Cheap emotive stunts like using staticky still images with voice overs, and WAY too frequent use of shots like countin’ the Benjamins and images of people writing cheques will certainly add to a sense of outrage, but have no intellectual integrity - let alone taking snippets of speeches out of context, and the melodramatic musical cues. My assessment of the film-makers is that they make Today/Tonight look worthy of a Pulitzer.
Describing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as “the Mormon church” and its members as “Mormons” is kind of like describing homosexual men as queers or faggots – it’s sort of ok if you are one, but pretty offensive if you’re not. I should make it clear that I use them in the previous sentence to provide clarification, not offense, and I do not subscribe to using any terms of hate. LDS church is still not really right either– the purpose of the name of my church is that the name of Christ is of foremost importance.
I find it concerning that the marriage ceremony depicted used the words “partners for life” – does this mean that words husband and wife are soon going to be as obsolete and stripped of meaning as the word marriage?
“Equality for all” – briefly, equality means that people should have equal rights. Everyone currently has the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex, who is not already married, and not within certain familial closeness. If what is meant by equality in this context is “the right to marry who I want”, it is impossible to allow same-sex marriage without also allowing polygamy and incest. Constitutional rights – it was not necessary to have “between a man and a woman” on the original constitution, because (I assume) the original authors would not have conceived that anyone would think it could be anything else. My church has typically supported equal rights – Utah was the third state to allow women to vote, and while its relationship with (specifically) persons of African heritage has been complex, to say the least, there are several blatant misrepresentations of the truth regarding this in this video – “They didn’t allow blacks in the church until 1978” is an outrageous lie.
If you need a piece of paper to feel validated in your relationship (as Tyler or Spencer’s mum suggested) – your relationship isn’t worth the cost of the piece of paper.
Don’t we all just love a good love story – do not think that putting Spencer and Tyler as the face of this documentary is any less contrived that documents indicating that a “young mother not affiliated with the church” would be a suitable figurehead.
It should not come as a surprise that my church has joined forces with other like-minded faiths for a unified purpose – it is my opinion that this is one factor that makes us unpopular. Specifically – the church has generally been pro-Israel, and maintains a reasonable cordial relationship with Jewish faith organisations; shares many common principles and practices with Islam, and has often co-ordinated humanitarian efforts in the Middle-East and Africa with Islamic organisations. Funnily enough, it’s usually the other Christian denominations that we differ with…
It does not surprise me that the church chose to remain somewhat anonymous throughout this campaign – if I had to speculate a reason why, it would probably be that there is already a great deal of misinformation about the church in the public domain – for example, I STILL get asked if I’m allowed multiple wives, despite the fact that polygamous marriages have not been solemnised by my church in over a hundred years. I would further speculate that if the word “Mormon” was anywhere near the campaign, it would be dismissed by many out of hand, without consideration for its merits.
Tax-exempt status of the church – I agree that this is a contentious issue. It may interest you that in recent years, tithing payments made to the church are no longer 100% tax-deductible. It would not surprise me that this move may have been made in response to criticism over this issue.
“Means” and “time” are not “part of a vow ceremony” or “a code”. I have participated in the ordinances that I believe she is referring to, and I do not interpret those words in any sort of reference of the covenants I have entered into.
Homosexuality does not “interfere with the Mormon concept of heaven” for anyone but the individual in question - and this is not a fait accompli, either. As I’ve stated before, homosexual sex practices are considered no more or less sinful than any other sexual practices outside marriage. They didn’t do a terrible job of presenting a brief overview of the rest of the theology – but it’s a complex subject.
“Gay child” – this presupposes that you accept that homosexuality is something that you are born with.
“Mormons hold to one of their most controversial beliefs” – there’s a reason that all of those pictures are in black and white! As previously, it’s been over a hundred years. Their argument that because Tyler’s ancestor suffered persecution, he should be allowed to marry. The converse is true – if homosexuals are allowed to marry, there is no practical barrier to polygamy, demonstrating my earlier point.
“This is about what’s right” – I have no doubt that some people believe that same-sex marriage is right. I disagree, but would defend to the death their right to believe it, and use appropriate methods of expressing this. Similarly, the church believes that what THEY are doing is right, and is doing exactly the same thing.
“Thank you for giving me two mommies” – more emotive claptrap that adds nothing to a rational discussion. She either had two mommies before or never will - this suggests that if a father is not married to the mother of his child, he’s not a daddy. A common argument against religion is “children shouldn’t be brainwashed from an early age” – do you really think that this doesn’t cut both ways?
Money – I have never been asked – directly, or indirectly - to donate money to a political cause, let alone being threatened with disfellowship. I do not doubt that some church leaders MAY have done this – it is NOT in accordance with church teachings, and they should be censured for this behaviour. Which does happen, by the way. If individuals choose to “give until it hurts” for a cause – does this not indicate that this is important to us? If someone seeking a same-sex marriage did the same – emptied the college fund, sold the car – to fund the opposite side of the political campaign, would this be criticised, or lauded?
“They revised their rules” – it is not practice for anyone not serving a full-time proselyting mission to knock doors, and certainly not to wear name-tags. This is again a cheap shot at the stereotypical public perception of “f**king doorknocking Mormons”. I would suggest that there is no-one out there that has been hounded incessantly by tracting missionaries – if you tell them you are not interested, they will leave. There’s plenty of other people who ARE interested who they would prefer talk to.
“They can still ban African-Americans from their temple” – yeah, not for thirty years now.
“The integrity was so anti-gay!” – do I really need to say it?
Suicidality – there is no way that anyone can suggest that this is not a serious issue. It’s a pretty long bow to draw that from a single sentence drawn from an entire book that indicates the parents of a young man who killed himself “had an indescribable sense of peace” following his death that, they preferred a son kill himself than have a gay son. One of the roles of the Holy Ghost is a comforter – I cannot imagine anyone more in need of comfort than parents who have lost a child. I have spoken with Saints who have lost family members, who have also recounted this feeling of peace. I would suggest that a much more logical conclusion would be; people kill themselves because they are unhappy. There have been many gay teenagers commit suicide. Is it not possible that it is, in fact, homosexuality that causes their unhappiness? I believe that my God’s greatest desire for his children is for us to be happy – nothing more, nothing less. Is it not possible that the commandments He gives are designed with this end in mind? An oft-quoted aphorism is “Love the sinner, hate the sin”. It SHOULD never be the intention to make an individual feel unwanted or unloved, but sometimes that behaviour will not result in happiness.
There is no evidence to suggest that the outpourers of hate at the big rally are Latter-day Saints, though the obvious implication is that they are. In fact, there is (at least anecdotal) evidence to suggest that the “God-hating lesbian” and the “f**ked in the ass” guys are NOT Latter-day Saints. Saints are encouraged (though not commanded – another important point) to be clean-shaven, and American Saints tend to follow this minutiae more closely than, for example, yours truly. It’s pretty easy to find ignorant people if you look for them.
“We will not treat you the same” – actually, that’s EXACTLY what we want. I can’t marry a dude, either.
I do agree that you can’t be “born gay” – as I believe that God wants us to be happy, I can’t accept that He would create people with no other choice than to be unhappy.
I find the allegations of the dude claiming that he was tortured by or on behalf of the church appalling – if such an event happened (which I doubt), those responsible will have a much greater debt to answer to God most. My opinion is that there are two types of sin – those that hurt others, and those that just hurt ourselves. I definitely think that those who hurt others are worse. Similarly the grainy footage of a couple of guys in suits roughing up another couple of guys... see my earlier comment re journalistic integrity.
The practice of committing homosexuals to asylums, mental hospitals and performing frontal lobotomies etc. is pretty barbaric. Keep in mind though, that this is again, not a specifically “Mormon” problem. Homosexuality was reclassified from being a mental illness within the last forty years – those kinds of treatments were pretty standard for a whole big bunch of disorders back in the day.
“The entire Utah legislation is against me” – again, no. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705343558/Mormon-Church-backs-protection-of-gay-rights-in-Salt-Lake-City.html
Chris Buttars – this guy is obviously an ass. I’m pretty sure that some members of my church are racist, homophobic and just plain stupid. The church has quite clearly stated that he does not speak for the church – just like any other bishop, or random member.
“This is simple – it’s just love”. That may be the case for certain individuals – but there are certain individuals who want to use same-sex marriage as the thin end of the wedge to destroy a sacred institution. There are doubtless bigots and homophobes in my church – but most of us just want to protect something holy, for the benefit of all mankind. This may be an arrogant and presumptive position to take, but no more so than blanket statements like “you just want to take my rights away! *sob*", "why do you hate us so?", "you're all homophobic/closet homosexuals yourself!".
In short – I acknowledge that everyone should have EQUAL rights – that is, the same as everyone else. It is impossible for society to validate (through marriage) same-sex relationships without also validating any other sexual practice – including (but not limited to); bisexuals (who obviously should be allowed to marry more than one person); incest; paedophilia (after all, the only scientific definition of “adult” is reaching sexual maturity); bestiality; necrophilia and polyamory. While the usual reponses to these are "but those are illegal" or "everyone knows that those things are wrong" or "those are caused by mental defects" or "but that's just ICKY" - all of these things have been said of homosexuality. Everyone just draws the line of what they think is acceptable. The scariest of all is the response - "well, maybe we should address these issues on their own merit". This is what the Latter-day Saints are fighting to prevent. Latter-day Saints have made it clear where they draw the line – they have been ardent supporters of certain gay rights such as equal employment opportunity etc. Marriage is something worth fighting for – and we will fight for it.
