Avoid the Appearance of Sin

There is a strong emphasis given by church leaders to avoid even the appearance of sin, and members take this very much to heart, sometimes to the exclusion of showing Christlike love.  I mentioned that in my last post, and it was brought to my attention that people may not understand what I mean.  So let me provide an example.

Suppose a member of the church admits to a second member that their orientation is gay.  The first question the second member asks is "but you surely don't act on it, do you?".  The church has a policy that a gay orientation is not a sin, only acting on it is.  So that second member is deciding how to interact with the first based on whether or not they are sinning.  That second member wants to make it abundantly clear that they don't approve of sin.  It can seem so important to them to make sure nobody thinks they approve of sinning that they make sure that anyone who knows they befriended the first member also knows that the first member was not acting on their orientation.

Do we do this with other sins?  When we interact with other members, do we make sure to let them know that our member friends do actually obey the word of wisdom?  If a friend introduces their spouse and children, do we ask whether the children were born in wedlock so we can properly make it known that we disapprove of having children out of wedlock?

Avoiding the appearance of sin is important.  We should not be skirting the line, pretending for social reasons that we are happy to share a drink with friends even if we slyly avoid actually drinking.  Taking a bold stand is good.  But that's dealing with our own choices.  When we take it to the extreme of shunning others to appear to disapprove of sin, then we are out of line with the teachings of the Savior.