The Mormon Church has clarified its position on homosexuality, saying that gays and lesbians are almost human.
That’s not my self-indulgent hyperbole, that’s their straightforward theological position, although with different words.
They now talk about the need for compassion toward anyone who experiences same-sex attraction. After all, says their manipulative new website, “The attraction itself is not a sin, but acting on it is.” Elsewhere, it says “With love and understanding, the Church reaches out to all God’s children, including our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.”
The “all God’s children” thing is nonsense. After all, if gay men and women are as much God’s children as straight men and women, why aren’t they allowed the same divine right of consensual sexual expression? If Mormons now admit that God makes some people gay (“individuals do not choose to have such attractions”), does the Church simply reject the wholesomeness of this creation? Does the Church deem itself fit to judge that gay people should not act within the integrity of how God created them?
Do they think God makes a mistake every time God creates a gay person? After all, every day some 300 American babies are born who are destined to become gay adults.
Mormons celebrate that sexual expression and loving, blessed relationships are the singular domain of humans. By admitting that people are born gay, and then denying them the glories of sexual expression and loving relationships the Mormon Church denies them their humanity.
Some “love and understanding.”
Church leaders helpfully state that “they aren’t changing the Mormon teaching that same-sex relationships are sinful.” Of course, if gays could marry, those couples’ sexual expression could be considered blessed by God and they would not be living in sin.
Church leaders say they hope their new project on same-sex attraction will foster a “greater understanding of homosexuality among Mormons and a more civil conversation about the issue.” I think people already understand exactly where Mormons stand on this issue, and what they mean by “civil conversation.” Just four years ago, the Mormon Church poured millions of dollars into California’s Proposition 8, which successfully removed the then-existing right of gays to marry each other in California.
There’s your “civil conversation.” There’s your “We can all come together to foster a climate of goodwill and a determination to understand the workings of God in each individual life.” In what ways is this arrogant Church attempting to understand how it seeks to truncate the humanity of gays, denying God’s plan for them and their sexuality?
You and I personally subsidized that 2008 Mormon political campaign, through the tax exemptions the Church enjoys on its billions of dollars worth of property. Why their tax-exempt status—contingent on non-involvement in electoral politics—wasn’t immediately revoked remains an enormous scandal that never happened.
And just a reminder: the Catholic Church is on the same marketing kick. Last week the Pope encouraged members to treat gays with compassion and dignity, while reminding them that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.” So God creates people who desire sex with a partner of the same gender, and the Church judges that inborn desire as pathological. The Church valorizes marriage, sexuality, and the family as part of God’s gift to humanity, but firmly opposes those God-given creatures’ right to marry, be sexual, and build a family. The Church denies their humanity.
Compassion? Dignity? It’s just a marketing slogan. These institutions hate the sin, and loathe the sinner. And now they’ve even lost the integrity of their hatred by calling it compassion.