Affirmation and LDS Family Services
Do you think it’s a good idea for Affirmation leaders to meet with LDS Family Services? Why, or why not?
posted by Affirmation at 11:53 AM
Monday, April 07, 2008
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11 Comments:
I think it’s an excellent idea! It is consistent with one of Affirmation’s stated purposes: “Provide a forum for communication and education for members and leaders of the Church and our peers concerning homosexuality.”
I think it's a good idea. Will the GAs do something to stop their anti-gay rhetoric? I doubt it. But, this is a start.
Sounds like a good idea to me... but you might want to start referring to them with their correct name "LDS Family Services". They haven't been "LDS Social Services" for years.
We all like tea and crumpets, but meaningless, unless there is a lot of work before the meeting to gain agreement on outcomes or next steps. Just exactly what are the stated objectives anyway? Who has the agenda, what are the proposed action items? Like Mountain Meadow, perhaps they will give us a monument somewhere on the BYU campus to honor lives lost and damage done.
I think it is a good idea, though like some others have said, I wonder if it will really change anything. It does give me hope that Pres Monson will usher in a new era of, if not acceptance, at least more love and understanding. I guess we'll see.
Like one of the anonymous posters here, I am also curious who will set the agenda of the meeting? What items will be discussed, and what if any will be tabled for future discussions?
Since when is LDS Family Services an official calling and part of the General Authorities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?
If the General Authorities do not have time for Affirmation, why should we waste our time with LDS Family Services?
It's depressing to hear gay and lesbian people putting themselves second to the rest of the church. It appears to me they've deeply internalized the negative views of being gay/lesbian. No one has to meet with self-appointed "leaders" to explain their value or role in the universe. If they don't already know it, then at best they are ignorant, and at worst they are wicked. So why are they considered leaders? They sound like followers to me, followers of traditions of prejudice, of abuse by majority, of groupthink. They give stingily in their attempts to remain relevant and socially fashionable. It's misguided to crave their acceptance. What does that indicate? That we've finally been tokenized? That we've successfully been coopted into a power structure that can then ghettoize and dismiss us with our permission?
Until the day they're seeking meetings with us, I say don't waste your time. Better to feel like a complete outsider, a rebel, an apostate, whatever empty epithet the self-satisfied call you rather than be their pet and a second class citizen. I hope that everyone who attends this meeting, straight and gay, quit tuning out when they have the "warm fuzzies", and instead take into account ALL of their feelings, good and bad, and ask themselves why so much bad if this is all so good, only then can they step back and start from a place of intellectual honesty about how things are and how they need to change.
I think this meeting is past-due. The church has mistreated it's non-straight members for so long, and it has never figured out what to do with them. Despite recent policy shifts, it has a long way to come before it realizes that we are non straight for a reason, and that reason is part of the divine plan. Some of us in Affirmation never want to be part of the church again, but if we want the church to cease persecuting us, even passively (what else is telling us to be celibate?), then we have to come to them and show them that we are as God intended.
The worst that can happen from this meeting is the church going back to ignoring us. The best is fully fellowship for LGBT people. I believe that the outcome will be closer to the former, but certainly much more.
We have an obligation to present all people as loved of God. This meeting will help remind the brethren, even if it's through their agents in LDS Family Services.
I think that it is a total waste of time. The Church will not change its attitudes and policies until it is FORCED to.
It was NOT the good example of nice, faithful African-american LDS members or meetings with Black associations that made the Church change its mind about blacks and the priesthood.
It was social and ECONOMIC pressure in the US, and their eagerness to conquer new markets overseas (Latin America, Africa).
Let us not forget: in 1978, the Church was about to lose its tax-exempt status. And boycots were ruining BYU athletics, not to mention all the demonstrations and bad press in a society that had deeply changed since civil rights movements decades earlier.
MONEY, power, PR and respectability is what counts for LDS Inc. And while the majority of US society considers gay-bashing a "christian value", the Church will not pull a muscle to defy a mainstream that they have been trying to be a part of for several decades now. (With Edelman's help.)
When discrimination against gays becomes a crime, the Church will miraculously get a "revelation"...
But not before then. So let's not waste our time and energy.
I think we do a great disservice to gay people when we assume the church can be reasonable or rational on the topic. I have never felt so uncomfortable in my life as I have in an LDS church.
The best we can hope for is "tolerance". The only reason they don't excommunicate people for even admitting a gay inclination has to do with "public outcry" or alienating family members of gays. I remember the days when even discussing the topic could result in discuplinary action.
We should do what blacks did prior to 1978. Openly accuse them of discrimination, and publically discuss their treatment of gays.
I think that you might look at Affirmation leaders meeting with LDS Family Services in a similar way that you might look at a President of the U.S. meeting with an enemy. Do you need to have pre-conditions prior to the meeting? Perhaps but not any pre-conditions that are unrealistic. I don't think that it is realistic to meet with them with the hopes that they will accept us fully and embrace our orientation as a part of God's plan. That is a journey that we need to keep the members of the Church on. We need to speak out constantly and never let up. Every time we speak with a family member and a friend who are LDS (or not LDS even) we make stronger inroads. This combined with our national grassroots outreach and exposure the Church is going to have to begin moving in the direction that I believe God wants the Church to go in. That is accepting God's GLBT children and having an equal place at the table for us.
When the people of our nation are ashamed of homophobia I think the Church will have no choice but to deal with us head on and take our hopes and our lives seriously.
Affirmation needs to meet with LDS Family Services and have a very powerful message that uses all strong arguments for our case but also in support of our spirituality as well. If these Affirmation representatives have a great argument, message and a list of requests I think that much can be accomplished.
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