Though I would have liked to remain silent during this big
discussion about gay marriage (Are you surprised? I am, too) I was asked by a
friend to write a post about it. So this post is just based on my opinions of
gay marriage and more importantly how we respond to this discussion.
First of all, I’ll state my position. I stand with what the church says about
gay marriage. In my opinion and in my belief, marriage by definition is man and
woman. I have nothing against same-sex couples and in reality what we’re
fighting over is a word. That being said, I do support gay rights, as does the
church. Should gays be discriminated against in jobs and other opportunities?
Of course not! I’m all for gay couples in civil unions getting the same tax
benefits and other legal rights as married couples, actually. In the end, I
guess I just care about the semantics.
Now that that’s been said, here’s the bigger issue that I
see: contention. That, more than anything, has been driving me up the wall
during the past few days. Yes, it’s a heated argument and a touchy subject for
many on both sides. But let’s be honest, the Supreme Court isn’t going to make
its decision based on how many people have a red equal sign as their profile
picture or how many people have… whatever the “traditional marriage” people
have as theirs.
In the end, all that’s happening is people are getting in
pointless arguments and getting angry. And that drives the Spirit away. I still
have a long way to go to get to the kind of Christ-like love that I want to
have, but in my judgment so do so many others. This includes people inside the
church. Yes, we have different opinions and viewpoints, but that doesn’t mean
there has to be contention. In my Doctrine and Covenants class, we’ve been
talking about Zion recently. The
more I learn about it the more I realize how far we are as a people from
getting there.
“And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one
heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among
them.” (Moses 7:18)
Before we can physically build Zion, we must first become
Zion where we are. I’m not saying we have to all agree on everything. I’m
saying that the arguing and the contention are not conducive for building Zion.
The answer is love. You don’t have to agree with everything someone says to
love them. You don’t have to have the same political viewpoints to love them.
You can love them because they’re children of our Heavenly Father, our brothers
and sisters. Like I said, I still have a long way to go with developing this
kind of love, but it’s one of my desires. Could I be killed like Jesus was and forgive my killers? If I can’t love that much,
then I fall short of the Christ-like love that I’m searching for.
PS: Check out http://ldsvoicesofhope.org. The Voice(s) of Hope Project is finally been released! I'll be doing a post or two about it later! :)
