Mormons may not know until the hereafter what causes same-sex attraction, but “God loves all his children” and expects everyone to do the same, an LDS Church leader said Sunday.
While the message — delivered to more than 200,000 Utah Mormons — may not seem significant, the messenger was.
As second counselor in the governing First Presidency, Dieter F. Uchtdorf is one of the highest-ranking leaders in the hierarchy of the nearly 14 million member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to address the thorny topic of whether same-sex attraction is inborn.
Ain’t that sweet?
But what qualifications does Uchtdorf have to address whether SSA is inborn? None — he’s just a mystic. No, he was sent to ‘Save the Sale’. Church doctrine changes when it looks like it’s going to affect the bottom line. Hating on homos made good business sense in the past (and thus good doctrine), but it’s been playing increasingly poorly as of late. Answer: Downplay Packer, so Uchtdorf gets to be the good guy.
“Many questions in life, however, including some related to same-gender attractions, must await a future answer, even in the next life,” Uchtdorf said. “Until then, the truth is, God loves all his children, and because he loves us, we can trust him and keep his commandments.”
Have you ever noticed how that ‘wait until the next life’ thing gets played a lot?
Some audience members welcomed Uchtdorf’s approach, which seemed more consistent with the church’s position.
“It seemed fairly close to the line we’ve been getting lately — the idea that the practice is sinful, but homosexual tendencies are acceptable within the church as long as people don’t act on them,” said Jennie Pulsipher, a Mormon who watched the regional conference via satellite at her east-side Salt Lake City stake center. “He also emphasized that [gays] should be treated lovingly as children of God.”
Hear that, gay people? Mormons will treat you like humans, as long as you never have sex for the rest of your fucking life. Sounds like a deal to me.
27 October 2010 at 6:37 am
Did you ever see that Intelligence² debate where Stephen Fry shouted "Then what are you for?!" at his Catholic opponents? That's what I wanna yell every time I hear this "Mormons may not know until the hereafter" malarkey. What's the point of paying 10% for prophets, seers and revelators if you've gotta wait in line for answers like everybody else?
27 October 2010 at 4:05 pm
@Chino
It's a test of our faith. Duh.
27 October 2010 at 4:12 pm
The link to the quote by Stephen Fry.
28 October 2010 at 2:31 am
I really like that quote. It's like: "Hi, we're a religion, and you have to everything we say to get to heaven because we have a direct line to the creator of the universe.
"Oh, but you can't blame us for all the cruelty and injustice that we did in the past, because, honestly, everybody thought that stuff was fine back then! How were we supposed to know?"
You'd expect them to be somewhat more moral, not less.