That said, I am not of a disposition that would allow me to take these things lightly. To use the language of Brigham Young, it is up to us as members to "know, by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates, or not." Because I do not believe prophets are infallible, I believe it is possible to conscientiously object to one or more of their positions and still remain on good terms with our Heavenly Father. The issue you raise is big, but I'll try to be brief. I felt it was beyond the scope of this little post and decided not to include it, but I think it is worth discussing here, and it is something I have addressed in other posts (one of them is linked below for your convenience). Your perspective is valuable because I know it will be on many people's minds. I'm actually glad you brought that up, Thalos. If knowing what the scriptures actually say on this subject represents a change for my fellow Mormons. I have simply illustrated what the scriptures say (or don't say). The rights and dignity of homosexual couples are contantly under attack - and that does need to change.Ībout chainging and redefining everything, I don't know that I have changed or redefined anything. If I was gay, attempts to justify my relationship are not necessarily the result of a guilty conscience as you suppose. It is literally a matter of life and death. I have a firm conviction of only one thing - we have a responsibility to love our brothers and sisters in this world, and as a culture and an institution we Mormons need to learn to love and understand our LGBT brothers and sisters better than we do now. Well, I don't want to disappoint you, but as a man who is happily married to a woman, I have the luxury of saying it is no concern of mine whether it is right or wrong. Regarding your theory that I have embraced homosexuality, and that I am on the defensive and that deep down inside I know it's wrong. If our scriptures are allowed to leave it alone, than so are we. #LDS SCRIPTURES CASE FREE#My goal in writing this piece is not so much to justify homosexuality as it is to free Mormons and Christians from what they percieve as an religious obligation to condemn it. #LDS SCRIPTURES CASE FULL#I say with full awareness of those 5 passages that I do not believe it to be a fundamental Christian doctrine that homosexuality is a sin. I also discuss them in more detail in the article linked below for your convenience. I assure you, darwin, I am well aware of the Bible verses that condemn homosexuality, I provided specific links to them in the above article. Still, I think it is worth more than a passing note, that our scriptures are silent on a subject with which our Church has taken such a hardline position. You are correct that our scriptures speak favorably of marriage between a man and a woman (and a woman and a woman, etc.). For now, I just want to leave my readers with this little bit of food for thought. Now, to be serious for a moment, just think about it, 5 passages in a book that has more than 30,000 verses? And beside that, nothing in the LDS scriptures? If this is an important doctrinal point, is this the amount of coverage we should expect? If so, how high should this topic stand on our list of priorities? I'm not going to try to answer these questions here. I mean, 5 passages!! that's almost as many verses as we find condemning the ingestion of bloody meat, and we all know how important that is. The Bible's references to homosexuality include two lines in Leviticus and three more passages in Paul's letters, making a whopping total of 5 passages in the whole Bible dealing with this not-at-all numerically insignificant subject. In addition to the overwhelming number of verses regarding homosexuality in the LDS scriptures that I've quoted in full above, I should mention the fact that the Bible (which we believe to be "the word of God as far as it is translated correctly") is not completely silent on the subject.
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