"After General Conference, the media descended upon President Packer with negative publicity and misinterpretation of his speech. It was said that over 100,000 letters were delivered to him on Tuesday in protest to his talk. For those who might have been misinformed on what he said, we invite you to read/listen to his entire talk."
Link to his talk: http://lds.org/conference/sessions/display/0,5239,23-1-1298,00.html
I read something recently that was much more articulate than I could be about the Church's official stand on the matter. Here is the link to that: http://beta-newsroom.lds.org/article/church-mormon-responds-to-human-rights-campaign-petition-same-sex-attraction
This is one of my favorite parts of what was said:
"God’s universal fatherhood and love charges each of us with an innate and reverent acknowledgement of our shared human dignity. We are to love one another. We are to treat each other with respect as brothers and sisters and fellow children of God, no matter how much we may differ from one another.
We hope and firmly believe that within this community, and in others, kindness, persuasion and goodwill can prevail."
I'm grateful for the Church's stand on this position and hope to be able to spread it however I can. And to those who were offended by the misunderstanding... I pray their hearts will be softened and these protests put to rest.Because of this issue I recently came upon a very inspirational blog. The writer is a gay Mormon and expresses his feelings about the talk that Packer gave as well: See link below:
http://gaymormonguy.blogspot.com/2010/10/president-packers-talk-from-gay-mormon.html
This is a must read and a great source of encouragement and strength for those of you who have same sex attractions but want to become or stay a member of the Church.
Thanks Almsy for posting all of this. I think that I need to repent and ask forgiveness. I have never thought of homosexuality as a weakness to overcome, but rather just a sin. We all have weaknesses!
ReplyDeleteOur Church is unfortunately not free from the sin of persecuting others. I wish we were. It's one of the lessons from Church history: Others were persecuting us (pick a group from the 1800's, and they were persecuted. It was the times), but we were persecuting them, too. It was a war. I think the same is true today. We may still feel some persecution as members of the Church, but our tactics aren't entirely pure, either. Prop 8 was particularly messy. It's an interesting thing.
ReplyDeleteListening to his talk, I knew there would be quite a bit of uproar. My hubby, Mike, always says about Gospel doctrine that is hard to hear... "You can't apologize for the truth." This particular talk was a testiment to me of the need to have a strong testimony that what the prophets and apostles tell us comes from God. It's not made up or just their opinion. It is truth even when it is hard to swallow.
ReplyDelete