The Mormons Are Back at it Again with their Homophobia…
Elder David A. Bednar recently addressed a question from a Chilean member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints, or the LDS, or Mormon Church. Here is a link to the full video, but I want to address some specific statements…
1. He said that beauty, physical disability, and same-sex attraction can be considered God-given challenges we must overcome. Except none of these things are like the other…
If a beautiful person goes through life never developing depth of character, that’s on them. They were given an advantage; beauty and kindness are not mutually exclusive. Beauty doesn’t directly interfere with a person’s ability to follow the gospel as it is currently being preached. Therefore, there is no intrinsic quality within them that they are being asked to overcome or deny.
If a person is born with a physical disability that prevents them from walking, I certainly hope we are not to assume that this a challenge they must overcome and if they never learn to walk, they have failed in the mission God gave them…
So…
If Elder Bednar is going to call same-sex attraction a challenge to overcome (which I object to in the first place) why is this the only example he named where they are being asked to act counter to their innate characteristics and cannot be in the gospel should they “fail” to do so?
In his own words, “We are not defined by sexual attraction. We are not defined by sexual behavior.” Not that he was trying to help craft a pro-LGBT argument, but he is right. My choice to enter in relationships with members of my same sex tells you nothing about my character; gives you no other information about what kind of person I am. Therefore, why has the Church taken steps to define acting on same-sex attraction, even in married relationships, as apostasy. Sounds like the Church has defined us by our sexual behavior, doesn’t it?
2. He actually says, “The world teaches that we must be tolerant and accepting,” but that “there are some things we do not accept or tolerate.” He thinks that if he says the Church “loves all people” he can, in the very next sentence, get away with saying, “we do not discriminate and we are not bigots.” I hate to break it to Elder Bednar, but just because the Church thinks God has allowed them to and wants them to discriminate against people, does not change the definition of the words discrimination and bigot.
3. He repeats the idea that men and women are different and relationships between two people of the same gender inherently lack something. It may very well be true that he and his wife see things differently, but it is absolutely true that his wife will see things differently from many of the more than 3 Billion women on this planet. This flawed logic needs to stop. One person is not a complete representation of their entire gender. (Unless you’re Chaka Khan or Whitney Houston who are Every Woman…)
Mormons have perfected a certain brand of “polite” homophobia that makes it harder to challenge. They disguise it with a nice tone and sprinkle in words like “love” so that any outrage or hurt seems like an overreaction. But as any Sondheim fan would know, “Nice is different than good.” Saying hurtful things in a nice tone does not change the troubling fact that the stigmatization of the LGBT community has real life or death consequences. We will never know for certain if the recent increase in suicides among LGBT Mormon youth was directly cause by the Church’s recent decision to increase the anti-LGBT rhetoric to include homosexuality in the definition of apostasy and to require children to denounce their parents’ relationships, but I ask the Church, is it truly worth the risk?
