Homophobia: A Derisive Name for True Beliefs

These days many of the admonitions we hear from our church mirror those we hear in the secular world. And they are very confusing and conflicting. We are indoctrinated toward diversity, and at the same time told we must be one. We are supposed to rely on and serve the Lord, and yet service to and reliance on one another is what is emphasized. They say all worldviews are welcome in our church, but the conservative worldview obviously isn't. More and more we hear words to the effect that traditional family values and age-old, virtuous, biblical ideals, for instance,  must be replaced with trending philosophies placing human beings and certain of their current whims at the center of our worship. 

Yes, as the secularist movement intrudes into churches, all that talk of diversity and tolerance shows its true colors. There are certain opinions, and it follows certain people, that are actually not welcome anymore. Furthermore, they are being called names. Here is a very recent example.

Anthony D. Perkins, a General Authority Seventy, said in a BYU Idaho Devotional, May 22, 2018, "We must shun bigotry of every kind. There is no room in this Church for sexism, racism, homophobia, Islamaphobia, immigrantaphobia, or any other phobia. There is room in this church for everyone."

Say again? How can there be no room for people who have some genuine beliefs about the issues he mentions (men and women are different, for example, which fact many consider sexist), but room for everyone? Did he really say two completely opposite things in the same paragraph?


There are several problems here. But let's discuss these unlovely words: bigotry and phobia.

Bigotry is now defined as applying to people who hold strong and unreasonable ideas especially about race or religion, homosexuality, illegal immigration, and other politically-charged issues of today. Here's the catch. In the world we are living in, where good is being called evil, and evil good, and only the elite get to decide what is reasonable or unreasonable, anybody who retains strong feelings towards important principles and problems which feelings are now unpopular is a bigot. So, pretty much, we're not to have strong, family-based, conservative, biblical beliefs on any of these important issues because such and so has now been declared bigoted. 

Now, phobia. The word homophobia is a misnomer, a very unkind and false one. As our friend and mentor Dean Byrd taught us, a phobia is a mental disorder, an irrational fear not based in reality. So people with mental disorders aren't welcome in church? Seriously, calling people homophobes simply because they believe homosexuality to be harmful and sinful and a dead-end according to scripture and biology and medicine and human experience is not a phobia. It's actually truth, righteousness, and common sense.

Homophobia is a made-up word concocted to intimidate and blacklist anybody who expresses anything, that means anything, against homosexuality that is, anything LGBTQ etc., from gay porn to gay marriage, from proclaiming unlimited self-imposed sex identities to cross-dressing to almost every form of physically acting out sexually to mutilating one's healthy hormones and genitalia under the guise of transgendering. The only remaining taboos anywhere in this sexual revolution scenario seem to be incest, child sex abuse, and child-adult sex, and these taboos are weakening as Godless progressivism marches on, apparently without much resistance. Without God all things are permitted, wrote Dostoevsky. 

Church leaders spouting admonitions against their pet -isms need to realize that the Church itself has a history of racism and sexism, which sexism continues, which it has never apologized for. They need to know they themselves, by their own definition, are "homophobes" because despite its softening toward and welcoming of self-identified homosexuals and homosexuality (see mormonandgay.lds.org), the changing of the BYU honor code, the hanging on in the homosexualized BSA, and the donations to gay organizations, etc.,  the LDS Church has official doctrines and policies in place that discriminate against homosexual behavior (although the enforcement of these policies are conveniently left up to untrained local leaders of every ilk).

Because of this, advanced LDS homosexualists (those who fully embrace all things homosex)  continue to work toward the Church fully and openly embracing homosexualism in all its forms. Sarah Langford is one of those, an open bisexual Relief Society president in a BYU young marrieds ward, who works in the Missionary Training Center and who is married to a man professing to be gay. (Did you get all that?) She was a panelist at a recent BYU-sponsored event about "what it's like to be LGBTQ" at the school. (Notice how self-centric this topic is.  Who says something like this? There is no law, no sin, and no God in it.) One person in the group expressed a feeling of division between those "righteous and unrighteous gays," meaning those who stick in the church and say they are celibate, and those who wish to openly act out homosexually. He needn't hold his breath. Langford seems to consider herself an apologist for homosexualism in all its forms and a pioneer on "modeling for the rest of the church" what gay acceptance looks like, i.e. giving gay behaviors of all types a platform (we read: attention, inclusion, equal treatment as per temple marriage, etc.).

We repeat, homosexualists and those who are derisively called "homophobes," cannot both be equally preferred and supported. One group will be harmed. We can see which way the wind is blowing. 

Will the Church fully give in to the pressure of the sexual revolution and all other progressive concepts? It seems to have done so already in spirit if not completely in deed, and in the process has not only resorted to disingenuous name-calling but is deeply alienating its most truly religious and thinking members and causing a stark division within its congregations.One of our daughters told of a long pro-gay comment made by a woman in a Relief Society meeting recently that met with zero resistance. This is happening all over. Those of us with Godly ideals and values are no longer speaking up. We have received the message loud and clear. Our worldview, even though spelled out in the scriptures, is not allowed. What Brother Perkins proclaimed amounts to, If you believe in the scriptures [the Word of God, the Spirit] you are a bigot and a homophobe and not one of us.

Personally, we cannot in good conscience attend meetings where the opposite of what we believe, and have always believed, is taught and discussed (and blubbered over) as if true and righteous. Not only does this false teaching/discussion do violence to our treasured beliefs and dishonor the Lord Jesus Christ, it feels as if our presence would be an encouragement or amen to the lies. We seem to be having to avoid certain leaders, teachers, and fellow members in church settings, and only exchange polite greetings elsewhere. We are walking out of more and more meetings. We wish this were not necessary, we wish we could stay, we wish we could participate fully as we used to, we wish we could gather with countless people, friends unified by God's Word, discuss the welfare of our immortal souls, and share the peace and joy of the gospel of Jesus Christ together.

This veer to the secular left in our beloved church has happened by degrees, step by step, behind the scenes, flaxen cord by flaxen cord. We believe it all began with the weakening of a belief in the complete need for Jesus Christ as our Savior, the essential saving grace of Christ, of Christ being the only way we can be saved from our sins and receive eternal life, as we know from scripture. If Christ is not so very necessary, it's that much easier for sin to be rationalized. This is how homosexualism, and other radical stances, have crept in. Notice that there has been no public pronouncement or revelation revoking any scriptures or the Family Proclamation. And yet these things, largely, in spirit at least, have been abandoned. 

Need we say it's just not good for a church to be so divided among its members, especially by way of stealthily abandoning its former unequivocal stance upholding morality and true Christianity, that is, abandoning its standard works and doctrines---and then intimidating, alienating, even persecuting its true believers? Can it even call itself that same church, or a church at all?