1970s Church Pamphlet on Homosexuality
 

http://connellodonovan.com/transgressors.html

A couple of high points from this pamphlet authored by SWK and Mark E. Peterson:

1. It refers to homosexuals as perverts, deviants, etc.
2. The 1970s church believed scripture study, prayer, and increasing interaction with the opposite sex could cure homosexuality;
3. Homosexuality was simply a problem in the person's mind;
4. A person seeking a bishop's help would be guaranteed confidentiality unless the person failed to make progress;
5. Homosexuality threatens the existence of the human race.

This quote sums up the Church's 1970 position on homosexuality quite well:

"Reason might also be employed to convince the individual that there is no future for a homosexual. He may appear to 'get by' while young and attractive but the day will come in his life when there is nothing left but chaff and dust and barrenness and desolation."

"young and attractive" lol. I can see the underlying attitude here that is justification for LDS women to let themselves go after marriage.

When I read stuff like this, it doesn't really make me feel upset or embarassed at all. It actually makes me feel good to see the progress the church has made in 40 years, and i look forward to the next 40 years of progress.

When I read these things the first thing I usually think of is why are we and the southern evangelicals at such odds. Our belief systems are so close. I guess it boils down to a battle of who is right when it comes to being closest to God. That battle transcends all the things we are alike in. The belief in who is right is a religious thing and the common things we have are cultural that spring forth from being very conservative when it comes to religious interpretations.

I do think we are more tolerant when it comes to religion than they are. I hear a lot more pleas for lets get along and inclusiveness of non-believers than I used to.

Sexuality of any type is all in a person's mind, so why should homosexuality be any different?

It's obvious the church often got/gets the details wrong, but it doesn't change the fact that homosexuality is not a path that leads to exaltation.

Translation: "I have a man crush on Bronco and hope he gives me herpes."

Jeez Indy, get some counseling, will you? This board isn't the place for you to share your smut.

That isn't the best Phoebe Cates picture floating around cyberspace. Can you find a better one please?

Translation: "When I was at BYU, I would 'float' with the oompa loompas in the Helaman Halls every Thursday while watching Family Ties. Mallory was cute, but Alex was cuter."

Dude, seriously, go talk to someone.

????

How many teenage Mormon boys with SSA are praying to God to remove this from them. Yet God will fail them and not remove it.

Would you care to pull out an older edition of the DSM-IV or whatever the equivalent was called 30 years ago and see what it had to say on homosexuality?

Thanks in advance.

That's a dodge.

Many Mormon gay young men are tormented this very moment, and God will not answer their prayers to remove (what you call an impediment to exaltation) this SSA/homosexuality.

Don't you feel bad for them?

Of course I feel bad for them. The urge isn't the impediment, it's acting on the urge.

It's not a dodge, it's a pertinent point to Swarthout's use of a 1970's pamphlet that really wasn't all that out of step with the DSM-III which was the prevailing academic thought on the subject.

Which supports my statements on this board and CB that at times I have been ripped on for making. Everything that comes from the church isn't or shouldn't be taken as Gods word.

It should be taken as his servents word, which may or may not refelect how God feels.

Which then neatly goes into another one of my long held arguments, the honor code doesn't come from God. It is a code his servants choose to use to control or run the church owned school.

Given that pamphlet, it's easy to see why the greatest geopolitical issue for the Brethren is homosexuality.

It's not abortion, political oppression, fasicism, communism, totalitarianism, radical Islam, world hunger, disease, etc.

It's homosexuality. Because homosexuals will destroy the entire human race.

You see how these ideas percolate. For one generation, they are literally like unto a nuclear holocaust, these gays. For the next generation, gays will not destroy the world, but gay marriage will destroy the world.

Just like the belief that blacks are cursed, "fence-sitters", and spiritually inferior to one generation. To the next, they are "allowed" in the door, but don't marry them, that's wrong.

When my generation takes over, I suspect that views will be different on these two issues.

I weep for your generation because they're evidently too stupid to understand that the church doesn't say that marrying people of another race is "wrong".

Link?

Thanks in advance.

I wonder if the church still believes, as that pamphlet says, that most cases of homosexuality can be "cured."

I highly doubt their success rate.

Where do you think sexual urges come from? Your ankles? Your brain processes various stimuli and formulates reponses to those stimuli. Not all brains are created equal, so people react differently to different stimuli.

Why do I even need to engage in this exercise of pointing out the stupifyingly obvious?

I agree with you in theory--that imperfect men are trying, in their imperfect way, to relate God's will to His church.

However, if there's something to get right, in my view, this is it. To you, me, and 95% of church membership, this isn't a big deal. We don't struggle with it, it seems to make sense that this issue is similar to anyone else's weaknesses, and that turning to God will help. To the youth who struggles with it, and then is given bad advice and/or dealt with as a "pervert", this is potentially life-wrecking.

This may be what the DSM-III was teaching, but that's no excuse for the church of God (whose leaders claim their wisdom is superior to that of the world--read the pamphlet) to get this wrong. I just don't get this.

Yup, brains and ankles--those are my two body parts. Why did med school take so long?

You're right--it's stupifyingly obvious.

Is engaging in homosexual behavior right or wrong in God's eyes?

I realize that, informally, mind and brain are treated as though equivalent, but they aren't.

So...since it's just a matter of thought patterns, you could obviously choose to be a homosexual if you wanted, right?

"There hath no temptation taken you ..."

In the pamphlet the church says they can cure SSA in most cases. I wish it were true, for those LDS that wish it would be taken away.

Unfortunately, I think it's not true. And that they are ineffective. And that for whatever reason, the Lord does not answer most of these prayers to take away SSA.

What????? Since when do we assume 100% control of all our brain functions? Can we control our heart rate just by thinking about it (spare me the Eastern mysticism examples)? Can we control the hormonal balance in our bodies just by thinking about it? Can we control any number of other functions our brain is responsible for?

Stop trying to be so ridiculously obtuse.

There are thousands of righteous people who pray to have their disability, mental or physical, taken away. I suppose God "fails" them too.

"For whatever reason" he "does not answer" them.

Maybe I'm beginning to agree with those who say our church instruction is bland when this kind of understanding is what it produces.

I don't think the Lord is under any obligation to remove from any of us our trials and tribulations in this life, so the fact that he does not cure people of SSA is not persuasive, at least not to me.

That being said, I also think the notion that SSA can be cured by reading the scriptures is right up there with green men on the moon. It is good to see that the Church has backed off such overly simplistic counsel and has now adopted the "let's love them and welcome them and we really don't know where it comes from" approach.

Cerebral Palsy is not a sin.

Some argue SSA is a sin.

Shouldn't God be able to take away sins?

Tex, what you are in fact arguing is that SSA is a lot like Cerebral Palsy, it is (most often) an involuntary condition not easily removed. Which goes entirely counter to the pamphlet. The pamphlet says God can take it away in a majority of cases.

I don't think anyone believes that now.

Is an urge a sin? I still have an urge to pound people who are idiots. That urge has never gone away.

I suggest, if you haven't read it yet, to read the Sermon on the Mount.

Then report back with your own answer.

Please explain this.

Whenever God doesn't do what we want him to do, he's failing us?

To the person with a righteous desire to be married in the temple, yes, I think it fails like God failing them.

No, an urge isn't a sin, even though the warning about committing adultery in our hearts is valuable counsel that if our thoughts are left unchecked we tend to act on them more than if we recognize them and try to combat them.

There are many people with physical or mental disabliites that prevent them from attaining this? Is God failing them too?

Only if they also happen to be gay.

Indy and FM, thank you for making my point that it is usually an unalterable condition, unable to be moved by scripture, prayer or counsel.

Again, contradicting the pamphlet.

That's a pretty selfish view of God. God's not there to do what we want him to do.

Did God fail Paul with his thorn?

his strength is made perfect in weakness...

I'm drawing no such analogy. I'm simply saying everyone has trials and temptations and weakness that belong to this mortal existence. We could come up with a dozen examples, no one of which will be perfectly analogous.

The point is, God's love is not defined by how willing he is to remove things from us that clearly are a part of being mortal.

You sagging pile of shit, what did I say in the my very first post in this thread?

http://cougarguard.com/forum/showpos...92&postcount=4

I also pointed out that some of the church's viewpoints were no different than the leading psychological reference guide at the time. Shame on them for relying on the wisdom and learning of men. Maybe that should be a painful lesson to us all that rely too much on the arm of flesh.