Church’s stand not one of activism

On Nov. 10, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints issued a press release, announcing that they support “nondiscrimination regulations that would extend protection in matters of housing and employment in Salt Lake City to those with same-sex attraction.”

A big fat deal was made of this, and it received front-page headlines from the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News.

However, the church (and any of its members trying to cite this gesture as evidence of lack of homophobia within their religion) shouldn’t be so quick to pat themselves on the back for this half-hearted attempt at compromise.

The LDS Church doesn’t think that people should be fired or discriminated against for being gay? How polite.

Adamant celebrators of this move are missing a crucial point: not thinking that people should be denied a home or a job for which they are qualified simply because they’re gay is an issue of common sense. Being against discrimination of any kind — racial, sexual, orientation-based, etc., the list goes on — doesn’t make you an activist or a supporter. It makes you a normal, right-headed human being.

During the Church’s vocal support of California’s Proposition 8, the 2008 initiative to ban same-sex marriage, a great deal of practicing Mormons that staunchly opposed the proposition — this writer included — were left out when LDS Apostle Dallin H. Oaks cited Mormon unification against Prop 8 during the April 2009 General Conference, referring to anti-gay marriage activism as a descendent of the “honored tradition of unselfish cooperation for the common good.”

Backing the proposition was Utah’s own Sutherland Institute, a “conservative public policy think-tank” which believes that, according to their Web site, “religion [is] the moral compass of human progress.”

However, on  Nov. 12, the Institute issued a statement, calling “on the Utah State Legislature to overturn these local ordinances on the basis of sound public policy.”

The Sutherland Institute, which I hesitate to legitimize even through printed criticism has indirect ties to the LDS Church; its late founder was a member and six of its seven pictured trustees are either LDS or former BYU students/teachers.

As someone who stood against the Church’s 2008 political grandstanding, I’d sure like to ask them how it feels to now be on the other side of that sword.

Is it difficult to have your church support    something you find completely morally reprehensible? Does the cognitive dissonance keep you up at night?

It’s not much fun to disagree with an organization to which you’ve given so much money, attention, devotion and piety. But the Church hardly needs my defense, nor will its recent political maneuvers receive it. Because until their doctrine changes, as it often has (and should), the Church is against homosexuality and those that practice it. It’s just that not all of its members are.