Given the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there will, in the next three months, be much talk about the fastest-growing religious group in the country.
And although gay activists have all but demonized the church, with HRC for example, saying that you “just gotta love” Tom Hanks for calling Mormon supporters of Prop 8 “Un-American.” (Although Louis Farrakhan criticized the president for supporting gay marriage, HRC has never questioned his patriotism.)
Mormons may have helped fund the campaign to pass Proposition 8, but my Mormon friends tell me that the church is reconsidering its attitude toward gays, with attitudes changing in wards across the country. One of those friends recently shared with me this essay by Dr. Donald C. Fletcher, the bishop in a San Francisco ward:
Working as a bishop in the Bay Ward, I have heard firsthand the stories of members who are gay and felt their pain as I work to bring them back into church activity. The emotional pain and isolation of LGBT members rejected by parents, friends and loved ones after coming out is more severe than any other I have yet experienced in my ministering, and it motivates me to continue in the work I am doing.
Read the whole thing. Fletcher didn’t just share his thoughts with a few select friends, but in the Salt Lake Tribune, the paper with the largest circulation in Utah, the state with the largest concentration of Mormons on the planet — and the state which houses the administrative and leadership offices of the church. What Rome is to Catholics, Salt Lake City is to Mormons.
I could find no evidence online that Dr. Fletcher was reprimanded for his sympathetic piece on gay people.
It would be nice if more gay organizations would recognize the changes taking place in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This article was published in June, over a month ago; I wondered if HRC had perhaps referenced it to show signs of improvement in a conservative faith. Here’s what my search for Donald Fletcher yielded:
Interesting that they would ignore evidence of a shift in attitude among Mormons.
Wonder why that is.
Mormon families via It Gets Better
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I948dOw41I8&feature=youtube_gdata_player
http://mormonstories.org/washington-dc-circling-the-wagons-conference-for-lgbtqssa-mormons-and-their-families-friends-and-allies-april-20th-22nd-2012/
I sometimes get called self-loathing because I don’t genuflect to whatever right du jour the “LGBT” establishment decides is the next absolutely fundamental requirement that only bigots and H8ers resist. But…
I’d counsel the LDS church to proceed very carefully here. I know of no organization or sphere where opening the door to “LGBT”s, based originally on sob stories of pain and exclusion, etc. has not led to one more demand after another, until the group –churches especially– are tearing themselves apart for the sake of tiny tiny minority within it who are allied to the larger secular LGBT Left which, as we know, loathes religion. Well, Christian and Christian-derived religions like Mormonism, anyway. Give em some Mohammedans and they all drool with multicultural frisson.
Anyway, what starts out as a soap opera over gay suffering…just the way Blacks started out with the dogs and the little girls and the Rosa Parkses, etc…and a short time later you’ve got a huge mess on your hands.
So, Apostles and Prophets and Elders, beware.
Let the self-loathing begin.
Good point Ess Em. You can no more satisfy a drama queen’s insatiable need for victimhood than you can a Democrat’s lust for power.
No, I agree, EssEm.
Given the number of “real LGBT people” like Richard Rush, Levi, Cinesnatch, and so forth who attack and mock Christians, Mormons, and others of faith, it seems that the good bishop’s compassion is quite misplaced.
Of course we could try thinking like real conservatives and see each person as an individual. But what fun is that?
All Mormon gays are no more likely to behave like drama queens and make unreasonable demands than all straight ones are. Kudos to the straight Mormons who seem to understand this.
We’re constantly complaining, here, that we get lumped together with gay liberals. But it’s…what…okay to do that to gay Mormons? It seems to be hunky-dory to do it to gay Christians, too, as I have noticed on more than one occasion.
Speaking as someone who actually deals with gay Christians on an almost daily basis, I can attest that there are drama queens who make crazy demands and sulk when they don’t get their way. Some of them are gays. And some are social conservative straights, who display that same propensity.
I’ve traveled a long, hard road to find a spiritual home that honors the orthodox, yet remains open to a continuing exploration of truth. And I’ve found it in the Episcopal Church. All the idiotic prattling I’ve heard here about it catering to customers aside, I know from the inside that it is precisely because they WON’T cater to customers that has led to many of their parishes’ dwindling membership rolls.
And I mean customers both on the hard Left and the hard Right.
I have a very good (gay) friend who has, since becoming a member of my parish, made endless demands that it relax its requirements on catechetical training, on ministry, etc., etc., etc. to suit him. They have refused to do so. He squawked about it a little, but when he saw that they stood firm, he backed down.
I don’t know much about the Mormons’ beliefs. Having lived all my life in Arizona, I can tell you that it’s always good news when a Mormon family moves into the neighborhood, because they make very good neighbors. I have some problems with Mitt Romney, because I’m a libertarian and he’s always been a big-government politician. But the fact that he’s a Mormon is, in my view, actually a point in his favor.
Let the sniping begin that I am a “typical liberal” because I have made this or that independent, individual observation. Those who think like liberals will always show themselves for what they are when the opportunity arises. But I believe every individual deserves to be treated like an individual — regardless of religious affiliation or sexual orientation. What a liberal I am!
The episcopal church is the perfect example of what i mean. Tearing up the worldwide anglican communion with a gay bishop.
And this one highly newsworthy item totally defines a denomination the size of the Episcopal Church?
Surely you’re not that ignorant, Essem.
Flash bulletin: as this is a political site, and many gay conservatives and libertarians are people of faith, at least a few of them are going to turn out to be — surprise! — Episcopalians.
Those who heap such ignoramus contempt on other people’s faith display not only a contempt toward them, but toward God. That’s in the same Bible so many Christians claim to know so much about. Try reading it once in a while.
People might want to think twice before making empty-headed, stereotypical, group-lumping (and yes, un-conservative) remarks about members of a denomination whose churches they have never even entered, save possibly for a wedding or a funeral.
Since you are clearly not rational, I will not reply any further after saying this:
Attended an Episcopal seminary, was member of Episcopal parish for some years, studied for my theology PhD in 2 Anglican schools, friendships with Episcopal priests, and have followed the Anglican church’s history and current doings regularly for decades. So I know whereof I speak.
If you take a pill and calm down and read and pay attention, you can see that the Episcopal Church’s official acceptance of an out gay bishop provoked huge fissures in the larger Anglican communion. As I say, ECUSA is a perfect example of how what started out as compassion for marginalized gays and lesbians led to a huge church-wide mess in order to regularize them. Surely a cautionary tale for the LDS.
How my observation of facts in relation to ECUSA holds God in contempt…or the Bible, which I have read right thru many times and can read in Greek…oh forget it.
Take the Scarecrow’s song in Wizard of Oz and make it your personal hymn.
I attended an Episcopal Church for a time in college. I ultimately rejected it for the same reason I rejected the Methodist Church I was raised in… it was too political and too worldly.
Had a friend who joined the Methodist Church about the same time I became a Mormon. He said, “I like this Church because it doesn’t want to change me; it accepts me the way I am.” I disagree, I think the whole point of Faith is *to* change you.
He quit a couple of years later after they refused to pay for him to attend a conference the national Methodist Church was holding at a resort somewhere.
EssEm, I am fanning myself from the vapors. You’re so educated! You know it all!
You do not know every gay and lesbian Episcopalian, what the faith journey of each has been, why he or she has chosen that particular church, or anything else. Cutesy-pie comments about the Wizard of Oz and braggadocio about your proficiency in Greek aside.
I don’t agree with every decision the U.S. Episcopal Church has made. Though I personally regard the elevation of Bishop Robinson as troubling for reasons other than the fact that he was honest about who God made him to be. If we all hold out for a church or denomination that does things we agree with 100% of the time, we will reject organized religion altogether. As have many gays and lesbians, for this very reason.
I left the United Church of Christ because it was too political and too worldly. I have found the Episcopal Church to be less so. Is it as spiritually pure as a Second-Century hermitage in the Palestinian desert might have been? Of course not. But as my faith, and being part of a body of believers, is too important to me for me to stay home on Sunday mornings or generally forego my faith, I stay on.
But of course, since you can read the Bible in Greek, I’m sure you can slap me down to size and tell me how unimportant that is.
Lori, when I was young, there were three types of biting/poisonous snakes that roamed our ranch: racers, copperheads, and rattlesnakes.
Racers would run away from anything and would only attack if they were cornered.
Copperheads would freeze where they were at and wouldn’t generally bother you unless you stepped on them.
Rattlesnakes came after you with fangs bared, and wouldn’t stop until you ran away or they no longer had a head.
Granted, there were aggressive racers and docile rattlesnakes. But in general, it was good policy to ignore racers, go around copperheads, and have the Ruger drawn, ready, and well-aimed for rattlesnakes.
Like it or not, the LGBT community has proven itself to be rattlesnakes quite often with churches. Thus, one should a) expect the utmost of caution from those already in the church and b) exercise the utmost of caution for those wanting to be in the church.
One need not fire blindly, true; however, you’ll find that rattlesnakes like to strike, and when they do, by the time you have it out of the holster, you’re too late.
NDT, I appreciate that there are some real tantrum-throwers and troublemakers within the churches. Some of whom are gay. But what inducement is there for them to consider the superiorities of a more conservative way of seeing people — that each of us are individual human beings, accountable one-on-one to God — when they are lumped together and blindly judged along with everybody else in their “group?”
My errant friend, the politically-liberal recent convert to the Episcopal Church, is still trying to wrap his mind around the concept of gays even being conservative politically without being “self-hating.” Every time I think I’ve gotten him to grasp it, one of two things happens to screw him up again.
Either: (A) His trusted liberal talking heads tell him, again, that all conservatives are terrible people who hate him, or (B) Some social conservative who hates gays behaves toward him in a manner people who do not hate him never would.
Both of those two mindsets are responsible for why people like my friend have such blighted views. And the shame of it is that every member of each group is also very much an individual, responsible for his or her own interactions with others.
It is, as Yul Brynner said in “The King and I,” a puzzlement.
I wonder why the LDS Church is the fastest-growing religious group in the country. Some reasons may be that Mormons are generally prosperous, they send out a veritable army of likeable articulate handsome clean-cut young men on missions, they build beautiful temples, they have one of the world’s greatest choirs, they are virtually all white people, and it’s the most uniquely American religion.
There must be some more reasons, but surely the underlying religious beliefs are not among them. Who could possibly hear Joseph Smith’s tale of the gold plates, plus his other assertions, such as the Garden of Eden being in Missouri, and then seriously say to themselves, “I see no reason to doubt the authenticity of those stories, and so I believe they are true! Finally, I found a religion that makes logical sense! Please sign me up!”
I’m not suggesting that LDS beliefs are any more or less preposterous than any other religion, but the fact that it was invented so recently right here in the United States should make its absurdity more apparent compared to religions that came into being thousands of years ago.
86% of Mormons in the United States are white.
Worldwide, there are many Mormon temples in Polynesia, Latin America, and Asia.
I think the reason LDS is growing as a religion is that, unlike Richard R’s leftism, it actually works. Follow the teachings of LDS and your life will work out pretty well. Follow the path of victimhood and dependency advocated by Richard R and your life will be so miserable you will resort to trolling conservative blogs and deluding yourself that this is a purposeful use of your time.