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New Church Policy?


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1 hour ago, smac97 said:

I do not understand what this means. 

Therein lies the problem.

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

That some have "gotten away with it" doesn't matter.  Secretive and undetected violations of the Law of Chastity are . . . still violations of the Law of Chastity.  That way my point.

Okay. Not sure why you felt compelled to aim that argument my direction, but whatever floats your boat.

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3 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

Yes, he was.  The danger has never been turning someone gay.  It's been about making gay relationships so acceptable in the Church that accepting everything except the sexual relations is the next step.

Then there remains only one step left.  If all today's youth grow up accepting same sex couples in the Church that final step becomes unavoidable.

So someone who is gay isn't welcomed in the Church after all?  

And if someone who is gay wants to participate in a Church dance, they should not be allowed to actually dance?

Exactly what should a Church leader do if they find out one of the youth is dating someone of the same sex?  Not allow them to attend church?  

This whole issue seems to be a rabbit hole that has no suitable answers if the goal is to bring everyone towards Christ.  Unless, of course, one believes that dancing with the same sex means you can not progress towards Christ, but somehow preventing them to participate in a Church dance does???  I don't think that would work on me.  It would just push me further away from the Church.  Which is where I am now.

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46 minutes ago, california boy said:

And if someone who is gay wants to participate in a Church dance, they should not be allowed to actually dance?

I don’t see any excluding gay youth from dancing with opposite sex friends. 

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4 hours ago, rongo said:

Boys dancing together in an LDS stake dance setting is blatantly flouting the social norms --- a bold, conscious step, either to test the waters/reaction, or even bolder, to proclaim and project. It's completely different from platonic, friend dancing among girls. 

Actually, in the explosion over the last ten years, it's much more common among girls than among boys. Our very open and obvious gay community at school (which includes many Church members --- and they are trying to be open and obvious about it) is almost exclusively girls (there are some boys). At other schools I have been at, this social phenomenon is overwhelmingly girls. 

I missed this post earlier iirc. 
 

This is very confusing to me. You allow girls to dance together even though the likelihood of them being same sex attracted/LBTQ+ is much higher than with boys, but you don’t want to give the implication you approve of same sex sexual behavior/LGBTQ+ identification? 

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10 minutes ago, Calm said:

You allow girls to dance together even though the likelihood of them being same sex attracted/LBTQ+ is much higher than with boys, but you don’t want to give the implication you approve of same sex sexual behavior/LGBTQ+ identification? 

I haven't been to a stake dance since 2018. As bluebell mentioned earlier:

3 hours ago, bluebell said:

As an aside, in this era, in the US at least, two girls slow dancing together platonically is not really a thing anymore.  Once gay and lesbian relationships became high profile, platonic same sex relationships that don't want to be perceived as romantic tend to be much less touchy than they were in previous generations. 

I agree that there has been a lot of water under the bridge in the last four years, and I suspect that there would be a lot less of the platonic friendship hand-holding, or friend dancing now because of the explosion of kids acting out or experimenting (kids who don't want to be misunderstood don't want to give any reason to). Kids who identify as gay very visibly do so --- they go to great lengths to cultivate the look that they are part of that group. 

When I used to work closely with youth in a church setting, when there were girls dancing, they were pretty clearly not gay teens seeking a romantic experience out of it. It would be a different thing today if two girls who cultivate the look and identity of the gay community were doing that, but that hasn't been my experience. Boys dancing together automatically would send that message, and it would be known to the boys and to the observers that that message was being sent.  

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I realize its not entirely the same, but one of the towns in my childhood ward had a 150 year-old ban on school dances. One year, the pro-dance Mormons in town hired a Mormon lawyer (my father) to overturn the ban so that they could organize a homecoming dance. My father threatened to sue the school board if it was shown that board members were taking a religious stand against the Mormon kids organizing a school dance.

It was a real-life "Footloose" scenario, with the Baptist minister in town recruiting people from out of town to come in to to the town hall to show their support against dancing. The pro-dance parents in town (led by a Mormon family in my ward) even invited Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon from the movie Footloose to attend a rally in support of a school dance 😁

At the time it had made international news, it was a long time ago but a quick search still turns up a few articles.

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54 minutes ago, rongo said:

they were pretty clearly not gay teens seeking a romantic experience out of it. It would be a different thing today if two girls who cultivate the look and identity of the gay community were doing that,

Iow, you can tell from the behaviour whether platonic or not. Why not just judge the behaviour and not bar the possibility that in this day and age maybe some boys might feel like dancing and choose to do so with a friend, male or female?  I just don’t see a need to make official church rules about something that can be handled by what is already in place as well as being a rule that may not fit in nonAmerican countries and in addition to all that sexualizes slow dancing. 

Edited by Calm
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21 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

increasingly rare owing to aggressive Euro-American colonisation of the imagination

And that the Church at times contributes to this troubles me when we are a global church which should not have a national identity, but rather are of the kingdom and family of God.  I greatly appreciate leadership’s direction in having a greater variety of ethnic groups in pictures as well as the effort to create a hymnbook that is more appropriate for a global church. Also temples everywhere possible and all the money invested in doing translations, even of languages where we might have few converts relatively speaking (almost 150 on the official website so far).

Edited by Calm
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32 minutes ago, Zosimus said:

I realize its not entirely the same, but one of the towns in my childhood ward had a 150 year-old ban on school dances. One year, the pro-dance Mormons in town hired a Mormon lawyer (my father) to overturn the ban so that they could organize a homecoming dance. My father threatened to sue the school board if it was shown that board members were taking a religious stand against the Mormon kids organizing a school dance.

It was a real-life "Footloose" scenario, with the Baptist minister in town recruiting people from out of town to come in to to the town hall to show their support against dancing. The pro-dance parents in town (led by a Mormon family in my ward) even invited Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon from the movie Footloose to attend a rally in support of a school dance 😁

At the time it had made international news, it was a long time ago but a quick search still turns up a few articles.

How long before school dances were allowed?

Given the students were dancing at the community center next door, it seems a foolish rule because if they were so afraid of illicit behaviour, they could have supervised at the school where if students were setting up the dances themselves, there might have been less supervision. 
 

Quote

The letter said it was “common knowledge” that dancing involved other activities considered unacceptable. It warned of alcohol consumption, access to drugs and an increased risk of teen-age pregnancy.

The students from Purdy have dances now, but they have to rent a place in Monett, seven miles away. Sometimes they rent the community center, which is right next door to the school.

“We don’t want to dance there,” said Robert Johnson, a Purdy senior. “We want memories at our school.”

 

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1 hour ago, 2BizE said:

Whoot, whoot.  I’m hearing a number of progressive comments from folks on this forum who predominantly share only very conservative comments.  

Which precisely is the issue.  Posts here demonstrate that.  Faithful believing members who see no sin in homosexuality.

"Progress", if allowed to continue among members, will inevitably embrace sin. 

It's unavoidable.  Except for divine intervention.

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9 hours ago, strappinglad said:

I guess that I am an old , weird fuddy-duddy, but holding hands with a girl often had a romantic component to it. Slow dancing with a girl definitely did. I really didn't do much of either until I was called as a dance instructor for the ward's youth. That calling was so out of the blue. I was taught the cha-cha , the waltz , the jive , etc. etc. and then taught the dances to others. As some have said, 2 girls dancing together out of necessity was fine, while 2 boys doing so would be = ewwww !!

Why? I did it and look at how I turned out so………..oh. I really need to stop doing this.

Ban church dances just to be safe.

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6 hours ago, Calm said:

I missed this post earlier iirc. 
 

This is very confusing to me. You allow girls to dance together even though the likelihood of them being same sex attracted/LBTQ+ is much higher than with boys, but you don’t want to give the implication you approve of same sex sexual behavior/LGBTQ+ identification? 

Toxic masculinity is unsurprisingly insecure and fragile. There would be a taint to such a pairing and all would look down on them. Then everyone wonders why people aren’t more well-adjusted.

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10 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

Which precisely is the issue.  Posts here demonstrate that.  Faithful believing members who see no sin in homosexuality.

"Progress", if allowed to continue among members, will inevitably embrace sin. 

It's unavoidable.  Except for divine intervention.

Or, posts here demonstrate that the church and some faithful believing members see no sin in rejecting homosexual relationships. 

Such "devotion," if obstinately continued, will keep hurting people and hindering people from having enriching relationships and a fullness of joy.

This can be avoided, and so much repaired, if those who are obstinately hanging on to that rejection repent and choose the right.

Edited by Meadowchik
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13 hours ago, smac97 said:

And yet I have not seen a coherent rejoinder to it.

Thanks,

-Smac

There never was any double standard in the Church.  Nobody was allowed to engage in interracial romantic behaviors with individuals with negro blood, and everybody (both whites and blacks) were equally required to marry someone only of their own race.

See? No double standards there!

Edited by Daniel2
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8 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

Which precisely is the issue.  Posts here demonstrate that.  Faithful believing members who see no sin in homosexuality.

"Progress", if allowed to continue among members, will inevitably embrace sin. 

It's unavoidable.  Except for divine intervention.

Count me as one of those progressives. My grandparents and parents were taught that interracial marriage was sin. But they watched the good fruit of those marriages, prayed for direction, and repented. 

My generation is doing the same with gay marriage. Evil trees do not produce good fruit. As I’ve seen their fruit is good, I’ve prayed for direction and repented. That repentance has brought me enormous peace on an issue that still troubles so many members. The divine intervention is there for all who seek it. 

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FWIW, I’m been in multiple ward and stake leaderships that have tried to set local policies for same-sex dancing. Some have implemented policies excluding the practice entirely, with mixed results. But over time I’ve generally seen local leadership relax so long youth are just dancing. 

Another trend is there are a lot fewer slow dances than when I was a youth. Maybe 5-6 per dance. Also fewer line dances. 

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10 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

What a terrible thing we have done, to allow young people to be stripped of their innocence and the known protective factors of simple, intimate friendships.

I was raised in a culture where physical touch and affection amongst males had not been sexualised in any way, and one of the things that I loved most about later working/studying in Indonesia was the daily sight of high school boys, brothers, fathers and sons, and even male co-workers walking down the street hand-in-hand or with their arms around each other -- just because they were friends.

I have on several occasions danced with other males, including at Church dances. In societies where sexual orientation is still a foreign concept (increasingly rare owing to aggressive Euro-American colonisation of the imagination), there is simply no fear that doing so is sending a sexual message.

The people who actively seek to make everything in this world about sex and sexuality have robbed us of our freedom just to be, and we in the West are already reaping the whirlwind as a result of forcing such a heavy burden onto children: sacrificial victims to the 'progressive' agenda.

I grew up where the only relationships ever portrayed in books, movies, the media, and church were heterosexual relationships. A gay relationship was disgusting, never talked about in polite company and the idea of living a happy and fulfilling life with someone you loved, if you were gay was not even remotely possible.  The book most commonly quoted was by Spencer W. Kimball, who called all homosexuals abominations and portrayed every single one of us as being vile and evil whether they acted upon it or not.  I grew up at a time where police would raid bars that the suspected gay men gathered, beat them with billy clubs and drag them off to jail on a regular basis even  in San Francisco.  It was totally acceptable to bully a kid that was even suspected of being gay.  You could beat them up and never get in trouble for it.  It was a time where the worst insult you could give someone was to call them gay. I grew up at a time where civil rights for gays didn't exist.  

ah, the good old days.

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16 hours ago, smac97 said:

Nobody in the Church is allowed to engage in "behavior" that is "homosexual or lesbian" in nature.

The Church has a thoughtful differentiation here (emphasis added) :

And here (emphasis added) :

And here (emphasis added) :

And here (emphasis added) :

I think this last emphasized statement is applicable to all members of the Church, not just those bound by the Honor Code.

Applying the Law of Chastity is not reasonably characterized as "shunning."

There will always be boundary-pushing efforts.  What is the difference between "modest" and "immodest" dress?  

Or we could continue to be patient and compassionate, even when some folks are into boundary pushing, with the ultimate intention of undermining them.

There is no double standard in the Church.  Nobody is allowed to engage in homosexual behavior.

Thanks,

-Smac

It's nice that you think the BYU honor code applies to everyone but I think that is a You thing.

Your comment about applying the LoC doesn't make any sense when the LoC isn't being violated. Hand holding is not a violation. Dancing does not break the LoC Etc. Hence the Double Standard. You (and many others) seem to broaden the LoC to anything that could be considered gay. The problem is that isn't the LoC. That is an ad hoc of rules and policies being enforced on gay people. Your comment about patience and compassion are funny because they only apply to straight peoples lack of acceptance of LGBTQ people. 

 

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19 hours ago, Durangout said:

I saw the following on another LDS related blog site.  Let me say at the outset that I realize that it is anonymous and I usually dismiss out of hand anything 2-3rd hand / anonymous.  In this case, however, I received addition information via a PM that leads me to believe that the situation is real and as described.

I’m horrified and saddened that this has happened and even more so if this is the direction that The Church is going.  To normalize homosexual behaviors is simply evil (contrary to God’s Plan).  Are we, as a church, so weak that we can’t stand up to the world any longer?  Are we no longer a peculiar people?  It does seem that a latter day apostasy of sorts is underway.

 

https://www.ldsfreedomforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=66191


“Our stake president met with other stake presidents and they decided together that same-sex-attracted youth can slow dance with others of the same gender. They rationalized that "well, they're not breaking the law of chastity" and "at least they're at the church instead of somewhere else" (!!!).

I was speechless and dumbfounded ... and remain dumbfounded although I'm just starting to find my tongue.

I expressed later in an email that we are to avoid the very appearance of evil and that I would not want my young teen son to go to a church dance and see females slow dancing with females and males slow dancing with other males. I mentioned that kissing and hugging isn't breaking the law of chastity ... are the same gender couples allowed to do that as well?

The stake president (whom I love and respect very much and who is a lawyer by trade) replied that it's a slippery legal slope and banning them from slow-dancing could lead to legal trouble.

I countered: "The slippery slope leading youth to full-blown homosexual relations is more damaging than the slippery slope leading to legal problems, in my opinion. If we can't ban wickedness as a church with God on our side because we're afraid of society and its lawyers, then we've already lost the battle and the war."

I feel like I'm living in bizarro-world”

Thoughts?

I am skeptical that this is happening.

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