The Week in Mormonism, 3/6/16: No Homosexuals in the Church?
A video from February surfaced this week in which Elder David A. Bednar, addressing a Spanish-speaking audience, took the question, “How can homosexual members of the church live and remain steadfast in the gospel?”
Bednar replied,
First I want to change the question. There are no homosexual members of the church. We are not defined by sexual attraction. We are not defined by sexual behavior. We are sons and daughters of God and all of us have different challenges in the flesh. There are many different types of challenges.
Would it be a challenge to be very beautiful or very handsome, and in the world in which we live, never develop deep character because we are able to open doors and have success just because of our physical appearance? And we become shallow and superficial in many aspects of our lives. That can be a challenge in the flesh.
Some people have physical limitations. They may be born with a body that is not fully functional, or we may have an inclination to be attracted to those of the same sex…
Simply being attracted to someone of the same gender is not a sin. There are many members of the church who may have some manifestation of that attraction. They honor their covenants, they keep the commandments, they are worthy. They can receive the blessings of the temple and they can serve in the church. It is when we act on the inclination or the attraction — that’s when it becomes a sin.
So, the reason I began my answer as I did, is that in this question, the word “homosexual” was used to describe or label a member of the church. It’s an inaccurate label. We are sons and daughter of god and we determine how respond to the variety of challenges we experience in mortality through the proper exercise of our moral agency.
Most of the criticism of Bednar takes his second sentence out of context. As Hermant Mehta notes,
Bednar’s answer isn’t as bad as it sounds. He’s not saying there are no gay people in the Mormon Church — of course there are. He’s not denying that.
He’s saying that the Church doesn’t define people by their sexual orientation because they’re more than that — they don’t say “We have X gay members and Y straight members,” just like they don’t say “We have X white members and Y black members.” No matter how you identify, according to Church leaders, you’re more than any one characteristic.
And Andrew S. writing at W&T insightfully looks at Bednar’s remarks in the context of person-first language:
People-first language is a type of linguistic prescription in English. It aims to avoid perceived and subconscious dehumanization when discussing people with disabilities and is sometimes referred to as a type of disability etiquette. People-first language can also be applied to any group that is defined by a condition rather than as a people: for example, “people who live on the street” rather than “homeless…”
We can see what Elder Bednar is doing is something similar. He wants to establish a core identity as something of worth…like, say, being a child of God…and then separate traits that he views as inherently bad or “less than” (such as same-sex attraction) as non-core.
I recall telling people at several times that I didn’t think the “born this way” rhetoric would be effective at changing everyone’s mind…because ultimately, whether LGBT traits are chosen or inborn, the real distinction is whether one views these traits as good or neutral, or bad. If you’ve been in discussion on homosexuality on the internet for any length of time, you’ve likely heard people compare it to alcoholism or a propensity to violence — as much as this befuddles an LGBT person or LGBT ally, the disconnect here is that the person making this comparison views all of these traits as bad things. The LGBT ally cannot change this perception simply by arguing that sexual orientation is inborn.
Kevin Barney offers an extremely readable summary of the textual analysis of 2 Nephi 12:16, which quotes from Isaiah as follows:
And upon all the ships of the sea,
and upon all the ships of Tarshish
and upon all pleasant pictures.
The 1981 and 2013 editions of the Book of Mormon include a footnote that reads,
The Greek (Septuagint) has “ships of the sea.” The Hebrew has “ships of Tarshish.” The Book of Mormon has both, showing that the brass plates had lost neither phrase.
Barney summarizes a paper from BYU professors Pike and Seeley that shows why this is not actually what happened. He then summarizes two more papers from Wright and Huggins that offer evidence that Joseph inserted this material from a nineteenth century source. Barney concludes,
Because I accept Joseph as a Prophet, I’m not bothered by the possibility that he played more of a role in shaping the text than that of simply being a reader to a scribe. If our people can somehow get acclimated to such a possibility, that may be the best path forward to making sense of the presence of the Isaiah texts in the Book of Mormon.
Other Links
- To My Gay Brothers and Sisters: I Will Be A Friend.
- Mormons clash with the ungodly in war by Amazon customer review.
- Historian Andrea Radke-Moss presents evidence that Eliza R. Snow was gang raped in Missouri. And Meg Stout attempts to separate the convincing from the conjecture.
- Dreading the Sabbath: Or, why you should stop worrying and enjoy life.
- A review of JSPP Journals, Volume 3. And one of When Prophecy Fails. And three capsule reviews from Steve Evans.
- Does the thought make reason stare? “I’m not married to the idea of Heavenly Mother anymore. I’d rather believe she doesn’t exist than believe that she doesn’t matter.”
- Is there Anachronistic Christian Doctrine in the Book of Mormon?
