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Published: Oct. 3, 2010 at 10:44 PM
SALT LAKE CITY, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- A senior Mormon leader said in a sermon Sunday in Salt Lake City same-sex attraction can be overcome and non-heterosexual unions are morally wrong.
Boyd K. Packer, the 86-year-old president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Quorum of Twelve Apostles and considered next in line to be president of the church, rejected the position gays are "pre-set 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?" Packer said. "Remember he is our father."
Packer told more than 20,000 church members at the LDS Conference Center and millions more watching the church's 180th Annual General Conference via satellite those who advocate legalizing same-sex marriage seek to "legalize immorality," The Salt Lake Tribune
reported.
"A law against nature would be impossible to enforce," he said. "Do you think a vote to repeal the law of gravity would do any good?"
Packer's sermon drew from the church's 1995 declaration, "The Family: A Proclamation to the World," to back his contention that the power to create offspring "is not an incidental part of the plan of happiness," but "the very key."
Of course this is what we latched onto. Maybe this is the miracle we needed. These are selective quotes from the conference talk. Reading the entire talk is better, but my understanding is that it is not out until Thursday. This will give us time to ponder and discuss.
So, O ye of SGAttraction, gays, homosexuals and/or the people who are foolish enough to love us, what say you?
I have always thought anyone could change anything if the old adage is correct and one of them is god. Not all of us are going to have Paul Saul monments - asper other GA's. SOme of those thrown into the lions den are going to get eaton. we all have aur challenges, and this one is mine. I am not waiting around for a cure. I am living my life in accord to what I know to be correct.
ReplyDeleteI didnt get to hear the whol talk. I had hoped that he would have soffened the tone, though I really was not waiting for a change in policy, and I dont expect it to ever happen. I was hoping that he would al least say that those who are are and may never be any different. That is how I feel. I can still choose to live the comandments and have a temple recomend.
ReplyDeleteDOaks has said that "Feelings are another matter. Some kinds of feelings seem to be inborn. Others are traceable to mortal experiences. Still other feelings seem to be acquired from a complex interaction of “nature and nurture.” All of us have some feelings we did not choose, but the gospel of Jesus Christ teaches us that we still have the power to resist and reform our feelings (as needed) and to assure that they do not lead us to entertain inappropriate thoughts or to engage in sinful behavior." Here he make a diferencaiton between feelings and behaviors. behaviors can be changed. Feelings - not so much
ReplyDeleteThey released Elder Hafen, outspoken gay cure advocate. To me this is more significant than the content of the talk given by Elder Darth K. Vader.
ReplyDeletei say "whatever" to his comments of change. i cant change my sexual identity any more than he could. my choices, sure, i can change those. and maybe that was what he was referring.
ReplyDeletebut at Deiter Uchtdorf pointed out the night before during his excellent discourse on pride - our (read lay lds members) interpretation of the essay is what ends up on the table. most notably the lds culture tabooed the use of word "proud" as it was now ungodly to say "I'm proud of you". Our reaction generally swings further than intended as we seek course correction.
The point being is that i am more concerned with the lay members reaction to his lecture (what i interprete as harsh, over barring, and uncaring)how are they going to deal with their gay sons or daughters. Are we going to see an increase in suicide or families throwing out their kids? This is a real concern.
I personally have chosen not to take BKP at his word. yes, his lecture upset me but in the end i've chosen to ignore him. just the way he has chosen to ignore me (at least that's the way i see it).
This talk ends a week when numerous young men took their lives because of bullying, because they are gay. This talk does not promote tolerance, understand and love- it encourages homo-phobic behavior and promotes the notion that if you can't manage to change your sexuality, you just aren't trying hard enough or don't ahve enough faith. I call BS, and I don't mean Boy Scouts. Bless each of you who have married and are managing to make something workable from it- really, I admire whatever it is you have to make it work. But, I have known too many friends who have tried, have gone through hell to change, to have enough faith and it is an insult, in my opinion, to every person who has fallen to their knees and asked their HEavenly Father to lift this "burden" from them. It makes my heart hurt.
ReplyDeleteIsn't his words the whole point of your blog?
ReplyDeleteMaybe I missed something; I listened to the entire talk and I didn't get any of what you're saying out of it.
ReplyDeleteGod doesn't take away our burdens just because we ask Him to, or because we don't like what we have to carry. He helps us to carry them.
Yes, I have had many days when I wanted to end my own life because I didn't think I could go on one more day being attracted to men, and there are still times when the burden seems overly heavy, but in the end it is our choices that make us who we are. We choose to go against our feelings, our "natural man" whatever the definition may be to any one person, and become a more godly person. I don't care if some Mormons choose to take any General Authority's words to an unintended extreme, that is not the fault of the GA, it is the fault of the moron who chose to act as such. In the end my judge is not the rank and file members of the Church, it is God, and that is all I care about.
I have also realized that my struggle with SGA has been a blessing. It has helped me to be much more compassionate and understanding of other people and their struggles. It has helped me to develop more Christlike attributes that seem to come more easily to men with SGA than to many hetero men. It has helped me to look beyond myself and my own pain, to the pain of others, and to realize that no one gets through this life without a great deal of pain. It has helped me to be much more honest and open with my wife right from the very start, and to rely on her in ways that other men don't, and, to me, they are missing out on a wonderful facet of marriage.
So to me, my struggle with SGA has been not a curse or a burden, but a great gift, to teach me to be more like Him.
By the way, my first paragraph was in response to those who think Elder Packer's talk was meant to inspire bullying or intolerance or to make gay people feel less than others. I did not intend for it to sound as if I was disagreeing with Calvin, because I agree with his comments completely.
ReplyDeleteWhat I would suggest is realizing that the LDS church is NOT the true church as it so famously suggests itself to be. I'm not attempting to bash the church, that's not my point. But IMO the LDS church paints a pretty picture of itself through Mormon Messages (youtube) while at the same time giving someone a pulpit to spew out anti-gay hatred. I wonder how many young gay Mormon boys heard Packer's message who now are thinking suicide is their only means of escape.
ReplyDeleteCant EVERYBODY change? Isnt that the point of living? The question is how much and when. It may be the resurection for the most of us.
ReplyDeleteWhen I heard the talk, in which he addresses many types of temptations, I didn't think he was saying that you can pray or get a blessing and all the sudden become heterosexual. I thought he was giving assurance that a loving God would never leave you alone in your temptations, without providing a way for you to get through them - meaning that you don't have to be a slave to your feelings, God can give you strength to overcome, meaning act, in a way that is righteous despite it being difficult and not feeling predisposed to do so.
ReplyDeleteNot that that is easy, both Paul in Romans and Nephi in 2 Ne Chapter 4 lement their weaknesses. They talk about the impossibility of being perfect as long as we have imperfect, carnal bodies. They recognize the impossibility of being perfect until the resurrection.
All of us have different temptations, some crosses such as SSA are particularly difficult to bear, but no loving God would make it impossible for some of his children to be able to eventually obtain celestial glory and the ability to have eternal increase because isn't that the overall goal of the gospel - of the "plan of happiness"? I think one of the difficult things about being Mormon and having SSA is that it seems like such an obvious hurdle to our eventual goal, but really any heterosexual sin, or the sins of pride or addiction can be equally damning to our final goal.
Anyway, I think that President Packer was trying to give hope and give assurance that is is worth it to fight temptation and that no matter what the world says, the doctrine of eternal marriage, being between a man and a woman will not change, but will not be FOREVER out of reach for any of God's children. I think that was INTENDED to be encouraging and comforting even if it didnt' feel that way.