blacks and the priesthood

I would like to add a few more thoughts on the gay marriage issue.

One of the claims I made in my previous two posts is that many people see gay marriage as a civil rights issue, consequently they will have to go all the way with it, even to the point of threatening religious organizations fighting to preserve traditional marriage.

Most gay marriage activists are adamant that gay marriage won’t force the Mormon church, or any church, to recognize, solemnize or perform homosexual marriages. Many on the religious right don’t have faith in those assurances—neither do I. (For several examples of the tactics being used see this article by William A. Jacobson, Associate Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell Law School in Ithaca, NY.) In a debate on gay marriage, Lorrie L. Jean, attorney of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center, made this chilling comment,

The real danger to religious freedom lies not in treating everyone equally under the law, but allowing any one religious belief to be imposed on everyone else. Thousands of religious leaders, churches and synagogues oppose Proposition 8 — and they would never do so if their own religious freedom was endangered. (A gay-marriage Pandora’s box?, Los Angles Times.)

Continue reading “More on gay marriage”

There has been some recent talk about the Church’s former policy of not ordaining black men to the priesthood. I am republishing this post from my other blog (Response to Damon Linker).

An article written by Jason Riley in the Wall Street Journal brought up some good points (“The Mormons still haven’t settled their race problem“). The only issue I had with the article was the comment, “Ultimately, the ban was a manifestation of a central belief that blacks are unfit to be full members of the church on Earth, or to exist alongside whites in heaven.”

There was never a doctrine of separate heavens for blacks and whites. Mormons did, and some still do, see blackness as the mark of a divine curse. But there was never a teaching that blacks could not eventually receive all the blessings that whites may receive. I know that doesn’t change the past or make it less offensive, nor should it. But because Mormonism’s past is checkered with practices and doctrines that many consider racist or strange, assessments of our beliefs easily tend toward exaggeration and/or distortion–sometimes a lot, and sometimes a little. Continue reading “Blacks and the Priesthood”