“The greatest fear I have is that the people of this Church will accept what we say as the will of the Lord without first praying about it and getting the witness within their own hearts that what we say is the word of the Lord.” - Brigham Young
So many people have been talking about what Boyd K Packer said at conference on Sunday. Because I am mormon and also live with two gay guys (no they aren't dating, we are all friends) I have been asked how I feel. Honestly I don't know. I have always known the stance the church took on gay marriage, but I believe that the mormon church doesn't force you to do anything. They put guidelines in front of you and it's up to you to obey. Of course you won't get the same blessings that others get when they obey, but you get the consequences of the choices you make. That's how I felt about this, the church has never really told me what to do or believe until yesterday and now I am kind of confused.
One thing that makes me mad is when people who aren't LDS try to talk to me about the church and say how things are 'stupid' when they don't understand. Lately it bugs me when people who are LDS talk about how being gay is wrong when they probably have never met or talked to a gay man or women in their life. If you know nothing about you, you should learn and then form your opinion.
I started looking stuff up online about it and I found a group called Mormons For Marriage. It is a group of Mormon People who are against Proposition 8. They had a lot of good quotes from prophets like the one I had in the beginning. Others include:
“With all their inspiration and greatness, prophets are yet mortal men with imperfections common to mankind in general. They have their opinions and prejudices and are left to work out their own problems without inspiration in many instances.” - Bruce R. McConkie
They also have others that talk about equal rights:
- Joseph Smith declared in a statement published in the June 1, 1842 issue of the Times and Seasons (vol. 3, no. 15, p. 808) that he and other members of the First Presidency were “friends of equal rights and privileges to all men.”
- President John Taylor said, “When the people shall have torn to shreds the Constitution of the United States the Elders of Israel will be found holding it up to the nations of the earth and proclaiming liberty and equal rights to all men”. (Journal of Discourses, 21:8)
- Hugh B. Brown of the First Presidency said in October 1963 General Conference, “We believe that all men are the children of the same God, and that it is a moral evil for any person or group of persons to deny any human being the right to gainful employment, to full educational opportunity, and to every privilege of citizenship….We call upon all men, everywhere, both within and outside the Church, to commit themselves to the establishment of full civil equality for all of God’s children.”
This confuses me even more! I think all I can do right now is do what Brigham Young said and pray about it. I encourage everyone else to do the same.
