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LGBT is a big issue in the church. In case you didn’t know. I know I react passionately to the black and white declarations from top leadership, not usually with warmth and kind thoughts. However, there seem to be some cracks in the ice –
Ann pointed out
Quote:Elder Cook was recently interviewed by Sherri Dew and talked about his time in leadership in the Bay Area – a lot about the members of this stake dying of AIDS, how they were supported and taken care of by others and each other.
Ray pointed out
Quote:
Elder Holland presided at a meeting for all Young Single Adults and fielded the same basic question.While I believe there absolutely is an intimacy double standard in the Church, his response was MUCH better than Elder Bednar’s – and that doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
It also doesn’t surprise me that Elder Bednar’s response blew up the Mormon blogging world, while Elder Holland’s did not. That also is instructive.
I have also noticed that DFU – The Silver Fox has chosen to make his public remarks and actions centered on refugee’s and human service. Completely avoiding fireside’s and open question events.
And of course there is always the Christofferson family angle. I know they don’t want to be the poster family for LGBT but Elder Christofferson can’t fully be on board with the black & white when his brother is gay. (On this one I could be wrong)
My point is – do you think there are cracks in the ice or am I just dreaming?
We can hope. One of the things that has confused me about leadership and this issue is that the top leadership tells us they don’t move forward with new policy and whatnot unless they are in agreement. I just don’t see that they could be on LGBT issues. I have convinced myself that agreement was reached on “the policy” from a purely black and white perspective based on the similar policy regarding children of polygamists – although I see the two (polygamy and SSM) as very different. Ron Rasband gave a devotional talk at BYU not long before he was called as apostle that I thought illustrated some progress. He referred to gay people as gay people not as people with same sex attraction. churchistrue wrote:Ron Rasband gave a devotional talk at BYU not long before he was called as apostle that I thought illustrated some progress. He referred to gay people as gay people not as people with same sex attraction.
He has not been indoctrinated yet. Give him time and he will start speaking in the same “GA Cadence” that we are all familiar with, and start using the same words (SSA) as his superiors.
I doubt it, Sheldon. I think he is more like Pres. Uchtdorf, Elder Causse, etc. He was born and lived moved of his life outside the US. He only has one child, and his wife has written eloquently about the cultural crap she faced for that and her professional career.
Yes, there is an ever-growing crack, especially with my kids’ generation. They know too many LGTB friends to see things the same way as so many of their parents and grandparents.
As a child, homosexuality was listed in medical literature as deviant mental illness and interracial marriage was no longer criminal, but still treated as if it were. Reader’s Digest was full of stories about the evils of The Pill. As a 7th grader, my brother was invited over to a friend’s house. Our mother found out through PTA that the parents were not actually married, and I remember my mom trying to decide whether she should allow her son to go into such an immoral environment. No businesses were open 24 hours a day. 7-11 was open 7am to 11 pm and that was considered REALLY cool. All those changes .. And I am young enough to still have a minor child living at home. Science has brought advances in knowledge but societal norms are slow to change. Religious norms are even slower to change. The church is changing, but a generation or two will need to die off before we see the large changes that we are waiting for. I do expect to live long enough see women get the priesthood in some abbreviated form .. But I expect it will be in my dotage. I am hoping to see LGBT changes in my lifetime .. But that is even newer than women’s rights. It might take another 100 years to happen.
The next generation of GAs will move the church forward culturally. I expect to see women’s garments become sleeveless in my lifetime — just removing the last vestige of sleeve that they currently have. I expect to see temple marriage become something that can occur immediately after a civil ceremony marriage in this country — just to align this country with other countries standards. I expect to see cremation to become accepted practice within the LDS community. I expect to see family size continue to shrink and to see more women pursue higher education and careers.
The church knows that they need to catch up with society trends if they want to continue to be marketable. The PR department is working so hard to showcase the LDS lifestyle as diverse and inclusive. At some point, it will need to actually become so. The diversity is there .. It is just the inclusion that the culture needs to work on.
Dang AP- You sure are full of hope. I know I am not that many years older than you. Or maybe you just have a longer expectation for your life than I do for mine 🙂 I do agree that these changes will probably come. There is a chance the church will retrench and become more hard-core and against cultural norms, but I think it will be hard for the church to swallow when the church membership starts dropping precipitously, especially in places like Utah. Once that happens I think that even many TBM’s will see the writing on the wall. Some of those will interpret that the end of the world is coming, so they need to buckle down even more.
I guess I am thinking this way since I am reading “The Angel and the Beehive” and Armand Mauss paints a picture of the church cycling through wanting to be accepted by society, but then at times is just too “the world has gone astray” and then try to be a bit more isolationist and be very different. We go so far one way and then some want to push that pendulum back the other way.
amateurparent, some of the things you mention have to come from the top down but I already see other things that you mentioned happening at the local level. It’s the brethren that need to keep up. 
It probably depends a lot on the ward and where that ward is located on the earth (all things church aside, some countries and regions can be night and day) but having one family that shows Christlike love toward their gay or transgendered child can go a long, long way. People that take a more hard-line, traditional approach become a little more guarded in their comments they make. I hope it takes far less than 100 years. I believe it will happen though.
In my home ward, there is very little said about this policy. A couple of weeks ago we had our ward conference & I thought for sure they would say something.
But, no. I personally would welcome some kind of open discussion.
I just don’t see it happening anytime soon because it would take a complete about face in doctrine to truly accept gay people in the church. Our doctrine is and always has been that marriage is a divinely-appointed institution between a manand a woman. OK, maybe woman should be/was women (another topic), but I don’t see the doctrine changing to be that marriage is a divinely-appointed institution, regardless of gender. It would take a revelation similar to the lifting of the priesthood ban in 1978 to change this, and I just don’t see it happening anytime soon. From the March 2015 Huffington Post article that LH referenced, Elder Christopherson said that the church would never change its stance on gay marriage:
Quote:Could there be a time when the LDS Church would change its position on gay marriage?
The apostle was unequivocal.
Nope, he said.
Before “the policy”, I thought there were cracks appearing in the ice. Those cracks are well-frozen over now, and the ice is thick.
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