Religions continue to be obsessed with sex. But more importantly, religious leaders want to make certain that they don’t isolate any particular group as ultimately religions are big business and their goal is to have as many members as possible. TGO
Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press
By By BRADY MCCOMBS and RACHEL ZOLL | Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Mormon leaders made their most significant outreach yet to gays and lesbians, unveiling a new website Thursday that encourages church members to be more compassionate in discussions about homosexuality.
Church officials insist they haven’t changed the Mormon teaching that marriage is only between a man and a woman and that same-sex relationships are sinful. However, the website states that Mormons should be loving and respectful toward gays and lesbians, while appealing to gay and lesbian Mormons to stay in the church.
“Reconciling same-sex attraction with a religious life can present an especially trying dilemma,” church leaders wrote on the website. “Anyone who lives in both worlds can attest to its difficulty. But with faith, love and perspective, it can be done.”
Gay rights advocates welcomed the effort while expressing hope that the church would someday accept same-sex marriage.
“My hope that this assists our most vulnerable, our youth, to have a safe place to be able to talk about their identity and maintain a safe place within their families and communities,” said Valerie Balken, of Equality Utah, the state’s largest gay rights advocacy group.
Balken said her organization was alerted earlier this week to the website launch, but was not consulted over the two years the church developed the site.
The site, titled “Love One Another: A Discussion on Same-Sex Attraction,” states that it reflects the views of the highest authorities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Church leaders say in the presentation that gay and lesbian Mormons who are not in same-sex relationships can have “full fellowship in the church,” including holding the priesthood and participating in temple rituals — a privilege reserved only for church members in good standing. And the church said it would no longer “necessarily advise” gays to “marry those of the opposite sex.”
“Same-sex attraction itself is not a sin, but yielding to it is,” the website states. “However, through repentance Jesus Christ will offer forgiveness.”
Church officials also posted video testimony from Latter-day Saints who struggled with the issue, either through having gay children or realizing they were gay.
Among the testimonies is a lengthy, emotional from a man identified only as Tyler, about how he struggled with hopelessness and alienation from God as he tried to reconcile his attraction to other men with his dedication to the church. The issue is particularly challenging for Latter-day Saints, who believe that Mormons in good standing spend eternity together with their families. A family member who leaves the church, a common occurrence for gay and lesbian Mormons, will remain separated from their relatives.
Tyler eventually married a woman, Danielle, who is also featured, and the couple has a baby boy. Danielle said they were able to discuss his homosexuality and find a way to be happy, but “having that eternal perspective was a very important thing for us.”
The website is the latest step from LDS leaders to make gays and lesbians feel more welcome in the church.
Mormons faced intense criticism after church leaders helped fund and lead the fight for California’s Proposition 8, a constitutional ban on gay marriage that voters adopted in 2008 after the state Supreme Court ruled that gay Californians could marry. Since then, church leaders have been trying to heal tensions.
In 2009, a senior LDS spokesman made a rare public appearance before Salt Lake City lawmakers to support regulations protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination in housing and employment.
In 2010, the Human Rights Campaign, a major gay civil rights group, protested after a high-ranking LDS leader called same-sex relationships unnatural. The church responded by condemning bias or cruelty toward others over any issue, including sexual orientation. Given the persecution Latter-day Saints have faced, church members should be “especially sensitive to the vulnerable in society,” including gays, the church said. In the 2012 election, the LDS church took no public role in state ballot measures over gay marriage.
“We must not judge anyone for the feelings they experience,” church authorities wrote, saying homosexuality “should not be viewed as a disease or illness.”
The website rarely uses the words “gay” or “lesbian,” the terms preferred by the gay community. Instead, the site refers mostly to people “with same-sex attraction.” Still, John Gustav-Wrathall, 49, said it was significant that the site used the term gay or lesbian at all. He was excommunicated from the LDS church in 1986 after revealing to his bishop that he was gay.
“This is huge,” said Gustav-Wrathall, who has been with his partner for 20 years. “I don’t see any hint of condemnation.”
Gustav-Wrathall grew up Mormon, served a mission and started college at Brigham Young University. As he grappled with being gay, he considered marrying a woman and eventually fell into deep depression and nearly committed suicide.
He left BYU and figured he would never return to the Mormon church. But in 2005, he felt called to begin going to worship services again at a ward in Minneapolis. Although he remains ex-communicated, he said many of the church members and the bishop have gradually accepted him even knowing he’s openly gay and married to a man.
Gustav-Wrathall thinks this new official communication from church leaders will push open the door for even the most resistant church members to form friendships with gay and lesbians.
“This is an opportunity that God is giving us to learn patience, love, forgiveness,” he said. “We have to wrestle with these things without having a clear cut answer.”
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Associated Press Religion Writer Rachel Zoll reported from New York.
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Online:
http://www.mormonsandgays.org/
Blacks Ridiculed again by the Mormon Church
By Lee B. Baker, Former Mormon Bishop
For several years now, every Tuesday evening I have had the great privilege of addressing the Christian and Mormon listeners of Worship FM 101.7 in Monrovia, the capital City of Liberia, West Africa.
I have come to know several of the station managers and a number of the more frequent callers to the weekly program. Through their comments, questions and photographs, I have been genuinely moved to see the application of their unyielding faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Over the past few months the question of racist teachings in the Book of Mormon and from the past Leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been on the minds of the Liberian converts to Mormonism and the many true Christians who struggle to understand how such a Church can be growing in Africa.
I believe the answer is relatively simple; it has been the perfect merging of a sincere lack of knowledge on the part of the Mormon converts and a disturbing lack of accountability on the part of the Mormon leaders. A near total lack of knowledge across Africa specific to some of the more explicit teachings found within the Mormon Scriptures, principally that Black Skin is a representation of wickedness and even less information concerning the racism and bigotry openly and officially taught by the early Leadership of the Mormon Church. This combined with the current Church Leadership’s inability to clearly and specifically reject its own racist teachings both in print and from its past Senior Leadership, has left the Black Race with only a short irresponsible and offensively juvenile Official Statement that claims the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints knows very little about its own race-based policy that had lasted for well over 100 years:
“It is not known precisely why, how or when this restriction began in the Church, but it has ended.”
Maintaining a detailed and comprehensive history of every aspect and teaching of the Church has been both one of the hallmarks and one of the downfalls of Mormon Church. Within the relatively young Church, authoritative documentation, however corrupt it may have been, has never been in short supply. Each of the Senior Leaders of the Mormon Church has had several official biographers as well as an army of Church authorized historians to record for the faithful Mormon all facets of the History of the Church. In fact, one of my first of many “Callings” in the Mormon Church was that of a Ward (Congregational) Historian, long before I became a Bishop.
The peculiar assertion that the Mormon Church itself does not know the details of its very own race-based policy of restricting the Blacks from holding the Priesthood is tremendously embarrassing for all Mormons and exceptionally degrading for anyone who actually believes it.
As a former local leader of the Mormon Church, I have repeatedly assured the African members of the Mormon Church that the documents and “Scriptures” I have read to them over the air are both Authorized and Official for the time period they are relevant to. I clearly state the current position of total acceptance of all Races by the Church, but I must highlight the fact that the Book of Mormon still carries it’s obviously racist message that dark skin was a curse and Jesus was white. I have said many times on-air that like the Mormon Missionaries, I too believe that every African should have a copy of the Book of Mormon, if only to learn the truly racist teaching of the Mormons.
I have and will continue to teach the African Nations from the authentic Mormon Scriptures and the Church History documents, which I had purchased from the Mormon Church to know my past responsibilities as a Mormon Bishop. The official records of the Mormon Church include many jokes and sermons given within the Official Semi-Annual General Conference of the faithful Mormons, using the “N-word”, Darky and Sambo. Additionally, these Church published books record nearly 100 graphic sermons and lessons that clearly teach the principle, practice and policy that Black Skin was, is and will remain forever the Curse of Cain.
Only in the recent past has the “Complete History” of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints come to the attention of its own membership, much less to the under developed regions of the world. As this information is discovered, an ever increasing number of members of the Mormon Church have come into a personal crisis of faith, most notably Elder Hans Mattsson of Sweden, a General Authority of the Mormon Church who has gone public with his doubts and questions.
Not unique to Africa, has been the Mormon Church’s training of young Missionaries to strictly avoid any discussion of several of the more embarrassing, yet true, teachings of the 183 year old Church. Chief among these subjects has been Polygamy and Blacks and the Priesthood.
With the smooth talent of a skilled politician, the Mormon Church has ended its Official Statement with the following hypocritical and deceitful, but technically accurate quote:
“The origins of priesthood availability are not entirely clear. Some explanations with respect to this matter were made in the absence of direct revelation and references to these explanations are sometimes cited in publications. These previous personal statements do not represent Church doctrine.”
As a former Mormon Bishop and member of the Mormon Church for over 32 years, let me be of some help with the translation of this very carefully crafted message. The two key noteworthy phrases are: “in the absence of direct revelation” and “These previous personal statements do not represent Church doctrine.”
I will address the most obvious first, clearly the “previous statements” from the Church and its Leadership “do not” represent the Church doctrine today. The policy was reversed in 1978 and there is no question as to the policy today. The hypocritical deception is that between 1845 and 1978 those “statements” did, very much “DID” not “DO” represent past Church doctrine. Yet, I do give full credit to the clever Mormon authors and editors for their most skillful use of the English language.
And finally, the most revealing and enlightening statement from the Mormon Church is: “in the absence of direct revelation”. So then, it is incredibly true and accurate that without any mockery or sarcasm; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had for nearly 100 years, restricted a significant portion of the human race, millions and millions from God’s intended blessings of Eternal Marriage, Salvation and even Godhood, without knowing why they did it, all without “direct revelation”?
This Official Statement of religious shame and embarrassment comes from the Headquarters of a Church that claims to be guided in all things by “direct revelation”. How then, did such an exclusive doctrine based on prejudice, bigotry and racism become so accepted, so authoritative, so convincing and so commanding for so long, without “direct revelation”?
As a former Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I give testimony that what they have stated is true, in that, they are racist and do not hide the History of the Church from its members or the public, this, their Official Statement on Race and the Church demonstrates that fact.
I believe that the truly wicked teachings as well as the repulsive history of the Mormon Church concerning Polygamy, Polyandry, Blood Atonement, and Blacks and the Priesthood is available for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
It is my prayer that all Mormons and non-Mormons will come to know the true history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That every man, woman and young adult on the earth today will find the time to read the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price from cover to cover to see the deception they hold, and then… read the Word of God with the eyes of a child, and follow the true Jesus, the true Christ found only in the Bible.
Sincerely,
Lee B. Baker
Former Mormon Bishop