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He isn't wrong. Stuart Matis would still be alive today if he weren't indoctrinated with false beliefs about sex and was allowed to be with somebody he loved. Only if we re-define "biological imperative" to mean "anything that anyone strongly desires to do." I can't go along with that. I won't comment on your rhetorical exploitation of a suicide, except that I find it manifestly beneath you. Emphasis on "your view". Just because you think those are the only valid purposes of sex and just because you think "strengthening the marital union" between a man and woman is a valid thing but "strengthening the marital union" between two people of the same sex is not doesn't mean the place you draw the line isn't an ad hoc rationalization of your own prejudice. If I say "The First Amendment right to Free Speech is, in my view, an extremely important provision of the U.S. Constitution," I am reiterating and endorsing a principle. I didn't create it. It's not an "ad hoc rationalization." “In my view” means I am stating a position, not hiding behind a committee. It does not mean the position is a private taste. The two purposes—generation, and the bond of a husband and a wife—are the Church’s teaching and a teleological account of the act. You may reject both. You do not get to translate “I hold this” into “I made it up to cover prejudice.” That's just conclusory laziness. The line is not “strengthening a union is good, except when the pair is the same sex.” That would be "ad hoc." Rather, the line is that the union in view is marriage, and marriage, on this account, is a man and a woman. “Strengthening the marital union” is not a floating good that attaches to any two people who are fond of each other and then gets yanked away from one couple out of spite. It names a kind. Two men can have loyalty, consolation, and a household. That is companionship. It is not the same kind of union, and it is not the same use of sex. If that is wrong, it is wrong as an account of marriage and of the act—not because I needed a pretext. The same closed set also puts heterosexual fornication, adultery, and casual use in Y. A rule that constrains my side of the line as well as yours is a poor candidate for “ad hoc rationalization of prejudice.” Prejudice is animus toward a people. A principle about what sex is for can be mistaken without being a mask. And your baseless and conclusory accusations don't move the needle for me in terms of showing me that I am or may be mistaken. If anything, it further bolsters my overall impression that folks like you and SU use the "Bigot!" ( or "Prejudice!") schtick so frequently because it's all you've got. I can articulate a reasoned basis for my position. I don't think you can, either that or you are so immersed in your own worldview that you cannot accommodate the possibility that viewpoints divergent from yours might be reasonable. So you retreat to name-calling. You prefer a different purpose (consent, companionship, well-being as you define it). Then say the purposes are incomplete. Do not say that drawing a principled line, and admitting it is my view, proves the line was never principled. Fallacies Poisoning the well. “Ad hoc rationalization of your own prejudice” attacks motive instead of the two purposes. Equivocation. “Marital union” is treated as any committed pair, then the restriction looks arbitrary. Question-begging. Assumes same-sex pairs are already the same kind of union, so excluding them must be prejudice. Straw man. “Just because you think” as if the claim were an unshared whim rather than a taught, general rule. A Mormon friend of mine who is a widow just got married to another Mormon man who is a widower. They were both sealed to somebody else--according to the dogma, she'll be with her first husband in the next life. "Dogma." Pejorative framing like this does not advance your argument or position. It weakens it. It is said in lieu of substance and reasoning. No. That is not what the argument says, and it is not what the Church says. First, I have been speaking in categories and kinds. Opposite-sex couples as a category have procreative capacity, and same-sex couples - whether viewed one at a time or as a category - entirely lack procreative capacity. I did not say marriage exists only to produce a new baby this year. I said two purposes: generation, and the bond of a husband and a wife. A widow and a widower who marry are still a husband and a wife. They are the kind of pair whose union is ordered to children even when, in this season, no child will come. Menopause, prior families already raised, a hysterectomy—those are facts about this couple’s body and calendar. They do not turn the pair into a different kind of pair. A same-sex couple is not an infertile widow and widower. They are not a man and a woman at all. You are treating “cannot conceive this time” as identical to “not a generative kind of union.” That is the same false equivalence as menopause and vasectomy. Frequency and impossibility in a particular case do not rewrite the kind. Sealing. Yes: in the ordinary telling she remains sealed to the first husband, and the second marriage is for time. That does not make the second marriage pointless, and it does not make it a same-sex marriage, and it does not mean there will be authorized extramarital sex. It makes it a present-tense covenant between a man and a woman—care, fidelity, a shared household, lawful sexual union under the Law of Chastity. Companionship in that covenant is the second purpose I already named. You dropped that purpose so you could force “kids only,” then declare the remarriage illegitimate. I did not give you a kids-only rule. “Exactly the same reason a same-sex couple presumably does.” No. They married as husband and wife. Whatever mix of comfort, love, and practical help moved them, the form and kind and category they entered is still the form the law and the Church call marriage. Two women can want comfort and help too. Wanting those goods does not make the form/kind/category the same. Friends want those goods without anyone calling it marriage. So: their reasons are not illegitimate. The farm-that-is-not-harvesting-this-year is still a farm. A same-sex pairing is not a farm with a bad season. It is a different plot. And if "harvest" = generation/procreation, then that different plot is intrinsically barred and will never produce anything at all. Ever. Fallacies Straw man. “According to you there is no reason to remarry.” False equivalence. Infertile opposite-sex remarriage = same-sex marriage. Suppressed conjunct. Drops “strengthening the husband–wife union” so only babies remain. Reductio gone wrong. A conclusion I do not hold is forced onto a distinction I do hold. Thanks, -Smac

One thing I don’t understand about the topic is what “discourages” actually means. Surrogacy is obviously not wrong or they would say that, so if it’s not wrong then why discourage him? Is it because they think it could be wrong but they don’t know for sure?

Analytics, As a preliminary matter, I appreciate you taking the time and effort to substantively respond to my list of propositions. While neither of us may be able to fully persuade the other, I find value in listening to what you have to say. From the perspective of objective reality, everything you say here is false. Well, that's interesting. You are perched on "the perspective of objective reality," with no biases or other impediments, and from there can definitively declare that God does not exist? I think not. I previously said this to SU: "I can articulate a reasoned basis for my position. I don't think you can, either that or you are so immersed in your own worldview that you cannot accommodate the possibility that viewpoints divergent from yours might be reasonable." Your pronouncements about what reason can and cannot lead to are not self-evident, so this is just an assertion. What you think about the Atonement of Christ is a subjective and conclusory value judgment (and one that is based on a rather facile caricature). You have not engaged Proposition 1. You have declared it false from “objective reality,” attributed it to manipulation, called the Atonement sick, and waved at Miracle of Forgiveness. That is a worldview speaking. It is not a demonstration. “From the perspective of objective reality, everything you say here is false” assumes the conclusion. If God does not exist and prophets are not sent, then yes, those sentences are false. That is not a finding. It is your starting point restated as a verdict. Question-begging. “Reason doesn’t lead to these beliefs; sociology and psychological manipulation do” is a genetic fallacy even if some people are badly taught. A belief can be socially transmitted and still be true (or false). How a person first heard Moses 1:39 does not decide whether the Father has a work and a glory. Would you accept the reverse?: “Atheism is what certain faculties and friend groups produce, therefore God exists.” I'm genuinely curious. I am not asking you to share the premises. I am saying they are doing work in the argument. If God is involved, if He sends prophets, if living apostles can teach and correct, then the Law of Chastity as taught now is not a whim I invented to be unkind. If those premises are wrong, say that and we argue authority. Merely declaring them wrong, or relabeling them as pathology, is not that argument. On the Cross: Latter-day Saints do not teach that the Father tortured an innocent bystander to soothe His feelings about me. We teach that the Son offered Himself, that we are accountable, and that mercy and justice meet in Him. You may still find that offensive. Calling it “sick” is a moral reaction, not a proof that no atonement occurred. Health of a feeling and truth of a claim are different questions. “Following false prophets is a bad idea” is a tautology. The live question is whether these men are false. You have not shown that. You have assumed it. Miracle of Forgiveness is not Proposition 1, and it is not the current Handbook statement on same-sex conduct. If you want to criticize that book, criticize that book. Do not use it as a stand-in for “everything you believe about God and sex.” If you want to talk sexual ethics without God, say so and we can stay on nature, marriage as a kind, and children. If you want to say my first proposition is false, then the burden is the same as mine: give reasons that are not “your team is manipulated and your cross is icky.” Fallacies, short list Question-begging. “Objective reality” = your naturalism, therefore my sentences are false. Genetic fallacy. Social/psychological origin is treated as disproof. Category error. “Unhealthy to believe” is not “false.” Straw man. Atonement reduced to “an innocent man was murdered because of your sins” as a guilt charm. Poisoning the well. Prophets = false; Kimball = the whole ethic. Ad hominem / tone. Sick, manipulated, bad idea—aimed at the believer, not the proposition. Sex is important for some people. It isn't for others. It depends upon your own life's situation. Ideally, many things are much, much more important than being raised by "both a mother and father.": Protection from abuse and neglect. Warm, responsive relationships with dependable caregivers. Material security. A stable home with little destructive conflict. Good physical care from pregnancy onward Adequate nutrition, medical care, sleep, and physical activity Caregivers who can regulate their emotions and function reliably. Consistent, constructive parenting. Rich opportunities to learn. A safe, healthy neighborhood and physical environment. Social belonging and support beyond the immediate household. Those are goods. I did not say they were not. Proposition 2 is not “the only thing a child needs is a mother and a father.” It is that sex is a powerful part of the human probation, that it is how the species continues, and that the hoped-for pattern is a child raised by both. “Sex is important for some people, not others” answers a different sentence. Some adults have low desire. That does not make sex a minor feature of the species, of marriage, or of how the next generation appears. A person can live without much interest in food and still not get to rewrite what eating is for. Your list is also not a rival to a mother and a father. It is mostly a description of what a decent home does. Protection from abuse, warm caregivers, material security, low destructive conflict, competent parenting, belonging—those are not an alternative family form. They are the work of adults who stay and care. The ordinary way a civilization tries to attach two sexually complementary parents to that work is marriage. Pointing at abuse in some two-parent homes, or virtue in some other non-two-parent homes, does not make “mother and father” a small thing. It makes abuse bad and virtue good. Both can be true at once. “Ideally, many things are much more important than being raised by both a mother and a father” only works if we are forced to choose: either a mother and a father or safety, food, and no screaming. That is a patent false dilemma. The design I named is a mother and a father who also protect, feed, and keep the house from becoming a war. When a home lacks a mother or a father, the remaining adult can still do many of those things well. That is not the same as saying the missing parent was never part of the design. So: yes to every bullet. No to what I think is your hoped-for inference that sex is optional in the human story, or that generation-plus-mother-and-father is a fake concern because other goods also matter. In the end, I think we both agree with the basic concept here: Sex is important. Fallacies Straw man. Treats “sex is important / mother and father” as “nothing else matters.” Equivocation. “Important for some people” (individual libido) vs. important in the human pattern. False dilemma. Safety and nutrition versus a mother and a father. Moving the goalposts. From what sex is and what the institution is for, to a checklist of child-welfare inputs. Non sequitur. A good list of caregiving conditions does not show that two people of the same sex are the same kind of union, or that a missing mother or father is morally irrelevant. The "law of chastity" did not come from "the Lord". It came from inherited Christian sexual morality and American cultural norms. Whether it is a good thing or a bad thing depends upon the individual who is indoctrinated with it. If you are well suited for it, then that's great. But you aren't dealing with reality if you imagine waiving a magic wand and it working for everybody else. But people have literally committed suicide because they were indoctrinated with these beliefs. Think about that. I take suicide seriously (I also find polemical exploitation of it rather offputting). I will not score points off it. I also will not accept “people have died, therefore this commandment is not from God and must not be taught.” That is an appeal to consequences dressed as compassion. Grief does not decide provenance, and it does not decide whether an ethic is true. Source. You say the Law of Chastity came from inherited Christian morality and American norms, not from the Lord. That is your theory of origins. It is not a disproof of mine. Proposition 1 is doing work here: I think God speaks through prophets, including about sex. If that is false, the commandment is only a tradition. If it is true, tradition is how a lot of revealed law arrives in a culture. “It resembles older Christian teaching” is what you would expect if the same God had been repeating Himself. Genetic fallacy either way: even a fully human custom can be wise or foolish; even a revealed law can be preached badly. “Good or bad depending on who is indoctrinated.” That turns an ethic into a personality fit. Fidelity, honesty, and not stealing also do not “work” equally well for every temperament. Difficulty is not a test of source. I have already said the constraint is harder for some people than for others. That is true of almost every serious moral rule. It is not a license to dissolve the rule into “whatever suits you.” “Magic wand.” I did not claim a wand. I claimed a standard. Standards fail in practice every day. That does not mean there is no standard. It means people are free and life is costly. Suicide. People have taken their lives in the orbit of religious sexual teaching. People have also taken their lives in the orbit of family rejection, mental illness, isolation, pornography, and a culture that tells them their desire is their self. Correlation is not a single cause, and “indoctrinated with these beliefs” skips every other factor. If a particular book, bishop, or parent taught someone they were irredeemable for an attraction they did not choose, that teaching was wrong by the Church’s own present light: attraction is not the sin; conduct is. Cruel application does not prove the Lord never spoke. It proves some of us have spoken poorly. If your point is pastoral—do not heap shame on people who are already despairing—I agree. If your point is “therefore there is no Law of Chastity from God,” that does not follow. It is a tragedy used as a gavel. So what is your perspective on Proposition 3? Are sexual ethics important or not important? Fallacies Question-begging. Assumes no revelation, then treats culture as the only source. Genetic fallacy. Christian/American pedigree is treated as disproof. Moral relativism smuggled as psychology. “Depends on the individual” replaces true/false with fit/unfit. Appeal to consequences / emotion. Suicide is used to close the question rather than to discipline how we speak. Causal oversimplification. One set of beliefs is loaded with deaths that have many causes. Straw man. “Waving a magic wand” is not what was claimed. Sure. You can use a Venn Diagram to represent ethics. Okay. But do you agree with the concept? That everyone differentiates X from Y? Not just the Latter-day Saints? The issue isn't merely whether living in box X is a healthy way to live. But that is certainly a fair inquiry. Is living in accordance with the tenets of the Law of Chastity "a healthy way to live?" Two different questions are being taped together. Proposition 5 posits that every serious ethic divides sexual conduct into permitted (X) and not (Y), and that Latter-day Saints are, or should be, allowed to draw that line at husband-and-wife. Do you agree or disagree? “Between consenting adults” is another line. It is not the absence of a line. That point stands whether or not someone once heard a badly-formulated and cruel object lesson in Sunday School. What you listed is baggage, and some of it is real. Feelings are not the same thing as conduct. Current Church teaching does not make same-sex attraction, or a passing surge of desire, into sin. If a teacher said “your feelings make you unworthy of God,” that teacher misspoke. If someone used the chewed-gum image to tell a kid they were used up forever, that was a bad image and terrible packaging of important gospel precepts. Repentance exists because people are not gum. I will not defend poor analogies and object lessons. No need. That one has long been set aside, and I am glad of that. There are plenty of ways to meaningfully and accurately characterize and describe the Law of Chastity, repentance, and so on. “Pluck out your eye” is Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount about lust, not a uniquely Latter-day Saint invention. You may think He was wrong. You do not get to hang that sentence on “Mormon indoctrination” as if Matthew 5 were written in Salt Lake. The Atonement is not “you glanced, therefore the Father tortured His Son.” That is a caricature of guilt. We teach that sin is real, that the Son offered Himself, and that mercy is offered to people who fail—including sexually. If the version you heard was only shame and no pardon, that is a pastoral failure. It is not Proposition 5. So: yes, some religious speech about sex has been harsh, sloppy, and damaging. No, that does not mean there is no rightful X / Y differentiation, and it does not mean BCA is the neutral default. You can scrap the gum and still say sex belongs in a marriage between a man and a woman. Those are not the same claim. If the fight is “teach desire as damnation,” you are barking up the wrong tree. I don't believe that, and the Church doesn't teach it. If the fight is “therefore the Church may not distinguish X from Y,” that does not follow. Bad packaging does not erase the box. Again: Proposition 5 posits that every serious ethic divides sexual conduct into permitted (X) and not (Y), and that Latter-day Saints are, or should be, allowed to draw that line at husband-and-wife. Do you agree or disagree? Fallacies Moving the goalposts. From “you may not have an X/Y” to “your X/Y is tainted by ugly extras.” Straw man. Current teaching (attraction ≠ sin; repentance available) is replaced with gum, unworthiness-for-feeling, and a cartoon Cross. Guilt by association. Worst youth-lesson rhetoric is treated as the content of the Law of Chastity. Non sequitur. Some beliefs attached to the line have been harmful → therefore the line itself is illegitimate. The question isn't whether they are reasonable. Well, I can't agree with you there. But regardless, could you just humor me and address the issue? Is the Law of Chastity a reasonable basis for sexual ethics? A lot of ground covered here. I appreciate the effort. You have, it seems, stopped contesting whether the Law of Chastity is a reasonable basis for an ethic. That was the proposition. “The question isn’t whether they are reasonable. The question is whether they are healthy” is a new exam. Health matters. It is not a magic replacement for reasonableness, and it is not a single number we can read off a study. Can I construe your statements here as an implicit acknowledgment that yes, the Church's Law of Chastity is a reasonable basis for sexual ethics? If "No," please elaborate. Shared ground. Fidelity, honesty, no coercion, responsibility for children, contraception and infection as real goods in a secular frame, “nobody owes anybody sex”—I can agree with most of that as part of treating people well. The Church already teaches several of those points. You said so. What “healthy” is doing. You want an ethic judged by well-being: treat each other well, informed choices, satisfying lives. Fine. That still requires a picture of what sex is for. Your picture is consent, consideration, and harm-reduction, applied the same way regardless of sex. Mine is a closed set: husband and wife, with generation and covenant union as the point. Those are different accounts of health, not a lab result versus a superstition. “Evidence should matter more than whether a rule is called sacred” assumes well-being as you define it is the highest good. That is a value. Science does not hand it to you any more than it hands me a temple recommend. Ordinary development and bad teaching. Masturbation as adolescent development, the gum metaphor, “touch yourself and you’ll turn gay”—I will not defend the scoutmaster. That causal story is false, and it is cruel. Feelings are not sin, and the Church has taught that for a long time. A passing arousal is not a crucifixion. If someone taught a child that ordinary development made them dirty forever, that was a failure of teaching, not the core of “X is husband and wife.” You can throw out the bathwater (unhealthily-expressed folklore) without throwing out the baby (the merits of the Restored Gospel). Scrupulosity, survivors, unmarried adults. Religious OCD is real. Survivors who already feel contaminated need care, not more contamination language. Unmarried adults and spouses worn down by vigilance deserve pastoral sense. None of that proves that any closed sexual ethic is unhealthy. It proves that law without mercy, and worthiness interviews run like a panic, can injure people. I have already said the Church’s own present distinction is attraction versus conduct. I think we need to acknowledge that distinction. Do not treat every clumsy youth talk as the doctrine. Also, see this thread for some interesting notes about "maladaptive perfectionism." It may have some relevance. Same-sex members. Yes: the Church does not offer an approved sexual relationship with a person of the same sex. That is the hard edge. It is not a secret. Similarly, the Church does not offer an approved sexual relationship with a person to whom the Church member is not married. Also a hard edge. Also not a secret. For someone whose durable desire is only for the same sex, obedience means forgoing that sexual life. I do not call that costless. I also do not accept that the only “healthy” resolution is to bless the relationship. Many ethics ask people to forgo a desired sexual life—married people, priests, anyone who keeps a promise. Difficulty and distress do not, by themselves, make the rule false. Research that links stigma with distress tells you stigma hurts. It does not tell you whether the underlying moral claim is wrong, any more than distress among people who leave a faith proves the faith was true. Temple, cleanliness, worthiness. That framework is how this church talks about covenants, not how it writes the criminal code. You may think purity language is an extra tax on the psyche. Latter-day Saints think the body is sacred and that some uses of it affect standing before God. You are free to reject that. You are not entitled to say a church may not have sacramental boundaries unless those boundaries match comprehensive-sex-ed plus BCA. Proposition 6, still. I posit that the Law of Chastity is reasonable and defensible as a code. Other people may draw a larger X. Pluralism is the right to do that—not a duty on Latter-day Saints to treat their line as uniquely illegitimate because some applications have been harsh, or because some people would feel better if the line moved. “Earn its reputation for being healthy by how it affects people” is a fair pastoral demand. It is not a proof that only your ethic is allowed to speak. Fallacies Moving the goalposts. Reasonable conceded; the new test is healthy-as-you-define-it. Persuasive definition. “Healthy” is loaded with BCA, same-sex partnerships, and comprehensive sex ed as if those were outcome measures rather than the ethic under review. Anecdote as doctrine. One scoutmaster’s false theory of homosexuality is treated as the Church’s sexual ethics. Causal overreach. Stigma–distress correlations are asked to do the work of a moral refutation. Straw man. “Feelings are sinful / development is filthy” in place of attraction-versus-conduct and repentance. Special pleading. Every community may have an X/Y unless it is this one, because this one talks about worthiness. "Principled and reasoned disagreement" about whether consenting adults who love each other should be allowed to have a consenting, committed, loving life together because of the reasons you've outlined (e.g. the plumbing doesn't fit) are neither principled nor reasoned. That sentence only works if the dispute is “may two adults love each other and share a household.” That is not what I argued, and it is not what the Law of Chastity is. People may love each other, keep house, keep commitments, and be treated with decency. I have not said otherwise. The question is whether sexual conduct and marriage are the same thing when the pair is two men or two women as when it is a husband and a wife. “Allowed to have a loving life together” smuggles the sexual and marital conclusion into the description of the life. That is the point at issue, not a fact you get to treat as already settled. Moreover, "allowed" here doesn't even make sense. The Church has no secular authority to enforce the Law of Chastity in any sense, and only has as much authority the individual(s) choose to cede to it. In other words, the relationship is bilaterally voluntary. “Because of the reasons you’ve outlined (e.g. the plumbing doesn’t fit)” is a synecdoche. Dimorphism was one sentence in a stack: what sex is for, what marriage is as a kind, mother and father, living prophets, a closed set rather than BCA. You plucked the blunt biological line, ignored the rest, and announced that the whole disagreement is unprincipled. That is not a rebuttal. It is a refusal to read and engage. “Neither principled nor reasoned” is also circular. You reject the conclusion, so the reasons cannot count as reasons. A principle is a stated standard applied to a class of acts. “Sexual relations belong in marriage between a man and a woman” is that. You think the standard is wrong. Wrong is not the same as unprincipled. BCA is also a principle. I think it is a thin and problematic and manifestly insufficient one. I do not call it bigotry or “not reasoning.” If your claim is only that the "plumbing point" standing alone does not prove a complete moral theory — I grant it. Biology describes the generative act; it does not, by itself, write a church handbook. I never said it did. I said a moral view in which sex has that purpose will treat same-sex sexual conduct as Y, not X. You need a different purpose, or no purpose, to get a different result. Name that. Do not rename disagreement as the absence of principle. Fallacies Straw man. “Loving committed life” in place of sexual conduct and marriage as a kind. Synecdoche / cherry-pick. One biological sentence treated as the entire case. Question-begging. The reasons fail because the conclusion is already disallowed. Equivocation on “allowed.” Civil permission, church teaching, and moral truth are not distinguished. Ad hominem lite. “Neither principled nor reasoned” attacks the quality of the person-as-thinker instead of meeting the standard. Thanks, -Smac

I agree with this. Our biology operates in the framework of our own circumstances. While in some cultures the survival of the lineage was all and the family having no children, not even nephews and nieces (who could have husbands who were adopted in to carry on the family name as well as the bloodline) to support was a disastrous outcome, that’s not our culture today, thank goodness….which means sexual reproduction doesn’t not have to be the end all of our individual existence. We even have other options for our old age care besides our own biological children. Smac appears to me to be appealing to biological survival as one of the measurements. If he is going to that, he needs to look at the entire system and not pull out individuals because individuals or even couples don’t survive by themselves, but in their extended communities (whether family, tribal, or other), so it’s illogical to treat one type of individual/couple behaviour as the source of genetic survival. It’s a combination of individual behaviours that matter. And if we want to know what behaviours contributes to genetic survival, the most logical way to do it is to look at what behaviours have been persistent over time. Communal caring seems to be one of those (respectful burials of multiple families together; respectful burials of older disabled individuals that most likely could not have contributed physically much to family survival, yet were not abandoned in childhood; explosion of population with permanent communities, not just nuclear or even extended families). Persistence of homosexuality would suggest it is another behaviour that contributes to the survival of the family genes. There may be other valid reasons for arguing against same sex behaviour nor should biological drives rule our moral behaviour these days. Just saying claiming biology negates homosexuality as a healthy, functional behaviour is not correct. It actually supports it as promoting survival in a variety of circumstances. PS: I am not addressing anything but scientific claims and only doing so because sloppy science bugs me.

Only in the individual sense, not in the lineage sense where a combination of heterosexual and homosexual can promote survival in a biological sense of genes (see above for the science). And if you are focusing on the individual as paramount when it comes to actual survival…that is a genetic dead end as nuclear families are less likely to survive than an extensive family network. You need to look at the characteristics of the extended family to see which are most successful genetically speaking….and we have the real life result in front of us that shows homosexuality was not bred out of our genetic pool, thus likely contributed to survival. But do you really want to use genetic survival as your measure here given the likely result of elevating that to is promotion of what we would call today very immoral behaviour, including killing any children from a different father that a woman had or turning those children into slaves and the sacrifice of needs of less promising or lower caste children for the needs of the children families saw as their future…such as giving less food and care to weaker or less intelligent children.

I think it's important to carefully frame what we mean and I likely did not do that. From a certain perspective, every organism is just a machine built around a set of unfeeling uncaring genes. These machines are the result of a never ending arms race whose sole "purpose" is reproduction. I use purpose here loosely. Whichever genes evolve the best machinery reproduce and survive into future generations. Those that produce poor machines don't survive. I don't think that is a view that any person or organism holds day to day when viewing and deciding what has meaning in their life. For me sex is about fun, closeness, intimacy, love and connection. Are these things evolutionarily advantageous? Probably, but I don't really care. And I don't think most people do. My biological machine has evolved apparently to care very much about those things and care very little about the survival of the species. On a personal note, sex's purpose in my marriage would be very poorly described as about reproduction. have six children. Due to fertility issues only three were conceived "naturally". The other three were produced in ways that were very divorced the sexual act.

He isn't wrong. Stuart Matis would still be alive today if he weren't indoctrinated with false beliefs about sex and was allowed to be with somebody he loved. Emphasis on "your view". Just because you think those are the only valid purposes of sex and just because you think "strengthening the marital union" between a man and woman is a valid thing but "strengthening the marital union" between two people of the same sex is not doesn't mean the place you draw the line isn't an ad hoc rationalization of your own prejudice. A Mormon friend of mine who is a widow just got married to another Mormon man who is a widower. They were both sealed to somebody else--according to the dogma, she'll be with her first husband in the next life. Because of some biological realities, it is impossible for her to have any children. Therefore, according to you, there is no reason for her to have gotten remarried, right? It is as biologically impossible for her to have children with her husband as it would be if she were married to another woman. And according to the dogma, she won't have children with him after they are dead, either. So according to your logic, there is absolutely no reason for her to have gotten remarried, right? The purpose of marriage is to have and raise kids. They can't have kids, and all their existing kids are raised. Were their reasons for getting married illegitimate? Consistently applying your logic, they must be, because they got married for exactly the same reason a same-sex couple presumably does.

From the perspective of objective reality, everything you say here is false. Reason doesn't lead to these beliefs. Sociological drivers and psychological manipulation do. Furthermore, I don't think it is healthy to believe that an innocent man was tortured and murdered because of your sins. That is a sick, unhealthy belief. And I think following false prophets is a bad idea in general. If you want to understand reality regarding sexual ethics, the last thing you should do is read Miracle of Forgiveness. Sex is important for some people. It isn't for others. It depends upon your own life's situation. Ideally, many things are much, much more important than being raised by "both a mother and father.": Protection from abuse and neglect. Warm, responsive relationships with dependable caregivers. Material security. A stable home with little destructive conflict. Good physical care from pregnancy onward Adequate nutrition, medical care, sleep, and physical activity Caregivers who can regulate their emotions and function reliably. Consistent, constructive parenting. Rich opportunities to learn. A safe, healthy neighborhood and physical environment. Social belonging and support beyond the immediate household. The "law of chastity" did not come from "the Lord". It came from inherited Christian sexual morality and American cultural norms. Whether it is a good thing or a bad thing depends upon the individual who is indoctrinated with it. If you are well suited for it, then that's great. But you aren't dealing with reality if you imagine waiving a magic wand and it working for everybody else. But people have literally committed suicide because they were indoctrinated with these beliefs. Think about that. Sure. You can use a Venn Diagram to represent ethics. The issue isn't merely whether living in box X is a healthy way to live. What also matters is all of the bagage attached to it through the false religious beliefs. Beliefs that feelings are sinful, it's better to poke out your eye than be aroused by looking at somebody, that doing so is a sin which caused Jesus to be tortured and killed, that having those feelings makes you unworthy of God, that if you experimented with something you are a chewed up piece of gum, etc. The question isn't whether they are reasonable. The question is whether they are healthy. I think sexual ethics should be judged by what they do for actual people. Do they help us treat each other well, make informed decisions, and build satisfying lives? Science cannot decide our ultimate values for us. But if we care about human well-being, evidence should matter more than whether a rule is called sacred. That points toward an ethic built around freely given, informed consent, honesty, mutual consideration, and responsibility for consequences. Consent requires the capacity to choose, freedom from pressure, and the ability to stop. It is essential, but it isn’t the whole story. The same standards should apply regardless of sex or sexual orientation. Keeping commitments matters. So do emotional readiness, contraception, preventing infections, and the welfare of children. Nobody owes anybody sex, including a spouse. Pleasure and intimacy are legitimate goods; freely chosen abstinence is legitimate too. Children need accurate, age-appropriate education about bodies, boundaries, and relationships. As they mature, that should include contraception and sexual decision-making. Comprehensive sex education does not make young people more sexually active and can improve safer behavior. We can encourage patience and self-control without withholding information or making sexual development frightening. The Mormon Church teaches several things that fit this approach: fidelity, commitment, respect for others, and opposition to sexual coercion, including within marriage. It recognizes marital intimacy as an expression of love, not just a means of producing children. Those are healthy teachings. But the Church goes beyond that and says that this is all a matter of moral cleanliness, purity, and worthiness before God, and then proceeds to rack on on incredible amounts of unnecessary guilt for things that are parts of normal, healthy sexual development, to say nothing of making rules that say if you are sexually attracted to somebody of the same sex, then you are precluded from ever having a sexual life, even one based on fidelity, commitment, monogamy, and respect. The surrounding framework matters: sexual conduct and thoughts are evaluated through moral cleanliness, repentance, and worthiness to enter the temple. Masturbation is a typical part of adolescent sexual development. Treating it as a nasty sin that makes you impure and unworthy is an evil thing to teach. When I was a Boy Scout, my scoutmaster/deacon leader taught that the problem with touching yourself is that you'll soon get board of touching yourself and will then want to touch other boys, and that it would thereby make you gay. Can you see the problem with teaching false things? The difficulty is especially clear for gay and lesbian members who want a loving partnership. The Church offers no approved sexual relationship with a same-sex spouse. It teaches that for them, obedience can mean lifelong abstinence from the kind of relationship they desire. Research links religious sexual stigma with psychological distress through internalized stigma and religious struggle. Other people can struggle with this framework too. Someone with religious OCD may become trapped in checking thoughts, confessing, and seeking reassurance about purity. That is a recognized clinical problem. I would also worry about survivors who already feel contaminated, unmarried adults who want intimacy, and spouses who struggle to reconcile pleasure with years of vigilance against lust. Their needs deserve individual attention. I don’t think these teachings are universally healthy. The evidence gives good reason to believe some people would be better off never having internalized the idea that ordinary sexual behavior, or a loving relationship, makes them spiritually unclean. We cannot rerun somebody’s childhood and measure the difference, so that remains a reasoned judgment rather than a universal experimental finding. I want an ethic that teaches people to be responsible and considerate while allowing them to feel at home in their own bodies. A religious rule should have to earn its reputation for being healthy by how it affects the people expected to live it. "Principled and reasoned disagreement" about whether consenting adults who love each other should be allowed to have a consenting, committed, loving life together because of the reasons you've outlined (e.g. the plumbing doesn't fit) are neither principled nor reasoned.

I somewhat disagree with this from a nonreligious, purely biological perspective. Sex likely evolved to be pleasurable and connective as that increased its frequency and the longer lasting relationships that then had a man around to care for the offspring increasing their survival rate, thus increasing the offspring of those who found sex pleasurable and connective. In that sense the purpose of pleasure and connection is perpetuation of the species. However, given the frequency of same sex relationships in nature and the fact it hasn’t been ‘bred’ out of humans in our millions of years of existence, seems like homosexuality likely helps or at least does not hinder the survival of the offspring as well, meaning calling it biologically incoherent is unsupported once you look beyond individual couplings and what actually contributes to survival….which is not the nuclear family, but extended relationships. A truly independent family is going to drop survival rates drastically as it’s much harder for them to produce sufficient food on their own. Anyone want to check out the quality of life where they actually make every last thing they use for themselves? There is a hypothesis that homosexuality increased the number of adults caring per child, thus increasing the likelihood of survival yet again. One study even showed gay men were more caring of the children than the women (though this could be culture)…I wonder if this was of certain children or children in general as a mother generally has to focus more on the younger children, while an uncle or aunt could choose which child they wanted to support if they wanted. Thus if the purpose of sex is reproduction, then even if heterosexuality is more supportive of it, homosexuality is not inherently negative when speaking of biological survival. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/study-reveals-potential-evolutionary-role-for-same-sex-attraction.html It is also possible that in families with genes that contribute to homosexuality, females produce more children for some reason…again increasing the likelihood of the survival of that family’s biology. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12180867/ So even if sex’s purpose is primarily procreation, that still doesn’t leave homosexuality as inherently bad. Now if a culture viewed homosexuality as bad and isolated them from children by labeling any interaction as wrong, creepy, grooming, etc, thus preventing them from contributing even in cases where they would otherwise be very helpful, then it would be contra productive, but that is the culture determining it, lowering their biological value, not the actual biology.

So this is poorly worded according to you. What you meant was: Therefore it’s bad? Because your “reasoned” approach seemed like you were appealing to biology. But really this is just sneaking in your earlier proposition that God says it’s bad. Because non reproductive acts are bad because god says so. I assume you apply this uniformly. When heterosexuals participate in non reproductive sex acts (oral a***) are these bad too? At any rate the reasoning here boils down to my interpretation of my church leaders interpretation of gods will says it’s bad.

Okay. You aren't the first to decline to have a substantive discussion about these topics, and to instead lean on emotionalisms and logical fallacies and walk away with "waste my time" and "I just can't" sorts of things. Again: I think the "Bigot!" schtick is so frequently utilized because it's all you've got. I can articulate a reasoned basis for my position. I don't think you can, either that or you are so immersed in your own worldview that you cannot accommodate the possibility that viewpoints divergent from yours might be reasonable. So you retreat to name-calling. And yet you appeal to biology to prove your morality. You say it's "biologically incoherent", therefore it's morally bad. I'm not saying it's morally good because it exists throughout the animal kingdom. Only that your claim that it's biologically incoherent is patently stupid and false. Things in biology serve more than one purpose all the time. Same sex behaviors in the animal kingdom (including humans) fulfill many biological imperatives. You do realize that biological organisms have more than the single purpose of reproduction right? Biologically and physiologically, yes. Hence Paul's description of same-sex behavior as "chang{ing} the natural use into that which is against nature" and "leaving the natural use" (Romans 1:26-27). In every material respect, same-sex behavior doesn't make sense. It is a genetic dead end. The only biological imperative in sexual interest is procreation, and same-sex behavior is entirely and intrinsically devoid of procreative capacity. The plumbing does not work. One of the two essential gametes for life is necessarily absent. I did not say “it appears in nature, therefore it is good.” That is the move I rejected. You are now saying I made the mirror-image move: “biology, therefore immoral.” I did not do that. What I used biology for is narrower. Sex in sexually dimorphic animals is organized toward gametes and the possibility of offspring. Same-sex sexual behavior does not do that. Call it a dead end for generation. That is not “patently stupid.” You already granted it: if the goal is to reproduce, this will not get you there. “Biologically incoherent” is perhaps not the best phrasing. A more careful sentence is: as a reproductive act, it does not cohere. It can still exist. It can still have other effects—bonding, rank, play. Hearts can pound from fear as well as from love. That does not mean the heart is “for” fear. Multiple effects are not multiple natures of the organ. Yes, organisms do more than reproduce. They eat, flee, groom, sleep, form troops. Nobody denies that. The question was what this act is, the one that uses the genitals to pass on gametes and genetic information. You answer by listing other goods a life can have (friends, a happy social world) and other functions behavior in general can have. That does not give same-sex intercourse a generative purpose. It changes the subject from the act to the organism’s whole résumé. So the two uses of “biology” are not the same: Yours (as I hear it): animals do it and animals have many aims, so calling it biologically pointless is false. Mine: the sexual system is for generation and union of the two sexes; same-sex use does not generate; that fact is relevant to a moral view in which sex does have that purpose. The first is ethology. The second is teleology plus an ethic. You can reject the ethic. You cannot treat “organisms aren’t only baby factories” as a demonstration that the sexual act has no distinctive purpose. I still need an arbiter for right and wrong. Is it just BCA for you ("between consenting adults")? Morality is contingent on two people consenting to engage in an act? Biology does not baptize the act. It also does not make “dead end for generation” a false statement. Thanks, -Smac

I can't tell if you are serious or not. I am serious. I think matters of this sort deserve sober and respectful and measured reasoning and discussion. No joking going on here. Well, talk to SU, who said that same-sex behavior "fulfill{s} biological imperatives." As for "claimed otherwise," I think you are right. But that means we can dispense with the notion that there are not qualitative differences between same-sex and opposite-sex relationships, marriage, sexual behavior, and so on. Of course there are. On an individual level, yes. As a category, though, there is a world of difference. Sex between a man and a woman is, in my view, intended for two purposes: procreation and the strengthening of the marital union. Same-sex marriage categorically fails to fulfill these purposes. Again, I am serious. You just agreed with the only biological claim I made: same-sex sexual behavior does not reproduce. “Nobody has claimed otherwise” is not a win. It is you leaving the field and opening a different one. I was not asking whether two men can be friends, or whether a household can be affectionate. I was saying what sex is, and what marriage is when it is tied to that. “If your goal is a happy life full of people you love” is a goal anyone can have without calling the relationship a marriage and without using sex as the seal. Friends, siblings, members of society, etc. already do that. You smuggled sex back in as the thing that makes this bond special, then said sex is a tiny part of marriage and I am "weird" for noticing it. Pick a lane, please. If procreation “might not be a consideration at all,” you have not answered a view in which generation is part of what the institution is. You have announced a different institution: a companionate contract. Fine. Say that. Do not pretend it is a reply to “the plumbing does not work.” It is a reply to a question I did not ask: “Can people be happy without making a baby tonight?” “Sex is a tiny part of marriage; procreation is a tiny part of sex.” This is just frequency again. Most hours of a marriage are not intercourse. Most acts of intercourse do not conceive. That does not make generation a hobby and companionship the essence. Most of a farm’s hours are not harvest, but harvest is still what the farm is for. You are using how often the act succeeds at one of its ends to deny that it has that end. Calling that an “obsession with sex” is just scolding the person who refused to let marriage be redefined as friendship-plus-coitus. The thread is about whether same-sex sexual conduct and same-sex marriage are the same kind of thing as husband-and-wife union. Sex is not a side topic in that fight. It is the subject. Thanks, -Smac And the fallacies continue: Straw man. Treats “same-sex sex has no generative capacity” as if I had said “gay people cannot have friends.” Moving the goalposts. Biology conceded; the test becomes “happy life / social structure.” Motte and bailey. Motte: nobody thinks two men make a baby. Bailey: therefore marriage need not have anything to do with generation. Equivocation. “Relationship” slides from sexual/marital pair to “people you love and rely on.” Accident / frequency. Tiny share of hours that are sex, or of sex that conceives → those are not what the institution is about. Ad hominem / tone policing. “Your obsession with sex is weird” attacks the speaker for staying on the actual subject. Red herring. Friendship and compatibility do not speak to whether the sexual act is X or Y.

The latter. The origins of the priesthood ban are not that. I'm amazed that you don't see leading people astray as being synonymous with leading people away from the truth. No, I don't view it that way. "{L}eading people away from the truth" in the context of some leaders teaching traditions about the priesthood as "doctrine" is certainly an error. And a fairly serious one. The early leaders of the Church lacked both experience and training and resources to unequivocally differentiate between "doctrine" and opinion, tradition, policy, and so on. Now that we are 200 years into this experiment, are the Brethren still doing that, or have they long since corrected course? If "leading people astray" = "leading people away from the truth," and if "leading people away from the truth" = "erring in pronouncements of doctrine," I can't get on board that that. It requires us to get considerably closer to infallibility than I think we ought. Rinse and repeat: It [the current posture of the LDS Church] was characterized in that way, yes. Whether it actually was, however, is something we cannot state with clarity and confidence. I don't follow. You are saying that "we cannot state with clarity and confidence" the "current posture of the LDS Church?" If you believe the Lord didn't institute the priesthood ban, then you believe the LDS Church followed the commandments of men. Not sure about "commandments." Culture and tradition and unfortunate racialist proclivities, yes, some/many of the Latter-day Saints and their leaders did that. Or maybe the phrase "leading people astray" has particularized significance, about which we continue to disagree. It seems like you're saying Official Declaration #2 is the actual revelation they received from God and not something they wrote of their own impressions after prayer. It is a recorded description of the revelation, yes. I don't know if the revelation involved precise words from God or something else. I don't think we can say we know this. These sound pretty clear to me: • 2 Nephi 5:21 - "And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them". • Alma 3:6 - "And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men". • 3 Nephi 2:15 - "And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites". "Skin of blackness" has been shown, fairly persuasively in my mind, to be open to a variety of interpretations. Yes, it may literally mean an increased amount of melanin, but it may also mean other things that, in my view, make quite a bit more sense. How do you know that? I'm from Iowa – show me a recorded revelation from God for the existence of a heavenly mother. I thought Missouri was the "Show Me" state. I cannot show you a recorded revelation. I do not have access to the Church's archives. If you mean "{N}o recorded revelation for a heavenly mother {has been published to the world}," then I would agree with that. I think that's quite different from saying there is no such "recorded revelation" at all. Who is the God and Father of the LDS Heavenly Mother when she was living on another world with a man who would later become her husband and Heavenly Father of our Earth? We don't have this information, and this characterization is questionable. It sounds like you're saying that people can teach falsely about the Father and the Son and still be saved. Yes. Repentance is a wonderful thing. Sinning in ignorance is a troubling thing. Testing the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price is the hinge for the LDS belief in a restored gospel. Essentially, yes. Not sure how this is responsive to my point: That some of Joseph's successors allowed and propagated substantial error in the Church (non-revelatory justifications for the priesthood ban) is not a hinge or a pivot point or a litmus test for the "legitimacy of the Restored Gospel." They believe their Quran is the Word of God. Yes. But I don't think the "Jesus" referenced in the Quran is numerically distinct from the "Jesus" referenced in the New Testament. Yes. I think denying the deity of Christ is fairly characterized as "leading people astray." But then, OD-1's reference to "astray" has no application to Muslims. Here's a better analogy. Person A says, "I believe Barack Obama was a great President". Person B says, "I believe Barack Obama was a terrible President". Person C comes along and says, "Barack Obama is Chinese, born in China, single, 40 years old. He can never be the US President. Persons A and B are not referring to the same person as C. It is not differing perspectives, but rather different facts about two separate Obamas. I disagree. I think Persons A and B are obviously talking about the same "Barack Obama" that preceded Donald J. Trump as POTUS. As for Person C, I don't know if that person is referring to the same "Barack Obama" that preceded Donald J. Trump as POTUS, or about some other person. Thanks, -Smac

No, heavenly beings. My opinion is these are pre-incarnate human spirits that became archangels. Possibly good at one time, maybe becoming subject to pride, and zealous to test/tempt humanity, and a tendency to rebel against the Lord and are doomed to become mortal and die. (Psalm 82) Absolutely no one in those six verse is called the only true God. Contextually, the prophets say the Lord is Israel's one God... Of just Israel. Jesus, the Lord, says the Father, not the Lord, is the only true God. His God. These are real but derivatived gods of not Israel. Infinite Regress is not canon. Then biblical council of gods are lower beings, but still heavenly... for now.

@smac97I'm sorry, but I just can't with this lol. I'll try with the first part. You said: It's also "bad" because it is biologically incoherent. I said: Same sex relationships exist throughout nature. They fulfill many biological imperatives, like companionship, and love. Your response: And yet you appeal to biology to prove your morality. You say it's "biologically incoherent", therefore it's morally bad. I'm not saying it's morally good because it exists throughout the animal kingdom. Only that your claim that it's biologically incoherent is patently stupid and false. Things in biology serve more than one purpose all the time. Same sex behaviors in the animal kingdom (including humans) fulfill many biological imperatives. You do realize that biological organisms have more than the single purpose of reproduction right?

Here is my point. Oh, boy. The white smoke! Among other things, yes. I also believe God exists, is involved in our lives, and has ordered marriage and sexual behaviors in ways intended to facilitate marriage and children. I also believe that sex is important and so, therefore, are sexual ethics. I also believe that everyone has their own set of sexual ethics, a framework for differentiating X (appropriate and permissible sex) and Y (inappropriate and impermissible sex). I also believe that the Church, both collectively and as to its constituent members, has the same right as you and CB and SU and everyone else to define and adopt and proclaim a set of sexual ethics. I also believe that the Church's differentiation of X from Y is reasonable. It's not arbitrary. It's not absurd. It's not immoral. Its purposes and effects can be articulated. It is well within the bounds of reasonableness. I also believe that treating the Church's Law of Chastity as per se "bigotry" is unreasonable. That's just a cop-out and a diversion and a logical fallacy. Well, I'm certainly willing to listen to you lay this argument out. As I see it, there is nothing new or innovative in the propositions I laid out here. The question of the existence of God predates our discussion by millennia, so characterizing that as ad hoc (that is, "formed or used for specific or immediate problems or needs") does not seem to work. The importance of sex, the ubiquity of sexual ethics, the reasonableness of the Church's set of ethics, and so on, are all matters that have been discussed for a very, very long time. Nothing "ad hoc" about them. Nor is my recitation of them ad hoc, as I have expressed them, or variations of them, many times over the years. Almost all of the propositions I posted I copied and pasted from letters, posts, personal essays and journal entries written over many years. I didn't make them up for this discussion. And yet both are forms of "marriage" between a man and a woman. Ipso facto, they reflect my primary point: that God limits sex to within the bounds of marriage, which therefore results in prohibition of things like fornication, adultery, same-sex behavior, and so on. You are not refuting my account of marriage. You are reading every ancient sex rule as if it were the 2026 Handbook, finding that it is not, and calling the difference a contradiction of “what God values.” That only works if the Law of Chastity is a single flat codebook that never had a standing rule, a commanded exception, and a later withdrawal. That is not how I read scripture, and it is not how the Church teaches it. Here is what I have claimed: X is sex between a husband and a wife. The purposes I named — a covenant union of a man and a woman, and the possibility of children — are the purposes of that act and that institution as the Church teaches them now. I also said child welfare and a mother-and-father home are reasons that institution makes sense. I did not say: “Every arrangement God has ever tolerated or regulated was designed to maximize modern child-outcome metrics.” You are burning a thesis I did not write. Having said that, yes, biblical law did not uniformly companionate monogamy with mutual fidelity as the modern West means it. A married man’s sex with an unbetrothed woman was not “adultery” in that code. The harm the statute names is often the other man’s claim (husband or father). I grant the legal history. It does not get you to “therefore God does not care about generation, or mothers and fathers, or a man–woman pair.” Ancient Israel approached things a bit differently that we do today, but not in ways that fundamentally depart from the X / Y differentiation I have presented. Married (ishah, another man’s wife): Sex with her is adultery. Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22. Both die. The statute names his neighbor’s wife. It does not say “a husband who cheats on his own wife.” The legally protected party is the husband of the woman. Betrothed (already bound to a man, not yet living with him as in a completed “home-taking”): In Israelite practice betrothal was not “we’re dating.” It was a binding reservation: bride-price in motion, she is his. Deuteronomy 22:23–24 treats sex with a betrothed virgin in the city like adultery: both die, “because he hath humbled his neighbour’s wife.” The text already calls her the neighbor’s wife. That is why I used “unbetrothed.” Betrothed counts as claimed. Unbetrothed virgin (no husband, no fiancé): She is still under her father. Sex with her was not construed as "adultery," but as damage to her marriageability and to her father’s household. Exodus 22:16–17: the man pays the bride-price and must marry her unless the father refuses; the money is still due. Deuteronomy 22:28–29 (the “seize” case): fifty shekels, he must marry her, no divorce. In other words, the cited law is repairing a property-and-honor loss, not punishing a married man for breaking faith with his wife. A widow, divorcée, or foreign woman outside those boxes is a further gray zone in the narratives (Judah and Tamar, Samson, etc.). The statutes you were cited are mostly about the virgin and the neighbor’s wife. "Unbetrothed" meant "not promised to another man." Therefore sex with her cannot be “adultery” as that code defines it, even if the man already has a wife. His existing marriage is not what the statute is protecting. What it did not mean, though, is that the Torah is a romance novel in which everyone is free. It does not mean God had no interest in generation or in male–female pairing. It means the crime labeled adultery is “taking what belongs to another man,” not “a husband failed his own covenant of exclusivity.” That is the gap you are using. You are right about the legal definition, but I think you are incorrect if you are treating that definition as the eternal content of “chastity” or as a veto on husband-and-wife fidelity as the Church teaches it now. That is, in my view, a different legal category. Same culture of men, women, and belonging—not two husbands, and not “companionship is the point.” Every one of these arrangements is still a man and a woman. Hagar is not a second husband. A concubine is not a same-sex spouse. The Torah is regulating sexual access to women in a clan society. It is not licensing two men, and it is not teaching that sex has no generative purpose. You are treating “the husband’s duty of exclusive fidelity was weaker in that code” as if it erased the structure of the pair. It did not. I do not read 132 as “God merely tolerated Abraham because of culture.” The text says He commanded some of it. No dispute there. Jacob 2 says the same thing from the other side: monogamy is the standing law; plurality is an exception when the Lord commands it to raise up seed. That is still marriage as man-and-each-wife, not a sexual commune and not same-sex marriage, and not a license for sex outside of marriage. “They belong to him” in 132 is covenant language in a nineteenth-century revelation. It is ugly to modern ears. It is not a proof that the Lord was indifferent to children. The stated point of the exception, in Jacob and in the plurality passages, is seed—not a man’s trophy case as the highest good. Emma’s warning is in the text. So is the command that the wives be given and received under specified conditions, not grabbed. I am not going to pretend 132 reads like a contemporary pastoral letter. I also will not pretend it authorizes the thing we are arguing about. It authorizes more wives, when commanded. It does not authorize two husbands, or sex between persons of the same sex, or extra-marital sex, and it does not say children are a matter of indifference. An apostle’s family going hungry while other mouths in the same compound had bread is a real cost. I acknowledge that. It is evidence that commanded plurality was hard on some women and children. It is not evidence that God “doesn’t include their welfare in the calculus,” and it is not evidence that a same-sex household is therefore a marriage, and it is not evidence that God condones sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman. Hard commanded exceptions can be costly and still not rewrite the standing law. OD-1 ended the practice. The Church does not now teach men to take ten virgins. You are using a withdrawn exception, and the worst cases under it, to veto the present teaching. I don't think that works. If I said “plurality was always the optimal child-welfare system,” you would have a point. But I didn't, so you don't. Rather, I said the present law ties sex to a husband and a wife, and that a child is owed, so far as the intended design goes, a mother and a father. Pointing at 1853 hardship shows that other goods (obedience in a commanded plurality, building a people in the desert) sometimes sat in tension with that. Tension is not identity-theft of the current doctrine. 1 Corinthians 7 is eschatological counsel in a “present distress.” He prefers undivided devotion; he still treats marriage as licit and sex within it as a duty the spouses owe each other. Genesis, the Proclamation, and “multiply and replenish” are still in the canon. Latter-day Saints do not take Pauline preference for celibacy as the standing law of the Church. An apostle telling a church under pressure that singleness can be better for mission is not God announcing that generation does not matter, or that same-sex behavior is licit, or that sex outside of man-woman marriage is licit. That question assumes the current Law of Chastity is a novelty and that earlier prophets were simply wrong until this decade. The other reading—the one I have been using—is this: Monogamy is, per Jacob 2, the standing law; some patriarchs and some nineteenth-century Saints were commanded into an exception that was still man–woman marriage; the exception was later withdrawn; living prophets now teach the standing law and apply it to a question those chapters were not asking (whether two people of the same sex are married). That is not “God finally became honest.” It is dispensation-specific guidance, which is already how we treat diet, war, gathering, and priesthood administration. You can, of course, reject living prophets. Then we are having the authority debate. What you cannot do is take every ancient regulation of male sexual access, plus one costly plural household, plus Paul on celibacy, staple them into a single “what God values” pamphlet, and then declare that child welfare and procreative purpose were never anything but "ad hoc" cover for “God said no to gay sex.” The purposes of marriage were articulated well before Obergefell. The texts you cite do not teach same-sex marriage. They do not teach that sex is essentially about companionship or an itch to scratch. They teach, in various ways, that sexual relations belong between a man and a woman who is a man’s wife or concubine under the law of that time—and, in our time, that the Lord requires monogamous husband-and-wife chastity. That is a change in scope and administration. It is not a change into the ethic you are defending. If you want to work a passage, pick one. I am not inclined to agree that an unsorted stack of Torah, 132, and Corinthians has refuted the Law of Chastity as taught now, or the propositions I have laid out previously. By the way, I hope you will respond to and critique those propositions. Thanks, -Smac ETA: Catalog of logical fallacies: Presentism. Ancient property-and-clan statutes are judged as if they were supposed to be the 2026 Handbook. Equivocation. “Adultery” in Torah ≠ “adultery” in current Church teaching; using the first to void the second is a word-swap. False equivalence. Commanded polygyny / concubinage (man + women) = same-sex marriage. Straw man. “You think gay people shouldn’t have families” / “welfare was never a real reason.” Undistributed middle. Some commanded arrangements were hard on children → therefore child welfare cannot be part of the purpose of marriage now. Selective flattening. Paul on celibacy is treated as the Lord’s last word on generation; Jacob 2 and the Proclamation are ignored. Moving the goalposts. If any prior dispensation fails a modern child-welfare audit, present teaching is “ad hoc.”

Those earlier teachings are not accepted as the truth today. Here are two more from John Taylor, third President of the LDS Church: "And after the flood we are told that the curse that had been pronounced upon Cain was continued through Ham's wife, as he had married a wife of that seed. And why did it pass through the flood? Because it was necessary that the devil should have a representation upon the earth as well as God" (Journal of Discourses, volume 22, page 304). "When he destroyed the inhabitants of the antediluvian world, he suffered a descendant of Cain to come through the flood in order that he might be properly represented upon the earth" (Journal of Discourses, volume 23, page 336). You never did say if you believed the truth as stated by George Q. Cannon as the thread started. Care to try? These are two independent things. Is the Watchtower Jesus (Michael the Archangel) the same person as Jesus (God)? What Christs were Matthew 24:24 and Mark 13:22 referring to – the same Christ or different Christs? Worshipping a being (Jesus) who you believe became the first spirit child of heavenly parents and who then became a God is distinct from the scriptural Christ. The New Testament warns against false Christs. One such false Christ is the JW version, Michael the Archangel. They are walking with a false Christ. See my last reply. The LDS Church's doctrine that Jesus was ranked as a God when he reached some level of intelligence is not an opinion.

I think maybe that's activity rate as opposed to self-reported affiliation?

There are currently 50 states in the United States of America. Is this a characterization or something we can state with clarity and confidence? Is the teaching of Jesus being the first born child of heavenly parents just a characterization of something the LDS Church can state with clarity and confidence using the scriptures? I'm amazed that you don't see leading people astray as being synonymous with leading people away from the truth. These teachings led the Latter-day Saints away from the truth and into believing falsehoods. I know you don't consider this as the LDS being led astray by false teachings. Let me borrow one of your earlier statements and apply it to what you said: It [meaning "they are not doctrine"] was characterized in that way, yes. Whether it actually was, however, is something we cannot state with clarity and confidence. Rinse and repeat: It [the current posture of the LDS Church] was characterized in that way, yes. Whether it actually was, however, is something we cannot state with clarity and confidence. If you believe the Lord didn't institute the priesthood ban, then you believe the LDS Church followed the commandments of men. Maybe false teachings do not lead people away from the truth in your mind. The Governing Body of the Jehovah's Witnesses lead their people astray (away from the truth) when they teach Jesus is Michael the Archangel, that he returned invisibly in 1914 and made them (members of that body) the faithful and discreet slave to dispense spiritual food to the world, and that only 144,000 belong to the Bride of Christ. It seems like you're saying Official Declaration #2 is the actual revelation they received from God and not something they wrote of their own impressions after prayer. These sound pretty clear to me: • 2 Nephi 5:21 - "And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them". • Alma 3:6 - "And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men". • 3 Nephi 2:15 - "And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites". I know this. But I don't believe it. I'm from Iowa – show me a recorded revelation from God for the existence of a heavenly mother. If a revelation only comes from the First Presidency these days, then let's cast aside all the doctrines in the Religion 430-431 Doctrines of the Gospel Student Manual since many therein are not canonized. Who is the God and Father of the LDS Heavenly Mother when she was living on another world with a man who would later become her husband and Heavenly Father of our Earth? Christ atoned for original guilt (original sin). Here are just two: "It is most natural and just that he who commits the wrong should pay the penalty—atone for his wrongdoing. Therefore, when Adam was the transgressor of the law, justice demanded that he, and none else, should answer for the sin and pay the penalty with his life. But Adam, in breaking the law, himself became subject to the curse, and being under the curse could not atone, or undo what he had done. Neither could his children, for they also were under the curse, and it required one who was not subject to the curse to atone for that original sin. Moreover, since we were all under the curse, we were also powerless to atone for our individual sins" (Teachings of Joseph Fielding Smith, chapter 3). "There are two general divisions of sin, viz., original and actual. Original sin is that which was committed by the parents of the race, the consequences of which pass upon all of their posterity. Actual sin is that committed by each individual and for which he is personally responsible. Adam and Eve broke the divine law given to them in the garden, the penalty for which was death, natural and spiritual ; the first being the separation of the spirit and the body, and the second, banishment from the presence of God. The taint descended to their offspring. He died not only to atone for original sin but for actual sin, and to become the mediator between God and man. His blood was shed for the sins of the whole world. For original sin unconditionally, for actual sin conditionally" (Mormon Doctrine Plain and Simple). Even a false religion like Hinduism can be a moral hinge for its adherents. It sounds like you're saying that people can teach falsely about the Father and the Son and still be saved. Testing the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price is the hinge for the LDS belief in a restored gospel. Despite the claim made by the Book of Mormon (Mormon 7:8–9), not everyone who believes the Bible also believes the Book of Mormon, or vice versa. The LDS Church's Guide to the Scriptures even states, "The Book of Mormon was written for the intent that we may believe the Bible". My faith in the Bible does not depend on Joseph Smith. They believe their Quran is the Word of God. Muslims don't view the Quran or the Hadiths as providing different perspectives or opinions. The Quran (which denies the deity of Christ and his crucifixion) is leading Muslims astray (away from the truth). Here's a better analogy. Person A says, "I believe Barack Obama was a great President". Person B says, "I believe Barack Obama was a terrible President". Person C comes along and says, "Barack Obama is Chinese, born in China, single, 40 years old. He can never be the US President. Persons A and B are not referring to the same person as C. It is not differing perspectives, but rather different facts about two separate Obamas. Now I turn to some biblical concepts: Matthew 24:24 - "For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect". Mark 13:22 - "For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect". 2 Corinthians 11:4 - "For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him". Paul is warning the Corinthians about teachers who were presenting a Jesus different from the one Paul and the apostles had preached. A closely related passage is Galatians 1:6–9, where Paul twice warns about "another gospel": "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed". You gave me an question spanning different time frames so I had to consider all options. Person A's statement was most accurate decades ago – LDS leaders previously taught the ban and the reason for it were of God. Person B's statement is more accurate nowadays – "the priesthood ban and the reason for it were not of God, but from man". Previously I said: Person A's statement was most accurate decades ago – LDS leaders previously taught the ban and the reason for it were of God. Person B's statement is more accurate nowadays – "the priesthood ban and the reason for it were not of God, but from man". How do you view either of these statements as being inaccurate?

As I previously noted: I can articulate a reasoned basis for my position. I don't think you can, either that or you are so immersed in your own worldview that you cannot accommodate the possibility that viewpoints divergent from yours might be reasonable. So you don't even try to engage in substantive discussion. Just emotionalisms and logical fallacies. I don’t deny that same-sex sexual behavior shows up in a lot of species. That is a fact about animals. It is not a fact about morality, about right and wrong. “It exists in nature” only gets you to “it happens.” Infanticide, forced copulation, and eating the injured also happen. Yet by your reasoning these behaviors are good and moral solely because they 'happen in nature.'" Nobody treats those as a charter for human conduct. If “animals do it” were a moral rule, it would license a long list of things every serious ethic rejects. That is the slide from is to ought. A male penguin mounting another male also does not tell us what sex is for in a human life (or other forms of life), or whether a covenant called marriage should include that pairing. The penguin has no concept of marriage, chastity, or obligation. At most it tells you a nervous system can aim sexual behavior at the same sex. That is interesting for ethology. It is not an argument. I would not rest the case on “anything that does not produce offspring is biologically impossible.” Evolution is messier than that. A behavior can persist as a byproduct, as cheap noise, or as social glue in a troop. Grant the biologists that much. It still does not decide a human moral question. Function in a macaque is not permission for a person. If the claim is, as you have put it, "moral and good," then I would like to hear what you have to say. What is it about same-sex behavior that makes it "moral and good?" Please identify and explain the standard: God and commandment, a natural-law account of what human sex is for, consent-plus-harm, something. “Nature did it” is not a standard. It is a field guide asked to do a theologian’s job. So yes, the behavior occurs in nature. No, that does not make it moral, immoral, or morally required. Those are different questions, and they need an arbiter the woods do not supply. Lots of logical fallacies going on here. Appeal to emotion. “But they love each other” is meant to make dissent look cruel. Love is not a premise that entails “therefore this sex is licit.” Category mistake. Companionship and love are goods of relationship. They do not specify the kind of relationship or the use of sex. Friendship already has those goods. Equivocation on “biological.” Pair-bonding and affection have biological roots. That does not make every sexual expression of affection a “biological imperative,” any more than grief makes revenge an imperative. Is/ought, again. “Humans long for this” does not yield “they may do this sexually.” Special pleading. If love-plus-companionship justified sex, it would justify a lot of pairings nobody in that conversation wants to bless. They will smuggle limits back in (adults, two people, not relatives). Those limits come from some other ethic. They should say which one. Companionship and love are real. People in same-sex relationships can have both. That is not in dispute. What does not follow is that those goods are a “biological imperative” that licenses a sexual pairing, or that they tell you what sex and marriage are for. A "biological imperative," in the strict sense, is something like eat, flee danger, reproduce. Same-sex behavior is not a "biological imperative." Companionship and love are human goods. They are not a reproductive function, and they are not unique to a sexual relationship. Siblings, friends, parents and children, and celibate religious communities all do companionship and love without treating that as a reason to have sex. If the argument is “this pair loves each other, therefore the sexual conduct is moral,” the standard has quietly become affection plus consent. That is a different ethic than “sex belongs to husband and wife.” If that is where you are going, please say that plainly. Do not dress it up as biology. Love does not rewrite the act. Two men can be loyal and kind. That does not make their sexual conduct the same thing as the union that can generate a child and bind a mother and father to that child. You can honor the friendship and still say the sex is Y, not X. We've already determined that even if we gave Same sex couples the ability to produce biological offspring, that wouldn't change your view on anything. Because the "fix" is technological, biological. No, it's a real one. I think you just will not or cannot address it substantively. That is simply not so. The "vast vast vast majority of sex" is between a man and a woman. Such behavior categorically has procreative capacity. Which has no bearing on whether opposite-sex sexual behavior, as a category, has procreative capacity. It does. It is fundamentally unserious to say otherwise. Likewise, same-sex sexual behavior, as a category, lacks procreative capacity. It is unserious to say otherwise, or to say "Well hey, maybe someday technology will help us overcome that biological incoherence." If that were to happen, that would be an expression of technology, not biology. I think you may be misunderstanding me. When I say "procreative capacity," I mean sexual behavior as a category. Sex between the two sexes has procreative capacity. This is so even if an individual instance is an exception. Similarly, same-sex sexual behavior as a category lacks procreative capacity. There is no way for two men to procreate together, nor two women. Well, that's an interesting perspective. I would like to understand it better. In my view, the primary purpose of sex is procreation. In a biological setting, that's beyond dispute. In a Latter-day Saint paradigm, the primary purposes of sex are A) procreation, and B) strengthening the union between a husband and wife. So we agree in part. That's something. You are running together things that are not the same. 1. “It exists throughout nature.” That is a description of animal behavior. It is not a moral argument. Infanticide exists throughout nature too. Is is not ought. Logical Fallacy Count: Naturalistic fallacy. 2. “Companionship and love are biological imperatives.” These are not "imperatives." They are human goods. They are not a warrant for a particular sexual use of the body. Friends and siblings have companionship and love without anyone calling that a reason for sex. Logical Fallacy Count: Appeal to emotion, plus a category mistake: a good of relationship is treated as if it specified the kind of sexual act. 3. The infertile-couple / birth-control point does not erase the procreative claim. Nobody serious said “every sexual act must produce a baby or it is worthless.” The claim is about the kind of union, not a fertility test administered to each night. A husband and wife are still a man and a woman joined in the kind of pair that can generate a child, even when this cycle, this age, or this surgery means they will not. Menopause, vasectomy, and contraception are facts about a given act or a given season. They do not turn that pair into a different kind of pair. In contrast, a same-sex pair is not an infertile marriage. It is, instead, a pair that, by the structure of the two bodies, is not the generative kind at all. It categorically lacks procreative capacity. You are treating “most particular acts do not conceive” as if it proved “generation is not what that kind of sex is for.” That is like saying, because most meals in a rich country are not eaten at the edge of starvation, nutrition is not what eating is for, and therefore the “primary purpose” of eating is companionship at the table. Frequency does not rewrite function. That is a fallacy of composition / accident: what is true of many instances is treated as if it canceled the point of the kind. Birth control is also a weak support for your conclusion. People block conception because they know what the act is ordered to do. You do not put a dam on a dry wash. Same-sex couples don't practice birth control because what they are doing sexually lacks any procreative capacity. 4. “If they could make biological offspring you still would not change your mind, therefore procreation was never your real objection.” That does not make the objection fake. It means the objection was never “count the babies.” On my view, X is sex between a husband and a wife for two purposes (procreation and strengthening the union). That is a man and a woman in a covenant ordered to union and to the possibility of children. A laboratory trick that lets two men produce a child would still not make them husband and wife. It would be a manufacturing workaround around the kind of pair they are. You asked a consequentialist question (“what if the outcomes looked the same?”) and then treated a non-consequentialist answer as a gotcha. That is moving the goalposts, and it is a straw man of the actual claim. I also do not take “connection and companionship” as the primary purpose of sex merely because many acts do not conceive. That is your redefinition. It is not a finding. You still have to explain why those goods require this use of genitals rather than friendship, and why the parts are irrelevant to an act whose whole design in mammals is reproductive dimorphism. 5. What I am actually saying, without the caricatures. Same-sex sexual behavior can involve affection. That does not settle whether it belongs in X. Animal behavior does not settle it. A thought experiment about artificial gametes does not settle it. If your standard is “they love each other and most sex isn’t baby-making anyway,” please say that. That is an ethic of fulfillment and consent. It is not a rebuttal of a view that says sex has a purpose, and that purpose is not whatever a pair finds companionable. Who cares? There are many things in the constitution that are good and right. Many that were wrong. Slavery for instance. You misunderstand my point. The legal mechanisms whereby unenumerated constitutional rights matter. A lot. A lot. "Who cares?" comes across as a "Who cares? The ends justify the means."-style rationalization. That is the sort of "bad" I had in mind. “Who cares?” only works if we were scoring moral vibes. We are not. I said the legal basis for turning same-sex marriage into a federal constitutional right was poor. That is a claim about Obergefell’s reasoning: unenumerated rights, “ordered liberty,” history and tradition, Glucksberg, and a Court writing a definition of marriage that the text does not contain. You can think the policy outcome is kind and still think the opinion is a bad piece of constitutional law. Plenty of people do. Pointing at slavery does not touch that. Slavery was a textually accommodated wrong that took an amendment to kill. It was not a Supreme Court invention of a new “right” out of due-process poetry. If anything, the lesson of slavery is that constitutional text and structure matter, and that we change them in the open—by Article V—not by a bare majority - five justices - deciding that "mystery" and "meaning" have now evolved. Logical Fallacy: Reductio plus false equivalence. “The Constitution has contained good things and bad things” is true, but also idle. It does not tell you whether this holding was a lawful reading or a policy preference in robes. If the answer to “was the reasoning sound?” is “who cares, slavery,” you have left the legal question. I care because once “I want this, therefore the Fourteenth Amendment contains it” is allowed, there is no principled stopping point (please note, again, how "limiting principles" appears to be something utterly beyond you and the things for which you advocate), and there is no reason for anyone else to respect the next invention they dislike. That is the issue. Not whether every clause in 1787 was morally clean. Also, we continue to catalog all sorts of logical fallacies: Whataboutism / tu quoque. “The Constitution once sheltered slavery” does not make Obergefell well reasoned. False equivalence. A written compromise later repealed by amendment ≠ a 2015 judicial creation of an unenumerated right. Red herring. “Who cares?” declines to meet the claim. Category error. Moral inventory of American history is not an account of due process doctrine. d Another bad faith argument. Another dodge. Another demonstration of my previous observation: that you are so immersed in your own worldview that you cannot accommodate even the possibility that viewpoints divergent from yours might be reasonable. So you summarily dismiss my arguments rather than address them with reasoning and evidence, and decline to advance your own argument. That is not a concession that swallows the point. It is a distinction you keep flattening. There are at least three questions here: Structure. A same-sex pair, by design, does not give a child both a mother and a father. That is a description of the household, not a mood. Two fathers are not a mother. Two mothers are not a father. No happiness survey erases that. Outcomes. How those children score on grades, income, or self-reported well-being. That is an empirical fight. It is not the same question as (1). What marriage is. Whether the institution is a husband–wife covenant ordered to that kind of union, or a companionate contract for any two adults. That is a moral and legal question. You asked a thought experiment about (2) and then treated my answer on (3) as proof that (1) was fake. That does not follow. I can believe all of this at once: a child in that home is missing a mother or a father; some of those children may do well on some metrics; I still would not call the pairing a marriage, and I still would not say the Church should bless the sexual conduct. “Better off in every category” would matter if my only standard were a spreadsheet of child outcomes. It is not. So refusing to let a hypo (an unsubstantiated and question-begging one) rewrite the definition is not bad faith. It is refusing to play a game where you change the scoreboard mid-play. If your ethic is “whatever arrangement produces the best average stats is the right arrangement,” say that. Then we can argue about the studies. Do not call a structural claim bad faith because it is not a utilitarian claim. A child can be fed, housed, and fond of her two dads and still have been designed out of a mother. Those sentences do not cancel each other. You only get “bad faith” by pretending I promised that outcomes were the whole argument. And more fallacies: Straw man. You recast “missing a mother or a father” as “I secretly think the kids always do worse, and I won’t admit it.” That was not the claim. Equivocation. “Better off” is treated as if it meant “nothing morally relevant is missing.” Stats are not the same as a mother. Category error. An answer about what marriage is is used to disqualify a claim about what the household lacks. Moving the goalposts. First: would better outcomes change your view of the morality of the union? Then: if no, you may not mention children at all. Poisoning the well. “Bad faith” attacks motive so you do not have to meet the sentence as written. False dilemma. Either you flip your entire view when handed a hypothetical dataset, or every child-related sentence was a pretext. It is not the same sentence. “God said so” is a command. “Sex has purposes, and this pairing does not have them” is a reason—an account of what the act is for. I can hold both. Revelation is how I think we know the purposes with authority. The purposes themselves are not a tautology. They are: binding a husband and a wife, and the possibility of children. A same-sex pairing is not that kind of union and does not have that kind of act. That is a description, not a shrug. You can, of course, reject the authority. That is a different debate (prophets, scripture, natural law). What you cannot do is pretend I offered no reason except a veto. I told you the telos, the ultimate end, purpose, goal. It is not solitary. There is much that comes before it. You answered by renaming the telos “God said so” so you would not have to discuss whether sex has a purpose at all. If your rule is “only reasons that would still move me if God were out of the picture count as reasons,” say that. Then we are doing secular philosophy, and the same structure remains: dimorphic bodies, a generative kind of pair, infertile opposite-sex couples still in that kind, same-sex couples not in it, and so on. You already tried to dissolve that with menopause and birth control. Frequency of non-conceiving acts does not erase the kind. So yes, I think God has spoken. No, that is not the entire content of the claim. The content is purpose. “There is no refutation” is just you declining to refute the purpose and unilaterally declaring victory. And more fallacies: Straw man. You reduced “divinely intended purposes” to a bare command with no inner structure. Equivocation. “Reason” is used to mean “reason I will accept without God.” Failure to convert you is treated as absence of a reason. Question-begging. You assume from the start that theological teleology cannot count, then announce there is nothing to refute. Collapse of knowing and content. How I claim to know the purpose (revelation) is not identical to what the purpose is said to be. This is kind of hilarious in a thread about surrogacy and how you think gay people shouldn't be allowed to have families. I don't think I have said that If I have, please point out where. What I have said is that same-sex couples and their sexual behavior lack procreative capacity. Hilarious is not an argument. Neither is “you don’t want gay people to have families.” I said a same-sex pairing is not a marriage in the older - and substantially more coherent - sense, and that a child in that home is, by design, without a mother or a father. That is not a ban on kindness, housing, or civil friendship. It is a claim about what the institution is. If you have to recast it as “no families,” you are not answering the claim. Sex frequency does not define the institution. A couple that has two children and then years of non-conceiving sex has not “severed” marriage from generation. They already did the thing the institution is built around, or they remain the kind of pair that does. You keep counting acts. I am talking about what marriage is for as a public form. Most conversations in a courtroom are not verdicts. That does not mean courts have been severed from judgment. No fertility quiz is not the confession you think it is. The state also does not quiz fiancés on whether they will be faithful. Nobody infers that fidelity has nothing to do with marriage. We do not administer a conception exam because the form is still a man and a woman, the kind of pair whose union is generative in kind. A same-sex pairing is not an infertile instance of that form. It is a different form. You are treating the absence of a bureaucratic filter as proof that the telos is gone. That is like saying, because we do not weigh every diner, nutrition is no longer what meals are. Surrogacy cuts against you, not for you. If marriage were still quietly assumed to be a generative union of the two spouses, you would not need a third party’s body to complete the picture because same-sex couples categorically lack procreative capacity. Surrogacy is what you reach for after you have already detached the child’s origin from the married pair. Pointing at that practice and saying “see, marriage isn’t about procreation” is pointing at the break and calling it the original design. The thought experiment still does not make the objection fake. “What if they could produce biological offspring?” asks whether I am a consequentialist about lab results. I am not. A manufactured child would still not make two men a husband and a wife, and it would still not give that child a mother in the home. Refusing to let a hypo rewrite the definition is not an admission that I never meant the definition. “Hashed and rehashed / none of this matters.” That is a fatigue argument. It is not a rebuttal. If you are done, be done. Do not declare the other side’s distinctions nonexistent because you are tired of hearing them. And more fallacies: Straw man / poisoning the well. “Shouldn’t be allowed to have families” is not what was said. Accident / frequency. 99.9% non-conceiving acts ≠ institution has no generative purpose. Equivocation. “Severed in practice by contraception and no quiz” is treated as “severed in concept.” False equivalence. Infertile or post-childbearing opposite-sex marriage = same-sex pairing. Boomerang. Surrogacy is evidence of the severance, not proof that the old concept was already empty. Goalpost / “fake objection.” Same move as before: if outcomes and gadgets would not flip the definition, you may not talk about generation at all. Here is a truncated recitation of the propositions I posted previously: What is your assessment of this proposition? Is it "reasonable" to believe that God exists, has a relationship with us, etc.? Or are all theists living entirely outside the bounds of reason? Thoughts? Is sex important or not? Is it a means to a biologically imperative end (procreation)? Or is it just an itch to scratch? Do you agree that sexual ethics are important? I assume you do, but you are not really articulating any coherent ethic, nor are you addressing the substance of mine. Is it "reasonable" to infer from Proposition 1 (that God exists and has a relationship with us) that God could have given us a set of sexual ethics whereby we govern our sexual impulses and behaviors? Do you agree or disagree that everyone has sexual ethics / boundaries / perimeters? Do you agree that you and I are the same insofar as we each claim to adhere to a sexual ethic, but that we differ as to the boundaries of that ethic (differentiating appropriate from inappropriate sexual behaviors)? Do you agree that the Latter-day Saints are, collectively and individually, as entitled as anyone else to publish their views on matters of sexuality, including differentiating between X and Y? Do you agree or disagree that the Law of Chastity is reasonable and defensible as the basis for a code of sexual ethics? That is is within the bounds of reasonableness? Have the Latter-day Saints made, in legal parlance, a prima facie case for how it differentiates X from Y? If so, do you maintain that this case is borne of "bigotry" and not reasoning? Is it possible that, regarding sexual ethics, there are viewpoints divergent from yours which are reasonable? Thanks, -Smac

Were Ra, Dagon, and Baal humans that were worshipped? Who is the only true God in these six verses? Deuteronomy 4:35 — "the LORD he is God; there is none else beside him." Deuteronomy 6:4 — "The LORD our God is one LORD." Isaiah 43:10 — "Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me." Isaiah 44:6 — "I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God." Isaiah 45:5 — "I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me." Isaiah 45:22 — "I am God, and there is none else." Is Baal an exalted man – a real heavenly deity? Previous LDS leaders taught an infinite regression of Gods as truth.

I can't tell if you are serious or not. Yes, if your goal is to reproduce, "same-sex behavior" isn't going to get you there. Nobody has claimed otherwise. Ever. But if your goal is to have a happy life with a social structure full of good people and friends that you can love, bond with, rely on, and be compatible with, then whether or not your relationship with them has procreative capacity isn't the only consideration, and might not be a consideration at all. For most people, sex is a tiny part of marriage. And procreation is a tiny part of sex. Your obsession with sex is weird.

For @Notatbm From the Keystone YouTube channel: "In April 2026, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints filed a federal lawsuit against the Open Stories Foundation (Mormon Stories) and Dr. John Dehlin, causing a stir of mixed reactions among members of the Church. Today I have the lead attorney of that very lawsuit, David Jordan, on the show to answer some tough questions, and even respond to a few public claims made by Dr. Dehlin. "David Jordan is the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah. He's currently a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP, specializes in commercial and complex civil litigation, and is currently spear-heading the Church’s ongoing lawsuit against John Dehlin and the Open Stories Foundation."

They didn't go after him before because his "trade dress" did not formerly mimic the Church's. Then he changed it, and that got the ball rolling. Doesn't matter if the stories sound outlandish or not. The problem is people who are unaware thinking that the podcast is affiliated with the Church. Go have a look at other anti-LDS channels. Mormon News Roundup. Nemo the Mormon. Mormonish. Generally Unquotable (almost all their videos are titled "Mormon News Updates"). How about Alyssa Grenfell and her mocking of temple rituals? Maybe the Church doesn't care if ex-members want to talk about it, but have a problem with those who try to imply that they are official Church information outlets by using Church trade dress? I suppose it's useless to try to convince you otherwise, but you're wrong. I'm posting a YouTube video today in this thread called "Church's attorney DEBUNKS Mormon Stories lawsuit rumors". It's an interview with the lead attorney on the case. Have a listen.

Here is my point. You defend your interpretation of marriage and the law of chastity by appealing to children’s welfare in terms of growing up in an optimal home, their right to both biological parents, the need to perpetuate the species, and how all of this benefits society. This all comes across as ad hoc rationalizations that contradict much of what’s in your scriptures and what they imply God values. Start with concubinage. There were two institutions for owning women and having a license to have sex with them: marriage and concubinage. The Bible distinguishes them (2 Samuel 5:13; Genesis 25:5–6). The Hebrew bible defines adultery differently than you do. You think adultery is having sex outside of your own marriage. In contrast, in biblical Hebrew law, adultery means having sex with another man’s wife or betrothed partner. Sex with a woman who is neither married nor betrothed is not classified as adultery, even if the man himself is married. See Leviticus 20:10. Deuteronomy 22:23–24 explains why the punishment is so harsh; it isn't because you betrayed your own wife by having sex with somebody else, it is because "he hath humbled his neighbour’s wife." The decisive marital status is hers, not his. There was no expectation of sexual fidelity on the part of the husband, and having sex with others didn't harm his wives and concubines. In contrast, Exodus 22:16–17 treats having sex with an unbetrothed virgin differently than having sex with somebody else’s wife: the man must pay the bride-price and marry her, unless her father refuses the marriage, in which case the payment remains due because her economic value to her father was still damaged. These rules make it clear that first and foremost, the law of chastity was about harming property that belong to other men (either the woman’s husband or father), and not about being sexually faithful to your own partner. A married man having sex with a woman who didn’t belong to somebody else was a no-harm-no-foul situation. And D&C 132 closes off the explanation that God merely tolerated these arrangements because of the surrounding culture. Verses 34–35 say he commanded Abraham’s union with Hagar. Verses 37–39 endorse the patriarchs’ concubines and say God gave David his wives and concubines. According to the D&C, these arrangements received explicit divine approval. Look at what the revelation promises Joseph: a throne (verse 49), rulership (verse 53), and a hundredfold increase in “houses and lands, wives and children” (verse 55). Wives and children are rewards bestowed on the man, along with houses and land. Emma, meanwhile, is threatened with destruction if she refuses the prescribed arrangement (verses 52–54). The man’s authority and promised glory are spelled out. So are the consequences for a wife who objects. The effect that all this has on the welfare of the children is not a consideration. Verses 61–63 authorize ten virgins under the prescribed conditions, explaining that the man does not commit adultery because “they belong to him.” But, of course, adding wives and children does not multiply the father’s time or income. Why would God command such things when they can be expected to harm children? The costs could be severe. In Sherilyn Farnes’s study published by BYU, Apostle Amasa Lyman’s household suffered persistent problems with financial support. He had eight wives and nearly forty children. In 1853, Eliza Partridge Lyman wrote: “I have lived without bread when some of the family [i.e. other wives and other children] had bread to throw to the pigs.” This was during his apostleship, years before his departure from the Church. Farnes also notes that high church office could bring pressure to take plural wives even when a man was not a good provider. Polygamy under Brigham Young wasn’t about an optimal family relationship that benefits children and society. Calling these sacrifices necessary for exaltation would concede my point: other religious objectives took priority over those children’s welfare. Why would God command arrangements that expose children to those costs? How does the father’s promised glory answer the child’s need for food and attention? If a man desires wives and concubines he can have them because he desires them and having them will give him glory. Their welfare isn’t part of the calculus. Then there is Paul, whose preference produces no children at all. In 1 Corinthians 7, he merely permits marital sex and tells spouses not to deprive each other (verses 3–5). But he prefers celibacy and recommends marriage for those unable to exercise self-control (verses 7–9). His reasoning concerns the present distress, the shortness of time, and undivided devotion to God (verses 26–35). Perpetuating the species is conspicuously absent from that argument and not something he valued. You seem to suggest that this is all just descriptive and that earlier prophets and apostles may have mistakenly attributed their cultural assumptions about marriage and sex to God. That is certainly conceivable. But assuming that the true law of chastity doesn't change with the times, why do you believe God’s pattern of revelation has now dramatically changed? Why is only God now telling prophets and apostles the truth about the laws of chastity when he didn’t do so before?