Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Prophets quoted "disgusting sin we can't accept"

The Daily Universe, the offical daily publication of the Brigham Young University campus, published onto its website a letter entitled “Crimes against Nature,” in which a BYU student compared gay parenting to prostituting or serial killing.

“Just as if we wouldn’t want a child to grow up with a prostitute for a mother or a serial killer for a father, we shouldn’t accept a lesbian, gay or transgender parental model for young people,” stated Taylor Petty, from Raleigh, N.C., in the November 17 issue. “As prophets have said for four thousand years, sodomy is a disgusting sin we can’t accept.”

Petty’s letter caused an uproar among BYU lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and their supporters.  In the wake of critical response to the letter, flyer's were placed  inside copies of the Nov. 18 issue of the Daily Universe. Criticism of Petty’s letter appear in the Student Review, an  established off campus paper, and later in the Daily Universe.

From the flyer: “Gay students are in every classroom, every ward and every apartment complex at BYU and we want to reach out in love to help you better understand. The attitude represented by these articles reopens wounds that Christ died to heal. …The task of any religion is not to teach us who we are entitled to hate, but who we are required to love.”

“Regardless of your opinions on gay adoption and parenting, words like [Pattti’s] are unproductive, offending those that disagree and failing to bring legitimacy to your argument,” wrote Hunter Schwartz in the Student Review.

“The Family: A Proclamation to the World also states parents should rear their children in love and righteousness, provide for their physical and spiritual needs and teach them to love and serve one another, to name a few,” wrote Jordan Meservy in the Daily Universe.

Late Friday, November 18, Daily Universe managing editor Joel Campbell ordered the letter to be removed from the Daily Universe website.

“The Daily Universe has removed the letter originally published here after several readers complained about its tone and approach to homosexuality,” Campbell wrote on the new webpage in place of the letter. “We agree that the letter did not represent the standards of our sponsoring institution or our university community including the recent statement in the LDS Church Handbook of Instruction: ‘While opposing homosexual behavior, the Church reaches out with understanding and respect to individuals who are attracted to those of the same gender.’ The letter published in the Daily Universe did not represent the kind of understanding and respect that should accompany dialog on this issue. We regret that the letter was ever published.”

1 comment:

  1. Isn't this the third time in several months that BYU has slipped with their newspaper and included very un-christian words towards Homosexuals?

    ReplyDelete