Tag: civil rights

Baby Steps

Salt Lake City Temple

If you look back in the archives of the site you’ll find a heated discussion on several posts regarding the California Proposition 8.  While I opposed Prop. 8, and still do, and the LDS church’s involvement in it is what ultimately convinced me to have my name taken off their records I still held out the hope that the Church would come around on their LGBT stance, as they did with Blacks in the Church.

It seems that a small step toward fully accepting LGBT into the Church has been taken.  The Mormon church still thinks homosexual relationships and acting on homosexual thoughts is still a sin, but they no longer consider thoughts of such activities a matter for confession and therapy.  This seems like a tiny, inconsequential step, and in many ways it is.  But, it’s also a big shift from what has been standard church policy and not what I expected from a Church run by conservative, old, white men.

I’m hopeful that this is a first step and that as LGBT’s rights are recognized in the United States and across the world the LDS Church will continue to revise its procedures and statements until one day one of their prophets has the revelation that God loves LGBTs just as much as he loves the rest of us.  If it doesn’t then the hope and nostalgia I still carry for what was a very large part of my life will die as will my respect for an organization that does a great deal of good work in this world.

I’m hopeful it won’t come to that though.  They have taken this step and they’ll eventually take the others and the hateful bigots who hide amongst the many good people in the LDS church will have to find a new way to cover their hate.

You can call me a dreamer, that’s okay I’m in good company.

Concerning Proposition 8 in California

Wherin I debunk homophobes

My parents forwarded me the video below, they and a great many of our family friends are Latter Day Saints (Mormons).  I couldn’t watch the video and not respond back to them (all of them sending the letter below to about 100+ people who had the video forwarded or CC’d to them.  As I get replies from them I’ll post their emails and my responses back.  If you don’t understand some of what I’m saying, don’t worry I’m just arguing church doctrine with them, but hopefully there won’t be too much of that

The terrible video:

My Response:

I’m sorry, but I couldn’t watch this and not reply to it.  The CA supreme court’s ruling was not a whim, it was a very strict reading of the California and federal constitution.  The reasoning of the California Supreme court was the same reasoning behind the Federal Supreme Court’s decision used to strike down the anti inter-racial marriage laws of the 1960’s (more info here).

As we all know “separate but equal” by its very definition is not equal. The Supreme Court decided in 1967, “These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

furthermore the California constitution specifically states in Article 1 Sec. 8 (b) ” a citizen or class of citizens may not be granted privileges or immunities not granted on the same terms to all citizens…” the judges weren’t imperialists they were strictly interpreting the State’s and federal constitutions.

I will not participate in a proposition that denies equal rights under the law to a small subset of people, regardless of how I may personally feel about those people’s actions… In fact I will fight against any such proposition as any act which limits the freedoms and rights of my fellow American, limits my own.

Sincerely,

Jonathon Howard

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