Having A Gay Old Time At Cnn

[Log]

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/17/gay-rights-activists-see-mormons-softening-attitudes-toward-their-community/?hpt=hp_c3

Whee.

[LDS_RM]

What is it you would like to discuss? I believe that "hate the sin and not the sinner" has long been the attitude of the LDS Church, but I think that message was not clear to many inside and outside the Church. I am sure it was a shock to many - inside and outside the Church - when the LDS Church stated its support for the non-discrimination ordinance in Salt Lake City. Given the issues that the Church has been vocal on, it is important that the Church also make clear that the LDS peoples must love their neighbors while not embracing their neighbors way of life, a message that I believe many have a difficult time understanding until they actually experience it.

[Log]

I dunno that I want to "discuss" any of it. Some things caught my eye.

Mitch Mayne seems to relish his role as a lightning rod.

Mayne, an openly gay Mormon who blogs about homosexuality and the church, received the calling – a term Mormons use for being invited into a church position – in August.

Mayne is now executive secretary in a San Francisco ward of the church.

...

Mayne said he believes the challenge is to convince church leaders that they don’t ever have to excommunicate gay members.

And he said the Proposition 8 campaign was the “least Christ-like thing we have ever done as a church.”

[Buzzard]

Quote

Mayne said he believes the challenge is to convince church leaders that they don’t ever have to excommunicate gay members.

And he said the Proposition 8 campaign was the “least Christ-like thing we have ever done as a church.”

I dunno that I want to "discuss" any of it. Some things caught my eye.

One guys opinion. He's entitled to it, I suppose. I don't think the church hunts down fornicators of any stripe, but if they want to remain/return to full fellowship and activity, past sins have to be dealt with.

And I keep going back to the words of Elder Oaks that in the eternal sense, being a sexually active gay person brings misery. In the interest of avoiding more conflict than this thread will already produce, I'll not go down that road any further.

[Calm]

don’t ever have excommunicate gay members

I can think of a number of reasons to excommunicate gay members....embezzlement, assault and battery, murder, etc.

Surely he doesn't mean that just because someone is gay they are somehow less accountable than anyone else.

[Zakuska]

I dunno that I want to "discuss" any of it. Some things caught my eye.

I look at the Prop.8 issue as a 'Title of Liberty' moment for church history. We stood as a church for that which is right. It didn't really matter if we won or lost. What mattered is we stood and bore our collective testimony to the plan of salvation and what is acceptable to God. Now if the worlds wants to reject that testimony and go on its merry-gay-way. Is another story all together. There is enough wheat among the tares that destruction is held at bay.

[Log]

I can think of a number of reasons to excommunicate gay members....embezzlement, assault and battery, murder, etc.

Surely he doesn't mean that just because someone is gay they are somehow less accountable than anyone else.

In context, he undoubtedly means "for having homosexual intercourse and related activities."

[Calm]

a church leadership position

We had a long discussion when this happen about whether or not a secretary held a leadership position....my feeling was 'no' since a secretary never teaches or instructs or presides in his capacity as a secretary (advising someone who holds a higher position is counseling at best, not leading). That would be like me saying my position as ward librarian is a leadership position.

add-on: I don't have the least issue with gays in leadership positions, I've known of some who were in actual leadership positions before Brother Mayne....the difference is they didn't blog about it or give it the appearance that their leaders were okay with them thinking about being involved in homosexual sexual behaviour such as Brother Mayne talks about likely happening in his future as it had happened in the past.

[Calm]

In context, he undoubtedly means "for having homosexual intercourse and related activities."

I know, I was just being nitpicky....feel like that today.

PS: Glad to see you posting....

[Log]

Thanks. I'm trying.

I looked up his blog; indeed that's what he meant: http://www.mitchmayne.blogspot.com/

Nowhere, in our doctrine, does it say that homosexuality (or adultery, or anything else we determine as a sin of a sexual nature) automatically qualifies for excommunication. There is no doctrine or law that mandates that outcome. Instead, there is a great deal of latitude granted to local leaders to determine the fate of those they serve. Being excommunicated for being gay (or being in a gay relationship) is not doctrine; it has simply become something that we culturally do as a faith...

[Calm]

Generally excommunication occurs for a sexual sin of that level when the person is unrepentant....I think that is mandated scripturally though I am too lazy today to look it up.

so if we are routinely excommunicating people

I doubt there ever was a church leader who looked on excommunication as a "routine".

I think the church deserved the black eye they received.

The balance in his compassion for others is astonishing....

It is going to take a lot of intentional effort to actually prove they are different,” Murray said. “That burden, because of the really public nature of their support of Prop 8, falls harder on the Mormon church than others.”

Obvious assumption here that the Church actually wants to "prove they are different".

“Mormonism doesn’t simply wash off,” she said, adding that the church can’t make it that “either you are gay or you are Mormon, or either you support gay rights or you support the church.”

It isn't the Church that is trying to "make it" this.

[Pahoran]

What part of this is news? It looks like a roundup of old-news stories by a journalist who judges the world -- or at least the Church of Jesus Christ -- by how nice it is to those who break the commandments.

Regards,

Pahoran