Prop 8: A Fork in the Road For Modern Latter Day Saints I
Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2010 5:35 pm
Prop 8: A Fork in the Road For Modern Latter Day Saints
At the outset, I’d just like to provide both a doctrinal and personal philosophical foundation for my position on the details of the issue, and than go over a set of the most common leftist (or, from a Book of Mormon perspective, Korihorist) perspectives, with what I consider to be the salient refutations.
From the perspective of settled Church doctrine, homosexuality is one of a class of sins or transgressions against the laws and divine rules of conduct that govern the integrity and boundaries of human sexuality. Among all forms of transgression, it is classed, with other of the more serious moral lapses, of various kinds, as an abomination; as a sin of a degree of seriousness such that its continued indulgence, if not repented of in this life, will result in the “second death”, or a complete separation from God and all things “pertaining to righteousness” once the spirit leaves the body in death. It is a gross form of Telestial wickedness, classed with other forms of sexual immorality such as pre-marital sexual relations, adultery, and all forms of sexual perversion or fetishism that fall outside the bounds and conditions set by the Lord.
From a restored gospel perspective, never, in the history of humankind since Adam, have the commandments and counsel relative to human sexuality in this context been altered, amended or negated. Continued perusal of a lifestyle grounded in behaviors of this kind place one in a position of the living of a Telestial law, with all the implications and consequences attendant to that form and manner of life (whether such a life involves sexual sins or other forms of rebellion against the moral and ethical standards of the gospel).
Beginning in the sixties, the “sexual revolution” began a long and sustained assault on gospel standards of human sexuality across a broad front, of which the legitimization of homosexuality was, in the beginning, a peripheral concern. The broad based assault (exemplified by Hugh Hefner’s “playboy philosophy”) was on the primarily heterosexual aspects of normative Judeo-Christian sexual ethics as well as focused on the normalization or domestication of a society wide cult of eroticism as a fundamental aspect of a modern, affluent late 20th century western social structure.
A philosophy of unrestrained hedonism and “self fulfillment” paralleled the rise of the New Left and a spasm of social upheaval across range of social and political issues, many of them focused on the subversion and overturning of both Judeo-Christian social norms as well as classical liberal political and economic philosophy. “Liberation” was the cry from a cacophony of idiosyncratic voices each seeking their “rights” in their own way but all being united in their hostility to what we would understand as gospel standards of behavior in many areas, but for our purposes, in the area of sexual relations.
The “Gay Liberation” movement (there were a plethora of “movements” arising out of the cultural turmoil of the late sixties through early seventies era, all of which played upon some variant of the theme of “liberation” and “equal rights”) gained organizational and political experience in the late sixties, and blossomed over the next 20 years into a powerful and vocal political presence in American political and cultural life. Its original claimed aspirations, as with so many of the other “rights” movements of the era, was “tolerance” Discrimination against homosexuals in hiring, housing, and other venues of social life were to be opposed and made illegal by statute law, where applicable, in the same since as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made overt discrimination against blacks impermissible. Homosexuals were to be tolerated within the context of the Bill of Rights and other protections of the Constitution even when strong dissent regarding their chosen lifestyle was present in the one extending such toleration.
By the time the 80s were well underway, however, this original intention (as with many of the movements that proliferated during this period) that been abandoned, first for acceptance of homosexuality and the Gay lifestyle, and then for celebration of that behavior and lifestyle. Militant homosexual groups (like Queer Nation and ACT UP), supported by the cultural and political Left across a broad spectrum of groups and organizations (including much of the mainstream Democratic party and its activist core), embarked in that and primarily the next decade upon the cause of homosexual marriage, a concept virtually unknown in the 80s and that probably would have struck most homosexuals and homosexual activists in the 70s as preposterous.
While an idiosyncratic movement of its own with its own specific agenda and points to make, the homosexual marriage movement can also be seen as the relative culmination of a half century of sexual radicalism, beginning with the work of Alfred Kinsey and his associates and blossoming in the "sexual revolution" of the late 60, and early 70s, that has sought, in conjunction with other allied concerns, to overthrow the entire conceptual basis of normative sexual ethics and behavioral boundaries for a society of what many on the cultural Left would understand, with leading late 20th century leftist intellectuals such as Michel Foucault or Judith Butler, as a society of "self crafting" involving the liberation of the self from all, what are considered to be artificial and imposed cultural constraints upon sexual identity construction and expression.
All sexual boundaries, demarcation lines, and conceptual limitations based in any form of normative "morality" are considered to be arbitrary and oppressive, and worse, maintained in the service of the dominant classes or power structures of society. Human sexuality, gender, gender roles, and the possibilities of sexual experience are considered here to be (as no core "self" or underlying individual essence, or consciousness, is thought to exist) is as expansive and varied as the human imagination can conceive it to be.
Kinsey brought these ideas to a place of intellectual respectability, Hefner popularized them in their prurient, artistic form, and the critical theorists and postmodernists of late 20th century academic world baptized them in the waters of philosophical sophistication.
At the outset, I’d just like to provide both a doctrinal and personal philosophical foundation for my position on the details of the issue, and than go over a set of the most common leftist (or, from a Book of Mormon perspective, Korihorist) perspectives, with what I consider to be the salient refutations.
From the perspective of settled Church doctrine, homosexuality is one of a class of sins or transgressions against the laws and divine rules of conduct that govern the integrity and boundaries of human sexuality. Among all forms of transgression, it is classed, with other of the more serious moral lapses, of various kinds, as an abomination; as a sin of a degree of seriousness such that its continued indulgence, if not repented of in this life, will result in the “second death”, or a complete separation from God and all things “pertaining to righteousness” once the spirit leaves the body in death. It is a gross form of Telestial wickedness, classed with other forms of sexual immorality such as pre-marital sexual relations, adultery, and all forms of sexual perversion or fetishism that fall outside the bounds and conditions set by the Lord.
From a restored gospel perspective, never, in the history of humankind since Adam, have the commandments and counsel relative to human sexuality in this context been altered, amended or negated. Continued perusal of a lifestyle grounded in behaviors of this kind place one in a position of the living of a Telestial law, with all the implications and consequences attendant to that form and manner of life (whether such a life involves sexual sins or other forms of rebellion against the moral and ethical standards of the gospel).
Beginning in the sixties, the “sexual revolution” began a long and sustained assault on gospel standards of human sexuality across a broad front, of which the legitimization of homosexuality was, in the beginning, a peripheral concern. The broad based assault (exemplified by Hugh Hefner’s “playboy philosophy”) was on the primarily heterosexual aspects of normative Judeo-Christian sexual ethics as well as focused on the normalization or domestication of a society wide cult of eroticism as a fundamental aspect of a modern, affluent late 20th century western social structure.
A philosophy of unrestrained hedonism and “self fulfillment” paralleled the rise of the New Left and a spasm of social upheaval across range of social and political issues, many of them focused on the subversion and overturning of both Judeo-Christian social norms as well as classical liberal political and economic philosophy. “Liberation” was the cry from a cacophony of idiosyncratic voices each seeking their “rights” in their own way but all being united in their hostility to what we would understand as gospel standards of behavior in many areas, but for our purposes, in the area of sexual relations.
The “Gay Liberation” movement (there were a plethora of “movements” arising out of the cultural turmoil of the late sixties through early seventies era, all of which played upon some variant of the theme of “liberation” and “equal rights”) gained organizational and political experience in the late sixties, and blossomed over the next 20 years into a powerful and vocal political presence in American political and cultural life. Its original claimed aspirations, as with so many of the other “rights” movements of the era, was “tolerance” Discrimination against homosexuals in hiring, housing, and other venues of social life were to be opposed and made illegal by statute law, where applicable, in the same since as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made overt discrimination against blacks impermissible. Homosexuals were to be tolerated within the context of the Bill of Rights and other protections of the Constitution even when strong dissent regarding their chosen lifestyle was present in the one extending such toleration.
By the time the 80s were well underway, however, this original intention (as with many of the movements that proliferated during this period) that been abandoned, first for acceptance of homosexuality and the Gay lifestyle, and then for celebration of that behavior and lifestyle. Militant homosexual groups (like Queer Nation and ACT UP), supported by the cultural and political Left across a broad spectrum of groups and organizations (including much of the mainstream Democratic party and its activist core), embarked in that and primarily the next decade upon the cause of homosexual marriage, a concept virtually unknown in the 80s and that probably would have struck most homosexuals and homosexual activists in the 70s as preposterous.
While an idiosyncratic movement of its own with its own specific agenda and points to make, the homosexual marriage movement can also be seen as the relative culmination of a half century of sexual radicalism, beginning with the work of Alfred Kinsey and his associates and blossoming in the "sexual revolution" of the late 60, and early 70s, that has sought, in conjunction with other allied concerns, to overthrow the entire conceptual basis of normative sexual ethics and behavioral boundaries for a society of what many on the cultural Left would understand, with leading late 20th century leftist intellectuals such as Michel Foucault or Judith Butler, as a society of "self crafting" involving the liberation of the self from all, what are considered to be artificial and imposed cultural constraints upon sexual identity construction and expression.
All sexual boundaries, demarcation lines, and conceptual limitations based in any form of normative "morality" are considered to be arbitrary and oppressive, and worse, maintained in the service of the dominant classes or power structures of society. Human sexuality, gender, gender roles, and the possibilities of sexual experience are considered here to be (as no core "self" or underlying individual essence, or consciousness, is thought to exist) is as expansive and varied as the human imagination can conceive it to be.
Kinsey brought these ideas to a place of intellectual respectability, Hefner popularized them in their prurient, artistic form, and the critical theorists and postmodernists of late 20th century academic world baptized them in the waters of philosophical sophistication.