The Divine Institution of Marriage

[TripletDaddy]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

That's because there is nothing to work with. They should be honest with themselves. If I ran things in the LDS Church, this press release would have been very short. It would have said:

"We believe homosexuality is a sin and marriage is a sacred ordinance willed by God to be by man and woman. If you believe otherwise, we'll have to agree to disagree. Thanks be to God we live in a free country."

That would be it. That they go on page after page with sophistry, trying to appear thoughtful, is pathetic. It shows so much weakness and uncertainty.

I am not sure if I will be turned into a pillar of salt for saying so.....but SU's press release is basically 1000 times better than the official Church press release.

[OrangeUte]

Originally Posted by TripletDaddy

I am not sure if I will be turned into a pillar of salt for saying so.....but SU's press release is basically 1000 times better than the official Church press release.

i came close to calling the church's release b.s. (didn't b/c i was trying to be clever) and i'm still here in flesh and blood. you should be just fine.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by TripletDaddy

I am not sure if I will be turned into a pillar of salt for saying so.....but SU's press release is basically 1000 times better than the official Church press release.

No doubt about it.

But we all know that that's not really what SU would have put in the press release.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

But we all know that that's not really what SU would have put in the press release.

Actually, IF I WERE PRESIDENT OF THE LDS CHURCH, that is most definitely the press release I would write, or something like that (I doubt I'll ever be President of the LDS Church, however). How could I argue with a press release such as mine? What a relief it would have been for me as a young man in my early twenties to hear Mormon friends and family say, "We'll have to agree to disagree."

I honestly have no problem with religious faith, if it's honest faith and makes no pretense at being anything other than faith. I respect it. I have no desire that Catholic Churches or Mormon temples marry gays. I'm as much for religious liberty as gay liberty, and I appreciate religion's crucial role (most emphatially a net good) in human history.

Here's what I don't like: Intolerance ("we'll have to agree to disagree": as President of the LDS Church I'd be neutral on Prop. 8); conditional love; lying; coersion; ostracisation; tribalism; hate; apologetics, sophistry, junk science, pretend science; anti-intellectualism.

[All-American]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Actually, IF I WERE PRESIDENT OF THE LDS CHURCH, that is most definitely the press release I would write, or something like that (I doubt I'll ever be President of the LDS Church, however). How could I argue with a press release such as mine? What a relief it would have been for me as a young man in my early twenties to hear Mormon friends and family say, "We'll have to agree to disagree."

I honestly have no problem with religious faith, if it's honest faith and makes no pretense at being anything other than faith. I respect it. I have no desire that Catholic Churches or Mormon temples marry gays. I'm as much for religious liberty as gay liberty, and I appreciate religion's crucial role (most emphatially a net good) in human history.

Here's what I don't like: Intolerance ("we'll have to agree to disagree": as President of the LDS Church I'd be neutral on Prop. 8); conditional love; lying; coersion; ostracisation; tribalism; hate; apologetics, sophistry, junk science, pretend science; anti-intellectualism.

Whatever. If that was the press release the church wrote, you'd be pissed that they expect the members to follow them without giving reasons.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by All-American

Whatever. If that was the press release the church wrote, you'd be pissed that they expect the members to follow them without giving reasons.

First, the actual press release doesn't really give any reasons either. It's just less honest than mine.

The key part of your post is "they expect the members to follow them." Whatever that means. Yes, I'd still criticize efforts to induce members (explicitly or implicitly) into working for passage of Proposition 8 and donating money to the effort, ostracizing gays from their families and community, etc., whatever the press release said.

I'm not opposed to expressions of religious belief.

[All-American]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

First, the actual press release doesn't really give any reasons either. It's just less honest than mine.

It gives reasons. Dispute the substance thereof all you want, but don't give this garbage about them not existing just because YOU don't see any qualitative value in them. If we were to adopt this test of existence of yours as canonical, we should very well bring your own existence into question.

[

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

The key part of your post is "they expect the members to follow them." Whatever that means.

No, the key part of the post is the claim that no matter what the church does, you will whine and complain about it. If they don't give reasons, you will criticize them for that. If they do, you will criticize them for that too. If they stand firm on an issue, you will criticize them as being monolithic and call them Islamofacists. If they yield and/or apologize, you will criticize them for claiming divine authority in the first place.

Tell me this: are you capable of naming a single instance of something the church did right?

[MikeWaters]

http://www.millennialstar.org/2008/0...y-of-marriage/

Wow. What an incredible, inspired document by the Church. I urge all people to read this carefully. There are too many key passages for me to highlight any specifically. Respectful comments that build up the Church are welcome.

http://faithpromotingrumor.wordpress...n-of-marriage/

As far as I know, FPR has never had a SSM post, and I think that we are somewhat proud of that fact. Despite this record, I am so confused by the document that the Church put out today, called the Divine Institution of Marriage, that I simply must break the silence about this for the purposes of clarification. This document suggests that as a result of the court decisions in MA and CA (the legislative decisions legalizing marriage and civil unions in other states are not mentioned), “The institution of marriage will be weakened, resulting in negative consequences for both adults and children.” The text continues: “traditional marriage is essential to society as a whole, and especially to its children.” While there are a number of different arguments raised in this document explaining the church’s opposition to SSM, my question has to do with the relationship between SSM and the argument concerning the raising of children. The document explains that “if children and families are to be protected,” one must reject SSM. While I have heard this argument raised before by opponents of SSM, and church statements have alluded to this argument before, this document by far represents the most clear official statement on the subject of the threats to children. The threat to children constitutes the most prominent argument offered in this text.....

A quick glance at the comments shows that most favor the church's position. But I thought this was an interesting comment.

Looks an awful lot like whoever wrote this cribbed from Monte Stewart at the Marriage Law Foundation. He in turn has borrowed a lot of his ideas from John Finnis at Notre Dame.

This is part of what I see as the problem here. As a student, I researched pro and con arguments on same-sex marriage, and the strongest arguments came from Catholic scholars. The problem with the Church’s wholesale borrowing from Catholic argument is that the church has no natural law tradition (D&C 134 notwithstanding). This is why explicit natural law arguments such as infertile male-female couples or couples who don’t reproduce don’t violate the “marriage is for reproduction” principle don’t translate well for most Latter-day Saints.

This letter has painted the Church in a corner to an extent. The Church was safe campaigning against SSM as long as its basis was in divine command. Once they start making empirical and temporal arguments against SSM that can be disproved, they move the foundation of their arguments to a claim that can be disproved. When it is (and given the fat that the letter plays fast and loose with the studies that they cite, their claims will likely be thoroughly disproved), their retreat back into divine command will take on the appearance of bad faith and discredit the Church.

Finally, it is sad that this letter has such low quality scholarship, including the highly dubious claim that the Church will somehow be forced to recognize and perform same sex marriage. As TT notes, this has been thoroughly disproved. If the Church wants to make secular arguments, it should use its best and brightest rather than get some PR flack to (badly) crib someone else’s arguments.

This was linked through the Mormon Bloggernacle. If you are interested in it, google it. But in my brief searches, I've never found a place that seems like this one. And a lot of the blogs seem actually to be fairly low-quality (i.e. shitty). Sad that they probably get 20x the audience, while we languish in obscurity.

Btw, here is a pamphlet the church put out on homosexuality recently. I haven't had a chance to read it yet.
http://www.lds.org/topics/pdf/GodLov..._04824_000.pdf

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

...as President of the LDS Church I'd be neutral on Prop. 8

Yeah, that's more what I would expect.

[UtahDan]

Originally Posted by Levin

I like your press release much better than the Church's, which reads like they had a summer associate at some law firm write it.

That is a funny observation and one that occurred to me immediately when I read it. It very much has the ring of some underling on the payroll having authored it as opposed to one of the brethren.

EDIT: Having now read the second quote Waters linked, the author of that, whoever he is, states it perfectly.