The uproar over a gay couple detained for allegedly refusing to leave after kissing near the Main Street Plaza last week revealed a lingering resentment about the involvement of the LDS Church in the fight over Proposition 8 in California. This week on Utah NOW: the fallout of Prop 8... how are the faithful dealing with and talking about gay rights?

View or Post Comments

Guests include: Laura Compton, Chris Bigelow, Peter Danzig and Adam Blackwell.

To read about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint official views on Same-Gender Attraction visit:
www.newsroom.lds.org

For additional information visit the follow sites:
ldsapology.org
mormonsformarriage.com
protectmarriage.com

Filed under the following topic(s): Society and Community, Politics and Economy, Diversity.

Posted by Utah NOW, Wednesday July 15th, 2009 @ 5:35 pm

The center person made an incorrect statement and even on this website the issue was incorrectly stated. The center person said that security handcuffed a couple for kissing. Let us get the facts straight: 1st the couple was asked to leave. Property owners have that right. When the couple used profanity and refused to leave, is when they were detained. Since the gay couple refused to comply with the rules of the premises the city police had to enforce the rules of the premise. Any homeowner should expect that kind of back up from the police also.

Posted by Dixee Neugebauer, Friday July 17th, 2009 @ 8:05 pm

Another great show - very interesting group and discussion, thanks!

Posted by Jason Echols , Saturday July 18th, 2009 @ 8:28 pm

I thought the point made by the host was interesting that for a "correlated" church, the leaders' responses to members' opposition to Prop 8 varied wildly. I wish we could all have the freedom that Laura Compton enjoys to express our convictions so openly, even when it differs from the official church position. It's very sad for me to see well- meaning members who are troubled by the church's postion, yet afraid to speak according to their consciences.

Posted by Janeen Thompson, Saturday July 18th, 2009 @ 9:41 pm

Afraid of what? At most, excommunication, but if you don't believe the church's position on gay marriage then you don't believe in eternal marriage either -- or else you have some odd notions of the afterlife.

Once you've rejected the core of the plan of salvation, it's only the fear of being known for what you really believe in, and taking the logical step of removing yourself from the church's records, that causes you to shrink from taking a stand. You won't be excommunicated from merely making your opinion known, of course, unless that opinion involves denouncing the leadership as being out of tune with God's real wishes. That is apostasy, but if you really are a pioneer of a brave new world, be proud and lead out. Of course you'll end up ostracized by many, I won't pretend otherwise, but don't blame others for your lack of courage and abundance of intellectual dishonesty.

Posted by Preston McConkie, Sunday July 19th, 2009 @ 4:28 am

Preston,

Your all-or-nothing approach assumes the worst of those of us who are opposed to the Church's stance on marriage equality - that we reject the Core of the Gospel and are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Many, if not most, LDS members who support gay marriage do, in fact, believe in eternal marriage and find the LDS plan of salvation full of mercy. That there are many things we do not and cannot understand while we are shackled with mortal bodies is a given. All we can do now is look forward with a perfect brightness of hope to a better tomorrow when the truly colorful beauty of the Plan of Happiness is revealed and we begin to understand how limited our current black-and-white version is.

Part of our recent vacation to your fair state of Utah included a road trip to a Zion National Park overlook where we all took pictures. My 3-year-old's pictures are pictures of signs. He was so enamored of the guideposts and the lettering that he missed the Big Picture of the View Itself. While the guideposts interpret the vision, often quite accurately, they are not The Vision. Their purpose is to help us understand what we are seeing.

It would be a shame to be so focused on the jots and tittles of life - the signs - that we miss the call to charitable action, service and love - and the ability to view one another through the eyes of a loving Savior.

Rather than encouraging excommunication or the spiritual suicide of name removal (for if someone truly believes LDS doctrine, then removing one's name from the Church could easily be construed to be akin to spiritual suicide), how about finding ways to listen to, converse with and understand one another? I don't see how any of us who live here with our limited understandings of God's plan can take it upon ourselves to lightly cast our brothers and sisters out like so much garbage - "he who is without sin," and all that, you know.

This conversation is in its infancy still and will be many years in finding its resolution. Let's not put up walls so high and dig holes so deep that we lose touch with the humanity of those "on the other side" of us. Disagreement does not have to lead to ostracism.

Posted by Laura Compton , Sunday July 19th, 2009 @ 8:04 pm

To take Laura's beautifully stated point one step further, Preston's comment presumes that those who support civilly sanctioned gay marriage must naturally believe that gay marriage should also be spiritually sanctioned and that LDS belief in eternal man-woman marriage is therefore flawed. Clearly, there is plenty of room for gray here. A faithful LDS person can believe that, indeed, God recognizes only marriages that are between a man and a woman; however, the state is not God, and a civil marriage is not necessarily also a religious marriage.

Why can't someone believe that, while in their own religious view a certain marriage would never be blessed by God, it ought to be recognized for legal and civil purposes as akin to any other civilly recognized marriage? When an LDS person is OK with state recognition of a courthouse marriage that completely leaves God out of the equation, she obviously is not making the claim that she no longer believes an LDS temple marriage is essential to salvation. It's just the recognition that, in different contexts, marriage means different things.

Posted by Doug Smeath, Monday July 20th, 2009 @ 8:44 pm

I saw the program thanks to www.pamshouseblend.com which linked to the show.

Let's get one thing clear: The couple in question was *slammed* onto the hard concrete during the arrest! This wasn't an arrest you might see in demonstrations using non-violent confrontation, or the kiss-ins -- this was brutality, pure and simple!

Second: We're talking about *secular* law! There's not one advocate for same-sex marriage who wants to force any church or pastor from any faith to perform such marriages! Would you believe that there are still some mainstream churches who refuse to marry an interracial couple *40 years* after Loving v Virginia?

Third: Need I have to remind members of the LDS faith of the decades of oppression and bigotry members faced in the past? Need I have to remind members of the LDS faith of the words of Jesus in regards to hypocrites? Because that's *exactly* what members of the LDS church are committing when they call to oppress a minority when they forget their own history.

Posted by Marlene Bomer, Sunday July 26th, 2009 @ 4:40 am