Originally Posted By iamsally >>>They're doing those children a favor.<<< >>>Do the gay community a favor! Keep them out. Doing us a favor .. from being indoctrinated into a pack of lies.<<< My sentiments exactly. My first thought being, "Lucky kids!" Hopefully they won't get baptized after they are dead either.
Originally Posted By Yookeroo "With love and understanding, the Church reaches out to all God’s children" Unless they have gay parents.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip My personal experience with Mormons is that they are wonderfully kind and loving people. I feel they are stigmatized by belonging to a religion that is backwards in many ways. And I sympathize. I am a Catholic and do not want to leave the church. At the same time, I feel the church is backwards in many ways and do not share all of their beliefs. But it is still my religious home. I've been given hope for the future by Pope Francis, but I still know any substantial change in the church is a long ways off. I guess I hate to see individual Mormons bashed because of the positions taken by the church. Unfortunately Josh kind of makes it easy by generally supporting those positions where I have an easy time saying there are Catholic positions I just don't agree with and could never support.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder I see your point, RT. It helps to know that people can be intellectually honest about this type of thing. In josh's case sadly, he's brainwashed. No other way to put it. He'd be better off not engaging here if the responses truly bother him, but at the same time as far as I'm concerned he'd be better off not being Mormon. I get more upset than most possibly because the Mormon corporation has injected, interrupted, bullied (pick one) its way into politics and lives here in California simply because of a misguided belief they "know better" than anyone else what is good for people. "We're spreading love" and "in time you'll appreciate us for this". A loud and long F THAT right back at them. Intentional or unintentional, with their belligerent activities they've ruined the lives here of many people who never sought them out, all in God's name. Get out of peoples' lives while they're alive and stop screwing with them when they're dead. It's just creepy terrorism.
Originally Posted By Tikiduck Yep, behind all the smiles and good fellowship there is a small group of very powerful (and often creepy) old men pulling all the strings. Unwavering religious devotion, even when common sense and Human compassion tells you better, is not a healthy thing.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>I guess I hate to see individual Mormons bashed because of the positions taken by the church.<< There are a lot of Mormons who are defending these policies and saying "Aw shucks, this is really to protect children." But I am telling you, they really screwed up this time. I have never, ever seen so many Mormons so pissed off. Devout people who last week would have never uttered so much as a whisper of criticism are shocked and angry, and they are vocalizing that shock and anger. I've lost track of how many people have said they won't be attending or paying tithing until this is changed. The church thought they would slip this change into the handbook and no one would notice. They had to rush out a very awkward public statement (the one Josh linked to) late on Friday night because they were so caught off guard. It's important to remember that the church is governed and led by men whose median age is around 80. The top few leaders who likely drove this change are like 84, 87, and 91. They are insulated, they have no clue about social media, and they grossly underestimated how this would be received. I guess I'm saying don't assume that just because someone is Mormon they support this. And a lot of them are strongly considering leaving or not participating.
Originally Posted By utahjosh I am not brainwashed, although nothing I say - nothing - could convince some of you otherwise. The vast majority of members, once seeing this new policy from all perspectives, are supportive of it.
Originally Posted By utahjosh The "outrage" against this policy is due to misunderstanding. It's due to sensationalism. It's from those who do not understand that the church's belief in homosexuality as a sin isn't changing - ever. It makes ZERO sense to have a CHILD learn about a gospel that teaches that child's parents are wrong to be together. Our church teaches that the parents of a same-sex family should not have been married - and to fix the wrong they need to get a divorce. Makes no sense for a child from a same-sex family to be baptized in such a church. Baptism is a very serious decision - only made at 8 years old when the parent(s) are members of the church and there to support their full church membership. So the policy tells those children to "wait till you are old enough to be on your own, and when you are not longer reliant on the support of your parents."
Originally Posted By Yookeroo "The vast majority of members, once seeing this new policy from all perspectives, are supportive of it." This isn't making me love Mormonism.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Baptism is a very serious decision - only made at 8 years old when the parent(s) are members of the church and there to support their full church membership.<< This is so beyond disingenuous it is unbelievable. This notion that Mormons don't baptize lots of eight year olds if they aren't ready is beyond laughable. If you are a Mormon kid and you turn eight, you get baptized, end of story. If you turn 8 and you *don't* get baptized, everyone wonders what is wrong with you. Also, it is completely false that your parents need to be members of the church. Again, church periodicals have published stories praising kids who attend church without their parents. Seriously, I wish I had a time machine so I could go back a week and ask people like Josh if they think anyone else's baptism should depend on someone else's choices or "sins." Or ask them if they think it's no big whoop if someone just hangs out until they're 18 to get baptized. Or if they think having the light of Christ is just the same as having the gift of the Holy Ghost. I am wholeheartedly convinced that if the LDS church re-initiated its ban on African Americans from temple worship or holding the priesthood, Mormons like Josh would be like, "Yup, that's how God wants it!"
Originally Posted By ecdc "Look, I just believe in traditional marriage, where a man and a woman enter a restricted building, get dressed in white robes and green aprons, kneel across an altar from each other while some of their family mill about outside because they aren't allowed in, and are sealed by a stranger for time and all eternity unless the woman dies and the man gets remarried and then he can be a spiritual polygamist or the woman wants a divorce and has to get permission from three old men she's never met. What is so complicated about that?" --Mormons Also... "Our leaders can only wrong in the past, never the present." --Mormons
Originally Posted By utahjosh I'm not saiying this policy is anything but policy. I think the policy has mostly positive results. It's made for the benefit of children. But it's policy, it can change. It's not doctrine.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>I think the policy has mostly positive results. It's made for the benefit of children.<< Orwell called and told you to take it down a notch. So it's for the benefit of the girl who is being sent home from her mission because she lives part-time with her gay father when she's home? It's for the benefit of the kids' whose baptism was canceled this last Saturday? It's for the benefit of the man whose ex-wife just told him she's suing to take away all of his custody rights because she's scared their kids won't be able to get baptized? (We know, you don't believe these things. You just know that it's a great policy, but you don't believe any of the ramifications of the great policy are real.) Yes, what a wonderful, family oriented faith.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "Our church teaches that the parents of a same-sex family should not have been married - and to fix the wrong they need to get a divorce. Makes no sense for a child from a same-sex family to be baptized in such a church." And you're NOT brainwashed? ROTFLMFAO. What you wrote is so wrong it's almost criminal. Your church is EVERYTHING that's wrong with organized religion. It's an insult to humans everywhere.
Originally Posted By ecdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF4LKgSC40w&feature=youtu.be "Utah leads the nation in gay suicides, think that has anything to do with us?" "Nope." But remember, this policy protects children.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder Brainwashedjosh says he finds us laughable, but laugh about this BWJ- Tell us when, at some point in your life, you realize you needed to make a conscious decision to decide whether to follow up on your sexual attraction to males or females. Because by insisting it's a choice (yeah, we've covered this before) for others, you're also then saying you yourself had to make that choice, Just when was that? When was the time you decided to let your attraction to men be the one you'd ignore? Because by insisting it's a choice, you're rejecting that it's just something you feel naturally for one gender only. So, when was that BWJ?
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Remember how I said that I thought in 20 years whoever the leader of the Mormons is will have a "revelation" and change the policy for gay people? I think this may have moved the timeline up. I don't think they thought this through. I don't think they realize how many families they're going to lose over this. And those families will mostly be gone forever. If they won't except those families, the parents will just raise their kids and another religion, or no religion at all. And those kids, like most kids, will stick with the church they grew up in. Why in the world would they suddenly decide at 18 to join a church that didn't want them to begin with? Especially if they had to repudiate their parents. Ultimately most kids love their parents, and they're not going to do that. So the Mormons have just lost most of those families – and probably a certain percentage of their extended families - forever. Eventually they'll figure that out, and then it will be a revelation time.
Originally Posted By Yookeroo "I think the policy has mostly positive results. It's made for the benefit of children." I'm going to have to agree that keeping them out of the LDS is beneficial.
