A lifelong Mormon was fired from her job as an adjunct professor by Brigham Young University-Idaho after she refused to recant her support for LGBT rights.
Ruthie Robertson was allowed to finish out her summer course teaching political science, but the university canceled her contracted classes for the fall and winter semesters, reported KUTV-TV.
She wrote a Facebook post June 5 calling out the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for opposing LGBT rights, and she professed her support for her gay friends and loved ones.
“Most Christian faiths label homosexuality as a sin based on archaic writings,” Robertson wrote. “A few hateful verses in the Old Testament have led to hundreds of years of prejudice, hatred, violence, and pain. If we’re going to follow the Old Testament, and use it to justify a hateful stance, there are several other things we need to start condemning and punishing.”
The post went viral, and someone reported Robertson within hours to her employer — who she said implied her job was safe if she recanted her statement, but she refused.
“I could not take it back,” Robertson said.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/07/i-coul ... book-post/
Which is interesting considering back in March 2015...
An LDS apostle reaffirmed recently that Mormons who support gay marriage are not in danger of losing their temple privileges or church memberships — even though the Utah-based faith opposes the practice.
In an interview Friday with KUTV in Salt Lake City, Elder D. Todd Christofferson said that individuals in the 15 million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would be in trouble only for "supporting organizations that promote opposition or positions in opposition to the church's."
Backing marriage equality on social media sites, including on Facebook or Twitter, "is not an organized effort to attack our effort," Christofferson said in the interview, "or our functioning as a church."
http://www.sltrib.com/blogs/2301174-155 ... y-marriage
The article continues...
The KUTV interviewer asked further if a Latter-day Saint could "hold those beliefs even though they are different from what you teach at the pulpit?"
Yes, the apostle answered.
"Our approach in all of this, as [Mormon founder] Joseph Smith said, is persuasion. You can't use the priesthood and the authority of the church to dictate. You can't compel, you can't coerce. It has to be persuasion, gentleness and love unfeigned, as the words in the scripture."
Christofferson echoed this sentiment in two January interviews with The Salt Lake Tribune.
"There hasn't been any litmus test or standard imposed that you couldn't support that if you want to support it, if that's your belief and you think it's right," Christofferson said after a Jan. 27 news conference.
At that time, he and fellow apostles Jeffrey R. Holland and Dallin H. Oaks spoke to reporters about the LDS Church's intention to support nondiscrimination legislation for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community as long as the measure provides some religious exemptions. The Utah Legislature passed such landmark legislation last week — with the blessing of the state's predominant faith.
Any Mormon can have a belief "on either side of this issue," he said. "That's not uncommon."
Christofferson made the point again in a Trib Talk interview Jan. 29.
He was asked about Latter-day Saints who support same-sex marriage privately among family and friends or publicly by posting entries on Facebook, marching in pride parades or belonging to gay-friendly organizations such as Affirmation or Mormons Building Bridges? Can they do so without the threat of losing their church membership or temple privileges?
"We have individual members in the church with a variety of different opinions, beliefs and positions on these issues and other issues," Christofferson said. " ... In our view, it doesn't really become a problem unless someone is out attacking the church and its leaders — if that's a deliberate and persistent effort and trying to get others to follow them, trying to draw others away, trying to pull people, if you will, out of the church or away from its teachings and doctrines."
It would be interesting to see this case taken to court.
"The Campus is our World"