> civic pressure in 1978, and it is currently fighting against gay and > lesbian rights today.
I assume you are referring to the gay marriage debate. As far as I know, on other gay rights issues, such as hate crime legislation and a gay bill of rights, the church has made no statements. In the case of gay marriage the church has a vested interest in the debate. From what I have read, as a political body the church doesn't want to be forced by the government into a position of conflict with itself. If gay marriage became legal it is conceivable, and has been proposed in some states, that the government could only allow people to have a marriage license that would perform gay marriages. This would be a way to try and force the church to allow homosexuals to marry in the temple. Of course, the church would never allow gay marriage in the temple so the sealers would lose the legal power to perform marriages. Since the church's stance on chastity is no sex except with your legal and lawful spouse, church members would have to be married both at the courthouse and in the temple. Really, that is only a minor inconvenience for many. So the church is really fighting to make sure that it is able to retain it's rights to legally marry in the temple those it deems worthy. Now, I believe that the church has opposed all gay marriage initiatives, even those that had no restrictions on the legal authority to marry. Since I am a member I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are merely trying to avoid the possibility that the sealers would lose the legal right to marry. There actually is a precedent for this from what I hear. Early in its history BYU refused to accept federal funding. Later, the government put stipulations on those schools that had received those funds. They had to provide mixed sex student housing. BYU avoided the issue by having rejected the funds, but other ecclesiastical schools had problems with this and had quite a headache fighting it. .===================================. | This has been a P.L.U.G. mailing. | | Don't Fear the Penguin. | | IRC: #utah at irc.freenode.net | `==================================='
