Sunday in Outer Blogness: Love Wins edition!

Probably a lot of you had this experience the other day:

I know I did. Yes, the SCOTUS has ruled that the United States of America has joined the list of countries where marriage equality is the law of the land. And there was much rejoicing!!

Also on social media, some believers went apocalyptic (satire), and the PR wing of the CoJCoL-dS encouraged members to get their persecution complex on. (Alex posted an amusing example of how he has evolved on this.) It’s hard to be on the wrong side of history:

Nothing says “tyranny” like being forced to whisper about how much we hate gay people in private so we won’t be labeled as bigots. It’s totally unfair.

Sincerely, the polarization is unfortunate, but honestly, I think the outcry on the losing side is just the last defeated howl before they move on to pretending none of this fight against gay marriage ever happened, just as they seem to have forgotten that they used to be opposed to one-man-one-woman marriage:

It appears that you can take whatever you want to demonize and say that it was the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire. I thought it was the gays – but the Mormons prophets taught me better. It was marriage between one man and one woman. I am waiting for prostitution, whoredoms, sexually transmitted disease and ruin to befall my family and when it does I will cry out with great lamentation that it all comes from being shackled to but one wife.

Other believers have long held that divine commandments and the laws of the land are two different things, and that’s a feature, not a bug. And still others wish this celebration could extend to their own families within the church:

For me, this poses a profoundly spiritual problem, a problem that cannot by fixed by court rulings. As a believing Mormon, my highest yearnings include fellowship with God that includes bonds of family that endure in eternity. You indeed can’t legislate that.

This is going to be a problem for the CoJCoL-dS, moving forward:

I don’t expect giant conflicts over Bishops being forced to perform same sex weddings. Instead the most interesting questions will arise in the decades to come as a natural extension of our regular practice. In a few decades, we will have converts who are the children of same sex married parents. If those parents do not join the church before death, their child will inevitably be drawn to the temple to participate in our proxy liturgies for our beloved dead. It is our mandate.

The question will be, to whom shall our convert be sealed to as a child? Child-to-parent sealings are only performed to parents who are sealed in marriage. While it will be interesting to see if FamilySearch eventually allows users to input same-sex parents, more interesting, and more vital to the soul of our convert will be how he or she connects to the broader network of eternal kin.

The progress on this issue has been impressive. See this discussion of an incident in Louisiana.

Personally, I’m still on last week’s topic, so on my blog I wrote about some recent insights on how to address racism:

It’s great that our culture has gotten to the point of essentially agreeing that racism is wrong. Yet this positive development has ironically spawned a new problem: the “black hat villain” problem. To wit, it’s the reasoning that “Racists are evil villains; my friends and I are not evil villains; therefore we are not racists.”

Racism is far from over.

And now for all the other dispatches from Mormondom! The silent deletion of the BoA facsimiles has begun — and some other info has gone missing! A member had an interesting exchange with an apostle over what their special witness actually entails. This year’s ‘Saturday’s Voyeur’ production will feature Heavenly Mother and Kate Kelly (dramatization). You’ll be surprised by this tale of being solicited by an LDS swinger. Take a trip down memory lane with this history of the CTR Ring. Oh, and the CoJCoLd-S is at it again:

If I cannot bring my authentic self to church without being censured and told my questions are dangerous and shouldn’t be expressed publicly, this situation additionally negates the example I wish to set for my children of integrity and courage. On June 21st my leaders also put me under formal sanction to not speak because of my questions regarding inequality, a sanction my former leadership in Texas had similarly imposed on me before we relocated to Georgia. “Not even in the hallways,” my Texas leader decreed. But I could not remain silent, especially after I heard Church spokeswoman Ally Isom publicly state that conversations about difficult topics including women’s ordination and the priesthood/temple ban for Black members were welcome in a congregation, in Sunday School, in women’s meetings. Sadly, my experiences have not mirrored Isom’s inclusive invitation.

It’s sometimes hard to believe it has gotten this way.

In our New Testament lesson, we learned how useful spiritual experiences are for gathering real information. In Book of Mormon studies, we’re treated to some rather impressive military strategy:

Since he can’t lure the Lamanites out of Nephihah, Moroni instead personally scouts the city in the middle of the night. He discovers that the entire Lamanite army is asleep (because honestly, who posts round-the-clock guards when your city is under the threat of attack anymore?). Moroni then makes use of a whole bunch of ladders and ropes that his army seems to have and has everyone climb over the wall without waking up a single Lamanite soldier (because it’s not like the movement of an entire army would make any noise or any of the Lamanites would get up to pee during the night). In the morning, the Lamanites wake up to discover all of Moroni’s men inside the walls of the city, and they flee for their lives. Bloodthirsty Moroni commands his men to kill as many as possible before they escape, and everyone lives happily ever after

Now before getting back to depressing topics like climate change, let’s bask in the love a little longer! Treat yourself to this sweet love story! Have a great week!