I just posted this at Twin Mormons on FB after the moderator promoted the Go Fund Me for Memories Pizza in Indiana.
If you have comments please do so . There are articles regarding RFRA's, Same Sex Marriage and related issues. I have pledged not to post links here to the LDS website. They are readily available for those interested.
I will post this . This is the link to the Gay LDS site Affirmation. Not an official site.
Also, last weekend was General Conference. Open thread for comments, discussion and the like.
I just posted this at Twin Mormons on FB after the moderator promoted the Go Fund Me for Memories Pizza in Indiana.
Discrimination is discrimination. The Church went to lengths to state that they are against discrimination of any type. These people are discriminating against homosexuals, no matter how you paint it. Not that anyone would order pizza to cater a wedding. The people running this pizza parlor are overtly supporting discrimination, and this Go Fund Me is enabling and supporting that discrimination; if you are supporting this Go Fund Me action, you are supporting discrimination. The church made it clear that they did not want the ability for the denial of services included in Utah's legislation. Indiana did, and these people walked into the publicity grinder of their own free will. The Church DOES NOT support denial of services. You can have all the religious freedom you want, these laws are unnecessary because religious freedom is already in the Constitution and the Gov. is prohibited from making ANY law establishing religion in favor of another religion, non religion, or persecuting or protecting religion. I would argue that all the RFRA'a are inherently unconstitutional. Rather than denying services, businesses should make two cakes rather than one, for people they see as sinners. Love your enemy, lead by example. Memories Pizza has received over $840,000 for this ridiculous discriminatory, hate filled action they have taken. The religious freedom debate in this country is a sham. What it is doing is providing an excuse for hate, fear mongering and a backhanded way to maintain a way to discriminate against people they hate. The 14th amendment is as important as the 1st. The LDS Church should be very careful with whom they make alliances. Many of the churches and religious lobbying and front groups are in their nature and theology Dominionist or Christian Restorationist. This theology is profoundly anti-democratic and they want to overthrow our Democracy for a theocratic state, exclusively for and by, fundamentalist Christians. Anyone else would be a 2nd class citizen, and seeing as they do not accept Mormons as Christians, we would be on the wrong side of the freedoms afforded by such a government. They see Mormons as dupes, to be used until power is achieved and them we would be brutally crushed. Am I going too far? I think not. Have you not heard about Christian Dominionism? It would be very worth your while to read up about it. The most public proponent of this religious movement is Sarah Palin. Those promoting these laws are bad people. What has gay marriage ever done to negatively influence LDS straight marriage? Absolutely nothing. Is is going to turn our straight kids gay? No. Are they going to be able to force us to conduct gay marriages in the Temple? No. Is it going to make my wife and I get divorced? No. What it might do is stop a lot of people from the sin of fornicating because they WILL BE MARRIED! Does having a gay married couple living next door to me affect my marriage? No. In fact, I would rather have a same sex married couple as next door neighbors than a straight or gay unmarried couple cohabitating, or a straight married couple that suffers from domestic violence. I agree that the LDS church see homosexual activity as a sin and I won't debate that here, but there are some points to be made about it. I recognize the right of the LDS Church to have a policy regarding homosexuality and same sex marriage within the Church. I think the activity against Prop 8 by the Church to be a debacle. We should keep our noses out of this public debate. The Church doesn't ask us to shun divorced people, and there is a lot more criticism against divorce than there is against homosexuality in the Bible. The LDS church should be the last group to criticize non traditional marriage. We promoted VERY non traditional marriage from oh, about 1830 until when was it? 1898? My great grandfather was a polygamist. That is pretty darn non traditional marriage, at least form a United States perspective. I don't see why the GA's are so against this. The people engaging in same sex marriage are not, to my knowledge LDS. Our 11th and 12th articles of faith tell us that we should not stick our noses in other peoples business, religious or otherwise, and that we should be able to run ours how we want. We do that. In conclusion, I think the RFRA's are bull manure. They are intolerance enshrined. Don't give your money to these religious cretins in Indiana, If this is an issue to you, give your money to a legal fund, not to a bunch of ignorant misguided pizza makers.
Afterwards, the moderator of the group sent me some church links to the Churches comments and positions on SSA and LGBT. He tried to do some Church 'splainin'.