Same-sex marriage blog

Well written and formulated article. My thought center on the appropriateness of sharing controversial stuff on facebook. On one hand I understand that you have strongly held views and want to do something to help. On the other hand, I assume that those who right anti-gay facebook posts are doing this for the exact same reason. I accept that I have some really awesome “friends” that also have some nutty views (some of which may even display prejudice). I do not respond to their nutty tweets or wallposts.

My decision not to respond is mostly because I do not want the difference of opinions to create a divide in relationships. IOW – I fear the consequences. This in no way suggests that you are wrong for responding as you have done.

I only respond when someone sends me an email forward and I know them well enough to have a tolerant and respectful “agree to disagree” discussion, or when a sister had used the stake RS email distribution list to send a misleading and politically charged email to all recipients.

I personally think that the writing is on the wall in regards to legal same sex marriage, it is just a matter of time.

Nice blog. I’d agree with most of what you said.

I’d be entirely comfortable with the church changing the definition of marriage to be between man/woman and man/woman. That’s ‘all’ that’s needed. It’s sex outside marriage that breaks the law of chastity. Not the “nature” of the sex.

They already marry people in the church “for time only” (Remarried female widows). There could be theological issues with sealings and exaltation.

I also think that however long they waited (and I think they waited too long with black priesthood) they will loose people in the same way they did with the black issue. First because people will leave who don’t agree with the change as a (“homophobic?”) matter of principle. There of many, many people like this in the TBM heartland. There will be others who would leave because despite being supportive of the social principle of of gay-marriage, it would finally confirm in their minds that the church is subject to the winds of society and not lead through revelation. I’ve had the second conversation with a good friend who is embarrassed that we have opposition to gay-marriage at all, but if changed would see it as I described, a capitulation to societal pressure.

There’s also one thing I’ve been wondering about…

We hold God responsible for the situations we are born into. And yet he gave us the choice to (metaphorically) partake of the fruit. I don’t know if we chose our circumstances in minute detail. I think we probably didn’t pick a family etc. But if there was a pre-existence, I don’t think we were mute recipients of a condition and time in life.

I speculated further about this here and had included being born a “gay mormon” as one of the situations that could have been chosen not imposed:

http://manyotherhands.blogspot.com/2013/02/why-do-good-people-suffer.html?m=1

We hold God responsible for the situations we are born into. And yet he gave us the choice to (metaphorically) partake of the fruit. I don’t know if we chose our circumstances in minute detail. I think we probably didn’t pick a family etc. But if there was a pre-existence, I don’t think we were mute recipients of a condition and time in life.

http://manyotherhands.blogspot.com/2013/02/why-do-good-people-suffer.html?m=1

For my own life experiences I have chosen to believe that God does not intervene in this earth life except maybe to provide a vague feeling of love and acceptance from time to time. This belief causes me to discount much of the miraculous that people talk about. I don’t know if such things happen or not but I must remain internally consistent for my inner peace. This is accomplished by believing that God’s interventions would disrupt the learning environment of our mortal trek.

I am fine with whatever belief construct helps an individual – but I would caution against using such theological beliefs as a club. The doctrine of the pre-existence has been used to justify the priesthood ban and other horrible inequalities. (I find it interesting that though we no longer talk about the “less valiant” of the pre-existence we still sometimes praise our youth as having been righteously superior in the pre-existence – for there to be some spiritually superior there must be others that are spiritually inferior.) I have also seen people who are mourning verbally berated because of lack of faith in “the plan.” I would never think that you Mackay11 are guilty of these things, I just find it helpful to point out that what we find helpful might be hurtful to someone else. Tact and consideration are always appropriate.

I would think that most Gay Mormons who wish to follow a path of faith would choose to do that outside the church. This conflicts with the ‘one answer that’s right for everyone’ teaching.

Back to something Sam said about marriage disintegrating. I cant really see that. Yes, people are getting married at a later stage in their life compared to 40 years ago, but on the whole this is a good thing.

At my place of work I have 14 colleague that have children under the age of 8. 13 of these are married and the odd one out is getting married this summer. Small sample size, but i think on the whole people still value marriage.

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But simple maths tell me that it was never God’s intention for the majority of his children to need mormonism in this life and I imagine it won’t exist in the next.

This may be evident to everyone else here, but this was a profound thought that I had never thought of before. Thank you for sharing it. It bears consideration.

The party-line answer would be that the living members of the church would make up the numbers in doing temple work for the billions who have lived and died on earth. I wonder if anyone good with numbers has ever done an analysis on how long it would take for the adult population of the church who are temple-recommend worthy and within reasonable distance of a temple to do (time-wise) all of the ordinances that happen in the temple for every person who has ever lived. Surely someone could run the numbers of science’s best guess at how many humans have lived on earth from the dawn of the species to today and see how long it would actually take us to do one ordinance of each kind for every person who has lived? It takes 2 hours to do an endowment, a minute to do a sealing, a minute to do initiatory, and probably two minutes to do both baptism and confirmation. There are some time parameters here that can surely calculate, but I’m not good with numbers and would surely make significant mistakes.

What it comes down to is “if the whole church did nothing but temple work day and night for 1000 years, how many people could have their work done?” Is it even possible to give this opportunity to every man and woman who has ever lived (not even considering the question of how we will know the names of the herders who lived on the steppes 4500 years ago, etc.) given the size of the church, or will the church have to expand greatly to just turn into a temple-work steam engine barreling down the tracks doing nothing else for centuries?

I know I’m off topic here. I can move this to another thread if that would be appropriate. Moderator?