Comments on: Salt Lake Trib’s Utahns of the Year: Mormons Building Bridges

By: Brynn

Brynn — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 15:53:48 +0000

It is window dressing. The church technically doesn’t condone mixed orientation marriages anymore, but then you have Josh Weed out there advocating it and the church quietly condoning it.

Then you have “gay but celibate” thing, which is just another form of shame, and attempt to isolate and shame gay people from the outside world, leaving them with nothing but the support of the church. Being non-celibate, well shoot, that’s a moral failing of the highest order.

Not to mention the fact that they have never retracted the remarks of Packer or Dallin Oaks.

By: cowboy

cowboy — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 18:02:10 +0000

The juxtaposition of mormonsandgays.org and NARTH will prove interesting.

By: Soren456

Soren456 — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:37:21 +0000

Anything that offers “hope” for gay members within the Mormon church is both false and cruel.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:08:52 +0000

@Michael C
That was a PR move to make up for Prop 8 (which massively damaged their image) and help win Romney the election.

As noted above, the best they can do is “be gay, but either be celibate or enter a sham marriage”. Which isn’t really that much better. See also Josh Weed, the ex-gay therapist who quickly became a poster boy when people told their gay relatives “why can’t you be like him”

By: Michael C

Michael C — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:00:35 +0000

… and the Church officially hopped on board with http://www.mormonsandgays.org/

Open, civil dialogue is totally neat but the official position of the Church has not changed. Johnson is correct, while they have pretty much abandoned therapy for sexual orientation change efforts, they have shifted focus celibacy and mixed orientation marriages.

I think their new tactics cause more harm to LGBT Mormon youth. In the past, excommunication was immediate, leaving LGBTs without family or friends at the moment of outing. This provided gays with the opportunity to begin their lives openly and honestly. They have now found a way to cuddle kids into submission.

By: johnson

johnson — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 16:34:03 +0000

Read what they really say: “It’s not a sin to have gay feelings, but it is to act on them.” In other words, if you’re a gay man, get married to a woman and pretend, otherwise you’re on your own, enjoy a lonely, loveless life.

By: customartist

customartist — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 15:27:20 +0000

How quickly things change! When it was popular to disallow Blacks, Mormons did so. When it was popular to condemn gays, Mormons did so. History cannot simply be “re-written” with credibility.

“It would be better to be dead than homosexual” – Mormon Leader Boyd K. Packer 10/2010

http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top_stories/story/UPDATE-Packer-makes-changes-to-sermon-regarding/OecTkSc980K76VXGKo2bSg.cspx