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.
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