I do not have a problem with people choosing LGBTQ lifestyles. I personally believe government should be out of the marriage business, and do not care if gays marry, or even if polygamy is legalized. I do consider traditional marriage as approved and blessed of God, but that is outside the confines liberty, IMHO.
That said, I think about what the scholar Harold Bloom wrote about Sodom and Gomorrah. The cities were not destroyed because of homosexuality. Instead, they were destroyed because they sought to impose their wickedness upon others by force, what Bloom called incivility.
Today, we see the same thing beginning to occur. It is now so popular to promote LGBTQ issues that laws are being imposed to enforce not just equality, but preference. In North Carolina, the state knocked down a city law that would allow transsexuals to use women’s bathrooms. Liberal stars and companies are boycotting the state because they claim they are prejudiced.
In reality, we find that the opposition to North Carolina’s new law displays a form of misogyny. Women, having equal rights, should not be forced to have to share a bathroom with men, regardless of what they wear. We hear feminists decry the rape culture we live in, but sadly, many of them are quiet when it comes to protecting their rights against men intruding into what previously were safe domains for them.
We also see them taking discussion out of context. Recently, Elder Bednar tried to explain that there are no gay Mormons. He did not mean that there are no Mormons who do not experience same sex attraction. He meant that there are no labels in the Church of Jesus Christ. As we read in 4 Nephi, there are no Nephites or Lamanites. There are no more “-ites” of any kind. Instead, all go by one label: child of God.
Most labels tend to do one or two things: 1. they define us by only one small characteristic, and/or 2. they over-emphasize minor characteristics until they are the only things we are known by.
This is true in all walks of life, regardless of whether one is described by her brains, his good looks, wealth (or lack thereof), athletic ability, addictions, criminal record, sexual prowess, sexual attractions, etc. Each and every one of these things, if over-emphasized, becomes who we are. This is a dangerous thing, because we then create for ourselves a new god to pursue.
When we rid ourselves, or at least deemphasize such characteristics, we can then focus on the one characteristic that is of utmost importance and most beneficial to having a healthy view of ourselves: child of God.
No other characteristic can compensate for our forgetting who we truly are. To be a child of God means we sit with Lehi at the base of the Tree of Life, basking in its peace and joy, and partaking of the precious fruit of Christ-like Love. To focus on any particular mortal characteristic is to wander off into mists of darkness, either to be swallowed up in the misery of the depths of filthy water/hell, or to enter into the great and spacious building of pride.
Today, we see much of America choosing to focus on such particulars, rather than eternal concepts of who we really are. Bruce Springsteen and others denounce North Carolina, because the state respects womanhood, rather than someone’s mortal characteristic. As society seeks to destroy God’s definitions for his children (daughter, son, child), and replace them with their own, we will see the great and spacious building impose its will upon all.
At that point, there will be no difference between America and Gomorrah. There will be no reason for God not to destroy the wicked, in order to preserve the righteous, and to reestablish His Definition of who we really are.