Stacking the deck against Prop. 8

[creekster]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

Obviously, you think it is the right thing to do to donate.

Do you think there might ever come the day you would regret the decision?

I.e. you may be telling yourself that you will be blessed for following the prophet even if uncertain, but do you think you could see yourself thinking later that the decision was wrong?

I've never talked to anyone who related vigorously supporting the church's racist rhetoric at the time. Much less anyone then saying they regretted it.

My prediction: if in fact this thing proceeds like blacks and the priesthood/temple (which there is very much doubt it will), I think people that vigorously fought against gay marriage will not talk much about it. Such is human nature.

WIll I regret it? Probabyl not, although it is possible I may later think it was wrong. It's funny that you merntion telling myself I will be blessed fo rdoing it. I don't really feel that way. I feel more like it is a trial of faith and obedience. THere are certain core principles in my testimony that I choose to follow. Any blessings will be indirect and tangential, I believe.

[MikeWaters]

The truth ought to be something that can be articulated and explained.

And that's why the anti-gay marriage forces lack the ring of truth. At least to me.

To Orson Scott Card and others (including my father), nothing has ever rung truer.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

To Orson Scott Card and others (including my father), nothing has ever rung truer.

Imagine how jarring integration must have been to southerners acccustomed over generations to seeing the Civil War as an instance of unjust military conquest and subjugation, and African Americans as lacking complete humanity, all at once to have to share every public and private accomodation with blacks. Compelled to allow them to fix your food, stay in the same hotels as you, swim in the same pools, ride the bus alongside not only you but your children, and, yes, marry your white daughters and sisters, even compel the state to perform the ceremony and recognize the marriage. The revulsion now felt by Orson Scott Card and your father is kindred to what those southerners felt. That refulsion, however, is not truth speaking. It's ignorance and hate speaking.

[Tex]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Imagine how jarring integration must have been to southerners acccustomed over generations to seeing the Civil War as an instance of unjust military conquest and subjugation, and African Americans as lacking complete humanity, all at once to have to share every public and private accomodation with blacks. Compelled to allow them to fix your food, stay in the same hotels as you, swim in the same pools, ride the bus alongside not only you but your children, and, yes, marry your white daughters and sisters, even compel the state to perform the ceremony and recognize the marriage. The revulsion now felt by Orson Scott Card and your father is kindred to what those southerners felt. That refulsion, however, is not truth speaking. It's ignorance and hate speaking.

Another good illustration of why this movement is nothing like the civil rights movement of the '60s.

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Imagine how jarring integration must have been to southerners acccustomed over generations to seeing the Civil War as an instance of unjust military conquest and subjugation, and African Americans as lacking complete humanity, all at once to have to share every public and private accomodation with blacks. Compelled to allow them to fix your food, stay in the same hotels as you, swim in the same pools, ride the bus alongside not only you but your children, and, yes, marry your white daughters and sisters, even compel the state to perform the ceremony and recognize the marriage. The revulsion now felt by Orson Scott Card and your father is kindred to what those southerners felt. That refulsion, however, is not truth speaking. It's ignorance and hate speaking.

in all fairness, OSC feels much much more strongly about this than my father.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Tex

Another good illustration of why this movement is nothing like the civil rights movement of the '60s.

I'm sure you would have been there shoulder to shoulder with Eldrs. McConkie and Peterson. Do we have any reason to believe otherwise?

[Tex]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

I'm sure you would have been there shoulder to shoulder with Eldrs. McConkie and Peterson. Do we have any reason to believe otherwise?

I'm sure you didn't mean this as a serious question, so I won't bother with a serious answer.

[Levin]

Originally Posted by Tex

I'm sure you didn't mean this as a serious question, so I won't bother with a serious answer.

Tex, you've got to take SU on, not simply dismiss it.

You won't ever convince him, of course. It's fixed in his mind that b/c you oppose the legitimization of gay sex, that means you would have also been a racist bigot had you lived in the 1950s.

My first retort is that SU has a much too simple view of human beings -- he views them as linear, obviously, and finding out one belief about people opens up a whole vista of conclusions that SU can make about them.

People can surprise you, SU: they may have supported the civil rights movement, and been disgusted by the Church's racist policies as they lived through it, but support the church's stance on homosexuality now.

Is it hard for you to hold those two thoughts in your dogmatic head: that a person can be opposed to racist policies but in favor of the delegitimization of homosexuality?

Your byword; your catch phrase; your guiding principle, as is Europe's and most of the western world's, is tolerance. If you're intolerant of one, then that makes you a bigot and intolerant of all. This is the belief SU is espousing by leveling such accusations against Tex.

[All-American]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

I'm sure you would have been there shoulder to shoulder with Eldrs. McConkie and Peterson. Do we have any reason to believe otherwise?

Why not? Goodness knows YOU were.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Levin

Tex, you've got to take SU on, not simply dismiss it.

You won't ever convince him, of course. It's fixed in his mind that b/c you oppose the legitimization of gay sex, that means you would have also been a racist bigot had you lived in the 1950s.

My first retort is that SU has a much too simple view of human beings -- he views them as linear, obviously, and finding out one belief about people opens up a whole vista of conclusions that SU can make about them.

People can surprise you, SU: they may have supported the civil rights movement, and been disgusted by the Church's racist policies as they lived through it, but support the church's stance on homosexuality now.

Is it hard for you to hold those two thoughts in your dogmatic head: that a person can be opposed to racist policies but in favor of the delegitimization of homosexuality?

Your byword; your catch phrase; your guiding principle, as is Europe's and most of the western world's, is tolerance. If you're intolerant of one, then that makes you a bigot and intolerant of all. This is the belief SU is espousing by leveling such accusations against Tex.

Careful there. You're calling my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, my mission president, all my bishops and stake presidents, the entire 12 and the prophet (I guess arguably with the possible exceptions of Hugh B. Brown and David O. McKay, but they certainly didn't show much courage), Gene R. Cook, to be blunt, practically everyone I knew in the LDS Church growing up, racist bigots. All these people taught me and told me on my mission to teach the ban to blacks, because this was the way God wanted the earth to be, and I did so (still a source of great shame and pain in my life). I even wrote my mother a letter about it from my mission and remonstrated and she said I had to do it. Everyone else said the same.

So, if you think that pre-1978 you would have stood up against the ban, rejecting the very self-same rationale (blind obedience to your Church being some kind of virtue) you now cite against gay marriage, when all this multitude who grew and preserved the Church for you and your generation propagated and sustained it, your hubris and historical ignorance are spectacular. You're a fool.