As I recall, bruto, you made a similar comment in an earlier post, in which you suggested that LDS are guilty of calling "homosexuals sinful and disgusting" (words to that effect).
The Church has made (and is making) a sincere effort to help errant members understand that if they speak ill of homosexuals, they are not following the teachings of Jesus Christ. Note the following:
"Jesus Christ commanded us to love our neighbors. Whether sinner or saint, rich or poor, stranger or friend, everyone in God's small world is our neighbor, including our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. LDS believe that our true commitment to Christian teachings is revealed by how we respond to this commandment."
http://www.mormonsandgays.org/
"As a church nobody should be more loving and compassionate. Let us be at the forefront in terms of expressing love, compassison, and outreach. Let us not have families exclude or be disrespectful of those who choose a different lifestyle as a result of their feelings about their own gender." (Same source as above.)
"The gospel of Jesus Christ is based on love, respect, and agency. Mormons believe that all humans have inherited strengths, challenges, and blessings and are invited to live, through the help and grace of God, the principles revealed by Jesus Christ. . . . We are to love one another. We are to treat each other with respect as brothers and sisters and fellow children of God, no matter how much we may differ from one another." (Same source as above.)
I regret that some of those of my faith do not follow this counsel.
First of all, I hope that this whole argument is being kept as one of ideas, and not personal.
To the extent that you are personally tolerant, good on you. If you recognize that not all who share your faith are, all the better. Nonetheless, it seems to me that the LDS Church's stand on homosexuality is, like that of many churches, ultimately a sham. Homosexual orientation may be viewed with tolerance, but homosexual acts are not. This distinction is made explicitly and repeatedly in official LDS statements and on their sites. The efforts of many to prevent homosexual marriage creates an especially wicked double bind in the case of Mormon theology, in which all non-marital relations are disavowed. It's wrong unless you marry and you can't marry because it's wrong. If the Church is sincere in its tolerance, then it ought to butt out of the civil marriage issue altogether. In any case, as I repeatedly have said, a church has no business in the civil world anyway.
The "moral issue" is the welfare of children. Item:
"Marriage is society's most pro-child institution. In 2002--just moments before it became unfashionable to say so--a team of researchers from Child Trends, a nonpartisan research center, reported that 'family structure clearly matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage. All our scholarly instruments seem to agree; for healthy development, what a child needs more than anything else is the mother and father who together made the child, who love the child and each other." [emphasis added]. (Debatepedia, "Children do better with mother and father as role models."
There are many other well-researched findings that point to the same conclusion.
Now, I realize, SV may post findings that conflict with what I have posted.
If there is the slightest doubt as to which view is correct, I'll opt for the one that appears to protect children.
I certainly hope you do, in good faith. You could start with the obvious fact that your statement, highlighted above, could apply negatively to any adoption at all. Clearly the benefit of children is not all or nothing. You could add to it that not all couples provide the love even if they are technically together. And you could add to that the fairly obvious observation that divorce is very common, and of course divorced couples do not come close to meeting your criteria either. Single parenthood is also very common. The vaunted ideal has been notably absent from the lives of many children for many years, years in which the limitations favored by the LDS Church have been in effect.
If, as is the case, children
already exist before a gay partnership is entered, then a law that protects children will be a law that allows the families that
actually exist to enjoy the legal protection that marriage affords to families. Gay marriage is NOT just about couples. It's also about families, and about families that already exist.
Aside from the obvious problem of divorce, marital acrimony and just plain single parenthood (Child Trends reports about 4 in ten births are to unmarried women), the argument of child welfare must surmount several obstacles which I have yet to see done: it must demonstrate first how, if at all, the institution of gay marriage will harm the children in gay based families that already exist; second how, if at all, the institution will harm children in gay based families formed as an alternative to single parent families; and third, how, if at all, the institution might harm the welfare of children now in heterosexual marriages, either by somehow diminishing the welfare of happy couples or by superseding unhappy heterosexual unions with homosexual ones.
Those last issues seem to have been the fodder of the theoreticians and futurists, but time marches on. Vermont has had legal homosexual adoption for over 20 years, civil union for over 13, gay marriage for a few. Scandinavian nations have had a form of civil union for decades, and Massachusetts has had gay marriage for nearly a decade. Surely if there's quantifiable harm, some enemy of gay marriage would be able to cite it by now. The past will not always be in the future.
