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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyOctober 8th, 2010
An estimated 4,500 people surrounded the two blocks downtown that make up the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints last night to protest a recent anti-gay statement by LDS Apostle Boyd K. Packer.
Paker spoke at the Mormon Church’s 180th Semiannual General Conference spoke out against same-sex marriage and called homosexuality “impure and unnatural”:
“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,” Boyd K. Packer, president of the church’s Quorum of Twelve Apostles, said in a strongly worded sermon about the dangers of pornography and same-sex marriage. “A law against nature would be impossible to enforce. Do you think a vote to repeal the law of gravity would do any good?”
Those comments, coming on the heels of at least five suicides in September, drew sharp condemnations inside and outside the church:
Tonight, we are symbolic of all the children who have been killed by messages like Boyd K. Packer’s,” said organizer and Salt Lake City blogger Eric Ethington. “When you hear nothing from [church leaders] but that you are nothing but evil and you need to change the unchangeable nature of yourself, that is only a message kids can take for so long.”
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Leonardo Ricardo
October 8th, 2010
Apostle Packer ought pack it in…when I watched his inane speech I thought, oh my God, let my people go!
justsearching
October 8th, 2010
“A law against nature would be impossible to enforce. Do you think a vote to repeal the law of gravity would do any good?â€
What the hell is this “prophet” on about? This guy has a doctorate in education but he can’t even make a proper metaphor.
His metaphor might have made more sense if he intended to mean that it would be pointless to legislate that certain orientations were prohibited from existing.
Scott P.
October 8th, 2010
justsearching, small correction for you. This man is not the current prophet, that is Thomas S. Monson. In other words, even by LDS beliefs, this man does not speak with the voice of God. He does, however, represent the views of the current leadership.
Tone
October 8th, 2010
I wish they had, with one voice, slowly chanted “shame, shame shame, shame…”
justsearching
October 9th, 2010
I know there is the one Prophet in Mormon teaching, but I thought that members of the Quorum of the 12 were also thought to be “prophets” in some other sense as well. Could be wrong.
Richard Rush
October 9th, 2010
What exactly are Packer’s qualifications/credentials that allow him to speak as an authority on sexuality?
Here we have a guy who, apparently, literally believes Joe Smith’s story involving the gold plates. So, on that basis alone, he demonstrates that he is pathologically gullible and/or acutely indoctrination-receptive. Early in his life he was obviously told that story, and then he said to himself, “yes, that story makes sense and rings true, as does Joe’s entire Book of Mormon. And because almost everyone around me believes, it must be absolute truth.” Then, off he went, deluded with confidence, into a life devoted to indoctrinating others while quickly learning to enjoy the coveted benefits of power and adulation that came with it.
So, back to the original question: Packer sits at the top of the power structure of a religious institution housed in a magnificent temple built on a foundation of fraud, superstition, and lust for power, and unless you believe those things signify some real qualifications/credentials, then Packer has exactly none.
Rob San Diego
October 10th, 2010
Isn’t this all a part of the hidden heterosexual agenda? Get us to kill ourselves?
Jimmy
October 10th, 2010
The guy in the picture is pretty dreamy.
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