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Hi Gramps,

I understand and believe that God intended sex only between a man and a woman and I take no issue with this.  I also know that God intended us to have free agency.  I don’t think its my place to even have an opinion on whether or not two consenting adults can have relations.  Am I being disrespectful to God if I were to vote to allow two consenting adults to whom he has given free agency to enter into a relationship, and if so, can you explain why?

I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize my temple recommend, but I want to be as supportive of all downtrodden human beings, to include those of the LGBTQ community.  They are very often victims of hate crimes and such and I want to be able to be an ally, but I’m not sure where the line is.  I’m assuming I can’t vote for them to be married or have children, but I don’t quite understand why.  Can you help me understand?

Marcella

 

Answer

 

Marcella,

How are we supposed to treat the LGBTQ community?  I’d prefer to treat every individual as a child of God.  And as a child of God, we show mutual respect and courtesy.  We also tell people the truth — tactfully if possible, of course.  That does not mean that we bring up their sins every time we come in contact with them.  We don’t bring up heterosexual sins every time we talk to heterosexual people either.  We just try to encourage people to do the best they can no matter who they are.  But that doesn’t mean we lie to them and say “there’s nothing wrong with what you’re doing.”

Should you “vote for it”?  There is no such thing as “voting for same sex marriage” anymore.  Same sex marriage effectively became legal in California in 2013.  Most other states followed suit in the months following.

I don’t like the idea of treating them as a “community.”  They aren’t a community any more than the heterosexual population is a “community.”  There are heterosexual people and there are homosexual people. But the important thing is that they’re all people — children of God.

There are, unfortunately, the haters out there.  The truth about haters is that they don’t really need a reason.  They just hate.  People think that they hate “this group” or “that group”.  But the fact is that very few haters are so selective on who they hate.  They just need an excuse to justify their hatred.  And that doesn’t change because of legislation.  You can’t legislate love.  Here’s proof:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notice that the trend was already going down by 2013.  And after that, it leveled off.  But this came from a report stating that such hate crimes were on the rise (FBI crime statistics).  So, did legalizing it make a difference in the hearts of the haters?  It really didn’t do a thing.

Haters hate because they cease to learn how to have charity for all.  It has nothing to do with legal status.  Gay people are human beings and have human rights as outlined in the Constitution.  And that has nothing to do with being allowed to marry or not.

Stay firm in the faith.  Listen to the words of our apostles and prophets.  Understand which direction they are pointing and do your best to prayerfully seek out the will of the Lord.

 

Gramps

 

 

 

 

 

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