Monday, February 28, 2011

Impure? Unholy?

We’ve heard from some that same-sex sexual attraction is only sinful when acted upon. Let’s think this through in a slightly different way.

Every active Mormon adult knows that light-mindedness is an impure and unholy practice and that we are to avoid all other such practices. From this we know that thoughts alone are practices.

Now, if certain ways of thinking, as in being light-minded, can be unacceptable practices, where would that put homosexual lust, that is, thinking sexually about a person of one’s own sex? Given that Mormons still believe homosexual behavior is sinful, isn’t thinking about homosexual behavior unacceptable, or impure and unholy, too? And here let's not be naive. We can safely assume that a person who confesses to what we now call same-sex attractedness or who adopts the gay label thinks about gay sex. Aren’t we to avoid such an impure and unholy practice?

If something is sinful when acted upon with our physical bodies, it is also sinful in the form of thoughts. In this light, same-sex sexual attraction, just like adulterous attraction, falls into the category of impure and unholy.

What we should be caring about most as Christian latter-day saints is the state of our souls and spiritual progress. If a person insists on the SSA or gay identity without resistance, we must assume the worst problem is within the soul, that it has embraced that which is impure and unholy.

The soul is where all sin proceeds from. It's also where the Lord comes in, where repentance can work, and where the mighty change of heart, the greatest miracle of all, can happen.

Pretending the above is not so only hinders truth , hurts people, and inhibits everyone's spiritual growth. Don't be fooled by the alternative sexual identity hoax.

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