I've struggled for years to understand why my faith has been directed to hold homosexuality under so much scrutiny. And I'm afraid I don't have profound explanations for it yet. But here are a few thoughts.
Given the gravity that my faith gives to sexuality in general--sexual activity outside of marriage ranking just below shedding of innocent blood in the hierarchy of misdeeds--and juxtaposing that against my faith's belief in the extreme importance of family and family-level decision making, I can only imagine what a difficult discussion that must have been among the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles that led to the generation of the additional language in the Handbook.
As soon as I heard about this new policy I instantly thought back to an experience I had 11 years ago when I was privileged to teach a young family about my faith. One of the daughters, the oldest child who was 12 at the time, was eager to be baptized but none of the other family members shared that conviction at the time. The parents made the decision that their daughter would not be baptized. My faith doesn't believe in going against parent's decisions while they have legal guardianship, so their daughter wasn't baptized. That was hard for me because I felt how strongly this child wanted to be baptized.
I've had other opportunities to teach other individuals in different situations but related in that my faith required them to go through additional steps before they could be authorized for baptism. I taught a gentleman who I grew to love so much who was in a legal partnership. He and his partner of 20 years, a wonderful lady named Cindy, had not been married but were considered legally bound through California state law. Before he could be baptized he had to be interviewed by a mission president and receive authorization from the First Presidency, the highest governing body of my faith.
I also got to know a wonderful family whose wife and mother had been involved in a polygamous community some years back. She told me some of the additional steps she had to go through in order to be authorized to renew her membership in my faith. It took her some years and working with priesthood leaders. All that time, she participated in my faith's activities and worship services and considered her baptism all the more remarkable having had to go through these additional preparatory steps.
My last thought is that I recently renewed what my faith calls a temple recommend. The recommend authorizes me to enter our temple buildings that are only accessible to those among my faith who commit to living certain principles the best they can. The recommend interview includes a series of questions to gauge my level of commitment to principles like whether or not I believe in God and certain codes of conduct such as my faith's law of health among others.
I know some people believe that the LDS faith requires its members to either be 100% "in" or else they're shown the door or at least ostracized by its "true believers." I felt I could honestly answer all the questions asked in that recommend interview, and holding a temple recommend is as good of a sign as any that one is an upstanding member of my faith community.
Let me tell you some of the questions that interview did not include that some, I'm sure we'll-meaning, individuals must think are included given they're insistence in proclaiming the LDS Church as a hate driven organization. I wasn't asked if I hate gay people. I wasn't asked if I was willing to fund campaigns to take rights away from or refuse services for same-sex couples. And nowhere in that interview was it even mentioned I must be a Republican.
I know it probably sounds extremely naive for me to say so among the intellectual communities I run in, but I do have faith in a religion that believes it is led by a prophet. And that prophet has a pretty stark responsibility: act as God's mouthpiece on earth and don't vary from what God wants him to say or else God will remove him from said office. I don't understand all the reasons why my faith's prophet has been directed in this way. I won't deny my difficulty in dealing with this new policy. But I love the fact that I can feel like I'm an upstanding member of my faith community while holding opinions that differ from the mainstream "Mormon Culture," on some of these matters that are not a core part of why I choose to continue believing in my faith.
I'll admit that some individuals in my faith community say things on social media and other places that are sometimes very hurtful. But to label the entire community hateful is a gross inaccuracy. Case in point: I missed that 15 minute social media news cycle because I was chairing a city natural resources and sustainability committee meeting. One can definitely hold progressive views and a LDS faith belief system at the same time.
