The face of sin today often wears the mask of tolerance.

[_Thama]

I try not to be stupid. Basically, your answer is "yes," the Church should refuse to admit practicing homosexuals because the Church is wrong in everything else, so why not just seal the deal and be wrong in that?

Sophistry is dishonesty at worst, disingenuousness at best. Either one is a rhetorical failure.

Let's see if Thama has the moral courage to answer my question.

Boy oh boy. I was under the impression that reading comprehension was a forté of attorneys. I do wonder how you managed to pass your state bar, or are the standards really that pathetic out West?

I did answer your question. Go back and read the damn thing, and try to spend more time on it than you do on your briefs.

However, I sense that you'd like a more detailed discussion than a simple "should/shouldn't". From a theological standpoint, this is clearly a difficult matter for the Church, as the statements on the 1950s-esque nature of the family have been broadly recorded as statements from the First Presidency and as doctrinal as anything in the Church. It's even more problematic than the matter of blacks in the priesthood, though the Church managed to deal with that piece of backwards bigotry pretty well.

It's a sad example of the dilemma that all dogmatic religions face, when over time what is good theologically comes to be at odds with what is good morally. That's when you shake out the good religions from the bad, and the good, decent believers from the spiteful, hidebound fundies. I was momentarily encouraged that Mormonism might manage to be one of the good ones, eventually. I'm not so hopeful anymore.

[_bcspace]

Do you think the church's stance against adulterers (they can't have fellowship) is wrong?

Quit dodging my point.

It's a perfectly cromulent question. Homosexual acts fall under the definitions of adultery and fornication (depending on the circumstance).

[_The Dude]

It's a perfectly cromulent question. Homosexual acts fall under the definitions of adultery and fornication (depending on the circumstance).

If you are saying homosexual acts are nothing more than an aspect of adultery and fornication, then what happens when homosexuals in three US states or several foreign nations are legally wed? Ooops! Has the secular law supresceded the divine law and lessened the degree of sin, as it curiously does for male-female couples?

No, it doesn't work that way. (yet)

So these attempts to mollify critics by comparing the homosexual ban to common attitudes about adultery, or an Elk's club headdress, are poor experiments with sophistry. Can we please move on, BC and rcrocket?

[_bcspace]

If you are saying homosexual acts are nothing more than an aspect of adultery and fornication,

Yes.

then what happens when homosexuals in three US states or several foreign nations are legally wed? Ooops! Has the secular law supresceded the divine law and lessened the degree of sin, as it curiously does for male-female couples?

No.

No, it doesn't work that way. (yet)

Or ever.

So these attempts to mollify critics by comparing the homosexual ban to common attitudes about adultery, or an Elk's club headdress, are poor experiments with sophistry. Can we please move on, BC and rcrocket?

I never said anything about common attitudes. I am speaking of the scriptural context which does not recognize homosexual marriage.

[_beastie]

It's a perfectly cromulent question. Homosexual acts fall under the definitions of adultery and fornication (depending on the circumstance).

I really do not know how to be any clearer.

Crocket listed homosexuality - which is "same sex attraction" - along with other things that are actual behaviors. In other words, his post leads one to conclude that simply being attracted to the same sex without acting upon that attraction" is the equivalent of other sins that involved actually acting upon urges, like adultery.

I'm trying to tease out the fact that the frequent LDS attempt to explain that it's more "sex outside of marriage" rather than "being attracted to the same sex" that is the real sin is really a dodge, a bit of sophistry, as dude pointed out.

[_harmony]

Runtu = the Mark Hoffman of the exmormon world.

This comment has no bearing on the subject of this thread. Wheat, you're out of line (as if that's anything new or different).

[_moksha]

[I am] somebody who is willing to post with his own name. Somebody who is willing to answer questions honestly without fear of where the answer might lead. Somebody who certainly strives for honesty in all cases and will admit dishonesty if ever confronted with any objective proof -- instead of some crazy mindreading business.

You don't use a picture of yourself as an avatar. Why not?

Personal identification of that sort might be potentially dangerous.

[_Droopy]

Yes, socialists did this to religious believers and non-believers in their own religion throughout the 20th century, to the tune of 100,000,000 dead.

The Islamofascists are, of course, the heirs of the Nazis of yore, some of the most extreme leftists of the early 20the century.

No mystery here.

[_Droopy]

Everything else you cited was a behavior that was an outright violation of the church's moral codes, with one exception- homosexuality. That is a sexual orientation. Are you admitting that the church actually views same sex attraction itself - without acting upon it in any way - in the same way that it views adulterers and child molesters?

"Sexual orientation" is a catchall term that describes precisely nothing. Homosexuality is a number of things: it is a feeling or perception of erotic attraction to others of the same sex, a distinct set of sexual practices, and a subculture and lifestyle involving a set of sometimes highly stylized and cultivated sexual gender identities associated behaviors and mannerisms. The Church doesn't view the attraction itself in the manner it views actual sexual sin among heterosexuals, and Oaks and others have made perfectly clear to the intellectually honest.

As I see little reason, based upon past experience, to count you as among that class, however, so I assume the very making of this point has been moot.

[_Droopy]

No. But it has everything to do with sins and lifestyles, such as homosexual behavior and other fornication, being considered the norm in society.

That's kind of what I thought. Memebers of the LDS Church are already the least likely to say homosexuality should be accepted by society, and I think the goal is 100% rejection of any tolerant feelings for this specific movement. No more compromise.

There. For once, really for once, Seth has it right. Homosexuality should not be accepted by society. Wow! Should I bake a cake or go buy some party hats? A pluralistic, democratic society should tolerate it, yes, (with distinct limitations), but need not accept what it tolerates in the name of the very important principles of civil order and unalienable rights.

Homosexuality's threat to both civil society and the concept of unalienable rights (as opposed to the alienable, judicially or legislatively created kind) does place upon the rest of society a responsibility to set boundary conditions to the extent homosexuality and its attendant values can affect and condition the larger culture.