Brad L, I’m not sure what you want me to answer. The family is the basic unit of the Church, the eternal unit that is going to endure when the rest of the Church vanishes into history. Families are based on a father and a mother. There is precedent for fathers being shared between families, but the presence of a father and a mother is necessary for a family. That’s in the Proclamation, it’s twenty years old, freely available on the internet. Sure, the Prophet might wake up tomorrow and change that, just like the priesthood ban, but consider this: prophets and members of the Twelve were publicly wondering whether the priesthood ban might be ended, black families were always promised temple ordinances at least in the next life, and there was never a Race: Proclamation to the World.

So with the family being that important, and family units not based on a mother and father being excluded, what happens when you start a family with a father and a father or a mother and a mother anyway? Is that a family unit that is going to someday be able to be sealed? According to the best information from the First Presidency and the Twelve, and their unwavering policy for at least twenty years ever since this subject became important at all, no. So a non-traditional family – and I’m not talking about a family based on grandparents or aunts and uncles, no, those can be sealed as fathers and mothers – a non-traditional family is a competitor to the ordained-of-God kind, one that clogs family roles with people eternally unqualified for them. Again, I don’t care if they look like they can fill that role, if you can spend a lifetime with them seeming to fill that role. There are eternal things going on here, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts.

So a promiscuous gay is an individual sinning for himself. A gay family? That’s a building block for another church. God is jealous. Some things that look innocuous to us look evil to him, and eventually we will praise God for protecting us from such good things. They’re both immoral, but one is immoral in the I’ll-follow-my-passions way, the other one, no matter how good it might feel, is immoral in the I’ll-build-Satan’s-church way.

Is any of this new to you? Have all of you missed the last twenty years of church doctrine and policy? When they talked about the importance of the family, did you just blow it off? Do you really think the Lord will take his church in the direction of the world because the world is right? For the hardness of our hearts he’s allowed us many bad things, but he’s drawn us a line here.

Oh, and defiling sacraments being worse than hurting people, that is right out of scripture. Touch the ark? Dead. Dude probably had a family. Sodom and Gomorrah? Fire from heaven. Worship a calf? Chopped to bits by Levites. Hold back your substance when the Lord wants it consecrated? Struck dead. Your eye offends you? Pluck it out. Hand’s holding you back? Chop it off. Jesus was never afraid of hurting people.

You people are so sure progress only goes one way, that the world would never lead you astray, or tell you that homosexuality is healthy and normal even when the prophets have unwaveringly since the beginning of time called it an abomination. Please go back to scripture, go back to James 1:5, go back to asking God, by prayer, by study, by attention to the words of the living prophets, and trust them, give them some time. About a year and a half ago I wasn’t sure what kind of harm gay marriage could cause the family; I gave it time, gave it prayer, and came to a better understanding of family through it. You can too.

Does it have any foundation in scripture?

Wait, does the idea that gay promiscuity is more moral than lifetime romantic same-gender commitment have any foundation in the scripture have any foundation in scripture? You’re simply relying on your own (il)logic to draw that conclusion about morality.

Defiling sacraments has always been worse than harming people

What???? You’ve completely lost me. is this some sort of gnostic thinking that I’m supposed to derive some sort of esoteric meaning from?

Excommunication is not about meting out judgment, although many Latter-day Saints erroneously think of it that way—it is about separating what are perceived as harmful elements from the rest of the body to prevent contamination.

The apostles are scared of gay families, and so they have attempted to amputate them from the body of Christ. I believe that is enormously hypocritical.

So nl, that’s what my moral system is based on: faith over fear. The handbook policy is clearly based on fear, so I oppose it. But even if my moral system was limited to “be[ing] nice to each other”, as you suggest, there is clear scriptural precedent for that. Remember when Jesus said to love one another? Remember when he put mercy above sacrifice in his list of virtues? Remember when God told Joseph Smith Christian creeds were an abomination to him? What you call “defiling sacraments” I call ignoring 20th-century creeds. And incidentally, your policy is just the 20th-century policy of the church of the world. So it’s not God versus world: it’s 21st-century world versus 20th-century world. And just as 20th-century world is better than 19th-century in its rejection of slavery and racism, so 21st-century world is better than 20th-century in its rejection of sexual discrimination. The policy you’re defending didn’t originate with God: it originated with fallen humanity, and was one of those creeds Heavenly Father considered so abominable.

Also, if sacraments are eternal, then why aren’t you still practicing animal sacrifice? Isn’t that eternal? Or can sacraments change over time as new circumstances in the world arise? If grain can replace animal flesh, why is it so strange to you for same-sex to stand alongside hetero-sex?

Defiling sacraments has always been worse than harming people. At certain times harming people is good. In fact, the highest sacrifice involved harming someone, quite badly in fact. Sacraments are eternal, physicality is not.

This causes me to question how exactly you are informing yourself of what is moral or if you even have a concept of what the term morality means. Please explain how this man is living a more moral life.

Ironically the reason our GAs used to give for homosexuality being an affront to God is that it encouraged selfish promiscuity and could not result in raising children and stable socially responsible lifestyles. It is a complete about face to now define committed gay relationships as more profoundly dangerous and sinful than promiscuous ones. However you feel about whether or not God is OK with gay sexual activity or relationships, that is inconsistent and hypocritical and I am growing weary of members of the Church boldly asserting things as ‘how it has always been’ when they are clearly very ignorant of the real history of these matters in the Church. Brigham Young and other GAs spent a lot of time preaching polygamy as the most natural and healthy sexuality to have and actually disparaged monogamy as an affront to God’s ideals and a symptom of a morally weak civilisation. Any member asserting that the Church has been consistent in promoting and valuing the current line on heterosexual monogamy as the right and ‘natural’ form of marriage should at least have some humility and acknowledge that history even if you believe Brigham was lying when he claimed to be speaking as a prophet when he taught those things. Hypocrisy all over the place, and that was Jesus’ biggest bugbear.

Pharisees value rules and ritual purity over actual harm to real people. Sexual
promiscuity is far more damaging to families, society and health than any committed relationship as it immediately results in spreading STIs, infertility, abortions, unstable home environments for children and damage to the promiscuous emotionally, physically and spiritually. This is why so many committed, active members like me are horrified at all the rhetoric from GAs and anyone else proclaiming that offending sacraments is more evil that harming people in response to the implications of this policy change.

You seem to be one of that growing number of moderns that base their moral compass entirely on whether or not the individual in question feels good, and on whether or not a given action will hurt someone’s feelings. That’s not backwards, but it is stunted. Purity is real, and it’s not based on whether something brings a smile to your face or makes your heart throb. If you have sexual desire towards a member of your own sex, your desire is twisted, no matter how good you feel or how faithful to that person you are. It doesn’t matter if they consent, or if they return that favor, it’s a parody of God’s organization.

is that logical enough for you? In the past few decades our culture has seen a very large shift, and some of us have been taken up by it. The old directions on our moral compasses have been erased, and we no longer care about anything but niceness. Not to mention it’s become a taboo to even research ways to, you know, change sexual orientation. The Church of the World has declared you can’t so stop trying, and since you can’t why are you hurting these people? Ironically, followers of that Church think of themselves as free thinkers, and imagine they aren’t bound tightly to its authority.

Claiming the imprimatur of marriage for a homosexual relationship, and making it public and permanent, does seem to me to be a greater sin than an occasional and furtive homosexual escapade, or even a non-married long-term situation.

Alright, then. Let’s mark ji’s name down in the category of those who think that there are some situations in which sexual promiscuity (even to the extent of spreading deadly diseases) is less immoral than making a lifetime romantic commitment to one partner. Your moral compass is completely backwards, ji. I suppose that is what happens to people who blindly mimic and obey authority figures for years and years. They actually lose the power to think for themselves, and eventually even lose the very power to think logically altogether.

So where there are not willing “parents” to give consent, the rule is that the child waits. No harm, no foul. That has been the rule for a long time.

Wait, ji, I’m assuming that you are full believing member of the LDS church, correct? Don’t you believe that the gift of the Holy Spirit, which can only be received by being confirmed a member of the LDS church by a priesthood holder, is crucial for children to have? If one of the legal guardians of a child is consenting to that child’s baptism and confirmation, and the child desires to be baptized and is found worthy, then the LDS church has nothing or no one to blame but itself for denying that child the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is inconceivable. I thought that the LDS church was on a mission to give all willing people access to the gift of the Holy Spirit as soon as it possibly could. This is a complete double standard on the part of the LDS church.

I don’t speak for the Church in any matter, but I think I understand the policy

Then you don’t seem to understand how the policy contradicts other church doctrines and teachings, particularly Article of Faith 2.

What’s more perplexing is that you don’t even address Grant Hardy’s main points. Did you not understand them? Are you afraid to address them?