God Created Adam and Eve... Not Adam and Steve

In light of recent events concerning an LDS Conference talk Boyd K. Packer gave and the surge of hatred towards the LDS, I wanted to put in writing my thoughts about homosexuality. Due to the need many people have to stay mainstream and politically correct and the ignorance perpetuated by common misconceptions, there are a few issues I feel need to be addressed. In an attempt to cover a more comprehensive range of issues I am going to dive a bit into a lengthy comment written to me on facebook by a friend of mine named Adam, who is a part of the gay population.

President Boyd K. Packer gave a talk in this year’s October General Conference only a couple weeks ago from now. He unapologetically spoke upon the controversial subject of homosexuality which I applaud him for. He said things that people don’t like to hear, but that is what the Lord’s anointed do. They aren’t “people pleasers” or politicians that just tell the masses what they want to hear. Nobody wants to hear that they, or even a family member of theirs, are not obeying God’s commandments. Because Packer spoke about a hot topic in society contrary to liberal beliefs, he was immediately in the crosshairs of the opposition.

In summary, Packer, in his talk, mentioned The Family: A Proclamation to the World and talked about the sanctity of marriage and the value of a righteous priesthood holder in the home where a man and a woman are lawfully married. He spoke of love, forgiveness, and repentance. He said obedience and the priesthood could “show you how to break a habit [and] even erase an addiction.” He admonished us to wake up and know what’s going on in the world around us. He made the pint that if we enter into any relationship that isn’t in harmony with the gospel, it is wrong. A faithful member or even just an honest Christian can’t disagree with any of this. All of this leads to his point concerning homosexuality that got everyone all up in arms and offended.

Packer states, “some suppose that they were preset and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and unnatural. Not so. Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone? Remember, He is our Father.” He reminded us of Alma’s words in the Book of Mormon that there will be people who will call evil good and good evil and so forth. He warned us, after telling a story about a child who brought a kitty into class and they decided they should take a vote to see if it was a boy or a girl, that there are people who wish to do the same laughable thing. “There are those today who not only tolerate but advocate voting to change laws that would legalize immorality. As if a vote would somehow alter the designs of God’s laws and nature… We cannot change. We will not change our moral standard.”

Many would like to take the above statements and twist them into a message of hate and intolerance. Those same people, however, in all probability didn’t even listen to the whole talk but were still more than willing to jump to an anti-Mormon/religion conclusion. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard in the past couple weeks alone that this talk by President Packer proves that Mormons hate the gays. The truth: exactly the opposite. If I may, I will give quotes from the church pertaining to the area under discussion that people like to conveniently overlook.

The Church calls on those involved in the debate over same sex marriage to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility towards each other. No one on either side of the question should be vilified, intimidated, harasses or subject to erroneous information.”

-Kim Farah, Spokesperson for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Our doctrines obviously condemn those who engage in so-called ‘gay-bashing’ – physical or verbal attacks on persons thought to be involved in homosexual or lesbian behavior.”

-Dalen H. Oaks

Members of the church “should love [homosexuals] as sons and daughters of God.”

-Gordon B. Hinckley

I know of no group more loving than the leaders of the LDS church. If people hate the gay community, it is of no fault of these men. They teach only compassion, love, and understanding through the doctrine of Christ. Any act of hate towards the gay community is not tolerated within the church.

One may say that the actions of the members are in direct correlation to the stance of the church. As I just pointed out, obviously, the members who are engaging in hatful acts aren’t, in reality, listening to the messages of the church. They act out of their own accord, not what they have been taught and they will eventually reap what they have sewn.

Adam, my aforementioned friend said, “the issue is… the self-hate that the church's actions and words create in people who are born gay.” We would have to presume that people are born gay to even begin to prove this to be a legitimate assertion. The fact of the matter is, there is no consensus as to what causes homosexuality. There is no “gay gene.” The American Psychological Association (APA) issued a statement in 2008 indicating that most scientists think that homosexuality is caused by “a complex combination of nature and nurture.” They go on to say, “Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors.” A. Dean Byrd, Ph. D concluded that researchers whose studies have attempted to find biological causes for homosexuality have all admitted that they failed. F.S. Collins, the director of the Human Genome Project also came to the deduction that homosexuality is “genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations.”

The facts sustain what President Packer said in his talk when he said Heavenly Father would not send someone to earth as a homosexual if homosexuality is wrong and there’s no way to overcome it. Heavenly Father is a perfectly just loving God and would never allow us to come to earth immediately condemned to Hell without a way out. This misunderstanding causes some people to loath themselves because they think they are evil due to a mixture of God’s wisdom (homosexual activity is wrong) and the wisdom of the world (gays are born that way). If there is a problem with self-hate, it’s not because of the church’s standing on homosexuality, it’s because the world wants people to believe that they are born that way. Of course, this is simply not true.

My heart goes out to those who feel that they are less of a person because they are gay and I hope they see that, no matter the lifestyle one maintains, they are still loved unconditionally just as much as anybody else in this world and has just as much worth. This misunderstanding has caused much anguish and grief through suicides because they have been taught by the world that they are born that way and can’t change. So naturally, God must hate them because of the sinful nature of homosexual activities. The actual message of the church regarding homosexuality couldn’t be more converse.

Another point Adam brought up that I wish to address is that he claims nobody is 100% gay or straight 100% of the time. This idea that sexuality is fluid and that everyone is gay and straight at one point or another is ridiculous. I think I can speak for the majority of straight guys at least and say that I have never been even attracted to another man, in fact, it repulses me to even think about. It’s not natural and there isn’t even a biological need for a wishy-washy sexuality.

“’Ex-gay’ stories aren't true triumph over the devil, or even over biology. Rather, they're a natural change of attraction over time.” I have to disagree. Seeing as how there is no scientific evidence showing what causes an individual to be gay, I will stick with the words of the prophets, common sense, and the simple fact that homosexuality leads to a genetic and genealogical dead end. To practice homosexuality, one is breaking the law of chastity. A desire to do that which is ungodly, unclean, impure, or simply bad is a temptation. Anything unclean, impure, or leads one to break God’s commandments is of the devil ergo, to rid yourself of a temptation is in a sense a “triumph over the devil.” Finally, to suggest that one can naturally change ones attraction over time is an admittance that homosexuality isn’t something one is born with. No matter how hard a white man tries, he will never be black over time.

The notion that one cannot change their sexual orientation is simply a myth that has been spread around in the promotion of homosexuality and the liberal agenda. It was noted in the American Journal of Psychiatry that William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the famed sex researchers, reported a 65 percent success rate after a five-year follow-up on a research of psychological care to help men overcome unwanted homosexual attraction. Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, who ironically was the psychiatrist who led the effort for the American Psychiatric Association to delete homosexuality from the psychiatric manual, said “Like most psychiatrists, I thought that homosexual behavior could be resisted, but sexual orientation could not be changed. I now believe that is untrue – some people can and do change.”

To suggest, even to hint that homosexuality is a disorder of some kind elicits an illogical rage within the political left. However, there is no denying that gay activism, not scientific evidence, has influenced national mental health organizations regarding homosexuality. By vote of 5,854 to 3,810, the American Psychiatric Association eliminated homosexuality as a diagnostic category from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) in 1973, making it the first time in the history of healthcare that a diagnosis was decided by popular vote rather than by scientific evidence. In her book Queer Science, Simon LeVay, an activist researcher and self-identified homosexual stated, “Gay activism was clearly the force that propelled the American Psychiatric Association to declassify homosexuality.”

The opinion that homosexuality is an innate and immutable trait has fueled the argument for same-sex marriage. Referring to the biological argument that often serves as the basis for civil rights of homosexuals, Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling, a developmental biologist and self-identified lesbian, notes in the New York Times, “It provides a legal argument that is, at this moment, actually having some sway in court. For me, it’s a very shaky place. It’s a bad science and bad politics. It seems to me that the way we consider homosexuality in our culture is an ethical and moral question.”

Why the gay community even cares to change the definition of marriage is beyond me. Elton John with his long time partner, David Furnish had a few choice words concerning proposition 8. In December 2005, John and Furnish tied the knot in a civil partnership ceremony in Windsor, England. But, clarified, "we're not married. Let's get that right. We have a civil partnership. What is wrong with Proposition 8 is that they went for marriage. Marriage is going to put a lot of people off, the word marriage.” John and Furnish, and their two cocker spaniels, Marilyn and Arthur, were in town for Tuesday's annual benefit for the Elton John AIDS Foundation when he said,
"I don't want to be married. I'm very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership," John says. "The word 'marriage,' I think, puts a lot of people off. You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships."

Finally a voice of reason in the gay community. A prominent homosexual says NO to gay marriage. 
Does this make him a bigot? 
Does he hate you? Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council said it best when he said, “it’s time for the far Left to stop insisting that judges redefine our most fundamental social institution and using liberal courts to obtain a political goal they cannot obtain at the ballot box.”

What’s ironic is that it’s ok for the homos to vandalize LDS temples with graffiti, defile our garments in public, and protest on temple square during general conference but it’s wrong for the church to make statements about them. I can’t say I’m surprised though, as much as liberals preach “open-mindedness” they mean we should be open-minded about THEIR beliefs and agenda. It’s a one-way street to them.

It is time to stop the name-calling and the terrorizing, intimidating, stealing, and vandalizing. It is time to listen to logic. There’s no need for all of the contention on both sides and it’s time for the gay community to stop playing the victim card when they commit just as many hate crimes against those who feel homosexuality is morally wrong. As for me, especially because there is no real evidence supporting the contrary, I will remain on the side of the prophets, apostles, and God. There’s a reason why God created Adam and Eve instead of Adam and Steve.