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Question: If same-sex attraction is something that occurs naturally, why can't God and the Church accept it by allowing sealings of LGBT couples?
Question: If same-sex attraction is something that occurs naturally, why can't God and the Church accept it by allowing sealings of LGBT couples?
The Fall of Adam and Eve brought the entire human family the opportunity to overcome its effects. Christ asks us all to take up our cross and follow him
Some have brought up the sensitive question of why gay marriage and other LGB relationships can't be accepted by God and the Church if the characteristic is innate and even occurs in nature. Some struggle to find a purpose in the command to not engage in homosexual behavior. It is with that intent that this article is written.
It should be first noted that those who make this argument commit the naturalistic fallacy in logic. Just because it occurs in nature, that does not, by necessity, make the behavior inherently correct.
Furthermore, those who state that the Church has to accept LGBT sealings in temples because it is something that someone is born with are trying to refute a religious doctrine with nature when the doctrine itself is not based on nature but what one should do with what occurs in nature. The Fall of Adam and Eve brought with it the opportunity to overcome its effects. Humans were placed on this earth to have dominion over it and to take care of it (Genesis 1:26). With the fall, we now have other things to overcome. The nature that we experience today is fallen which is a good thing! We get to learn the difference between good and evil and overcome that evil (2 Nephi 2:25). Nature is both chaotic and orderly. To those parts of nature that don't have order, God has revealed to us through prophets how to properly bring them into an order that can provide us and all of God's past, present, and future children the best chance at obtaining the most happiness. God created a man and woman to bring those children to the earth as part of an efficient and secure order that could bring about that happiness. This is why the sanctity of heterosexual marriage is defended so vigorously within the Church.
Those who do not seek to understand same-sex attraction within the greater scope of the Plan of Salvation are not sufficiently wrestling with theodicy (the LDS theodicy being laid out in 2 Nephi 2:11-13 primarily but strengthened by the doctrine of Fortunate Fall and our belief that evil has always existed--God not being the source of it [Moses 4:1, 3; Abraham 3:27-28]). This is simply one of the effects of the fall that we have to overcome. Everyone has them. Christ asks us to take up our cross (Matthew 10:28; 16:24; Luke 9:23; 14:27;) and overcome the natural man (Mosiah 3:19).
Some argue that since "God created them that way" that this justifies indulging in homosexual behavior. They believe that, with or without the consent of the Church, that they can do this--perhaps believing someday that the Church will accept this behavior. Some cite the doctrine of prophetic fallibility to claim that, one day, the doctrine will change and that the prophets have spoken wrong on this issue. However, we have no evidence from scripture that God creates all of us. Additionally, we have no evidence of a spirits with homosexual sexual orientation. We have no reason to believe that the spirits would have homosexual orientation even if such isn't revealed at this time. If we are created in the image of the Father and Mother who are said to be our spiritual and physical creators, and if they only created male and female according to each creation account to multiply and replenish the earth, and if we have evidence in the scriptures cited for male and female spirits, then why should we expect there to be homosexual orientation in the pre-existence or in the eternities? Critics will have to strain credulity to answer such questions from Latter-day Saint theology. God is the Father of our Spirits, he created Adam and Eve, and Jesus is the only begotten of the Father in the flesh. Our bodies, however, are products of a fallen world that will be made perfect at the resurrection and judgment. Will one presume that someone is created with Downe's syndrome, autism, depression, anxiety, depression, etc.?
19 For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.
This opposition to homosexual behavior should not be grounds, however, for any kind of insensitivity, violence, or other discrimination of people who identify as LGB. Members faced with helping LGB-identifying persons to reconcile their faith with their sexuality should do so with a spirit of compromise, love, and discernment. As we listen to each other and seek to learn from one another, we can grow stronger together in our commitment to follow the Savior.
FairMormon joins The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the unequivocal condemnation of discrimination of LGB-identifying people for their sexual orientation.