have dire social consequences and legitimize practices that would further erode the potential of the Gospel message to bring individuals out of Babylon and into Zion and which, in the past, have proved the utter destruction of entire peoples (political orders), are more than fair game for the Church as an institution as well as its members as individuals (methinks our author, textbook Leftist that he at all events appears to be, is very likely of the "free speech for me, but not for thee" school of culture war).
Of course, religious authorities of any denomination possess the right, and may claim the legitimacy, to set the theology and policy for their religious community. When they; however, attempt to interject religious doctrine into the public spaces of a diverse democracy without reasonable justification, then members, especially faithful members, of that religious organization have the civic responsibility to express public disapproval of such dangerous and undemocratic behavior.
The above is just a mass of the authors own prejudices, assumptions, and nostrums bundled together and providing a revealing glimpse into the the leftist mind (Mormon or not). Here, in one paragraph, the author makes clear he has no comprehension of the kind of political order in which he resides, has little comprehension of the concept of open political dissent and discourse in such a society, and very much would like people of conscience within his own and other religious bodies to recuse themselves from participation in the political life of their country and society.
This is all quite typical of the mind of the compassion fascist who has compassion on the objects of his moral and social largess, but on no one with ideas different than his own. All so drearily typical.
No one is asking that you condone a behavior that might violate your religious faith, but we need to allow everyone the freedom to live their life as they see fit, so long as it does not physically harm another person.
I could write an entire monograph on this kind of philosophically thin leftist/libertarian tripe. This is old territory,and well trod. This concept, if taken seriously, would empty the Gospel of all its larger claims to critique of human society broadly speaking, and not just the individual heart (the Book of Mormon would be emptied in its entirety of its large scale social and moral criticisms of then existing cultures). But this is all very old leftist territory. Once religion retreats to the purely private sphere, The GAAC is free to work without criticism, dissent, resistance, or public confrontation and argument. This is, of course, how Satan works, through the silencing of opposing voices in the public square, leaving his followers to define the terms and the limits of acceptable public discourse. We now call this, of course, "political correctness". What it actually is, more properly, is the
political cleansing of public discourse and the marginalizing of discourse in opposition to the reigning orthodoxy.
After all, religious values must be something an individual freely chooses, not something forced upon him or her by the state. We should never allow our constitutions, whether state or federal, to become weapons in a crusade to impose a particular religious value system upon a pluralistic democracy. Today it might be a particular religious value that we affirm, but tomorrow it might be a religious system, which would seek to legislate against our own sincere beliefs. So now is the time to take a stand and keep separate civil and religious authority.
Much of this is recycled ACLU can't. Homosexual "marriage" is not an issue of forcing religious values on anyone, but of preserving the very core of a morally and socially viable civilization, marriage and family, from a conceptual transformation that would relativize and destroy the concept for future generations (and thereby doom many of them to moral confusion and dislocation of a truly cataclysmic nature). This is where the concept of majority rule has a rightful voice, in preserving the norms and traditions that make civil society possible. Homosexuals will be free to continue living as they prefer as always, but they will not be able to term it "marriage" of any kind. This is neither undemocratic (as if democratic decisions were always legitimate simply because they were democratic) nor discriminatory in the sense of the kind of bigotry blacks once endured. There is good cause, on occasion, to discriminate, in a free society).
I do not believe that people choose their sexual orientation any more than they choose their skin color or gender. So to discriminate and deny them equal protection and equal opportunity under civil law because of these natural traits; especially in this case, sexual orientation, is grossly unfair and should be rejected outright in a compassionate and just democracy.
That's nice, but as there is no scientific reason to believe in any concise or unmediated genetic origin of homosexual attraction, the author's opinion here is no evidence upon which to base his conclusion. For his conclusion to follow, homosexuality would, indeed, need to be inherent and natural. No evidence or facts exist to substantiate this claim.
If anyone could give me a single reasonable argument against marriage equality in our civil society, which doesn’t make fallacious appeals to tradition, misplaced appeals to religious authority, or make some ridiculous claim about nonhuman animals, then I would like to hear it. So far, no one has been able to present me with even a single justifiable reason.
Again, he greases his own skids beforehand even as he asks for the arguments he knows very well he has rejected out of hand at the outset. He wants an argument? He claims to be a "faithful" Mormon, so how about some Mormon doctrine? Homosexuality is a gross abomination and perversion of the Lord's laws governing human sexuality. Broad societal acceptance and encouragement of it, is both the encouragement of the "murder" of God's children as individuals, in Book of Mormon terms (making such practices much more acceptable in a given society, and removing any stigma or sense of abnormality in pursuing such behavior, and hence, making the destruction of human souls ever more likely) and the approval of something which, in concert with other similar forms of cultural decadence, have proven the undoing of entire peoples in the past.
You should know that like you, family and marriage are very important to me. As I have become acquainted with gay and lesbian couples, I have been touched by their goodness, sincerity, and commitment.
We know what this is. Classic ideological ink squirting. This is a textbook example of the politics of identity, and how it is deployed in lieu of close reasoning, philosophical nuance, or centuries of human history and experience. Homosexuals are now here presented as a unitary class, all of whom are people aglow with the highest human attributes and features. This is the function of ideology; to dampen and flatten distinctions and nuance and fog the deeper moral and philosophical questions by a simplified appeal to emotion and the anecdotal experience of the author, for whom not a single homosexual couple he has ever met is anything but an exemplary human being.
I am persuaded that allowing marriage equality would, in fact, strengthen the institutions of family and marriage in our country. Perhaps it might even make all of us a little more considerate and responsible as both marriage partners and parents. I can only hope that the citizens of California, and my fellow Mormons, will possess the wisdom and moral decency to reject the call to discriminate against our gay and lesbian coworkers, friends, neighbors, church members, and family.
There is no discrimination. Marriage is not a right, and the concepts of homosexuality and marriage are mutually exclusive. Our author is not a "faithful" Mormon but one of the wolves that has entered the flock and is rending and tearing merrily away. When he finally finds himself officially outside of the Church, he may then very well end up here.
I may have a few words for him then, if I'm still around.