Of course it doesn’t. People are born with all sorts of conditions that we don’t expect will persist in the eternities. That’s part of the beauty of the resurrection.

There have been many definitions of marriage. Two elements are common to all of them: (1) a union of man and woman (2) for life.

In modern Western Cultures, we’ve added elements (3) severable (meaning you can break the contract for life, in divorce) and (4) EXCLUSIVE, meaning that you can’t form more than one marriage at the same time. Thus Polygamy doesn’t even create a wrinkle in either of the two main elements. A plig man had two marriages. The wives were not married to each other; it was not all one marriage.

I have a hard time crediting the good faith of Mormons who claim to honor our ancestors by supporting ssm. Our ancestors were persecuted and jailed for their temple marriages, many of which were effected before the law was even passed to make them illegal. They were systematically persecuted. Wives went to jail for refusing to testify against their husbands. They did not ask or want the government to recognize their socially deviant relationships. They simply wanted to be left alone.

I don’t consider a mormon’s support for ssm treason against the church leadership. They’ve made a suggestion; you can follow or ignore it. But support for ssm is certainly a betrayal of the community. We all know very well that passage of ssm laws will bring upon us the same sorts of forces that our polygamous ancestors faced, to coerce us to sollemnize ssm in the temples. The antionwide ssm movement is based on the premise that those who refuse to recognize ssm are the moral equivalent of the White Supremacists in Loving v. Virginia. And the Bob Jones case makes clear that the Supreme Court will wink at “whatever it takes” to pressure White Supremacists into changing their doctrines.

If you don’t like the doctrine of the church, then take it up directly with God and the brethren. Don’t walz behind our backs and promote government measures to coerce the church into making the doctrinal changes you desire.

I wonder if we’re willing to look far enough outside of our own little mortal box to find out what Deity has to say about gay marraige.

If you choose to take the position that Gay Marriage somehow erodes the moral tradition of the United States of America, I challenge you to look back over the history of marriage in this nation. A family consisting of one father and one mother and their children is not the traditional American family. This nation has never had a specific “traditional� family structure; to have had one would have been a slap in the face to our multi-cultural, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic background. We live in a republic, and therefore, we live in a nation that is able to be molded and altered as needed to promote a political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them. Ask every citizen of this great country what they consider a traditional family, and you will receive a myriad of responses. An African American male would most likely explain how a traditional family is a single working mother with a couple of children. At the same time a Mexican American would most likely explain that a traditional family is composed of several grandparents, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, a mother and father, and several siblings. Most Caucasian Americans would explain the traditional family in the eyes of the oppressive Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority; a dominant father and submissive mother with a couple children. To accept that view as the only valid and moral option is to succumb to the oppression that has not only restricted the economic, political, and creative growth of the United States of America, but also the spiritual growth of our great nation.

For the record, I believe I will be having those dialogues, with people that Derren would now label as gay.