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Thousands Leave the LDS
Now you might have missed this news, what with the attacks in Paris and the childishness in the universities, but breaking news: The Church of LDS believes homosexuality sinful. Gasp! Who knew such beliefs lurked deep in their ways? Oh wait, everyone. Still, last week, that didn’t stop a few thousand from making a scene over a recent policy: the church will not baptize children of same-sex couples until they turn 18 and denounce same-sex marriage. So of course my social network feed exploded in outrage, of which I’d estimate 10 percent came from actual Mormons.
The latest news is that recently a few thousand made a public stand to quit the church, with at least 1,500 showing up in person, and another 2,000 (approximately) sending in legal representation to affect the same. (Side note: my lovely wife Amanda is unimpressed by sending your lawyer to submit your resignation. As she knows, you just need write a letter saying that you’re out.)
In my skepticism, I’d wager that few if any of those making this stand are seriously active in the church at all. I have a good friend who is very active in the “Ordain Women” movement and publicly denounced this decision by the church, but she remains equally active in her church. This likely was just a convenient excuse for those leaving to do so while making oneself look important.
The church responded, expressing that these individuals should reconsider this decision as there would be eternal consequences. This was met by mockery from the social progressives. “When threatening people with eternal damnation doesn’t work anymore, you know you’ve lost them.” Again, this doesn’t impress my lovely wife any, as she received similar warnings when she wrote that she was leaving the church. Naturally, leaving the LDS because one has converted to mainstream evangelical Christianity is less exciting (no colorful rainbow flags or news coverage), but the message was essentially the same: “Reconsider!”
I’ve never been Mormon, and I disagree quite a bit with the Church of Latter Day Saints, but here I turn and stand in their defense for a moment. Rather than trying to divide, the church is actually trying to consider all involved while remaining true to their doctrine. “Family is Forever” is a major concept within the church, so pitting children at the age of eight against their same-sex parents creates problems in many ways.
This policy is similar to that when dealing with children of Muslims: don’t cause familial strife. Wait until the child is of majority age and allow them to make the decision then. As for the “threats of eternal damnation” – well those are hardly such. Those religions that believe in the hereafter also tend to believe that one’s actions now will have consequences in one’s afterlife. The reply is a compassionate warning: don’t just consider the present, consider eternity. Understanding that there are rather nasty consequences for apostasy according to their beliefs, it’d be far crueler to say, “Okay, bye guys. Enjoy the Outer Darkness!”
That doesn’t matter to the social progressive. When you’re on the right side of history, you don’t have to argue or even listen to others. You just get to demand everyone embrace your ideals right now. Like the Huffington Post, you know that things are far more complex and that it takes smart, enlightened Social Progressives to figure things out. We religious types just need to take a back seat and let them drive.
Of interesting note is the second bullet point: How is the lay leader of a local Mormon congregation to make this determination when courts and lawyers find [shared custody] challenging?
For decades social progressives have told us that they have a better way, but they have taken a simple concept like marriage and made it so complex that it now supposedly requires lawyers, judges, and associated experts to puzzle out just what is a family and who is a parent. This is the aftermath of no-fault divorce, cohabitation, and shared custody. We can only expect more headaches and issues with same-sex marriage. And we have a bevy of legal experts and politicians in the wings ready to sweep in and confuse the issue even more, and then tell us that we’re too inexpert to understand the real complexities of what makes a family.
In our debates over same-sex marriage, I have stated that if a word can mean anything it will soon mean nothing. We’re finding that marriage and family as a cultural and social institution are quickly approaching nothing, and it’s the legal carrion crows that are picking over the remains. Only in the religious sense will those words maintain a sense of meaning. That is why the social progressives attack the attempts of religious leaders to negotiate and deliberate this morass.
Published in Marriage, Religion & Philosophy
I was under the impression that same-sex couples cannot “have” children together. There is NO WAY any same-sex couples can be natural parents to any child, and I imagine that ties the Mormons up in knots deciding who is “family”, especially with their excellent emphasis on genealogy. The same would hold if two people of the same sex wanted to get “married”-it simply does not exist in the Mormon cosmology. Merina, has the Church said it would not recognize a same-sex “marriage” even if the state is forced to?
I have great respect for the Mormon church, and I think it has been a great force for good in America.
Well, is this “disavowal” merely a private admission in front of a church authority that the child does not intend to repeat his parents’ behavior or encourage others to do so? Because that makes sense. But the word “disavowal” sounds like it could also mean more than that. It sounds like it could involve disloyalty to the parents who raised you. But it could also be handled with pastoral sensitivity and discretion.
I’ve heard that some Orthodox parishes have been reportedly facing somewhat similar issues with maintaining clarity on marital ideals while not rebuffing children whose parents don’t match those ideals, though, knowing the Orthodox, there is no official policy on how to do this, the guiding principle likely being pastoral discretion.
C.U.,
My normal attitude is that it’s none of my business but since in this case the fecal matter has hit the fan I’ll ask a question. Do the SSM people defend the polygamists? After all the Supreme Court decision based this whole question solely on LOVE. Surely the polygamist loves his wives and his wives love him.
Just wondering.
Regards,
Jim
RB, the church acknowledges that same sex marriage is legal in the United States, but has basically said there is no such thing as a same sex Mormon family. And thanks for your kind words.
Interestingly, I’ve heard there’s no religious penalty for endorsing SSM politically.
Children would never be told that they should abandon the people who raised them, but just as many parents do not approve of their children shacking up but still maintain friendly relations with their kids and partners, the children would be expected to say to a church official that they understand that the church does not sanction same sex marriages nor regard them as sacramental marriages as they do temple marriages.
There isn’t, nor should there be, though the vast majority of Mormons do not endorse redefined marriage.
I’m glad that here on Ricochet there’s been some attempt to see this from the perspective of the LDS Church. That effort has been missing almost everywhere else, including among some members of the church. As has been mentioned above, the main purpose of this policy to avoid placing a child in a position of conflict between the core doctrines of the LDS Church regarding marriage and chastity and the life-style choices of at least one of that child’s parents.
Understand that no sexual activities of any kind outside traditional marriage are accepted by the LDS Church. Cohabitating heterosexuals may not be baptized until they acknowledge that what they are doing is sinful, repent and either stop those activities (which may or may not involve separating) or get married. Single members of the church who become sexually active outside marriage or begin cohabitating may be subject to church disciplinary action. While excommunication or disfellowshipment would be extremely rare, such an individual would not be allowed to engage in the ordinances of the church or hold leadership or teaching positions. The purpose of this is to encourage repentance and a return to living by the teachings of the church. It is not intended as a punishment, but rather as a natural consequence of failing to live in accordance with church teachings.
The new policy regarding baptism of children and disciplinary action including excommunication of members who enter into same-sex marriages, even though legal is intended exactly the same way. Again, while the policy is in no way intended as a punishment of the children, it is a consequence of the decisions and choices of the parents, much as many other choices parent make affect their children. It is an absurdly “have your cake and eat it too” attitude by any member of the church to think they can openly flaunt church teachings this way without any consequences from the church for themselves or those around them.
As another author wrote about this, consider the different positions of a child who believes in the doctrines of the LDS Church and who is either the child of a cohabitating heterosexual couple versus a child with the same beliefs who is a child of a same-sex couple. The first child wanting his parents to follow the teachings of the church can pray that his parents repent and get married, thereby strengthening the family. The second would have to pray that his parents separate. The church doesn’t want to put any child in that kind of a position. I don’t see that the church’s position lacks compassion.
It does however demonstrate a very fundamental difference between same-sex marriage and heterosexual cohabitation. A heterosexual couple can bring their lives in line with the teachings of the church without breaking their family apart. A same-sex couple cannot do that. Whether you agree with that doctrine is beside the point. The doctrine is what it is and the church cannot change it without becoming something fundamentally different from what it is. If someone doesn’t like that, no one is going to stop them from finding another church that agrees with them. (No really, despite what you may have heard, no one is going to stop them. They’ll be earnestly asked to consider what they’re doing, but free choice or free agency is also a core doctrine of the church.)
Finally, while baptism is a necessary ordinance, LDS doctrine more than adequately provides for the child or anyone else that dies without baptism. This policy is in no way a problem in that regard.
Thanks for this comment … it opens the door for me to ask a question (not to you VC in particular, or this post in particular; just to all of us in general). It frequently seems that Ricochetti who are not members of a religion being discussed want to not only opine on current events related to the religion, but need to also take the opportunity to criticize or challenge the religion? Why?
What I mean is, it seems to me, that if the worst impact that a religion can have on me is to not allow me to be a member … why would I care what the religion holds of importance? Afterall, “I don’t have a dog in fight” so to speak.
Asking the same question, differently … why would anyone think it would matter to a member of a religion if a non-member thought a particular practice of the religion was over-rated or unimportant? Because in truth, the non-member’s opinion is irrelevant.
In summary, why spark discord?
While I view the LDS somewhat akin to how the Jewish Ricochetti view Christians (nicest bunch of heretics you’ll ever meet!) this is not ridiculous as a church policy. The PR department might need some work though.
Mormons are squared away and basically the opposite of most of our media class.. It provokes a reaction like this silly display.
This made me actually lol.
As a practicing Latter a Day Saint I’m glad church policy isn’t governed by today’s popular opinion.
Well, because religions don’t limit themselves to members, right?
In the U.S., Religions(and not just individual religious members) lobby for laws and public policy. They contribute funds to support various causes, they community organize to support various candidates or causes. They often take their particular take on what is moral and try to impose it on non-members.
And finally Ricochet has many who claim that Islam is harmful or not even a religion. Are non muslims supposed to not criticize Islam?
Politicians are talking today about limiting refugee status to one particular religion.
It’s convenient when revelations happen that just so happen to coincide with changing popular opinion isn’t it? Could it be that we will soon see some revelations regarding treatment of homosexuals in the church?
It’s almost as if Heavenly Father is aware of the trends in our culture and expresses his will to prophets.
That’s a common, yet arguably historically inaccurate charge. The church has made exactly two prominent revelatory changes in its history: polygamy and the change in eligibility for holding the priesthood. Polygamy was hardly changed when and only because it was convenient. Many church members were imprisoned, the church fought all the way to the Supreme Court, and was finally faced with a federal law confiscating all of its assets, and Utah was repeatedly denied statehood before the manifesto ending the practice was issued. If revelatory change was a matter of convenience, it would have been convenient a lot sooner than that. On the second change, that was a arguably a policy and not a doctrinal change. In the early years of the church, there were freed slaves ordained to the priesthood. That practice and the church’s anti-slavery stance were part of the problems Mormons had in Missouri in the 1830s. While not ordaining black men definitely isn’t one of the prouder episodes in church history, the change actually brought policy and practice more in line with early teachings.
If anyone has answered this one already, I missed it — so I’ll jump in. Yes, we believe that baptism is necessary to obtain the highest blessings of eternity. However, the Church’s policy does not imperil the salvation of affected children for two reasons. First, they will be able to be baptized as adults, when they are more mature and better able to deal with these questions and choices. To put a child in a position of having to choose between loyalty to parents and loyalty to church teachings is a cruel no-win situation. Second, if the child died before reaching adulthood, the ordinance of baptism would still be made available by proxy. The Gospel is perfectly just and merciful, and no one who dies without the opportunity to be baptized or have any other saving ordinance will be denied those blessings. That’s what our temple work is all about.
Also, you can hardly accuse the Church of caving in to popular opinion in the case of gay marriage. Quite the contrary.
I can understand why the church leadership did this. They are sitting on top of one of the few intact heterosexual marriage cultures left in the U.S., the preservation of which is probably their top priority. They also have an American member population who face the very real prospect of intense ethnosectarian persecution in the near future, and SSM has become a major wedge issue.
Perhaps I would feel differently if SSM hadn’t become so tied up in class and sectarian politics. But it has, and I don’t think we can blame religiously conservative people for being cautious.
Actually few revelations have ever been given without first a question on a subject being asked. In fact, it is a sort of a rule of thumb that a revelation is UNLIKELY on a subject about which no one is concerned enough to ask about.
This policy is not really new, the specific guidelines are just made clear and uniform.
Homosexuality in and of itself is not sinful. It is the sex act that is sinful.
I do know of members who have same sex attraction, yet remain celibate and therefore retain full activity in all parts of the LDS church, including the temple. Single heterosexual members also must be celibate to keep full activity.
Celibacy seems to be more controversial in some quarters than homosexual acts or sex outside of marriage. As a Mormon I find that backwards.
I’m pretty sure a single mother who is a lesbian, if she is repentant, and remains single, and celibate, going forward, would be able to be fully active, as would her child.
I think I understand the policy to mean that.
Especially in Salt Lake City, there are many who claim to be Mormons just so they can resign publically over every controversy.
Also, I think it is a good idea to clean up the membership rolls of people who really do not want to be bothered by the Church. If the media noticing a long standing doctrine, makes you leave… it’s fake.
Thanks for your answer. a final question(I think). Wasn’t denial of priesthood done because there was a revelation(s), then there was a revelation admitting blacks to the priesthood. How does the Church view this? A false revelation (the initial one(s) presumably) ? God changing his mind? How are these contradictory revelations explained?
Jeb got in a bit of trouble tonight trying to answer just how people could prove that they are Christians for immigration purposes…..
The only revelation I’m aware of opened priesthood ordination to all worthy males regardless of race. I’ve never read or heard of a revelation restricting the priesthood by race.
My point was not that we should not criticize, my point was why bother … when the criticism it has no impact, except to provoke each other.
Herbert, it’s late here, and I’m outta word count. Thanks for the conversation.
Herbert,
What’s your end goal here? I mean, I can attack the LDS belief system all day long and denounce Joseph Smith as a false prophet and a fraud. I do not consider their faith to be Christian (or monotheist, for that matter). But what would that accomplish?
Do you expect to convince them to stop listening to their church? Do you want to convince the rest of us to treat them as insane cultists?
They are not trying to do their missionary work obligation in here or baptizing our ancestors. They are explaining an internal church policy.
While we don’t all hold to celestial marriage, a great many of us to hold to marriage with a view to the position that we will be married to God, since Jesus as the groom will come for His bride, the Church. It is an indication of how highly marriage is seen in heaven.
Family is part and parcel of this, as (speaking as a Roman Catholic) we see God as a family, with a Father and a Son, familial names. We are not intended to be solitary persons but rather are born into a family and, normatively, at some point start our own families. In this we imitate heaven which is populated by a Family, to which we are called.
Herbert and Temp Time–the separation of church and state is widely misunderstood, which the modern Supreme Court has, I grant you, aided and abetted. Many states in the early republic had established churches. The idea was to prevent a national established church and to protect both the church and the nation.
Contemporary law forbids churches from supporting particular candidates, but churches are perfectly free to support issues that are important to them, so long as most of their time and means are not spent on one particular issue. And it would be very odd if they couldn’t. People gain much of their moral code from religion. We would hardly be a nation that protected conscience if we forbade the organization that forms our conscience from advocating in battles that greatly affect religion and religious people. Everyone, including libertarians, advocate for the type of country and society they want. Do you think it would be fair to say that religious people cannot?
I read an article recently that called Mormons Biblical Christians and other Christians creedal Christians, since we don’t adhere to the Nicene Creed. That sounds about right to me.