Back in my Mormon Matters days, Stephen Marsh an excellent post on helping people be comfortable in Church. Amongst other examples, he used the example of homosexuality. He also recommended John Dehlin’s (at the time recent) post that asked “what can we do to reduce suicide amongst people with a natural same sex attraction who grow up in the LDS culture?”

These are important questions. I agree with Stephen’s sentiment that the first round of answers aren’t likely to be what we end up with. Despite protests to the contrary, I think it’s obvious the LDS Church is trying their best here within their doctrinal framework and that with time better solutions will be found. 

One poster who has a homosexual son made an interesting comment that sparked a question in my mind. They said:

My wife and I have felt increasingly uncomfortable at church the past two months. It is not unexpected because of we live in California with our gay son and we listen to weekly admonitions re: prop 8. An anti-prop 8 TV ad has been running the last few weeks. It references a woman unsuccessfully trying to marry her fiance. Various things at the wedding ceremony make it so the wedding does not happen. It closes with a comment something like “What if you could not marry the one you love?

With that, a sister in our ward stood up in gospel doctrine (the class I teach) during the weekly prop 8 request for action and talked about the “subtle, deceitful people” doing “that TV ad”. She added that “we need to remember what they are really all about.” Continue reading →