What if we were to start from scratch? What if we were to examine right and wrong using our best moral intuitions, not privileging the traditions of our fathers? Would this be the sum of our moral arithmetic?
penis + vagina = good
penis + penis = bad
vagina + vagina = bad
penis + vagina + vagina + vagina + … = bad, except under certain circumstances when the prophet or temple say it is good
Is this the moral essence of who we are as Mormons? And if not, then why is so much rhetoric and policy fixated on defending the heterosexual, patriarchal family ideal?
Our rich theology makes me hope that we are more than this, despite the events of this past week. If we weren’t so conditioned by our upbringing, if we weren’t constrained by societal attitudes of the 1830s or the 1950s, isn’t it possible that our moral arithmetic might be more 3-dimensional, something like this?
I understand that the development of moral frameworks is a complex process with many competing and subconscious inputs. Certainly my thought experiment oversimplifies the process.
But the last equation speaks to something deep inside me—it rises from the page with strength and beauty. The earlier equations, in contrast, seem flat and lifeless to my moral intuition. That my soul acutely senses the difference, must matter. This experience of conscience–the peaceful whisperings that accompany good fruits–is what my 45 Mormon years tell me is the Spirit; it is my still, small voice, and I cannot ignore it.
Spot on, Mike. It’s so bizarre to me that Church leaders are so devoted to proclaiming how much they hate relationships where people’s genitals don’t match up to their liking. What an unfortunate gospel hobby to foist on the entire Church!
The slippery slope into hell…
Rob Osborn, it’s a lucky thing you’re hilarious, because you’re also in violation of our comment policy. Contribute to the conversation or don’t, but please refrain from calling others to repentance or offering commentary on the state of their immortal souls.
Down the slippery slope into hell,
The naughty blogger fell,
As if into a well.
What happened there, none may tell.
Let this be a lesson to yell,
From the rooftops or from a cell:
We must bid you all farewell,
For you sound your own death knell,
Whenever you rebel.
Rob’s great. Sometimes, in online discussions, it’s tempting to create a ridiculous strawman caricature of your opponents views to argue against. But in discussions in which he participates, no strawman construction is necessary!
I fell down the slippery slope
It was all I could do just to cope
And even though I was told nope
I ran away to elope
I was at the end of my rope
They washed my mouth out with soap
And yet I held on to hope
That I could one day meet the Pope.
This is just an idea I’ve been toying with, so maybe don’t take it too seriously. The formulation you come up with sounds pretty 1st World to me. Haven’t God’s purposes been being fulfilled all along, even when marriage wasn’t even a little bit about equality or modern notions of love? Even when people just spent all their time trying to survive? I don’t want to throw those things overboard in my own life either, but it seems like simply surviving and reproducing are awfully important to the God Mormonism envisions. Like, maybe more important than mortal happiness, certainly more importance than “authenticity” or “self-fulfillment”. Because you don’t need any of that to live and make the best moral choices you can given what you know. Choosing to honor your agreement with the next village over not to pillage them counts too, even if happiness just means that the lice aren’t so bad this season. And yeah, the penis and vagina part. Mormon ideas of the corporeality of God make the results of evolution crazy important. To the point that the evolutionary priority of a member of a species to procreate is mirrored in our doctrine. Instead of a duality of body and spirit, I almost feel like we merge the two. Like, do spirits without bodies have memories since they lack brains ie memory storage hardware? Do we underestimate how important bodies really are? Are we projecting too much of mortality back onto the pre-existence? If so, gay men producing sperm and lesbians menstruating (you already made this post earthy…) would suggest that yeah, even if it hurts feelings and screws up psyches, the sexual orientation part of their identity (which is more than just sexual orientation, right?) is a malfunction akin to a physical deformity (those people are valuable and capable of happiness too, usually, except when they just die horrible painful deaths, which sucks rocks). No, everyone isn’t God’s perfect little flower just the way he/she is meant to be. We’re the result of genetics, environment, and accident, and God expects us to deal as best we can, sometimes in ways that suck. Or are we going back to Saturday’s Warrior? Sorry I’m bouncing around so erratically…what’s the point? Well, just that maybe a gay couple being happy shiny and photogenic like anyone else in Utah valley doesn’t actually matter vis-a-vis what the church is trying to accomplish. Maybe being well-adjusted, maybe even being a good parent isn’t as important as we make it out to be–since, you know, all parents are deeply flawed anyway. But there are flawed parents who create life and flawed parents who don’t. Maybe the biological parent part, the creation part, is just way more important. Like, even someone who lives a crap life was still alive and the Mormon vision potentially turns them into deity too. So we shouldn’t be spending quite so much time patting ourselves on the back for shuttling little Jimmy to soccer practice three times a week because, hey, that’s great, but little Jimmy is no more precious and his life no more meaningful than little Guilliam who lived in the Middle Ages in France and died of the plague. And his mother no less saintly than any other mother, even though she was treated more like property than a daughter of God. That’s all pretty dark, but whatever doctrine and morality we come up with has to encompass all of that brutal truth too–which is still reality for many and could easily be reality for all of us again. So if all the 1st World 21st Century Oprah stuff evaporates in the face of the brutality of existence, what is left of gay marriage? Since with the union of man and woman, children remain regardless.
If all of that makes sense to anyone else, I will be mightily surprised.
There has to be laws. Simply stating that 2 gay people can have a loving relationship doesnt equate to the sanctification of the spirit. There is more at play than just how we feel. There are laws eternally in reference to gender and how the parts on the gender are or can be used. Gods laws specify that sexual relations are to be used only between a lawfully wedded man and woman. Any other sexual relationship is prohibited by God. Life isnt just about what we think feels good and what we decide is or should be right. That slippery slope into hell envelopes the philosophy of whatever feels good must be right which includes all manners and forms of immorality.
@Rob
Okay, so what you’re saying is that it’s wrong to say “I feel good about this church, therefore it’s right even when it makes gay kids kill themselves?”
Or how about “I feel good about this church, therefore when people show me evidence like the Family Acceptance Project’s research into causes of suicide and the FOX 13 report on suicide hotlines being swamped right after this announcement, they must be lying?”
Oh Rob…truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
Seriously, I wouldn’t waste time engaging Rob. On another blog, he made the assertion that one of the reasons women should/could not hold the priesthood is because women can’t dunk basketballs at the same rate men can.
Jewelfox,
The church doesnt make gay kids kill themselves. The entire Rocky Mountains is known as the suicide belt. Utah and Idaho, where the LDS church is most prominent, actually have lower suicides amongst teens than surrounding states. Studies have not been able to link an increase in teen suicides amongst gays in LDS families. But, studies have shiwn that teen suicide rates are lower where both family and religion are present. Its not the church that is killing teens.
Pete,
Dont lie. Dont take my comments out of proper context. Thanks.
Okay, this is fun and all, but let’s get back to discussion of the OP.
Yes, everything hangs on sexual activity. If you are single, divorced, or widowed a single covenant in the temple defines all that you are in the Church and in life.
If you are married and have a spouse who is sexually active with you, you are safe. Otherwise, if you have sexual desires they must be suppressed at all costs. A heterosexual must fight their natural God given desires with just as much force as those who feel a pull towards the same sex.
Love is wide open. Love whomever you will. But not sexually. That has to be denied in every case without exception. If you violate the Law of Chastity no amount of good you do can overcome it. In fact all the good you do can be used against you as a sign of how wrong you were to have sinned. Your calling, covenants, experience in the Church, etc.
So people who yield to temptation slip away into self-punishment self-exile rather than face the public punishment of the Church. Have no doubt, it is public. If you are a man going before a council of 16 men gathered from various corners of the stake who didn’t show more than a morsel of care for you, including the stake presidency, when you were struggling, now want a recounting of the details of your sins so they can cut you off from all that you believe in an love so deeply.
No sacrament for at least a year. People notice. If you have children they notice. No involvement in priesthood for years. People notice. If you have children they notice. No temple attendance for years. The safest place on earth is no longer for you. Your tithing isn’t wanted. If you have children you are now teaching them to keep a commandment you are not allowed to keep. Unless of course you are saving it up for the day you are let back in as an act of faith in God. To let Him know you didn’t give up on that commandment even though you were told to give it up.
No more garment as a reminder of protection. Now you’ll have a daily reminder that you are not protected from the eternally mindful of you and seeking to destroy you, spiritual adversary. Your life could be cut short before you work is completed in mortal life.
You will be told you do not have the Holy Ghost with you. If you believe this, and you should, you’ll doubt yourself at every turn. Mormons are not supposed to be making decisions without the Holy Ghost as a guide. It’s the same as ignoring the Holy Ghost except now the Holy Ghost is going to ignore you because the stake disciplinary council told Him to stop helping you as a member of the Church.
You’re sins will now be unremitted. Everything you ever did wrong in life is back on the table just like President Kimball said. All sin unremitted. Every drop is on your soul. But you’re covenants are still intact. If you are able to live a life of virtue without any of the blessings of the gospel other than faith and attendance (You can’t repent without baptism or the sacrament, you are in every way unrepentant when if you stopped the sin), if you can weather than storm for at least a year, and if you are let back in through baptism and confirmation from membership and a remission sins, you are still not done.
This is the interesting part. You will not be endowed again. You will not make those covenants in the temple again. You, if found worthy, will receive a restoration of priesthood and temple “blessings” by the laying on of hands. Two hands only. Your stake president’s. Your “covenants” are not restored because they never went away. You made eternal promises and those promises were never undone, only the right to enjoy the blessings of those covenants are taken from you.
So, while it’s not explained this way, if you really believe, then you are still under every single obligation you made in the temple after excommunication as you were before. The difference is you are forbidden to enjoy the most recognizable blessings. You are cast out with the workload to keep the covenant without any help in doing so.
Holy Ghost? Gone. Gifts of the Spirit? Gone. Repentance? Gone. Service in the Church? Not officially. You’ll have to work to find your own way to be involved simply because you have desires to serve. You will not be called. You can fold chairs, align books in the chapel, empty trash cans, give rides, or whatever you can find to do (Faith related blogging?) but that is it. Sing loud and with feeling. That will be your testimony. Say “Amen” with full purpose of heart.
Then you wait until the clock runs out. That is the battle and the test to endure. Which will run out first, you or the clock? If you can maintain the Law of Chastity, you’re good. You can still pray, but the high council sustained the stake president’s decision to limit the Church’s reach to you. Unless you have family in the Church living with you, you get no home teachers. You get nothing. You are on your own.
The will bug the life off of those who never confessed and left. They will be the focus of endless meetings, discussions, prayers, and visits. But not you. You want to be in but you are out. The key has been turned and locked.
You can still subscribe to the Ensign. Still do genealogy. But your sins are on you in every way. No weekly renewal even if you are “just” disfellowshipped. So the decision making is going to do downhill under than burden if you truly believe. You should truly believe in all of it. You broke the law that all of the marriage men at Church didn’t have to even really think about. If there ever was a sinner in the Church it’s you. 15 men you most likely never spent any amount of time with decided.
Really one man got revelation on it and the others went with it because it’s part of the job. Some are sickened for days at being involved. Others get a strange sort of doing my duty sense from it. And it all happens in one short evening and each is back home that evening enjoying sexual intimacy with his spouse while you, for having the honesty to confess, have stopped the sin, needing help to avoid temptation, now have nothing. They are on top for the world, the stake president is praised by everyone for being a spiritual giant and you have to accept that God just told him through the Holy Ghost to crush you for your own good and that of the Church. And you will believe it.
Those of are the conditions of faith you must endure. That is the consequence of violation the Law of Chastity for endowed men.
All the talks, out of context, about prophets wanting their sons to come home from a mission dead before they came home unworthy will haunt you. The last line of the proclamation on the family will haunt you. The feeling of nakedness from the absence of the garment, that you have been stripped of the vary clothing God gave you, will haunt you.
That the sin you committed is the sin next to murder in the eyes of the Church will haunt you. They rest of the world could careless that you had a moment that you wish had not happened (“Why do you even have regret about something beautiful?” they say) but in the eyes of the Church you are Next to murders. There is nothing darker or more evil sanding between you, the sin you committed, and murder. That is part of your burden. You will wish you could die and you may think about taking your own life. What good are you? Really? What value do you have left if you can’t keep one simple rule? That is the dangerous dialogue you’ll have in your mind because you will be alone.
All of it may cause you so much confusion and doubt about your identity that you just give up. You can’t deny the feelings and inspiration and acceptance you’ve gotten from the Church, but at this point you have none of it. Not a drop. Other options will look inviting and if you fall further, there will be no talk on the high council or in the stake presidency of ‘did we do the right thing?’ There is no hindsight on administering repentance. No one comes back and says we went too far, we were blinded by ignorance, pride, or whatever. No, all of it just contributes to your humility and learning how to not sin no matter what.
So you hang on.
Then one day, after at least year of succeeding without the aid of the Church, weathering the storm without the help, the storm the Church tells others they cannot weather without the blessings of the Church, but you’ve got to do it alone. Fight the temptations of darkness, living a standard higher than what anyone else is required to live for baptism, you get to come back in and experience a remission of your sins. Two minutes in water and less than five minutes of a confirmation now undoes half of all the darkness you had to carry with you for at least a year.
Half because now you still have to prove your worthiness on the clock for at least a year before you can enjoy the blessings of the covenants you chose to keep, because you didn’t have any choice but to keep them because you still believed. It was never wide open “well I’m out of the Church so look out ladies here I come!” That is not who you are. All they council did was take the blessings from you. You need repentance, you want repentance, and you want all things good in life, and the Church says fight this battle alone.
Paying tithing is a blessing not a covenant. Obedience is a covenant and you are obeying it by submitting to all of this. You may be living the Law of Obedience more fully that many active temple recommend holding members of the Church. You now have more commandments after excommunication, not less. Keep the covenants, but the garment is a blessing not a covenant. Sacrament is a renewal of all the covenants and a blessings. Can’t renew it. They told you no. Cannot have that reminder with you physically. It’s not for you. But come to church every Sunday as a reminder of what you cannot have. Pass it on to the next person. Give it to them, but you cannot partake.
Priesthood ordinances? They are a blessing to preform, not a right of fathers regardless of what President Packer suggests about them importance of fathers preforming ordination for sons. You’ll be discounted quickly because it’s not really about you. It’s about the blessing for the child and the child’s relationship with the Church in behalf of Jesus Christ. If you are in the loop on that it is really just a courtesy to you as a parent or family member but totally not necessary.
Yes, I am rambling but someone, someone, is reading this have gaining insight they did not have before.
Bottom line. For a man, it matters not what you do in the Church until you break the Law of Chastity and you chose to confess. You confess because you are honest and it is a sign that you want to do the right thing. But it’s not enough. Nothing else matters in your life if you are not living the Law of Chasity. Everything hangs on sex only happening in marriage. Or not happening in marriage if that works for the couple, but not outside of marriage.
Now, mental illness will not be taken into account when you are judged by the high council. Just like being drunk will not provide a defense against killing someone as a result of DUI. You’re circumstance will not matter or will the conditions that led to them matter unless they can serve to make a stronger case against you as a sinner who needs to have the means of repentance taken away and all safety taken away.
Hopefully the Church has conducted a study to determine how many men (sorry ladies I’m just focusing on men) make it through this process and come back. What their lives are like afterwards and the lives of their children, future and former spouses, etc.
Nearly all the 70 have been stake presidents. They’ve been through this process that causes them no real harm. The biggest harm is the very real feeling that they must do God’s will or the person’s sins will be on them. A liar? Well that’s not a problem. A liar retains all his own sins, but a truth teller? Well, they must be made clean or else the sin goes on the man who ignores it. A man who likely was blessed to never face such temptation and doesn’t need mercy in the same way. That’s right out of the words of Jacob. So concerned that God was going to punish him for other men’s sins did that he said ‘I’ve told you the truth about sin and now I am clean from yours.’
So it is, in every way, a mess for you if you believe and you violate the Law of Chastity. You can also experience double jeopardy. If a bishop says you are okay a stake president can come back later and say you are not. Both hold the keys of the gospel of repentance, but if you are a Melchizedek priesthood holder you may discover than any feelings of hope and light unlocked by a bishop can be undone by a stake president. Somehow there is a spiritual divide.
So if you believe, and you should believe, do not violate the Law of Chastity. Just don’t do it. If you find yourself in a situation where you are unmarried or in a sexless marriage, find a pill that is the opposite of Viagra and take it. Understand that the covenant you made in the temple is a covenant to be a monk with no release of any kind, expect the unexpected blessing of a nocturnal emission, unless you get married to someone who wants to bless you with sexual intimacy.
But if not, you, likely at age 19 or now at age 18, covenanted to be a monk. Oh and all the sisters who criticize men who remarry quickly after a spouse passes? These men are wise. Men who remarry as soon as they can after a divorce? That will be a mess, and it may end with another divorce, but at least the one rock they have in life will not be broken apart like their family was. They will still have the Church and the worth that brings them as they, if sealed, have to struggle with the weigh that the failed at the thing that matter most to them. They may have the wound of a rip in the eternal fabric of the space time continuum, and no one has answers, but at least the same organization is still a part of their lives. They are still on the inside of the ship even if it was a recovery marriage to keep them from sinking further into despair. God bless the lonely middle age sisters with no sex drive. You missed the opportunity to marry for some reason but if you have no sex drive you are blessed. At this point you can truly wait for the perfect man in this life or the next without any risk of messing up.
Single men? You can look forward to reaching an age where your sex drive dies. That is something to hope for and pray for. Pray that your sex drive will crash. No uploading or downloading of desire. Just nothing. If you marry later in life and you still have no desire you’re pure love and affection will be enough to guide you in embracing and fulfilling your spouses need for intimacy. Yes, you can call it a “need” and use the same line of reasoning used by married women who have no desire. ‘I do it because I love him, not because it’s something I have any interest in doing otherwise.’
But to the point about man + woman = good and man + man = bad? Well change that to man + woman = child, man + man = no child and I think you’ll get a different image of the issue. The Church is left as a defender of biology and spiritual teaching that families are forever. Gender roles are breaking down, but just as they are clear tendencies in those someone can look at with “gaydar” and know right way that the person is gay, there are tendencies within women that make them women beyond genitalia.
So there is something to the differences. Something to be admired in both.
But if you are not gay then please be grateful. If you are Mormon and single with desires for sexual intimacy for the opposite sex, you share in the same sort of frustration as your gay neighbors who like you believe and don’t have sex. For those of you who are married and will have sex tonight, this week or even just sometime in the next month or so you are the most blessed of all people of all the Church. You can enjoy what would otherwise be sin. You can fulfill the measure of your creation daily if your spouse is willing and able.
The rest of the Church? Hopefully you made it through puberty without discovering yourself sexually. If not, hopefully you’ve never had sex before marriage. If you are widowed or divorced, and not remarried, well then you are a most pitiful lot. You’ve enjoyed what you were born to do, what nature wants you to, and now you must deny yourself what is godly because it is now ungodly. If you don’t you will find yourself on the outside of the Church because those who have never been in that situation, who enjoy sex regularly in their blessed marriage have no idea what a superman you’ve been to keep the promise to be a monk for much longer than a mission.
Now if you are a woman well this is when not having the priesthood is a blessing in every way. You’ll never go before the high council. You’ll never have to tell more than three men at most. You’re much less likely to be excommunicated and few will notice. get to church early and sit deep inside the pews by trusted friends, older couples, and few will know you passed the sacrament and denied yourself a renewal of your covenants as an act of faith and obedience.
I know you are academics but please forget the typos.