No one here should be shocked to learn that I am saddened by recent comments made in General Conference. I didn’t expect a terribly different message from the church, necessarily, I am not shocked by this position, and I respect the Church’s right to set its own guidelines for things like Temple Recommends, a process that I have for many years personally and respectfully chosen to opt out of. I have nothing but love and admiration for those who adhere to those guidelines, choose a faithful life, and who aspire to a life in continual communion with the church. That is a beautiful thing. Different from my thing, but absolutely beautiful.
I respectfully take issue with the notion put forth by President Packer from his position of religious authority that he knows without a doubt that no one is born with homosexual tendencies, his reasoning being “Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone?” This reasoning seems to me to go against all the things that I know of God. It seems to me that God makes us all sorts of ways, and frankly does all sorts of things “to” us. He takes babies from mothers, he takes mothers from children, he gives people genetic dispositions to alcoholism, he gives people genetic dispositions to be brilliant savants at one thing and tragically weak at other things. Assuming God is intimately involved with each and every one of us on our path, God does a great many things that we cannot always understand. Some people’s paths seem so much harder than ours, and some people’s so much easier. And that is why God asks us not to judge others, and in fact, not even to judge ourselves, but to leave the judgment to him and him alone.
I have been incredibly, deeply, remarkably thankful to have Dan as my companion, who is loved and accepted and praised (“thank you for loving our crazy Lorraine!”) by my friends and family. I have been so lucky that the love that I was seeking was one so quickly accepted and appreciated by those around me (except some of my DC friends who CANNOT FATHOM falling in love and entering into marriage so quickly, to the point that some of them ceased their friendship with me).
I cannot imagine the road that others must walk in this regard, but I fervently hope that we all show love and welcome no matter the circumstance, and that no matter the reason they are this way, whether born to it, or coping with life through it, or making peace with it, we find joy in the fact that there is love in this world, and people willing to share it. And if by some random chance there is a questioning or open Mormon LGBTQ individual reading this digital spattering of stuff being tossed into the internets, know that you are LOVED, and that your beautiful, extraordinary, unique and powerful soul is worth more to God than a single mortal girl could ever express, in a million blogs over a million lifetimes.
I respectfully take issue with the notion put forth by President Packer from his position of religious authority that he knows without a doubt that no one is born with homosexual tendencies, his reasoning being “Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone?” This reasoning seems to me to go against all the things that I know of God. It seems to me that God makes us all sorts of ways, and frankly does all sorts of things “to” us. He takes babies from mothers, he takes mothers from children, he gives people genetic dispositions to alcoholism, he gives people genetic dispositions to be brilliant savants at one thing and tragically weak at other things. Assuming God is intimately involved with each and every one of us on our path, God does a great many things that we cannot always understand. Some people’s paths seem so much harder than ours, and some people’s so much easier. And that is why God asks us not to judge others, and in fact, not even to judge ourselves, but to leave the judgment to him and him alone.
I have been incredibly, deeply, remarkably thankful to have Dan as my companion, who is loved and accepted and praised (“thank you for loving our crazy Lorraine!”) by my friends and family. I have been so lucky that the love that I was seeking was one so quickly accepted and appreciated by those around me (except some of my DC friends who CANNOT FATHOM falling in love and entering into marriage so quickly, to the point that some of them ceased their friendship with me).
I cannot imagine the road that others must walk in this regard, but I fervently hope that we all show love and welcome no matter the circumstance, and that no matter the reason they are this way, whether born to it, or coping with life through it, or making peace with it, we find joy in the fact that there is love in this world, and people willing to share it. And if by some random chance there is a questioning or open Mormon LGBTQ individual reading this digital spattering of stuff being tossed into the internets, know that you are LOVED, and that your beautiful, extraordinary, unique and powerful soul is worth more to God than a single mortal girl could ever express, in a million blogs over a million lifetimes.
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