Thursday, April 26, 2012

More Mormon Homosexualists Speak Out

Here's another Mormon-made video urging the LDS Church and its members to "change," to compromise their most basic and deeply-held doctrines and beliefs to include the homosexualism that has been embraced by mainstream society. The concern seems to be that if we don't accept their self-identified alternative sexuality, young people will feel rejected and/or commit suicide.

Despite the apparent sincerity, concern, and good intentions of the interviewees, there are many things wrong with the sentiments expressed on this video, already watched by 20,000 viewers. Please note that sentiments, opinions, views, just because someone expresses them, may not be valid or valuable. Some are totally mistaken, even harmful. Each of us must choose for ourselves to discern between truth and error.

We have listed some the the problems we found in the video, voiced or implied.

1. People do not commit suicide just because other people don't commend their romantic sexual desires. For example, do we think of unmarried teen couples who get pregnant as inordinately suicidal? No, and yet LDS doctrine and culture do not approve of what they have done. There are a number of reasons for suicidality, including mental and emotional illness, impulsiveness, lack of confidence, immaturity, dependence on others, lack of faith, inner conflict, addictions and total self-centeredness. These are the opposite of mental and emotional health, patience, confidence, maturity, reliance on Christ, faith in God, inner peace, spiritual-centeredness and humility, all of which would make us good stewards of our physical bodies. These latter qualities are the ones we need to teach and emphasize. We believe this video is doing more to emphasize the former and is therefore encouraging rather than preventing suicidality.

2. Gayness is not innate. If it were all identical twins of gay people would be gay too and they aren't. Making it a pop-culture victimized minority identity is part of the carefully documented, planned, and carried out gay agenda. Pardon our bluntness, but the people in this video are drinking the trendy Koolaid flavor of the day. It's presented in a flashy new package, but in reality this sin is older than Sodom and Gomorrah.

3. God does not love anybody for being gay ("who you are") as this video suggests. He loves us all apart from our desires, real or self-determined identities, good or bad traits, weaknesses, sins, talents, or accomplishments. He loves us because we are His children, period. He has given us a plan to overcome the world, to be in it but not of it.

4. Being "gay" doesn't make people more perfect or special than others. We're all in the same boat when it comes to being human. There is no scientific proof that gayness is one of those things you can't change, quite the opposite. Thousands have reoriented to heterosexuality. See Exodus, JONAH, PFOX. People will argue for proof that so many have changed, but of course even one person who changes is a threat to the gay mindset.

5. We don't help anybody by giving in to their weakness; we actually harm them. Would you make a video like this urging everyone to celebrate any other such mindset leading to sinful and harmful behavior?

6. No one on this video addresses what gayness means. This is not surprising. Roger Scruton points out that the gay movement, with its fast and loose accusations of homophobia, has stifled many issues of pressing public concern. As George Orwell said, "So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot" ("Inside the Whale," A Collection of Essays). Gayness is about wrongly sexualizing people of one's same sex, out-of-bounds sexual thoughts, feelings, and acts which are harmful. Sexual abuse, pornography, sexual addiction, explicit gay internet chat rooms, phone sex, initiation by predators, sex experimentation, promiscuity, cruising, bath houses, drug use, and more, often play a part. We have our doubts that these highly emotion-based people have educated themselves or sat down with their loved ones and talked about the causes and dangers of homosexuality. In the midst of all the arguments we receive defending same-sex attraction, we at SoL find it interesting that we hear practically zero denial that the above-mentioned involvements are part of the lifestyle. Everyone needs to hear one honest man's heartfelt confession/plea we heard at a Sunstone symposium and read the book, Captain of My Soul, among tons of other sad but true info on our web site.

7. The people on this video seem to feel morally superior to the majority of the Church membership because they "love" gays. But all they are doing is going right along with the downward popular culture of the world at this particular time. In doing so they have developed an Oprah-like, pretend spirituality that worships whatever human feelings, desires, and relations are before us rather than God who doesn't change.

8. This video, in its deceptive disguise, injures the religiosity and insults the morals of others. It is anathema to any Christ-based religion in its true, unadulterated form. We sinners must adapt ourselves to the Church, not expect the Church to adapt itself to our sins. Like the indoctrinated young people on the BYU video, the people on this video, in order to avoid hypocrisy, must reject basic tenets of their purported religion.

9. George Orwell  reminds us that "all societies, as the price of survival, have to insist on a fairly high standard of sexual morality" ("The Art of Donald McGill"). And of course babies are not born knowing the proper standards and attitudes. They have to be taught as they grow and develop. That used to be easy since everyone and everything was modeling proper sexuality in mainstream society. Now it is no longer easy. For example, this video is saying that young people have total permission to make up their own arbitrary rules about sexuality and that the rest of us should adopt them -- a recipe for disaster.

10. This video, ostensibly a plea to "love" homosexuals, displays only a symptom of much a bigger problem. C. S. Lewis relates that sins of the flesh are "mere fleabites" compared to the sin of pride, that is, putting anything else before God, rebelling against Him and becoming a law unto ourselves.

Anybody Can Be, Nobody Has to Be

A standard argument in favor of embracing the gay identity is that it is not chosen. We agree that under certain conditions, anybody can be tempted towards same sex sexual attraction. But let's think this through. If a desire or temptation corresponds with wrong or harmful acts, whether we choose it or not doesn't really matter. What matters is if we realize it for what it is and choose to conquer it.

Do we choose a craving for chocolate? Or a feeling of anger? Or a wicked unkind thought? It seems like we don't. It's just our human nature. The more important and relevant question is, what do we do with these passions? Do we proclaim ourselves hopeless chocolate gluttons? Raging lunatics? Devils? Is that just who we are? Is it okay, even special? Of course not.

If we're serious about health, order, and goodness, what we do is regulate ourselves. If we're religious that means we turn to God. We work at getting our hearts changed. It's humbling and may be hard work, but we keep at it. If we're serious about God, health, order, and goodness, there is no giving up or giving in to the weakness.

What's missing in the LDS gay argument we see being swallowed by and emboldening so many these days, is this question:

If this condition or identity, whatever you want to call it, is so difficult, if it upsets family and conflicts with one's religious beliefs and prohibits a normal life, if these things are as important to them as they let on, whether a person felt they chose it or not, wouldn't they try to get help? Instead of clinging to trendy  poilitically-charged notions about human sexuality and seeking validation through pornography and gay-affirming individuals and groups, wouldn't they choose to educate themselves from all sides, seek out the best professional help available that fits their religious views, turn to God for motivation, courage, and faith, and never give up? Wouldn't their families support them in conquering their problem? 

That's what is so exciting about God's gift of agency. Whatever life deals us, we're free. We're free in our minds and hearts, no matter what. We can choose what we want, and if we truly desire to overcome this or that temptation, if we truly give it up to the Lord, we can be free of it. Because we are weak human beings, it may take time, it may creep up on us, we might get discouraged, it may cause us annoyance, regret, or sorrow, but if we keep truly striving and keep putting the Lord first, a current temptation can become ancient history, freeing us to make improvements in other areas.

Problems arise when people don't really want to give up their unrighteous passions. Sin, even in our minds and hearts, is pleasurable. We get something out of sin or we wouldn't make it a part of us. As foreign as it may sound to those who have been trained toward healthy heterosexuality, same sex lust is pleasurable to those who have learned and continually nourish such thought patterns.

Claiming the gay identity has a great deal of power and support these days. It gets a person a lot of attention and opens up all kinds of passes and possibilities, especially if one is proud, unrepentant, and completely ignores the above truths. In fact, the gay movement has done a great job of stifling discussion on important life issues such as the possibility of overcoming homosexual tendencies. It has done such a good job that ex-gays are denigrated and dismissed. Yes, one can self-identify as gay to rousing applause, but if one self-identifies as ex-gay, here come the tomatoes.

We at SoL are here to present an opposing view to the world's current opinion, that is, that the gay identity is unnatural, disorderly, and harmful. Homosexuality is taught and spread, usually to unwitting young people. We submit that sexual feelings are just feelings, and feelings can be suggested, nurtured or rejected, and can change directions all the time. Whether you feel as if you chose the feelings and desires or not, you can choose to resist and reorient them toward rightness and an orderly, normal life.

Anybody can be, nobody has to be.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

It Gets Better at BYU?

Some students made a video about being gay at BYU. Click here to watch it.

So let's get this straight. BYU students are getting away with making gay propaganda. It includes unverified information such as, "There are over 1,800 LGBT students attending Brigham Young University." It's a technically well-made montage of 20-something-year-old BYU-clad students accompanied by sad, somber music. These students confess self-determination as some sexual identity other than heterosexual: gay, lesbian, bisexual. But it doesn't stop there. Students testify that it's all perfectly okay with God. There is no talk of chastity, sexual purity, or repentance. Is there any doubt that they desire permission to act out (as if they aren't already to some degree), and they are telling the world that BYU and their Church, although still oppressive, is coming right along?

Here we have some obviously damaged, rebellious, confused, misguided young people on the mere brink of real living, of adult human relationships, of responsible adult experiences, of life's biggest decisions. And they believe they have lived enough to have figured everything out about themselves and about human sexuality, including unnatural, scripturally-condemned types of it that prohibit true marriage and pro-creation, inordinately cause chronic ill-heath conditions, and spread horrible life-threatening diseases?

Young Latter-day Saints need to know that in order to champion homosexualism (in oneself or others), one needs to abandon truth, reality, science (no gay gene), biology (there only 2 human sexes), proper gender roles (that ensure pro-creation), and core tenets of their religion. They must reject the Atonement of Jesus Christ, scriptures, prophets and apostles from all dispensations, temple covenants (yes, we are all supposed to keep even our passions and desires within the Lord's boundaries), the Family Proclamation, and countless conference talks, books, manuals, and hymns (#336 School Thy Feelings for instance). If they ever had a witness of the Holy Ghost concerning the truth of all these things, they have to deny that, too. They have to ignore the knowledge and wisdom of the ages (which they are supposed to be learning at BYU) and invent an entirely new worldview and culture for themselves.

We have some outspoken young people willing to do this for many reasons, perhaps as a form of youthful rebellion, or just to feel involved in a popular cause, or to feel superior, enlightened, comfortable with their current lusts or with friends, and popular in the eyes of the world. Do they realize what they are doing? Is championing various unnatural sexual feelings worth giving up everything else? Really? All this that is happening -- it's all in the scriptures. One wonders, have these kids read their scriptures? If they have, they don't understand them, as Nephi put it.

To the precious, misguided young people on the video, we say: You live in an upside-down world where youth and a godless trendy culture have been unwisely put on a pedestal and God's timeless goodness and wisdom are derided and disregarded. It reminds us of the silly 60's movie, Wild in the Streets, where the 20-something hippies put all the adults over 30 in camps and kept them drugged so they could run the world however they felt like running it, that is until teenagers decided to take over! Youth is by nature a rash, rebellious, emotional, ignorant, prideful time of life. And the truth is, as the LDS scholar Hugh Nibley, who himself knew 20 languages, put it, none of us are very pure or brave or good or wise, even in adulthood. That's why we need God from whom we get our timeless general standards and values.That's why we all need a Savior who offers essential divine redemption for our many weaknesses and sins and errors. That's why we need the Spirit to constantly humble, teach, and correct us.

We didn't note much discussion of the true purposes of the Godhead on the video, rather it was all about the students' purposes, their feelings, desires, sufferings, and comforts and how they conveniently have come to know that God has changed His plan to include their particular proclivities. It's true that God loves us all no matter what, a bit like a good parent unconditionally loves a naughty child, but our feelings, thoughts, motives, and actions often require purifying, changing, and improving. Not on the video.

That's why no one should give this video any credence. These are culturally-indoctrinated and emboldened young people who have, in their inexperienced youth, rashly and wholeheartedly embraced politicized, pop-culture sexual identities despite God's boundaries for sexuality in heart, mind, and body. One should wonder how and where they got these ideas cemented; one girl on the video admitted she turned to the internet where her wayward sexual feelings were validated and welcomed. The internet. Not the scriptures. Not the Spirit. The internet. Enough said. These young people need to know they have rejected the accumulated wisdom of the ages and summarily dismissed the spiritually-demanding Atonement of Jesus Christ. They have ignored and disparaged the availability of cutting-edge, professional, gospel-based therapy and the possibility of reorienting to heterosexuality and a normal life. They also obviously reject their agency, stewardship, and obligation to strive against sinfulness in all its forms to the end of mortality. They are so far conditioned into today's worldly ways that the above glorious gifts are things which they seem to know and care nothing about.

Has anybody heard the term LUG? It stands for lesbian until graduation. Let's face it. These are young people acting up. They don't know much at all and seem to be running the place. And nobody is giving them any proper guidance. It's as if all the adults are drugged senseless.

Think about it. Boundaries. Wisdom. Christ. Hope. Help. Health. Normalcy. Agency. Obligation. Stewardship. Progression. Nope, nobody's interested.

It gets better at BYU? We wonder if on these critical and essential topics it could get any worse.