While the Mormon Church has taken much more of a hands-off approach on marriage equality than it did in California in 2008, don’t think for a minute Church leaders are happy about our progress. At the Church’s biannual conference in (where else?) Salt Lake City, Apostle Dallin Oaks made it clear that the Mormon hierarchy still doesn’t like the LGBT community very much. Or at all.
Law cannot “make moral what God has declared immoral,” Oaks said. Just in case you had any doubt about what Oaks was talking about, he condemned “political and social pressures for legal and policy changes to establish behaviors contrary to God’s decrees about sexual morality and the eternal nature and purposes of marriage and child-bearing.”
Of course, the pertinent issue is how the Mormon Church is fighting those “political and social pressures.” The clearest example is in Hawaii, which has a large LDS presence. There the church is taking a less aggressive approach to fighting the forthcoming legislative vote on marriage equality. So even if the rhetoric hasn’t changed, perhaps the will power has, and in politics that is game, set and match.
Alan down in Florida
I never understood why a faith whose tenets include polygamy and old men marrying adolescent girls would have a problem with same-sex marriage.
You would think that changing the definition of marriage would be advantageous to them inasmuch as they had to jettison their beliefs under duress when Utah joined the union.
Polaro
@Alan down in Florida: Ironically, the Mormons with their polygamy and marring pre-pubescent girls is more in line with the Bible than the religious hypocrites in other denominations espouse. Problem is, they are both wrong and irrelevant to the discussion in a nation that is supposed to be founded on freedom.
andy_d
The biggest problem is that they are still trying to impose their religion on a purely civil issue.
Randal Oulton
“Law cannot ”make moral what God has declared immoral,”
Would that include a *third* bible written by a false prophet? Just sayin.
pauldouglas
@Alan down in Florida: In one word: Patriarchy.
Cam
Queerty, even in articles where you grudgingly admit that the Mormon church hates gays you want to soft peddle what they are actually doing.
You claim that they are taking a hands off approach in Hawaii? That’s funny when the church is pushing for an exemption to any gay rights laws for anybody with a religious or moral belief against homosexuality. That isn’t taking a hands off approach. That is fighting to allow any bigot to violate civil rights.
Oh, and the Church’s problems have gotten larger. Any Male member of the church over 12 in good standing is called a member of the Priesthood. Well the priesthood meetings don’t allow women. Some of the Mormon women have seen the gays fighting back and have decided it is time to take on not only the bigotry of the Mormon church but it’s sexism as well.
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/7333/mormon_women_knock_at_the_door__are_turned_away____a_theologies___/
AxelDC
They are one of the largest funders of NOM. They have taken a behind-the-scenes approach, not “hands off”. Matthew Holland, Utah Valley University President and son of LDS apostle Jeffrey Holland, was a founding board member of NOM. He was replaced by Orson Scott Card on NOM board.
Don’t confuse PR moves with actual acceptance of equality.
morgan riggs
@Randal Oulton:
Great comment, you hit the mark as most other religions think of them as a cult anyway.
loren_1955
For two centuries the Mormons were heavily persecuted for their beliefs in particular polygamy and in later years their stance on blacks. I know of the persecution, a number of my Mormon ancestors were murdered, others raped, still other burnt out of their homes. Today, now that the Mormons are considered more mainstream, the persecuted has become the persecutors. And sadly, the members seem blind to the hatred and bigotry they have.
The Mormons directly or indirectly though members has pumped millions of dollars against us in states across the United States and in many other countries. Their record of handling gays has been abysmal…electroshock and drug therapies, gay witch hunts leading to many suicides, but the absolute worst, throwing out young gays, as young as 12 years old to the streets for simply saying “I think I am gay” leading to lives of prostitution and drugs. Utah has one of the worst teenage suicide counts, made up of mostly gay youth. How’s that for being Christ’s true church? So far the church leadership seems to be wolves in sheep’s clothing. I warn the young gay Mormons to be ever so careful, the wolf will come out to kill and maim.
MK Ultra
Every piece of propaganda that the Mormon church put out trying to convince America that they’re not depraved haters, but loving and accepting, has only proven and shown how anti-gay, anti-liberty and rights, and anti-american they are.