Prop 8 / Same-Sex Marriage Discussion

[Anonymous]

Heber13 wrote:

jmb275 wrote:For me, if something is true it belongs in the church. If it’s false, it should be rooted out. But our method for determining truth (spiritual experiences, and revelation), IMHO, doesn’t have a real good track record in the history of the world.

Heber13 wrote:

In other words, maybe it is the practice that doesn’t have a good track record, not the truth which is understood more and more as we progress as a church and individually.

The two of you are WAY too smart for your britches! 😆

Doctrine that is “true” probably shouldn’t change but the interpretation thereof, may change…. I’m liking this.

Our finite understanding of eternal truth (whatever that is) should change with the advances of the human experience and species. It is adherence to a static belief system that tends to stunt this growth (along with a lack of free time to think about big philosophical things in hunter/gatherer societies or a lack of civic diversity and discourse in other cases).

But, if all truth can be made one great whole, this argues for a fluid, changing idea of the great whole of truth (not to be confused with the black hole of truth). Certainly truth cannot be made whole all at one time. This idea of being made whole is also the interpretation for ‘be ye therefore perfect”. Maybe it’s all a big test of how open we are individually to the fluid, changing idea of the great whole of truth. Is that being perfect?

[Anonymous]

Quote:

D&C 50:40 Behold, ye are little children and ye cannot bear all things now; ye must grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth.

[Anonymous]

I just came across Jeff Spector’s post on Mormonmatters.org back in Nov08 on this topic. One line that grabbed me was:

Quote:

It has been pointed out that the Church was one of many involved in the campaign, but again, the most organized of the bunch, it appears. Mormons only represent 2 percent of Californians, so, if all voted for Prop 8, could only be blamed for 2% of the 52% majority. Of course, as we know, not all agreed with the pro 8 position and many church members are too young to vote.

The irony here is that had prop 8 lost, you would not see the kind of protests from the frustrated pro 8 folks.

see http://mormonmatters.org/2008/11/10/the-irony-of-proposition-8/

What is this group’s take on this posting?

(I hope it doesn’t appear I’m trying to push any buttons or bash one way or another on the topic…I honestly find the whole set of events and the meaning behind them completely fascinating…I enjoy reading others’ comments on this).

[Anonymous]

Heber13 wrote:

What is this group’s take on this posting?

I’ll bite. (I think you do like to push buttons Heber )

The issue was not the “mormon vote” and the fact that this author would use that as some important aspect exposes his irrational bias.

The issue is the fact that over half of the money raised by the “Yes on 8” campaign/s was donated by members of the church. It’s hard to nail down a specific amount total as there were at least three very prominent “Yes” campaigns and the church did not direct members to a specific one, but did give the contact info to at least two of them. In CA, the number is somewhere between $7m and $12m (that can be documented, probably a much bigger number as many watchdog groups stopped counting on donations smaller than $5,000) And the church finally released it’s direct spending (in-kind) on the campaign and that number was $189,000. That’s from the church, not the members, but the actual CoJCoLDS.

Heber13 wrote:

The irony here is that had prop 8 lost, you would not see the kind of protests from the frustrated pro 8 folks.

This is not Heber’s quote but the “gentleman” that he was quoting.

Not sure if this writer is trying to seem unbiased or objective but this conjecture is insulting, at best. “The irony is that had Prop 8 lost, you would be writing about how horrible the world is, and these are the last days, and God will condemn the US like Sodom and Gommorah, etc., etc.”

His logic is absurd. (I swear I’m trying to be fair)

Heber13 wrote:

(I hope it doesn’t appear I’m trying to push any buttons or bash one way or another on the topic…I honestly find the whole set of events and the meaning behind them completely fascinating…I enjoy reading others’ comments on this).

Heber, now that the church has released it’s spending amount, how do you feel about it?

[Anonymous]

Fwiw, I am totally fine with the spending amounts – even though I’m not behind the full activity completely. The “in-kind” spending wasn’t “spending” in any classic sense; it was the dollar equivalent of the salary time and resource allocation of the Church. Other organizations had MUCH higher in-kind spending – on both sides of the campaign. (I can’t remember the Catholic Church’s total off the top of my head, but it’s MUCH higher than the LDS Church – and there were quite a few non-profits on the No campaign side that had MUCH higher totals, as well. It’s been too long since I saw the numbers to give actual totals, but that’s important to know.)

The Church’s actual monetary output was between $2,000 – $3,000.

So, of the roughly $40,000,000 raised in actual cash donations for the campaign, church members donated about half of it – but the Church itself donated about 0.005% of it. Not knowing the exact total of in-kind donations, since I’ve not seen any report of all of those totaled, if we look strictly at the Church’s in-kind donation as a percent of the total cash donations (knowing that percent is going to be substantially too high to reflect reality for the total in-kind donations), the Church’s in-kind donation total is roughly 0.5% of the total cash donations.

Again, I don’t like a lot of the rationale that was used to support the campaign (frankly, on either side), and I support a totally different “solution” (exactly like jmb275 and swimordie), but I have no problem whatsoever with the official Church totals for both cash and in-kind donations. 0.5% and 0.005% don’t ruffle my feathers in the slightest, when you consider them totally on their own.

[Anonymous]

swimordie wrote:

Heber, now that the church has released it’s spending amount, how do you feel about it?

To be honest, I thought it was interesting that

swimordie wrote:

the fact that over half of the money raised by the “Yes on 8” campaign/s was donated by members of the church.

Just like after a natural disaster (not trying to push buttons and compare a disaster to this topic…honest), mormons can be very organized and efficient. Only 2% of the population but 50% of the donations. Wow, that’s impressive to me! I think the statistics with the voting population was that it was supported in majority by african americans and latino-americans, but haven’t seen any statistics on breakdown by religious affiliation. There were certainly a lot of other christian groups involved, but the LDS church got a lot of the spotlight.

To me, that means:

1) The church can be very organized and efficient as an organization in getting things done, as direction comes from Salt Lake the local leaders get organized to carry it out – something other groups must envy (and resent);

2) The church has a loyal following of members that when asked to do something, the followers ACT and vote with their feet or pocket books not just their mouth (out of guilt or devotion or something…but it gets done…something other activist groups must be jealous of).

In a way, that is a good thing to see the church run efficiently like that. In another way, it is an awful responsibility that needs to be used carefully to follow Spider-Man’s mantra: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. Salt Lake can get mormons organized when needed. As a mormon, I will always make sure I do it because it feels right, not out of blind obedience.

That’s just the overall observation on how the church can work, nothing about the topic itself. I don’t know if you are really interested in my opinion on the topic, but on the events surrounding Prop 8 and how the church handled itself, I have not come across anything the church did that has made me upset or ashamed to be called a mormon. It doesn’t bother me that much that the church spent a little money for this (other church’s spent more than the LDS church). In a way, I like that the church wasn’t passive and just rolls over to every whim in society…or we’d have the masses dictating God’s will which is not the direction that truth flows. If the church got organized to educate the people on what the repercussions of allowing a small group in society to influence our education system or our culture in a way that will have lasting impacts on our families, then I’m all for enlightenment. If the practice was carried out poorly, involved guilt driven pressure on members to spend money and it fostered hate and discrimination…then I’m against it. But I can’t have an opinion on how it “felt” or how I saw it carried out because I wasn’t there. If it comes to my state…I’ll surely vote my conscience because nothing riles me up more than being told I have to think a certain way…that dog don’t hunt for me.

Kind of a boring response…I wish I could think of something more controversial to fire up this thread! 😈

…or have I done that with my response above on liking how mormons band together and act??? :

[Anonymous]

Actually, I agree with you on the “band together” part. The church wouldn’t exist today in its present form without that unity through lots of adversity.

However… this is not one of those times.

As jmb has pointed out several times, the church is under no threat, real or imagined. At least, not by the SSM issue. They ARE, however, putting themselves in the line of fire for their political activism. The Supreme Court for years has given broad license to religions being very politically active. So the church is most likely safe there. But, spending actual church funds on a political campaign forces the church to open itself up to lots of inquiries. If someone can find a plane ride that some GA took to CA that wasn’t reported and a court sees this as campaign expenditure and it wasn’t reported then a set of legal dominoes starts playing itself out. This happened famously in the late 80’s to Arizona Gov. Ev Meacham, who was LDS. His brother was campaign manager and money wasn’t reported properly and ultimately, he was impeached. The church is putting its tax-exempt status in danger by activating the extremely strict political contribution statutes both state and federal (especially CA).

And, this is where jmb’s question becomes so relevant. For what? Massachusetts has had SSM for almost six years now and what’s happened to them? Is there a rash of homosexuality breaking out in all of the elementary schools? Are people now marrying their dogs and horses? Are churches losing their tax-exempt status for not marrying gay couples?

I know everyone thinks that inter-racial marriage is a totally different thing. But why? When Loving v. Virginia was going through the courts, all of the same arguments against SSM were being used in that case. We’re all so proud of ourselves that we’re so racially sensitive that we now recognize how utterly preposterous those arguments were against inter-racial marriage. “But this is TOTALLY different.” Is it? Really? Why? (Sorry for the passionate sarcasm, I’m on one tonight )

The only threat to the church is self-imposed. We don’t know, really, the role of gender in the next life. 25% of heterosexual married couples can’t have children. Should their marriage be annulled for inability to procreate? Children raised in same-gender parent households identify as homosexual at the same rate as children in opposite-gender parent households.

I could go on but the illegitimate claims that were used 50 years ago against inter-racial marriage, and are now being resurrected, speak for themselves. (The above examples were asol used in the miscegenation debate, there were even clinical, medical studies commissioned by some white churches that showed that inter-racial couples were unable to procreate.)

I thought I was getting out of stage 3 too. Darn it! Oh, I know, “This is all just IMHFO”. There, back to stage 4.

[Anonymous]

swimordie wrote:

Really? Why?

I am beginning to see your point. Any ideas why the church is doing this then? Is it they have taken criticism in the past for not getting active or responding to issues in the media so this is one few time when they do decide to get active. I think I remember Elder Packer or someone talking about how since the growth and PRes Hinckley’s use of media has put Mormons in with other major religions, you can’t not (nice double negative use there, huh?) respond to others when others spread lies about the church. But even that doesn’t fit this scenario.

Why does the church feel so moved to get involved in this issue? Anyone have ideas? Is it just the personal agenda of the current leadership :

[Anonymous]

swimordie wrote:

As jmb has pointed out several times, the church is under no threat, real or imagined. At least, not by the SSM issue. They ARE, however, putting themselves in the line of fire for their political activism. The Supreme Court for years has given broad license to religions being very politically active. So the church is most likely safe there. But, spending actual church funds on a political campaign forces the church to open itself up to lots of inquiries. If someone can find a plane ride that some GA took to CA that wasn’t reported and a court sees this as campaign expenditure and it wasn’t reported then a set of legal dominoes starts playing itself out. This happened famously in the late 80’s to Arizona Gov. Ev Meacham, who was LDS. His brother was campaign manager and money wasn’t reported properly and ultimately, he was impeached. The church is putting its tax-exempt status in danger by activating the extremely strict political contribution statutes both state and federal (especially CA).

These are some good thoughts. I agree that the church is placing itself in hotter waters by stepping into a political debate (having moral undertones or not) than what SSM would do. And I think the effects of their involvement in this issue generally will carry on for years to come.

swimordie wrote:

And, this is where jmb’s question becomes so relevant. For what? Massachusetts has had SSM for almost six years now and what’s happened to them? Is there a rash of homosexuality breaking out in all of the elementary schools? Are people now marrying their dogs and horses? Are churches losing their tax-exempt status for not marrying gay couples?

This is really where the protectmarriage.com campaign fell apart for me. I investigated the cases that were brought up. One of their favorite was to point out that a Catholic adoption agency had to close its doors because it refused to place children in homes with homosexual parents. What we never heard was the fact that the Catholic agency not only was placing children in state custody, but they were receiving state dollars to do so. Of course they should abide by rules the gov’t places if they receive gov’t funds. They also failed to mention that the LDS adoption agency in MA has remained completely unaffected from SSM. In fact, I have a good friend adopting from them right now. And yet, they still refuse to place children in homes with homosexual parent.

The bigger problem at play here, indeed in all of society IMHO, is that the gov’t continues to interject where it ought not to. The more it interjects, the more our private lives (including private organizations) depend on gov’t funds, rules, and regulations. This grants the gov’t way way too much power and yes, they will be able to dictate what we can and can’t do. That is what we should be afraid of, not SSM. The way to counteract that isn’t to inscribe more regulations on personal relationships into the constitution, but to fight against gov’t involvement altogether.

[Anonymous]

jmb275 wrote:

This grants the gov’t way way too much power and yes, they will be able to dictate what we can and can’t do. That is what we should be afraid of, not SSM. The way to counteract that isn’t to inscribe more regulations on personal relationships into the constitution, but to fight against gov’t involvement altogether.

Perfectly stated.

Heber13 wrote:

Why does the church feel so moved to get involved in this issue? Anyone have ideas? Is it just the personal agenda of the current leadership

Judging by the irrationality of the brethren’s “leadership”, I think you nailed it. Packer has a track record of over 30 years of fighting these “cultural” battles and his current position lends credence to the argument that his agenda is the driving force behind this. Sorry to simplify this, but due to the current ideal of unanimity in leadership, one strong voice in the right place can set policy, unfortunately, in this case. I’m sure that this unanimity may be helpful for some things, but out of 15 seemingly bright older white gentlemen, you’d think a couple would speak up and say “hey, are there other options here?”

The alternative is that they really are just doing this all as PR and even my uber-cynicism can’t totally fathom that, but, then again, irrationality can make people do anything (Topical: see Gov. Sanford’s recent adventures).

[Anonymous]

Like it or not, think it’s correct or not, feel it’s inpsired or not, I think it will help the church growth world-wide – and even here in the US.

Gay marriage probably is inevitable in the US, and I wish the Church would support civil unions, but I really do think it will help the missionary work world-wide. I might be wrong, but that’s my belief right now – and I think that has as much to do with it as anything. In an odd way, I’m OK with that being the case – again, as much as I wish civil unions was on the table as an option and the Church would support it.

[Anonymous]

Well, I don’t have a dog in this fight but have been reading through this thread, as well as other blogs that discuss the same subject…

This, from my point of view, is the Church’s postition:

-Homsexual sex is wrong…not just a little wrong, but an abomination to God.

-Homsexuality, or any other non-approved sexual inclination, is not wrong UNLESS/UNTIL it is acted upon.

So, is everyone really expecting the Church to accept SSM or civil unions and just assume that the partners are going to be celebate? I guess what I’m saying is that you can’t condone civil unions without condoning homosexual sex.

That is really asking a lot to expect the powers-that-be to start accepting something that has been considered a grievous sin since Old Testament times as suddenly being OK.

The Church has certainly reversed the Blacks in the Priesthood issue but, IMHO, this is much bigger and will require a much larger change of thinking.

Of course SSM will be normal in our country soon but I expect the Church’s acceptance of it to be many years to come.

I could be wrong.

My opinion only,

Mileage may vary.

[Anonymous]

Old-Timer wrote:

Like it or not, think it’s correct or not, feel it’s inpsired or not, I think it will help the church growth world-wide – and even here in the US.

Gay marriage probably is inevitable in the US, and I wish the Church would support civil unions, but I really do think it will help the missionary work world-wide. I might be wrong, but that’s my belief right now – and I think that has as much to do with it as anything. In an odd way, I’m OK with that being the case – again, as much as I wish civil unions was on the table as an option and the Church would support it.

If the Church were to support civil unions, wouldn’t it, in fact, be condoning same-sex attraction? Do you believe that one day the Church will permit same-sex couples to be sealed in the temple? If so, do you think this will cause members to be divided? I told DH that I feel there will one day be a division — there will be orthodox Mormons and reformed Mormons.

I found your comment “it will help the church growth world-wide” interesting. Does this mean you are envisioning missionaries preaching the gospel to same-sex couples? Wouldn’t the manual “Preach My Gospel” have to be rewritten? What happens to The Family: A Proclamation to the World ?

Where do the teachings in the scriptures fit in all of this? Were they merely suggestions that we are now free to ignore?

I’m realize I’m probably rambling here. I’m trying to understand why members of an extremely conservative religion are leaning away from family values. I imagine I’m way old-fashioned in my beliefs.

[Anonymous]

swimordie wrote:

Judging by the irrationality of the brethren’s “leadership”, I think you nailed it. Packer has a track record of over 30 years of fighting these “cultural” battles and his current position lends credence to the argument that his agenda is the driving force behind this. Sorry to simplify this, but due to the current ideal of unanimity in leadership, one strong voice in the right place can set policy, unfortunately, in this case. I’m sure that this unanimity may be helpful for some things, but out of 15 seemingly bright older white gentlemen, you’d think a couple would speak up and say “hey, are there other options here?”

Some good thoughts swimordie. I’d like to say a few things in this regard. I’m not a huge Packer fan, and some of his older talks are enough to make any libertarian roll over in their grave. Having said this, I won’t speculate on what went on in the upper hierarchy of the church. I don’t know, and am okay with admitting that. I think there is groupthink involved in the church, and in the hierarchy. I don’t have a lot of evidence for this, but it seems likely given the demographics of those involved. I also think there is a lot of pressure to conform to unanimity whether there is or not. I sense that wasn’t the case as much in the David O. McKay era.

Nevertheless, I simply don’t know and wouldn’t want to speculate on it.

Ray wrote:

Like it or not, think it’s correct or not, feel it’s inpsired or not, I think it will help the church growth world-wide – and even here in the US.

Could be. If there is, I think it might be part of a polarization that our country seems to be experiencing. Repubs vs. Dems and the ever expanding ideologies that say different things but comes out looking the same. This is why I love the libertarians. They’re like political aliens, not really fitting in on either side. Interesting how the libertarians have an idea that would satisfy both sides of the coin on this issue, and yet we are bickering over it, and will continue until someone gets their way. Seems so silly to me.

@Kalola

Good questions. I hadn’t thought much about that.

[Anonymous]

@ Kalola: good questions, all of which is why this thread is interesting. My two cents:

Kalola wrote:

If the Church were to support civil unions, wouldn’t it, in fact, be condoning same-sex attraction? Do you believe that one day the Church will permit same-sex couples to be sealed in the temple? If so, do you think this will cause members to be divided?

I’m not sure if you meant “same-sex marriage” or “same-sex unions” instead of same-sex attraction because the church has already acknowledged that same-sex attraction is real and that we don’t know where it comes from, shouldn’t try to “change” it.

I do believe (or naively hope) that the church will one day allow same-sex sealings. I think it will happen more along the lines of gender roles rather than sexual activity. Society has a long way to go in treating genders with equal respect and, despite recent changes, the church has a ways to go on this as well. This is a long way to say that the church may in the future acknowledge that we don’t understand the role of gender in the eternities, etc. Frankly, it won’t be long when human cloning is possible, if it’s not already, and lesbian couples will be able to have children without the necessity of a man. And, in the distant future, gender change may be more complete as to include pregnancy (men already have nipples, is this why?)

Obviously, this process is far in the future and maybe by then church members will be more sensitive to other human beings who are different from them so, maybe there won’t be as much division as the other two big proclamations, polygamy, black priesthood.

Kalola wrote:

Does this mean you are envisioning missionaries preaching the gospel to same-sex couples?

I think the fact that missionaries would be told not to teach same-sex couples says everything about where the church is on this issue.

Kalola wrote:

Where do the teachings in the scriptures fit in all of this? Were they merely suggestions that we are now free to ignore?

In the part of the OT that talks about “abominations” including men with men, there are also other abominations named like eating pork, etc. It’s a pretty interesting list, most of which is ignored by the current Judeo-Christian world. Plus, the church freely ignores loads of scriptural “suggestions” (polygamy, WoW, new jerusalem, speaking in tongues, charging interest on loans, etc.)

Kalola wrote:

I’m trying to understand why members of an extremely conservative religion are leaning away from family values.

Are you saying that the acceptance of SSA and SSM is leaning away from family values?

[Author]

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