Saturday, November 14, 2009

David B gingerly touches the third rail of Mormon blogging

I don’t entirely get why the whole same-sex marriage thing is such a big deal (for either side of the argument), but i get that it’s a big deal for a lot of people. However, when it gets mentioned in church meetings it often gets really weird at me—like statements that marriage has to be between one man and one woman and that history has shown that “alternative forms of family formation” are doomed to failure. Well, if anyone would know that, i guess it’d be us Mormons…

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Most people at church are too polite or PC to say the real reason: It can be assumed that a couple who are in a same-sex marriage are acting on their homosexuality and so sinning. We do not condone sin. Of course, our church only gets involved politically for specific propositions (like in CA) if the writing of it threatens the right of the Church to not perform gay marriages.

Personally, I think a lot of plural marriages worked out just fine.

David B said...

It's an interesting issue, what you bring up—i mean, i remember a few years ago when the standard line was “homosexual sexual activity is wrong ’cause sexual activity outside of marriage is wrong, and marriage between homosexuals isn’t allowed, so homosexual sexual activity, being always outside of marriage, is wrong—QED”. That doesn’t work in a number of jurisdictions anymore, so i’ve heard it less frequently.

It leads to an interesting question—is homosexual sexual activity within marriage a sin? I know what i suspect the answer is, but it’s an interesting unanswered question.

And i don’t know if you’re right about the church only getting involved when there’s threats to the church’s ability not to perform particular marriages—conspiracy theories aside, if that’s the case i don’t see why the church got involved in Hawaii on the issue, for example.

Of course, like i said, i really don’t see what the big deal is. I understand it is a big deal to a lot of people, i just don’t grok it, you know?