Mormons and the Same-Sex Marriage Battle

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) has been an active participant in the legal battle over gay marriages. What exactly are they trying to achieve in their work in this area?

It’s important to understand they are not trying to ban homosexual behavior, which is best handled through spiritual and moral training. Nor are they focusing on other legal rights for people with homosexual tendencies.

“The Church does not object to rights (already established in California) regarding hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights, or probate rights, so long as these do not infringe on the integrity of the family or the constitutional rights of churches and their adherents to administer and practice their religion free from government interference.” (The Divine Institution of Marriage)

The entire focus of the Church’s efforts is to protect the definition of marriage and make sure that as a result of laws passed, the free practice of religion is not endangered. There are consequences to changing the definition of marriage that can have far-reaching effects on religions and on family rights.

For instance, making same-gender marriage legal will cause schools to be required to teach this type of marriage as normal and acceptable. We’ve already seen, in some states, that the schools are allowed to do this without parental warning or approval, and can even require children to bring such materials into the home, violating the rights of parents to control the morality of items in their own homes. Although opponants have denied this, if homosexual marriages are legal, schools would have no choice but to include them in discussions of marriage. Any current laws preventing this would certainly be challenged.

There have been challenges to the free practice of religion or freedom of speech in this movement. Some feel that any opposition to the proposed laws constitute hate speech and should be forbidden. This violates laws protecting both religion and speech, and create a double standard, since those declaring it hate speech believe they themselves can employ similar language in opposing those who support traditional marriage. Such a double standard endangers democracy for everyone, since the tide could change at any time, with the prohibitions placed on the opposing party.

When the issue has been put to a vote, we’ve seen clearly that Americans are not interested in redefining marriage. Changes to marriage laws generally come through the courts-the choice of a small number of people who choose to override democracy and the morality of the American people. This is a dangerous game to play, and all have an interest in ensuring we don’t have our country overtaken by judges who bypass the system of democracy so carefully crafted at our nation’s founding.

The Mormon Church upholds the civil rights of all citizens.  The Church has even said it would not fight civil unions between gays.  It stops short of approving marriage, since the Lord has proclaimed the institution to be sacred and has promised mankind with destruction should the institution of marriage be corrupted by any sort of movement, idea, or change that is against His will.  Recently, laws were proposed in Utah upholding gay civil rights.  Click here to read about the Church’s stance.