Thursday, January 15, 2015

Why the Church Cannot Support the Gay Rights Movement

In the 1960s and 1970s, the sexual revolution (or "free-love" movement) was in full swing.  The idea was that two consenting adults had a right to sexual relations regardless of previous societal customs of marriage fidelity and laws against adultery and fornication.  This flew in the face of most of the religions of the time, and still does today.  The movement was a particular affront to the LDS doctrine of the Law of Chastity.

The gay rights movement, by attaching so closely to the "consenting adults" argument is bound tightly to the free-love movement.  Like it or not, gay rights and free love are intertwined enough that to argue against free-love is to argue against gay rights.  The Church is completely set against the free-love arguments, and as such, is bound to be against the gay rights argument, too.  The Church will not budge on the Law of Chastity.  As long as people view gay rights as an argument about consenting adults, the Church will not be able to change its stance.

Some people try to tie this issue to the revelation on the Priesthood, which expanded the blessings of the Priesthood to those of African heritage.  But that revelation did not conflict with any fundamental doctrines of the church.  In fact, it was consistent with the pattern that had been set anciently of exclusiveness followed by expansion.

So how does the Church address gay rights?  First, there is an attempt to extricate gay rights from the sexual revolution.  The Church-preferred term of "same gender attraction" is an attempt to detangle the two movements.  The focus on individuals and traits is very different from the focus on sexual permissiveness that the traditional gay rights movement has espoused.  In the Church's official page on the subject, this focus is clearly visible.

For those who advocate change in the Church, please be aware than any suggestions that in any way curtail the importance of the Law of Chastity cannot be favored by church leadership.  The leadership will follow the example of Christ when he was confronted about the woman taken in adultery.  He did not condemn the woman, but rather than condone her behavior, He encouraged her to change the behavior.  The Law of Chastity is one of behavior, not of identity or predilection.  

So,as long as the gay rights issues can be separated from free-love, the Church can take a stand for rights, and does.

2 comments:

  1. What about lesbians? They are not all free love. What about gay men in monogamous same sex monigomaus relationships?. Conflating free love and gay.men seems yet another attempt to demonize them. I am not seeing the the Mormon church as all enlightened and using the term ssa to separate ssaers from gay people for any other reason than it found .gay people abhorrent. . Was it not just a few years ago that prophets were referring to gay people as the worst of all evils? Seems to me Mormons are grasping at straws to come up with all sorts of reasons why the.Mormon church is doing what it is doing in regards to gay folks. It has bloggers like you espousing theories. But face it, until recently when society advanced enough to stop demonizing gay people, the Mormon church made life so awful for gay folks that many killed themselves. Now society is saying enough, so suddenly the church is saying be gay but marry straight and you all line up to create theories to support this. I realize it must be frustrating to have your only.commenter be me, but in my lengthiness are some good points.

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    1. I think you are missing my point. So, what about lesbians, you ask? Are you claiming that lesbians do not use the argument that two consenting adults should be able to have sexual relations? The church has been against this argument from the beginning. The law of chastity is a clearly established doctrine, and the church will not accept the "consenting adults" argument unless the Law of Chastity is clearly overturned directly by God. So as long as the church rejects this argument, there will be those who claim the church is against gay rights. It's not finding gay people abhorrent, stretching to excuse church actions, or demonizing gay people as you suggest. It's just that the most common argument used to support gay rights flies in the face of firmly established doctrine. The church rejects the notion that it's okay for any two consenting adults to have sexual relations. Period.

      I do not personally like the terms "same gender attraction" or ssa or any such nonsense. But I understand why the official site (mormonsandgays.org) tends to use the term, and that is what I was trying to explain with that paragraph in this post. It's interesting that the site name itself uses the term "gays".

      And when has a prophet ever called homosexuality "the worst of all evils"? I don't think I know of that reference.

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