Wouldn’t it be better if you worried about your interests and let me worry about mine?

I don’t know what you mean – better for who? Worrying is bad for your blood pressure. I decline your invitation to worry.

In all fairness, you are free to say and think as it pleases you. I am simply stating my own fixed opinions, which do not allow me nearly so much latitude. I follow the brethren, no matter what argument clouds the issue. For me, it is a very effective solution to this difficulty, and to many others. As I already acknowledged, it may not suit you or ease your mind, just because I find that it does so for me.

My responses to your arguments are simply my own attempt to point out that your doubts on this matter seem of less consequence to me than other considerations. So I feel, and hold the hope that others may share that belief. You are welcome to ask as many complicated questions as you can think up. You may not be satisfied with the answers. That’s okay with me.

You can even hold on to the argument that church doctrine is mutable. I don’t believe it is. All the examples you cite actually demonstrate that fixed principles do not change, and the church is not prompted to act based on popular opinion.

I’m always struck by how ironic this Prop 8 kerfuffle is, given the history of the Mormon people. Must the persecuted always pile on the next despised minority to come along?

I thought that’s eventually what the Church did with regard to the ruling in Reynolds vs. the United States. Sure seems to have set a nice precedent, at least.

Wouldn’t it be better if you worried about your interests and let me worry about mine? You get it wrong when you make assumptions about my interests and represent them. Is it kind of you to do so? And I’m not referring to quoting my prior question about “parting company” either.

Rather, is it fair to say of me, “Have it as you will.” as though my queries and explorations are fixed and closed, as if I have a closed agenda, am committed to a side on this issue no matter what the evidence and the arguments are to the contrary? In essence, isn’t that saying that I am close-minded and insincere? Dishonest?

Is it fair to assert that I “insist on a certain perspective” or to say that “I assume that homosexual behavior is inevitable, beyond control or restraint” when I don’t?

Isn’t what I attempted to do is to make a comparison: homosexual orientation and handedness? Where did I ever divorce agency from homosexual orientation or handedness in the mix? Where did I ever say that the right-handed person couldn’t choose not to use the right hand predominantly instead of the left? Where did I ever say the homosexually-oriented could not choose to remain celibate? Isn’t it ludicrous to represent me that way?

So now, Jim, given that, whose assumptions in our interchange fall apart?

But Brother Jim, for me it is not about who is right or who is wrong in the argument, but about me trying to reconcile my heart and conscience with the respected and honored counsel of brethren to the contrary of my heart and conscience.

I don’t understand why accommodations can’t be made among the LDS for gay folks to have a loving marriage just like straight folks, or why such an accommodation wouldn’t make sex between loving, married gays okay as far as sin goes just like sex between straight folks who are married. I don’t understand the seeming hypocrisy. I know that the sex drive relates to procreation, but that’s not all it relates to, and we know sex gets preformed in hetero- marriages all the time without any chance whatever for procreation. That just seems hypocritical and I want to understand why others believe it is not.

Why do you engage in the interchange, Jim? What are your motives?

Why do you ask: “What interest wishes to introduce changes in custom and tradition long standing?” when a long history exists within the Gospel of changes in custom and tradition? What kind of question is that, considering the teaching of Christ over against the Mosaic Law or polygamy over against monogamy, or blacks and the priesthood, or pre- and post-Word of Wisdom, etc. etc.?

& Sara,

Thanks for reminding me of Elder Oakes’s viewpoint on “susceptibilities” (a word akin to “inclinations”) and “vulnerabilities,’ wherein he seems to acknowledge the complexity and the lack of understanding relative to the subject of being gay, among these others, by admitting that figuring out where inclinations and vulnerabilities come from is difficult. Expectations relative to his examples (e.g., gambling, tobacco, alcohol, hot temper, contentiousness, coveting) don’t discriminate the way being gay does, do they? They apply across the board. On the other hand, expectations relative to sex does discriminate. Sex is okay for heteros who marry, but not for gays. Why is that?

Handedness is morally neutral in our society today. It has not always been so in all cultures and societies. See the article in Wikipedia on handedness, the subtitle on stigma and repression. Even in scripture right and left are taken up as agents of symbolism: Jesus sits on Heavenly Father’s right hand and sin is depicted as being on the left side of Christ.

Even so, being gay is stigmatized and repressed. Witness the recent movement in the Church relative to position on being gay.

Why can’t sex in a marriage between gays be like sex in a marriage between those who are not gay?

So thank you all for your contributions, but if you have anything else to add, say it soon.

We’s questions reveal this faulty premise that so much “gay” logic depends upon. Without that faulty assumption, many of the otherwise sensible questions fall apart.