The first newsworthy quotes coming from April General Conference emanate from his moral excellency, Boyd Packer:

Just because the nation may change its laws to “tolerate legalized acts of immorality” does not make those acts any less spiritually damaging, senior apostle Boyd K. Packer said Saturday morning at the LDS Church’s 183rd Annual General Conference.

“The permissiveness afforded by the weakening of the laws of the land to tolerate legalized acts of immorality,” Packer said, “does not reduce the serious spiritual consequences that result from the violation of God’s law of chastity.”

This surprises no one, least of all me, but I had hoped for a more tolerant church response to the push for marriage equality in this country.

His sitting tirade of inclusion, diversity and unconditional love included this as well:

“Tolerance is a virtue, but, like all virtues, when exaggerated it transforms itself into a vice,” said the 88-year-old Packer, speaking from his seat rather than from the pulpit. “We need to be careful of the ‘tolerance trap’ so that we are not swallowed up in it.”

The Salt Lake Tribune article also mentions the “separate but equal” status of women in the church with this bon mot:

Several church leaders also spoke Saturday morning about the important but separate roles of women within the Mormon faith. For the first time in the church’s history, a woman, Jean A. Stevens, offered a public prayer at General Conference.

And then continues on to drive the point home.

“Men and women have different but equally valued roles,” apostle M. Russell Ballard said Saturday. “Just as a woman cannot conceive a child without a man, so a man cannot fully exercise the power of the priesthood to establish an eternal family without a woman. In other words, in the eternal perspective, both the procreative power and the priesthood power are shared by a husband and wife.”

Ballard went on to discuss a new church-produced video called “Strengthening the Family and the Church through the Priesthood” that “shows us all — men, women, children, married, widowed or single, no matter what our circumstances — how we can be partakers of the blessings of the priesthood.”

The church can make all of the videos, create all of the websites, play all of the new social media games it wants, but it does not obfuscate the fact that it has to change to survive — and yet, demonstrates again this conference its unwillingness to do so.

ADDENDUM: One reader ["MenaceToSociety"] of the Salt Lake Tribune article quoted above had this to say:

Say we could classify our treatment of our neighbors roughly as Love, Like, Accept, Tolerate, Dislike, and Hate. Packer isn’t talking about Love Thy Gay Neighbor. Or Like. Or Accept. Packer is resisting Tolerating Thy Gay Neighbor, when tolerate is really quite a low standard. Strange level of feeling towards his neighbors for a church leader.

A bright and humorous group have created a parody website of Mormons and Gays website, which the LDS church launched this past week.

It is nicely titled Mormons and Negroes and turns the tables right where they should be turned.

I pasted the link on Facebook and a Brazilian LDS acquaintance from some 35 years ago quickly protested:

Not for Brazilians LDS , great part of brazilian population has some black blood, so we have no problem at all !!! We like everybody , black, white, yellow, straight, not straight, everybody !! We are all the same, aren’t we???

I responded, …”most LDS (and most people I know) feel as you do, but the point of this parody is to show that something that is immutable and that you did not choose (e.g. skin color, sexual orientation) cannot be considered a sin. Nothing more, nothing less. The LDS church’s new website (mormonsandgays.org) claims being homosexual is not a choice — but acting on it is a sin. You can’t have it both ways — hence my comment on a double-edged sword (faca de dois fumes).”

I expect to arrive in São Paulo tomorrow to a Facebook firestorm (and perhaps a few less Facebook friends).

This week the LDS church launched a new website that is an attempt at rapprochement to the gay community, and perhaps their own little attempt at penance for the Prop 8 PR fiasco in California.

According to an interviewed official on KSL-TV, “…the site has been under development for more than two years”. [Personal aside: I could have put it together in a day; it must have been getting buy-in from Boyd K. Packer that took the other 729 days.]

Here are a few quotes from the site that stood out for me (all emphasis is mine):

This official website does not offer a comprehensive explanation of everything related to same-sex attraction, but it does reflect the feelings of Church leaders as to how we should treat each other as part of the human family. The site offers a place where the people whose lives are impacted by attraction to the same sex can find inspiration to work through difficult challenges while remaining faithful to Church teachings.

The Church’s approach to this issue stands apart from society in many ways. And that’s alright. Reasonable people can and do differ. From a public relations perspective it would be easier for the Church to simply accept homosexual behavior. That we cannot do, for God’s law is not ours to change. There is no change in the Church’s position of what is morally right. But what is changing — and what needs to change — is to help Church members respond sensitively and thoughtfully when they encounter same-sex attraction in their own families, among other Church members, or elsewhere.

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A good friend emailed me this week:

I heard something on the news about Mormons marching in the gay pride parade this year?  What’s that about?

And I responded:

A few Mormons who actually “support” equality are trying to make a statement, but this is not an officially-sanctioned activity, by any stretch of the imagination.

They still think that “god loves the sinner, not the sin” so think it’s okay to be a practicing (e.g. active) Mormon — as long as you also practice celibacy the rest of your life.

No thanks.

Here is a LINK to the Salt Lake Tribune article.

ABC-4 reported this:

“What we’re trying to do is say we welcome you.  We want you to be part of our congregation.  We want you to feel safe in our pews,” Munson said.

She is also sending a clear message to other Latter-day Saints.  “We want people in wards all over the world to see us and say these folks are just like me,” said Munson.

The temple going, tithing paying, faithful who say they believe President Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God; want to share a message.  “We have been getting messages from our church leaders about reaching out with love, about never supporting bulling [sic], about being loving and kind to LGBT people,” said Munson.

Latter-day Saints only support marriage between a man and woman, but they also say they love those who support same sex marriage.  Jay Vann who is an active Latter-day Saint from Murray is thrilled about Latter-day Saints joining the gay pride parade.

“By marching in the parade it doesn’t mean that we have to move from our stance whether it’s right or wrong, but these are our brothers and sisters these are our friends our cousin [sic]. I think by marching with them I think what were saying is they deserve to be treated like human beings,” Vann said. [emphasis mine]

And of course, The Onion has an “American Voices” take, which is probably more accurate than is being reported in the mainstream media.

The Salt Lake Tribune published an article over the weekend that detailed an LGBT event for LDS-oriented people. Apparently one self-invited speaker–Bishop Kevin Kloosterman–gave an inspiring talk that the Trib has titled “Mormon bishop says church responsible for gays’ emotional wounds“.

Some commentators are saying that the Trib is making too much of this and has missed the gist of his comments. To those, I submit a transcript of his remarks.

For me, these were the most confirming:

And as I read these stories and as I learned more about these issues, I began to see the emotional wounds and the scars that many of you still have today. And I seem to ask the question, “Where did you get these wounds?” and unfortunately the answer was, “In the house of my friends.”

Interesting story in today’s Salt Lake Tribune about a “gay BYU filmmaker”.

A lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the 41-year-old Wilcox has been the epitome of a good Mormon. He served a two-year mission to Barcelona, Spain, earned a degree from BYU, worked and taught Spanish at the church’s Missionary Training Center in Provo for five years, then joined the staff at BYUtv, where he has produced documentaries, talk shows and reality-based series.

He did it all secretly knowing he was gay.

I suspect that he will quickly find incompatibility.

LINK

In response to an online treatise on gay Mormons and how the church deals (or not) with them, a friend responded with the following (JNR — let me know if its okay to post this; I only steal from the best):

The part of Mormon cosmology that claims an exalted destiny involves at least one heterosexual marriage is pretty hard to get around

I agree. And you’re right that it would be a disservice to not address that fact, so I’ll just say this (again this is just my personal belief):

Mormon belief/doctrine/dogma/cosmology is pretty messy and has changed an awful lot since 1830. We’ve changed our position on things like polygamy, blacks and the priesthood, the doctrine of tithing and the organization of church leadership. We’ve changed our policies on what members can/can’t eat and drink (no coffee/tea/alcohol, but it used to be okay to drink beer though not anymore). We no longer observe the doctrine of gathering, and we’ve even changed the content of our most sacred ceremonies several times and so dramatically that people who had been alive 50 years ago wouldn’t recognize our current iterations. We barely even recognize the doctrine of common consent, even though it was pretty obvious that it was a big part of the early church.
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After finishing The Book of Mammon (see earlier review), the remnants of my Mormon mind seem to be quivering as if a lump of dead flesh were receiving electric shocks; just enough to make it seem alive, if not wholly yet.

All of a sudden I have a renewed interest in the church and its history. I guess this has lain dormant for many years now because it was easier to ignore than address the pain.

A friend recently asked me, “If the church’s stance on homosexuality were different, would you still be active?”. I didn’t hesitate to say yes — which actually surprised me, and which probably was a different answer than it would have been a month ago.

Strange.

Had dinner last night with family-in-law and Maxine Hanks (one of the infamous “September 6″ who were excommunicated as ‘heretics’ in the early 1990s).

Fascinating discussion around religion, belief (or lack thereof) and LDS church history. It’s a good thing my honey was in Milan; he would have been bored to tears.

It made for a pleasant evening to have like-minded souls conversing about the great mysteries. The food was outstanding as well, which didn’t hurt the overall sense of well-being and feelings of kinship.

I guess Elder Packer wasn’t involved in the revisions to the ‘handbook’.

Updated LDS handbook softens language on gays

The Salt Lake Tribune

A newly published compilation of LDS guidelines — used by all church leaders worldwide when dealing with their members — has softened the language about gay Mormons.

The book, known as the Church Handbook of Instructions, lays out the Utah-based faith’s policies on everything from baptism to running a worship service to counseling troubled marriage partners.

The updated reference book is scheduled to be presented to thousands of LDS lay leaders in a giant, televised training session Saturday. Any language changes, then, will set the tone for church interactions for years to come.

Like most recent LDS Church statements, this new handbook makes a clear distinction between same-sex orientation and behavior. It eliminates the suggestion, mentioned in the previous 2006 edition, that same-sex relationships “distort loving relationships” and that gays should repent of their “homosexual thoughts or feelings.”

It also says that celibate gay Mormons who are “worthy and qualified in every other way” should be allowed to have “callings,” or church assignments, and to participate fully in temple rituals.
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