Posted by:
Tal Bachman
(
)
Date: November 10, 2015 02:57PM
Let me see if I understand.
1.) Seventeen year old Jimmy is being raised by his mother, Anne, and her live-in boyfriend, Steve. Jimmy meets the missionaries, starts attending church, and before long, wants to be baptized. In this scenario, by all accounts, the LDS church would baptize Jimmy.
2.) But in the event that Anne has *legally married* her partner - but the partner just happens to be a woman - the LDS church will no longer baptize Jimmy.
So in (1), Jimmy receives baptism even though his mother is living in sin; but in (2), Jimmy is refused baptism even though his mother lives in a legal marriage, and Jimmy had absolutely nothing to do with his mother's decision. The difference is that in (2), Anne's partner, despite being a legal spouse, has a vagina instead of a penis.
Already at this point, two things come to mind:
"We believe that men will be punished for their own sins..." (LDS Article of Faith #2); and LDS Apostle Dieter Uchtdorf's announcement in 2013 that "regardless of your circumstances, your personal history, or the strength of your testimony, there is room for you in this church".
Needless to say, with their recent policy, the LDS church is clearly holding applicants for baptism responsible for the decisions of their parents, and in effect, "punishing" them by refusing baptism. And Uchtdorf's statement now looks indisputably like the PR hot air it always was. Even the starry-eyed dimwits still fawning over this gasbag will have to admit that now.
But let's go back to clarifying exactly what the new LDS policy would look in real life.
3.) Let's say that Jimmy was abandoned by his troubled mother Anne at age seven, and he had no family to speak of. Concerned for the welfare of their little neighbour friend, and having heard some disturbing stories about kids in foster care, the two female university students sharing the duplex next door (Leigh and Susan) take him in.
When Leigh and Susan talk to Jimmy about entering foster care a few weeks later, he starts crying and begs them not to send him away. A visit with a foster care worker only heightens Jimmy's apprehension, and leaves the two students even more concerned. That week, a story breaks about a boy beaten severely by a foster care parent in a nearby city. In the end, Leigh and Susan - best friends and focused on career rather than finding husbands - decide to keep on raising Jimmy together. Ten years later, they are all still together. Leigh and Susan have had a few boyfriends off and on, but each has been content being unattached, and their work schedules allow one of them to always be home with Jimmy as he grows.
But now, when Jimmy meets the Mormon missionaries and applies for baptism, the LDS church baptizes him, even though he has been raised by two women. It's just that the two women have not touched each other's private parts.
Here is a fourth scenario. Let's say that everything in Scenario 3 was the same, except that when Leigh and Susan adopted Jimmy, they *were* lesbian lovers. However, after two years, Leigh and Susan just weren't "feeling it" anymore - their love had grown cold - and all sexual intimacy between them had stopped. But...they had already taken in Jimmy, so they decide to keep on living together and raise him.
In this scenario, the LDS church would *not* baptize the 17 year old Jimmy, *even though for the previous six years, Leigh and Susan would have had exactly the same type of relationship (friends only) that they had in Scenario 3.
A final scenario: Jimmy's divorced mother legally marries a hermaphrodite named George. Together they raise Jimmy. I assume in that case, the LDS church would baptize Jimmy. BUT...I also assume that if Anne's partner simply went by the name "Georgina" instead of "George", the LDS church would *not* baptize Jimmy - even though George/Georgina's genitalia were the same.
Maybe the weirdest thing of all in all this is that many of the very men making these policies, themselves descend from the offspring of NON-LEGAL "marriages" between some early Mormon man and two, three, five, ten, twelve or more wives.
This weird, convoluted, unfair policy directive comes from men who claim to be Planet Earth's sole recipients of divine revelation.
In any case, this policy has exploded in the Mormon church's face, and now, they are stuck: if they don't change it, the outrage will continue, with literally thousands of people resigning over the coming weeks, and the church being legitimately criticized for holding baptismal applicants responsible for decisions they had nothing to do with. This policy makes Mormonism look outrightly bigoted and unfair.
But if they *do* change it now, they look weak - as though they caved in to public pressure...as though the policy was wrong all along, which can't help but raise questions about all those "revelation" claims church leaders make.
A neat comeuppance, in my books. Maybe there is something like Cosmic Justice - if even just a wee bit - after all.