Today the Mormon Church is handing out a brand new guidebook, telling LDS leaders they no longer have to tell gays they need to repent for feeling gay. Is this a new day for the Mormons?
LOLZ. Not really: The new language in the Church Handbook of Instructions, being distributed today and discussed in a nationwide televised training session, really just puts the church’s softer brand of anti-gay hostility into writing. The Salt Lake Tribune reports:
Like most recent LDS Church statements, this new handbook makes a clear distinction between same-sex orientation and behavior. It eliminates the suggestion, mentioned in the previous 2006 edition, that same-sex relationships “distort loving relationships” and that gays should repent of their “homosexual thoughts or feelings.” It also says that celibate gay Mormons who are “worthy and qualified in every other way” should be allowed to have “callings,” or church assignments, and to participate fully in temple rituals.
So how is this different from what LDS was saying before?
The handbook simply repeats what top LDS leaders have been trying to say, but unless they spell it out in explicit terms, many members won’t understand, said David Pruden, president of Evergreen International, a support group that helps gay Mormons live by church standards. Sometimes in the past, when a gay Mormon told his bishop he was struggling with same-sex feelings, the local leader would immediately call a “disciplinary council,” Pruden said. “They didn’t understand something that was foreign to them.” These members were trying to be faithful to the church and looking for help, he said. Instead they were hurt and punished. These handbook tweaks, Pruden said, “will bless people by making it easier for them to come forward and will help ecclesiastical leaders understand what the Brethren want them to do.”
All right. Does this mean anything is going to change? Nope!
How about we take this to the next level?
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The changes are “baby steps in the right direction,” said Mitch Mayne, an openly gay and active Mormon in the Bay area. “At least the handbook takes the damning terminology out of it.” Mayne, who is writing a book about his experiences as a gay Mormon, worries, though, that all decisions still fall on the local bishop. “I am hard-pressed to think of a bishop who is equipped to deal with [gay members],” Mayne said. “The standby response is to ‘pray out the gay,’ and those things don’t work.”
Nothing will really change, he said, as long as the church continues to equate gayness with the act of sex. “Homosexuality is no more about sex with the same gender than heterosexuality is about sex with the opposite gender,” Mayne said. “It’s really about who we are drawn to emotionally and physically and who we want to spend the rest of our lives with.”
And when you’ve still got the church’s second-in-command Boyd K. Packer wondering aloud why god would punish any human with homosexuality, you can be sure a new pamphlet that calls you a “worthy” homosexual so long as you manage to overcome human nature to have a sex life is not, in fact, a new day.
the crustybastard
Scientology + History = Mormonism
ron
So, it’s OK to be gay, but you just can’t act on it. We’ve seen how well that works out for the Catholics……These religious freaks are so fixated on gay sex they can’t think of anything else. Meanwhile, they’re all fucking the shit of other guys.
gregger
Please this was the church that said the entire anyone “black” wore the mark of Cain as late as 1970.
Cam
@gregger:
Greggor, it wasn’t until around 1980 that they grugingly allowed blacks to have full membership into the church.
This isn’t a change, this is just them trying to rewrite the exact same B.S. into language that seems softer but says the same crap.
stan James
It really sounds like the baby’s first crawling motions on a change in the church.
Prob not cuz they are happy about it, but because they are embarrassed about prop 8 etc. Keep hitting them up. In my long sales career, the key trick to winning deals was not price, perforamce etc. It was to get the decision makers embarrassed in that if they bot something else, it would be their reputation on the line.
Easiest example – the old IBM line – Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
So keep the heat on. And if I lived in SLC, not the east coast – I’d be buying prophylactics by the thousands – and giving them away to every gay guy who came to the store. (had lots of gaydar training in Dc from gay friends)
Reminds me of the old story about how us str8 guys were banging our GFs in the car – what the parents dont know won’t hurt them.
(smiles about the 3 star generals daugher I got her off with my fingers as a 2nd lt. Another dumbshit LT knocked up her sister – the ugly one at that. What a stink that was. 🙂
stan James
We also ought to make SLC the gay porn captial of the west. All those handsome Mormon boys who go out on safari to robo-talk about their bible – bet a hundred of them would sign up as long as they wore masks, and insured there were no identifying tatoos etc
Vman455
@Cam: It was 1978. In typical Mormon fashion, they claimed a revelation from God, but this only after immense political and social pressure basically forced them to change the church’s official position.
I remember quite vividly seeing a church-produced video about this in Sunday school. As you would expect, it portrayed the decision to change the policy as a godsend for black members of the church, completely discounting the decades of discrimination to which they had been subjected and offering no explanation nor apology for it.
Enyalid
Homosexuality has no place in a healthy normal society. Homosexuality destroys and divides familys, and disrupts societies, not to mention it is just plain sick and wrong.
tallskin2
@ENYALID – Can you explain please exactly how homosexuality destroys and divides families and disrupts societies?
What are the mechanics involved? How does homosexuality’s destructive mechanism work?
I await your answer ….
ron
@tallskin2: You’ll probably have to wait for Enyalid to come out of the Confessional, wiping jiz of his face…..Maybe you might want to refer him to Cassandra?
Soupy
Enyalid? Another one of those “straight men” cruising a gay website who can’t get a date with a guy.
Jeffree
Enyalid! Thats the word DENIAL scrambled, with a Y thrown in, so he wants to know *why* he’ s in denial.
B
QUEERTY: “And when you’ve still got the church’s second-in-command Boyd K. Packer wondering aloud why god would punish any human with homosexuality, you can be sure a new pamphlet that calls you a ‘worthy’ homosexual so long as you manage to overcome human nature to have a sex life is not, in fact, a new day.”
… Don’t be too hard on Boyd Packer’s “wondering”. While he’s obviously a bit slow witted in this regard, the obvious “revelation” will dawn on one of them at some point in the future. They will realize that since “God would [not] punish any human with homosexuality”, and since homosexuality is in fact an immutable trait, the logical conclusion is that being gay is not a punishment and there is nothing wrong with it.
If history repeats itself (we have an example regarding Black Mormons), once the Mormon position on gays is seen as a reason to ridicule them and a good reason to not join this church, their “prophet” will “see the light”.
Chris Cooper
While I welcome the recent LDS policy changes in regards to homosexuals with with open arms, there remains one area of policy that still makes me shudder, that is explained in the new Handbook 2 of Administering the Church – 2010.
This is the current policy of permanently annotating the records of LDS church members who have once engaged in homosexual activity, thereby marking them permanently throughout their Church lives, in a manner that will guarantee that all new wards and leaders (and possibly even the membership) will be informed of the legacy of that person’s current condition and/or past life.
The Church sates that it reserves such permanent annotations only on the records of members “whose conduct has threatened the well-being of other persons or of the Church”, and this is done in order to help the bishop “protect Church members and others from such individuals” (p. #70).
Notably, there is no mention of this requirement for any person found guilty of repeated heterosexual activities, which shows that the Church still regards homosexual activity to be a much greater sin and threat to its membership.
The offence of “repeated homosexual activities (by adults)” is placed alongside other atrocities such as incest, sexual offense against or serious physical abuse of a child, plural marriage and predatory conduct (p# 71).
While the LDS church truly believes in and preaches repentance and forgiveness, even to the point described in D&C 58:42 – “Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more,” current policies make the “remembering no more” part virtually impossible as “In all cases, an annotation on a membership record is removed only with First Presidency approval upon request of the stake president” (p. #70).
Such permanent markers for being a homosexual (or even claiming to be a reformed homosexual who has since repented and now refrains) is reminiscent of the pink triangle “annotation” given by Hitler and the Nazis upon all homosexuals rounded up and placed in concentration camps along with all of the others deemed undesirable at the time.
LDS people with a past that includes homosexual activities should be informed of this current policy so they can decide in advance, before submitting themselves to formal LDS disciplinary processes, whether they want the permanent stain of this annotation to mark the remainder of their lives in LDS fellowship.
Cam
@Enyalid:
You are gay and having trouble dealing with it…we get it.
Cory
I keep bringing up this issue on several blog sites- maybe it will spark someone’s interest somewhere along the way. I guess in a way lots of people have said the same thing in different ways. My problem with the whole Packer-gay thing is this: it defines all of religion by one criterion, namely control of one’s sexuality. As if that is all God cares about. It certainly is all Boyd Packer cares about, but I would hope God has a somewhat broader perspective. The Mormon church has done a pretty dismal job throughout its history of recognizing the primary function of a serious religion, which is to bring the individual member to an immediate experience of the divine with all that implies. For the Mormons, apparently that experience is reserved for the righteous at a particular historical moment, such as the Second Coming or the Last Judgment. But religions have found time and again that that is precisely the wrong way to find God. God is here and now, and is available to all who really want to find him/her/it. As long as Mormonism restricts itself to a God of the future, it will never be accepted as a real religion- and it will never find God.