What Ever Happened to Do What is Right, Let the Consequence Follow?

Do what is right, be faithful and fearless . . .
Do what is right, let the consequence follow . . .
Truth goeth onward then do what is right . . .

Along with the congregation, we sang these words of this old hymn in church this past Sunday. As far as we could see everybody's mouths were moving. But outside such meetings, when it comes to standing against our popular culture of embracing same-sex sexual immorality, many good LDS people, along with people of all denominations, aren't choosing the right. We aren't choosing the right because we are afraid of the consequences. We would rather offend God than offend some of the human beings we know.

Yes, in this culture war choosing the right is often more difficult than remaining silent or giving in. It takes courage. It takes faith. It takes willingness to suffer the consequences, such as being misunderstood, mistreated, and marginalized, yes, even by one's own brothers and sisters in the previously safe and unified confines of one's own church congregation where we all used to believe the same things.

Recent real life events serve as cases in point:

A former president of a local LDS ward's women's Relief Society organization was asked to give a presentation at a small monthly luncheon for older women. But when she revealed what her topic would be (teaching the rising generation the truth about male and female, natural gender roles, and marriage in accordance with official Church doctrine) she was summarily UNinvited. On top of that, she was given a letter in which her perceived faults and failings were illuminated.

(But it's worse than that. It's not just the silencing of the truth in church we need to be worried about. It's purposeful and insidious false teachings. Read on.)

Visiting teachers assigned to a member in this same LDS ward embellished a lesson on families to include how lesbians make wonderful parents and then lectured the woman in her own home on "love" and "reality" when she brought up how the scriptures condemn such behavior and how it is harmful to children.

In a Sunday Relief Society lesson on families, the instructor taught that families come in all types that are all equally effective and to be encouraged and valued, that it takes a village to raise a child, and admonished the women several times to keep an open mind. To quote, “Heavenly Father loves all types of families. We have a huge diversity and we have to be aware of what’s coming up.” Some of the comments bolstered this approach. One was. “A family is any group of people centered on the same goal.”

(But it gets even worse.)

When given the opportunity, those in positions of authority chose not to confront or correct these incidents. For example, a leader in this ward who had been notified of the above trends gave a good secular-type lesson on the rising statistics of premarital sex among opposite sexes and offered the usual secular-type preventatives. (Get rid of the blankets in your media room!) But he never spoke a word about the dangers of same-sex porn, or same-sex temptations, or same-sex experimentation, even though it comes of the same impulse and these kids' world is saturated with the normalization and celebration of homosexuality!

Not only does this marked omission throw a lot of especially vulnerable kids under the bus (which might include every kid these days), it also sets a fatal principle to work. When we give something like homosexuality a pass, we open the doors for licentiousness in general, and as a result all important basic gospel principles get tossed aside. Given the shocking stats this leader so unabashedly threw out, that's what's happening in a dramatic way. (Otherwise, for instance, kids would recognize the Spirit teaching and warning them against sexual activity.)

What? You think kids don't make the connection between gay-is-good and premarital-sex-in-general-is-good? Think again. They know that gayness, which increasingly targets youth, is all about sex and sexuality. So if gayness is okay, why not every other kind of sex? In fact, we hear that bisexual acting out among young girls, age 12-13, is the newest rage.

Unless we do what is right, regardless of the temporal and social consequences to ourselves, the anything-goes sexual revolution, without hindrance, and with encouragement, will come to a house of worship near you, and maybe to your own house, too. Those houses will fall in one way or another. Are we ready?