Out of the Closet

I am officially coming out closet--no, I'm not gay. I would like to say, however, that I am a Mormon and I support gay rights. Many of you already know that these are my views, but I feel the need to throw it out into the universe officially.

The LDS Church's involvement in supporting Prop 8 is widely known. The majority of church members supported this involvement. I did not. I was actually appalled by the whole thing. I do not for even one second believe that it was divinely inspired and I think that down the line we will seriously regret it. I know that many church members feel threatened and confused by gay marriage and they feel angry with people that don't support prop 8, or that question the church's involvement in it. Therefore, I am going to try to lay out the reasons for my opinion. Even if you are reading this and think you are going to disagree with me, please read on with an open mind. Please, just try to step outside of your own situation for a minute.

1) Why we should stop saying that people should choose not to be gay: First of all, being gay is not a choice, it is a way some people are naturally oriented. People don't just go along and decide "Oh, I think I'll make my life really difficult by going against cultural norms today, so I think I'll be gay." No, that's not what happens. This is not up for debate, it is not yours to say that you think people just choose to be that way. If you are not gay thenyou don't really know, do you? You could never really tell. How would you like it if someone said to you "I don't think you really have a testimony," just because they couldn't see inside your soul to check for sure. That wouldn't be fair. We have to be able to trust one another in our communities. Do you really think that all of gay people are lying to us and just being gay for fun? Since "coming out of the closet" seems to be a traumatic, relationship-severing, lifestyle altering event for most people, I think they would probably avoid it if they could. People generally don't like to make life more difficult for themselves on purpose.

2) Why gay marriage is not a threat to you: There are so many, many reasons that I could put down here. To me, the most important is this--we have all been given the gift of agency and should not actively seek to take away that agency from another person(s). If a person is hurting another person, as in criminal situations like child/spousal abuse, rape, murder, theft, etc. on down the line, it is our responsibility as a community to temporarily modify that person's agency to stop them from hurting others. This makes total sense--we shouldn't hurt people, duh. News flash: someone else living a gay lifestyle does not hurt your heterosexual self. If two guys or two ladies want to get married, how does that hurt you, really? You might see them kissing in public, oh no! If you are already married and your marriage is going to be affected by the fact that a homosexual couple also has a marriage, the problem is your marriage. Marriage is just an official thing on a piece of signed paper. The real thing is what happens every day, in the home, as partners. Families are made up of all sorts of people and no family is perfect, not even the heterosexual parents, four kids, everyone goes to church, cookie-cutter one. If you really are concerned for the souls of the people that are living a gay lifestyle, first of all, worry about yourself, and second of all remember, they are exercising their agency. This brings me to point number 3.

3) Why we should support (or at least not thwart) gay marriage: Our gift of agency is probably the most important thing that we have here on Earth. It is exactly that, a gift given to us from the Lord. He didn't just give it to the people he thought would make the best choices, He gave it to every single one of us. This country represents many things, positive and negative but it always claims to represent freedom. The LDS Church was able to begin and grow here because we were able to exercise our agency to worship in our own way. That right is one that we treasure. Imagine if a large group of people banded together to make Mormonism illegal--what if they said it was too weird or wrong? For many of you reading, the church is one of the things in your life that brings you the most joy, correct? If that source of joy was made illegal and you weren't allowed to have that joy in your life, how would you feel? We would never want that agency taken away from us, so why on Earth would we take it away from someone else? We should support the agency of other groups of people so that if our agency is ever threatened, maybe they will support us. Even if we may not agree with the gay lifestyle, we should all agree that we should be able to choose our own lifestyle and that we should be able to choose the path the we think will bring us the most joy.

4) Why Prop 8 was a bad idea: As far as I"m concerned, the church should never, ever, get involved with political issues. We are a church, we don't pay taxes, we are not (or should not be) a corporation, we do not get a political vote. Plain and simple. Even if they claim that that money was not tithing money, it was probably interest earned from investments made with tithing money. When I pay my tithing I expect it to go to help people, feed them, clothe them, or help missionaries. I don't want my money going to support a cause that I am vehemently against and a resent the fact that I have to worry about that.

Times are changing, luckily our church adapts with the times so we are always getting relevent information. If we change, they church will follow. Please keep these things in mind next time you enter a conversation about gay rights/marriage. Be sensitive, slow to anger, and last to judge.

Also, since I'm on the general subject, I don't support Mitt Romney. He is running a dirty rotten campaign that tells lots of lies and is funded by corporate and upperclass greed. Also I totally support ObamaCare! Hooray!