An interesting idea has cropped up in California in response to the passing of Proposition 8, which banned Same-Sex Marriage in California by saying that marriage could only be between a male and female.
John Marcotte of Sacramento California has proposed an initiative that would protect “traditional” marriage by banning divorce.
John is hoping that the people that voted to protect traditional marriage by passing Prop 8 will continue to protect it by supporting his initiative to ban divorce, just the way Jesus would want it.
I am trying to extend the good work done with Proposition 8 last year. It could really happen. The United States has not always had divorce as an institution the way we do now. As a ballot initiative it bypasses the legislature and the governor. It’s the will of the people made law.
People who supported Prop 8 weren’t trying to take rights away from gays, they just wanted to protect traditional marriage. That’s why I’m confident that they will support this initiative, even though this time it will be their rights that are diminished. To not support it would be hypocritical.
The secular progressives, gays and MSNBC hosts — but we beat them once with Prop 8 and we’ll beat them again. If people are thinking about getting a divorce, just remember “Hell is eternal, just like your marriage was supposed to be.” Jesus still loves you if you get divorced, just not as much as before.
The surveillance video of an incident that took place a few weeks ago has just come out. 2 gay men were in Salt Lake City on an open-to-the-public plaza that is owned by the Church if Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The 2 men kissed and were then confronted by LDS Security guards. While this was on private property and the Church can set it’s own rules for that property, it goes to show the gay-hating attitude of the Church and some of it’s members. Would have these fellows been treated the same way if they were a male and female that had kissed and were asked to leave?
TIME Magazine has a 4 page online article about Mormons, with come focus on how the church supported Proposition 8, the banning of same-sex marriage in California, where the church used it influence to force it’s religious beliefs onto people not of their faith.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints(aka Mormons) recently held their 179th Annual General Conference; a semi-annual event where church leaders (knows as prophets) speak to the members of the church to give them guidance to let them know what the Lord would have them do in these times. Latter-day Saints believein modern day revelation; where God communicates with the prophets of the church to convey His will to the people.
One of the speakers at this conference, Elder Quentin L. Cook, had something interesting to say about the non-believers out there.
Nonbelievers find it hard to accept the miracles of the Old and New Testaments and the Savior’s virgin birth and Resurrection. They view these events with the same skepticism as the appearance of God the Father and Jesus Christ to the Prophet Joseph Smith. They are not open to the possibility of a heavenly plan presided over by a supreme being. They do not have faith.
May I ask the question, should someone NOT have skepticism when it comes to miraculous claims? A 14 year old boy, about 200 years ago says that God and Jesus appeared to him and told him to start a new church, because all others were wrong. That’s quite a claim, and there better be a damn good reason to believe it.
“They do not have faith”. Why should someone have faith in this kind of claim? There needs to be a compelling reason to believesomething that has no evidence, or even contrary evidence, which is what faith is.
Elder Cook went on to say some things about those un-beleivers.
My principal concern is for the honorable people on the earth who are open to religious faith but have been discouraged or confused by incorrect doctrine.
So apparently people that aren’t open to believing in the fairy tales are not honourable. Apparently it is more honorable to shut off your brain and ignore things you know to be true, than it is to have honest questions and reservations about extraordinary claims.
Thank you Mormon Apostle, for helping me feel better about having left the church.
This past Sunday’s episode of HBO’s Big Love has some Mormons in a tizzy. As a former Mormon, I watch Big Love with great interest, I confess that it is a weekly ritual with my wife and I on Sunday nights. While there are some faithful Mormons who will watch Big Love, there might be a few less now.
This past week saw 2 major events in the life of Barb, the First Wife of Bill Hendrickson. She had been outed by her sister to her bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as living in plural marriage; which Barb knew that she would be ex-communicated for. Before that happened, she wanted to go to the Temple again and take part in the Endowment Ceremony one last time, since once she was excommunicated she wouldn’t be able to do that again.
The endowment ceremony is a very sacred part of Mormon doctrine, and is not talked about by faithful members, and to depict it in the format of an HBO drama is something they will take lightly. Having taken part in the ceremony myself, I can attest that the portrayal on Big Love is very accurate. Yes, I wore the funny hat, yes I wore the fig leaf, and I still have these items in my closet.
I find that the way the temple ceremony was portrayed was quite reverent, and actually more angelic that it really is; the addition of nice lighting and swelling music will do that.
The second major event for Barb was the “Court of Love”. This was the disciplinary hearing with the leaders of the church is which she was excommunicated.
While the Temple ritual being depeicted may be more contraversial, I find the excommunication segment to be more damming.
We see how Barb is surrounded by a group of men in the Patriarchal church, and isn’t given much of a chance to be heard; they made up their minds about what was going to happen before they even got there apparently.
When going up against disciplinary council the person being accused has everything stacked against them; they must be obedient or be cast out of the church; a bad fate for a believer since it cancels the oaths and covenant they’ve made within the church such as baptism, any priesthood offices and temple ordinances; to them they are cut off from salvation.
While we mainly focus on news stories here at Topic Agnostic, occasionally a blog post will catch out attention.
A self-described “Recovering Mormon” wrote a story that she swears is true, relayed to her from her homosexual friend. This friend recently had a conversation with a former female high school acquaintance. She is in her thirties and unmarried, which carries somewhat of a stigma in the Mormon culture since marriage is so heavily emphasis.
It seems that this female friend, called “Molly”, had been having dreams about this former friend “Tommy”, and that she had talked with her bishop about these dreams. Mormons believe in modern day, personal revelation, and sometime a dream can be taken to be as such. The bishop encouraged her to talk to Tommy about it.
The ensuing phone call is quite interesting, and you can check out the blog for full details. Tommy tells her that he is gay and in a happy relationship, and that’s when the cognitive dissodence kicks in. After hearing this new information about who she thought was her eternal companion being gay, she says this…
I really think we are meant to be. In my Patriarchal Blessing it says that I met my eternal companion in the pre-existence and that if he doesn’t make the right choices I will be alone. Are you willing to make the right choices, Tommy? Are you willing to use the Atonement? Are you willing to erase your sin so that we can be together? Because… I’d be willing to help you work through it.
For the uninitiated, a Patriarchal blessing is kind of like a custom tarot card reading. The Patriarch for the area, usually an elderly male, puts his hands on the persons head and gives a blessing, which is supposed to be a revelation from God that the person receiving it can and should guide their life by. It is looked at as authoritative and very sacred, so it has to be right! God has decreed it!
Unfortunately for Molly, this Blessing is no more authoritative than any other cold or warm reading done by a pretend physic “talking to the dead”. While the participants in these blessing are no doubt sincere, the sincerity doesn’t make up for the true nature of it; a nice fuzzy message made up by the person giving it.
I had personally given many blessing during my time in the church, and I was sincere in everyone of them. Sometimes I felt like it was coming directly from God, sometimes not. The mind is a mysterious machine and if we really want something to be true, it can manifest that for us; that has been shown over and over.
So this nice lady, Molly, is guiding her life and basing her happiness (in this instance anyways) on a dream and on a blessing; neither of which can be shown to be the product of any supernatural being giving messages to his children. It is a product of our own minds, which can be influenced by our wants and desires.
How much better would it be for her, instead of finding someone that fits this preconceived notion of a mate set out in a blessing, that she would be open to all possibilities when looking for a suitable mate. How much happier would she be.
A student put together an art exhibit that showed pictures of gay students at Brigham Young University, along side one of their supporters. Which is the homosexual is not identified. BYU, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) decided that this display should be shut down, and that’s what happened.
Now, this isn’t a surprise. The dogma of the LDS Church is that homosexuality is a grave sexual sin, and sexual sin is next only to murder (yes, worse than child abuse, fraud, theft, and any number of other ethical violations) and that it should be rejected outright. The church has a history of repressing their members that have expressed privately and/or publicly their same-sex attraction, and in fact BYU used to try “aversion” therapy on homosexuals that included shock thearapy and heterosexual pornography.
So, it is not much of a surprise that even a particularly benign display such as this would be censored by the school.
As of today, the display is back up, after a claim by the school of a “misunderstanding”. This is the way that the BYU and the Church work; they will do whatever they want and expect you to keep quiet.
From the New York Times: “California officials will investigate accusations that the Mormon Church neglected to report a battery of nonmonetary contributions — including phone banks, a Web site and commercials — on behalf of a ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage.”
Trey and Matt have somewhat of a history of lampooning the Mormon faith through various projects such as the classic Orgazmo; in which a missionary starts acting in porn movies to make money in order to have a temple wedding, and the infamous South park episode All About Mormons.
‘All About Mormons’ became somewhat of an expose for people unfamiliar with the history of the church, and especially for members of the church who never knew about some of the non-faith promoting history of the church, such as the fact that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon by placing his face in a hat, and didn’t even use the golden plates he purported to be in possession of. Those same golden plates were supposedly later taken back to heaven by the angle Moroni.
No doubt that this upcoming musical will be another entertaining chapter in the satirization of Mormons by Trey and Matt.
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