The latest installment of my bi-weekly “Defending the Faith” column appeared in the print edition of the Deseret News this morning and, for the first time in quite a few weeks, went up online on the Deseret News website rather than at LDS Living:
“Exploring how ‘Faith is Not Blind'”
Speaking of LDS Living, though, here’s something that is directly relevant to the subject of my column:
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I’m really looking forward to this:
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And now for a rather less pleasant topic:
Back in late February or early March of 2016, Elder David A. Bednar of the Council of the Twelve said “There are no homosexual members of the Church.”
Quite predictably, he was immediately depicted by a number of critics as insane, a bitter hater, oppressive, tyrannical, a homophobic bigot, oblivious to reality, an embarrassment to Mormonism, someone who ought to resign, in denial, and so forth. And, just within the past day or two, I’ve seen the same depiction angrily re-emerge online.
Now, on one level, there are clearly homosexual members of the Church. As a former singles ward bishop and as someone who has held various leadership positions, I’ve counseled with people who experience same-sex attraction. I’ll admit that, when I was serving as a bishop, there were actually fewer such cases than I had anticipated. Still, though, and while I hope and believe that, in doing so, I’ve been compassionate, empathetic, fair, and attuned to the teachings of the Church on this difficult issue, I certainly can’t deny the existence of homosexually-inclined Latter-day Saints.
But is that really what Elder Bednar was doing? Is he really — to put it bluntly — that stupid or that flagrantly and demonstrably dishonest? Was he really claiming, in opposition to what virtually every sentient adult member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints knows full well, that no Church members feel or ever have felt sexually attracted to others of the same sex?
How about this, for a comparison: When Paul wrote to the Galatians that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28), was he stupidly and dishonestly denying the fact that both men and women had joined the Christian church? Was he really claiming that no Jews (including himself) and no Greeks had accepted the message of Jesus? Was he actually saying, against the evidence of some of his own letters, that there were no Christian slaves? And, if he was, how could he also be insisting that there were no free Christians? Was he expressing his hatred for Jews, Greeks, slaves, freemen, males, and females?
When, at Ephesians 2:19, Paul writes “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God,” is he expressing not his openness to all but, rather, his raging and hateful xenophobia?
Of course not. To read Paul in such a fashion would be completely stupid.
So, too, to misread Elder Bednar in such a way argues either for stupidity on the part of the misreader or, more likely, for an animus-driven unfairness that should, but (sadly) typically doesn’t, embarrass the person doing the misreading.
Here is Elder Bednar, in his own words and his own voice:
Judge for yourself.
Certain critics of Mormonism would be more persuasive to reasonable outsiders if they weren’t so consistently unfair, uncharitable, and unjust in their criticisms.
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