To Be Or Not To Be... Married

     It's time to begin the descent of my fan base with my first highly controversial post.

     I live in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Eighty-four percent of our population is caucasian; seventy-six percent of our population is LDS.; we have below average crime in every category. For the most part, it is a nice town with nice people. But underneath the white, religious, middle class, smiling faces wages a war of epic proportions. The war against homosexuality.

     At the very core of the LDS faith, we have a prophet. President Monson is the man we look to when it comes to matters like homosexuality, and prophets before him have maintained his same teachings. Our church stands firmly with him against homosexuality as an innate condition and has no qualms about asserting that its opinion shall never change. The LDS faith believes that marriage is ordained of God between a man and a woman, and that sexual acts are only to be committed within the sanctity of that ordinance. And this is why I'm not very good at being Mormon. If you are easily offended, it is okay to click the little "x" on your browser tab and continue on with more agreeable reading. It won't bother me in the slightest. However, for those of you who are interested in learning why someone of the LDS faith stands so strongly for something that her church condemns, continue on and feel welcome to question me afterwards.

     I didn't always support gay rights. I grew up in Alabama, the core of the bible belt, so to speak. My family and my religion dictated that I should be against homosexuality, and being the impressionable kid that I was, I believed them. It wasn't until I left home and joined the military that I started to question the teachings I grew up with. It turns out that rebel flags really are offensive, not patriotic; it isn't necessary to start a sentence with, "I'm not racist, but..."; fried food is pretty bad for you no matter how delicious it is, and being gay doesn't make you a bad person who doesn't deserve love or happiness. So, what is it that made me change my mind?

     The military was a big part of my transition. After years of very little diversity, I was finally meeting people from all over the world, and I was enthralled by how different everyone was. I ended up with a good friend in the Army who was gay. She faced many challenges within the military. I'm pretty sure I was the only person aware of her sexual orientation. She did a very good job hiding it. I was saddened by her situation. She was choosing to sacrifice more for her country than most, and yet nobody could know who she really was. If anyone were to find out, she would be forced to leave the military and denied the opportunity to serve her country. At this point, I began to recognize the inequality faced by those in the gay community, but I still believed that homosexuality was against God's plan and did not support equal rights for the gay community.

     Then I met Michael. We fell in love, got married, started a family. But we were/are very different people with varying opinions on many subjects. If you're lucky, like me, you will spend your life with someone who takes the time to help you grow emotionally, spiritually, physically, etc. And this is where my new opinions came from. Years of ever-finely tuned conversations with an amazing man, followed by personally searching for the truth have brought me to realize a few things:

     1. We live in a country that was founded upon the basis of religious freedom. To say that your religious beliefs should dictate the outcome of our political rights is an egregious mistake. One cannot implement law based on the desire of one religion when so many are represented in our country.

     2. It isn't a question of whether or not gay people should be given the right to get married, but rather a question of whether or not we should have the power to take that right away. Our constitution states that all men are created equal, yet certain people within our government have used unlawful religious reasons to take equal rights away from an entire demographic.

                          (These first two are strictly political. Now, let's face religion.)

     3.  Homosexuality, although not that exact term, is mentioned only seven times in over thirty-one-thousand bible verses. It seems relative to me that it is mentioned so little, and should probably give us an idea of exactly how important it is in the grand scheme of things.

     4. "Further, the Bible is not a contract, or a set of instructions, with each passage spelling out something clear and specific. It is not a rulebook for being Christian. It is instead a widely varying collection of poetry, history, proverbs, moral directives, parables, letters and wondrous visions. We would be foolish to fail to understand that not everything in the Bible is a commandment, and that Christians cannot take any small section of the Bible out of its own context, and still hope to gain a clear understanding of its meaning." Any verse can be taken out of historical context and expanded upon. It happens all the time. Unless you are willing to explore the history of a passage and maintain a non-biased attitude toward the text, you should not attempt to discern its meaning.

     5.  The Bible's first four mentions of homosexuality occur in the Old Testament.
While continuing to be spiritually inspired and influenced by the Old Testament, Christians were specifically instructed by Paul not to follow the law of the Old Testament." Here are the three mentions of homosexuality in the New Testament:

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. --1 Corinthians 6:9-10

We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers -- and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine. --1 Timothy 1:9-10:

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. --Romans 1:26-27

     In the times during which the New Testament was written, the Roman conquerors of the region frequently and openly engaged in homosexual acts between older men and boys, and between men and their male slaves. These acts of non-consensual sex were considered normal and socially acceptable. They were, however, morally repulsive to Paul, as today they would be to everyone, gay and straight. The universally acknowledged authoritative reference on matters of antiquity is the Oxford Classical Dictionary. Here is what the OCD (third edition revised, 2003) says in its section about homosexuality as practiced in the time of Paul:

"...the sexual penetration of male prostitutes or slaves by conventionally masculine elite men, who might purchase slaves expressly for that purpose, was not considered morally problematic."

      This is the societal context in which Paul wrote of homosexual acts, and it is this context that Christians are obliged to bring to their understanding and interpretation of the three clobber passages. Paul certainly condemned the same-sex sexual activity he saw around him. It was coercive; it was without constraint; it involved older men and boys. As a moral man, Paul was revolted by these acts -- as, certainly, he would have been by the same acts had they been heterosexual in nature.

     6. "It is also critical to our reading of the New Testament's three passages to understand that while of course Paul knew about sex acts that took place between persons of the same gender, he had no concept whatsoever of homosexual persons. Virtually no one in Paul's time was "out"; no one lived, or in any way publicly self-identified, as a homosexual. Paul had no concept of an entire population of people who, as a fundamental, unalterable condition of their existence, were sexually attracted to persons of the same gender, and not sexually attracted to persons of the opposite gender.

We can be confident that Paul was not writing to, or about, gay people, because he simply could not have been, any more than he could have written about smart phones or iPads. We do not know what Paul might write or say today about gay people. All we know is that in the New Testament he wrote about promiscuous, predatory, non-consensual same-sex acts between heterosexuals. If we are to rely on the Bible, then we must take its text as it is. It does condemn homosexual (and heterosexual) sex that is excessive, exploitive and outside of marriage. It does not, however, address the state of homosexuality itself -- much less the subject of homosexual acts between a married gay couple. Christians therefore have no Bible-based moral justification for themselves condemning such acts."

Because there was no concept of gay marriage when the Bible was written, the Bible does not, and could not, address the sinfulness of homosexual acts done within the context of gay marriage.

Okay, I know that this is a long post with a lot of information, and I do apologize for that. If you can hang on just a little longer, I'll sum things up. I am Mormon. I love my church, and I respect those who attempt to follow every rule set forth for them by the church. At the same time, I am not a person who blindly follows any rule. I research; I learn the historical and cultural environment in which doctrine is put forth. If evidence can be found that supports the teachings of the church, I support them 100%. However, if I find in my research that there is another explanation which provides for a more in-depth, non-biased understanding of a passage, then I will not support the current teaching. God will never put forth any doctrine that requires you to choose between your faith in Him and your love for your fellow human being. To do so would be an injustice. Christ's main focus, which is repeated numerous times in the new testament is to love one another. He never defines the way in which we should express our love.

Finally, there has been no doctrine put forth since the new testament that addresses homosexuality in any way. All instances of any church condemning this practice arises from those seven passages in the bible, four of which we have been told not to follow, that can be explained by the dominating, militaristic practices of the time. I pray that in our near future, we may set aside our disdain for those who express themselves differently than we do, and learn to exhibit the principle that was most dear to our Savior: Love One Another.