Well, it’s about time to close comments. Thank you for the discussion.

What I was trying to say is that the most recent anti-gay rhetoric in the church is not any worse than it has been at other times. As you point out, it is also no worse than the anti-gay sentiments of mainstream America in the past several decades. The only difference is, now there are more people sympathetic and accepting of gays, both in the church, and outside it, so the hateful words are being noticed and commented upon. Outside the church, such remarks are now usually considered entirely unacceptable by the majority of society. In the church, progress on that front has been slower, but still steady.

mirrorim, I didn’t grow up in UT, not around mostly LDS classmates, and calling someone or something “gay” was absolutely the most common word for anything disliked. You’re not on solid ground if you think this is somehow a unique symptom of LDS homophobia.

I, for one, believe that is the point. Historically, a group must be demonized in order to prepare the people on your side to be willing to annihilate them. That’s true no matter what politics are in play.

Brad L, I think you’re right that there is a new awareness among congregations of the widespread divide, and so because of that, strong rhetoric is being used. But I still don’t think it is stronger than any other time. I remember back in 2008, when the news reported that Steve Young had a “No to Prop 8” sign in his yard, how summarily he was condemned by many of my fellow ward members. After a quick internet search, I was able to find a thread on an LDS forum about the article:

http://www.ldsfreedomforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=4627

One of the more creative commenters said, “I just wish I could be there to see Brother Brigham put his foot in Steve’s bottom when the two meet in the next world.”

I think that’s as strong as anything I’ve heard in the past week and a half.

In 2013, in the comments on the Deseret News’s website for an article about Steve and his wife speaking about building bridges with the gay community, there were similarly-themed comments, including “An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.”

That article is here:

http://www.deseretnews.com/user/comments/865586445/Steve-Young-says-he-wants-to-build-bridges-with-LGBT-community.html

Yes, the anti-gay rhetoric is very strong, sometimes hateful, and often hurtful. But that’s not new. Growing up in Utah, with mostly Latter-day Saint classmates, calling someone “gay” was for many kids either the meanest insult they could think of, or maybe worse, the common word for anything they disliked. And the parents were no better. I won’t say how old I am, but that was well before November 2015.

Back then, I didn’t know anyone brave enough to stand up and say that was wrong, myself included. The change is, now most congregations and schools have at least a few people willing to plead for love, tolerance, and acceptance. Often there are many. And there are probably a lot of people noticing the strong anti-gay rhetoric, while before it was accepted unnoticed.

As for infallibilism, I don’t think that’s a particularly new trend, either.

Some people, both here and elsewhere, want to make this issue black-and-white: if you’re not 100% behind it, you need to leave the church. But the truth is much more nuanced, and cultural trends eventually tend to dictate church policy. And while it can be relatively slow, we are actually very quick compared to many other religions, such as Catholicism (which I actually respect the Catholics tremendously for—they have a consistency that we utterly lack). For us it is usually decades, not centuries, before we can reject our old biases. It happened with blacks and the priesthood. It happened with mixed-gender marriages. It happened with birth control. It’ll happen with gay marriage. This isn’t the church spearheading a revelation unpopular with everyone else in the world. This is the church jumping, relatively late, on a conservative bandwagon that existed long before we got involved, among a very large portion of “the world” of the United States, as well as other countries. The church sided with one of two popular traditions, which at the time was the more popular one, and which seemed like it would make us more accepted by Evangelical Christians. It is now a less popular tradition, but one still supported by most of those same Evangelicals. Eventually it will become even less popular, and we will abandon it. Revelation is not involved anywhere in the process, unless, as with the ban on blacks holding the priesthood, revelation helps hurry along the change sooner.

For those who disagree, that’s fine. It’s not a black-and-white issue. I just hope you don’t abandon the church in a decade or so when it does change. Some people were so invested in the priesthood ban that they did, and I’m afraid it is likely the same will eventually happen here. I hope, though, it does not.

No organization is perfect, and if we try to wait to form communities until all its members and prevailing views are the ones we see as perfect, we will be alone all our lives. People are too stubborn. People are too lax. People are just people: they hurt each other, but they also heal one another, too. Some weeks it is more of the one; other weeks it is more of the other. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or any church, is no different.