Concerns about the Proclamation to the World

Sometimes it’s difficult to view the world from the perspective of others, especially where one set of beliefs represent the majority and beliefs are even tied in with many religions. How might someone that has no belief or background in religion view this issue?

I honestly do not understand how allowing same sex marriage takes agency away from “straight” people, I will have to have that one explained to me. When I was more orthodox I always assumed that we had to oppose same sex marriage because allowing it would be, for lack of a better term, a cultural stamp of approval on what amounted to a grievous sin. People would think everything was fine with their lifestyle when in actuality they would be doing themselves all kinds of eternal harm. In that sense the church was opposed because they didn’t want people to delude themselves into thinking all was well. After all, the first step or repentance is recognition and allowing same sex marriage would frustrate that first step.

I see the issue of same sex marriage as one that nourishes resentment and creates division.

As far as Proposition 8:

We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.

While affirming the right of expression on political and social issues, the Church is neutral regarding political parties, political platforms, and candidates for political office. The Church does not endorse any political party or candidate. Nor does it advise members how to vote. However, in some exceptional instances the Church will take a position on specific legislation, particularly when it concludes that moral issues are involved. Only the First Presidency can speak for the Church or commit the Church to support or oppose specific legislation or to seek to intervene in judicial matters. Otherwise, stake presidents and other local leaders should not organize members to participate in political matters or attempt to influence how they participate.

I’m glad that doesn’t happen very often. I also hope that wouldn’t translate into not voting the way the prophet wants you to vote means you are against the prophet of god.

Overall, the Proclamation is a wonderful document detailing the love and joy that families might have. In that, it is incredibly positive, and I like it.

However, all too often, bits of it are used as a stick to beat gays with.

I think companies and governments have been heavily undermining the family to the detriment of our society. The issue here is not those evil homosexuals lurking behind wherever, it is child care, it is abuse of children, it is adultery and lack of commitment, it is the time that companies force workers to stay away from home. These are all quite different issues apart from sexuality.

I actually have other doctrinal issues with the proclamation, and I think I’d be called a heretic if I said these things in a meeting like the one you describe. I think we know lots less about premortal and post-mortal life related to gender than the proclamation would have us believe. I think we know less about God’s plan (if there is one) than the proclamation would have us believe. And I dislike that the proclamation instills fears through threats of eternal judgement, something else we don’t know very much about.

Good Point! Where is the source of this belief in being created as Male/Female heterosexuals? The PoGP talks about intelligences but I don’t believe it goes into that degree of detail.

How much of gender and sexuality are biological? If all then it wouldn’t make sense to exist in the pre-mortal realm. If gender and sexuality can be part of our eternal (unchanging) identity then it would make sense that there are more variables than simply Male/Female. IMO.

History of Same Sex Marriages

Historical Outline It is estimated that 250 million people (or 4% of the world population) live in areas that recognise same-sex marriage.

Wikipedia – Same Sex Marriage

Celebrity Gay Weddings

Gay Marriages – Time Magazine Article

Gay Marriage – Silicon Valley

Gay men seem to have frequently married one another throughout history. In fact, in some societies marriages between gay men were officially recognized by the state, as in ancient Sparta, and on the Dorian island of Thera.

Much later, in 2nd century Rome, conjugal contracts between men of about the same age were ridiculed but legally binding. Such marriages were blessed by pagan religions, particularly sects of the Mother Goddess Cybele (imported from Asia Minor).

Many ancient writers, such as Strabo and Athenaeus, wrote that the Gauls or Celts commonly practised homosexuality.

Aristotle wrote that the Celts “openly held in honor passionate friendship (synousia) between males”.

Diodorus Siculus wrote that “Although the Gauls have lovely women, they scarcely pay attention to them, but strangely crave male embraces (arrenon epiplokas).

Bardaisan of Edessa wrote that “In the countries of the north — in the lands of the Germans and those of their neighbors, handsome [noble] young men assume the role of wives [women] towards other men, and they celebrate marriage feasts.”

Early 18th century London, gay men also got married, but without legal sanction. In the 1720s there were about 40 “molly houses” in central London, disorderly pubs or coffee houses where gay men (called “mollies”). Many of these gay clubs had a “Marrying Room” or “Chapel”Molly marriages didn’t have the blessing of any church until the 1810s, when Rev John Church officiated as the “Chaplain” at male gay marriages at The Swan in Vere Street.

Gay marriages among the American Indians, particularly the Sioux and the Cheyenne. In most such marriages one of the two men was called a berdache. One of the more famous berdaches was Yellow Head of the Cheyenne, who became the third wife of Chief Wagetote after being rejected by the white mountaineer John Tanner.

Rictor Norton, “Taking a ‘Husband’: A History of Gay Marriage”, Gay History and Literature, 21 February 2004, amended 3 February 2006, updated 13 June 2008 .

Ancient History

Various types of same-sex marriages have existed, ranging from informal, unsanctioned relationships to highly ritualized unions.

In the southern Chinese province of Fujian, through the Ming dynasty period, females would bind themselves in contracts to younger females in elaborate ceremonies. Males also entered similar arrangements. This type of arrangement was also similar in ancient European history.

An example of egalitarian male domestic partnership from the early Zhou Dynasty period of China is recorded in the story of Pan Zhang & Wang Zhongxian. While the relationship was clearly approved by the wider community, and was compared to heterosexual marriage, it did not involve a religious ceremony binding the couple.

The first historical mention of the performance of same-sex marriages occurred during the early Roman Empire. For instance,

Emperor Nero is reported to have engaged in a marriage ceremony with one of his male slaves.

Emperor Elagabalus “married” a Carian slave named Hierocles.

It should be noted, however, that conubium existed only between a civis Romanus and a civis Romana (that is, between a male Roman citizen and a female Roman citizen), so that a so-called marriage between two Roman males (or with a slave) would have no legal standing in Roman law (apart, presumably, from the arbitrary will of the emperor in the two aforementioned cases). Furthermore, “matrimonium is an institution involving a mother, mater.

The idea implicit in the word is that a man takes a woman in marriage, in matrimonium ducere, so that he may have children by her.” Still, the lack of legal validity notwithstanding, there is a consensus among modern historians that same-sex relationships existed in ancient Rome, but the exact frequency and nature of “same-sex unions” during that period is obscure.

In 342 AD Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans issued a law in the Theodosian Code (C. Th. 9.7.3) prohibiting same-sex marriage in Rome and ordering execution for those so married.

The first documented same-sex marriage was between the two men Pedro Díaz and Muño Vandilaz in the Galician municipality of Rairiz de Veiga in Spain on April 16, 1061. They were married by a priest at a small chapel. The historic documents about the church wedding were found at Monastery of San Salvador de Celanova.

Modern Times

In 2001, the Netherlands became the first nation in the world to grant same-sex marriages. Same-sex marriages are also granted and mutually recognized by Belgium (2003), Spain (2005), Canada (2005), South Africa (2006), Norway (2009), Sweden (2009), Portugal (2010), Iceland (2010) and Argentina (2010).

In Mexico same sex marriage is recognized in all 31 states but only performed in Mexico City.

In Nepal, their recognition has been judicially mandated but not yet legislated.

Complete list by Country

Non Traditional Parenting

Scientific research has been consistent in showing that lesbian and gay parents are as fit and capable as heterosexual parents, and their children are as psychologically healthy and well-adjusted as children reared by heterosexual parents. According to scientific literature reviews, there is no evidence to the contrary.

See sources

What is traditional Marriage?

Marriage has never been quite as simple as one man, one woman and a desire to procreate. Across cultures, family structure varies drastically.

Early Christians in the Middle East and Europe favored monogamy without divorce.

Some Native American tribes practiced polygamy; others, monogamy with the option to dissolve the union.

In some African and Asian societies, Coontz said, same-sex marriages, though not seen as sexual, were permitted if one of the partners took on the social role of the opposite gender.

Inuit people in the Arctic formed co-marriages in which two husband-wife couples could trade partners, an arrangement that fostered peace between clans.

In some South American tribes, a pregnant woman could take lovers, all of whom were considered responsible for her child. According to “Cultures of Multiple Fathers: The Theory and Practice of Partible Paternity in Lowland South America” (University of Florida Press, 2002), 80 percent of children with multiple “fathers” survived to adulthood, compared with 64 percent of kids with just one dad.

Mormon splinter groups practice polygamy.

In Hui’an China up until the 1990s, many married women lived with their parents until the birth of their first child.

And in the Lahaul Valley of India, women practiced polyandry until the most recent generation, marrying not just one man, but all of his brothers as well. The tradition kept small land holdings in the hands of one family and prevented overpopulation in the remote valley. The Western Ideal

But the first drastic redefinition of marriage in the Western world came from early Christians, Coontz said. At the time, a man could divorce his wife if she failed to bear children. Early Christians disavowed the practice. God had joined the couple together, they said, and a lack of offspring was no excuse to dissolve that bond. This was “unprecedented,” Coontz said. “It was actually Christianity that first took the position that the validity of marriage did not depend on the ability to reproduce.”

It took hundreds of years for the Church to enforce this pronouncement, and even then, local parishes would often find reasons to let divorce slide. As it stood, the early Christians weren’t sold on marriage, anyway.

Saint Paul famously said that celibacy was the best path, but grudgingly added, according to the King James Version of the Bible, “If they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.”

Still, marriage was not a matter of love. Too much affection in a marriage was seen as a distraction from God.

In the Middle Ages, people went so far as to argue that love in marriage was impossible. The only way to true romance, they said, was adultery.

Love in Marriage

The disconnect between love and marriage wouldn’t change until the late 1700s, when Enlightenment thinkers argued that the older generation had no business telling the younger generation who to marry.

From there, things snowballed relatively rapidly: In the early 1900s, sexual satisfaction became a criterion for marriage. Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, people began to question the laws that made men the legal overlords of their wives. Suddenly, the idea that marriage was a partnership between two people with different gender roles began to dissolve.

“My argument would be that it was heterosexuals who revolutionized marriage to the point where gays and lesbians began to say, ‘Oh, this applies to us now,'” Coontz said. “First love, then sexual attraction, and then, finally and not until the 1970s, the idea that marriage could be gender-neutral.”

With every change comes controversy, Coontz said. People sniffed at the idea of marrying for love, frowned upon the sexually liberated flappers of the 1920s, and fought against the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1970s. Emotion and ideology

Some of those ideological debates still echo in today’s debate over same-sex marriage, but research shows that there is no scientific reason to deny marriage rights to gays, said Sharon Rotosky, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky.

A June 2008 study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that children with lesbian parents actually did better on many measures than children of straight parents. Other studies have shown very similar outcomes between kids with gay parents and kids with straight parents.

What Sam said.

The biggest threat to marriage today is heterosexuals, not homosexuals – and it isn’t close.

Well, I guess when it put it that away, it could happen. The only problem is with so many members of the church being at stage 3 is that they won’t believe teachings of the church will ever change, regardless of modern-day continuing revelation. But we on this forum know better. They have changed and will change. At stage 3, I used to be the same way with believing teachings never change, just our point of view.

And to clarify, that really doesn’t strip deity or revelation out of the equation. Who’s to say that god doesn’t work that way? Giving people further knowledge when they are ready for it. How might a same sex marriage revelation be received 20 years ago bu general membership or the world? Perhaps a prophet’s heart couldn’t have even been in a place to receive a revelation like that.

Tryin’ to balance the equation.