Speaking of the LDS stand on gay marriage....

It seems that once every decade the LDS Church gets wound up on some issue that it's leaders see as a threat to civilization. Today it's a fear that 1-3% of the population will destroy marriage. Yesterday's "fears of destruction" were no less silly.

Looking back, in the 1950s and 1960s it was the civil rights movement. The late Apostle Mark Peterson, (who is reported to have once said in a speech before a Mormon conference ""I've been married to my wife for 44 years, and never once have seen her body uncovered."), took the anti-black feeling in the church at the time and ran with it.

Peterson gave a talk at BYU in 1954 and said, among other things:

The discussion on civil rights, especially over the last 20 years, has drawn some very sharp lines. It has blinded the thinking of some of our own people, I believe. They have allowed their political affiliations to color their thinking to some extent, and then, of course, they have been persuaded by some of the arguments that have been put forth.....

We who teach in the Church certainly must have our feet on the ground and not be led astray by the philosophies of men on this subject.....I think I have read enough to give you an idea of what the negro is after. He is not just seeking the opportunity of sitting down in a cafe where white people eat. He isn't just trying to ride on the same streetcar or the same Pullman car with white people. It isn't that he just desires to go to the same theater as the white people. From this, and other interviews I have read, it appears that the negro seeks absorbtion with the white race. He will not be satisfied until he achieves it by intermarriage.

That is his objective and we must face it. We must not allow our feeling to carry us away, nor must we feel so sorry for negroes that we will open our arms and embrace them with everything we have. Remember the little statement that we used to say about sin, 'First we pity, then endure, then embrace.'...

Now we are generous with the negro. We are willing that the Negro have the highest kind of education. I would be willing to let every Negro drive a cadillac if they could afford it. I would be willing that they have all the advantages they can get out of life in the world. BUT LET THEM ENJOY THESE THINGS AMONG THEMSELVES, I think the Lord segregated the Negro and who is man to change that segregation? It reminds me of the scripture on marriage, 'what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.' Only here we have the reverse of the thing— WHAT GOD HATH SEPARATED, LET NOT MAN BRING TOGETHER AGAIN.

Just goes to show you what going 44 years without seeing a naked woman will do to you.

During the 1970s it was the Equal Rights Amendment. Spencer Kimball and his cronies got all worked up over....nothing.

“The basic concern of the Church with regard to the ERA as a moral issue is that women will be treated less favorably in many fundamental regards; and also that the family unit—in the Mormon sense of a sacred and eternal relationship—will be denigrated, causing great and substantial damage to not only the Church but also the nation and the basic ideals which have made this country great”

Women pretty much have the rights promised by the ERA even though it didn't pass. The family unit is under attack...by corporate America and the materialistic orgy that it has to keep people participating in in order to reap huge profits for it's share holders. But all the worry and work they did was just a waste of time in the long run.

Now it's gay and lesbian marriage. But with the LDS Church there is a wicked twist that they don't want to talk about. When it comes to marriage it's the Mormons verses the Mormons. Let's get READY TO RUMBLE!!!!!

1. Our modern era has seen traditional marriage and family – defined as a husband and wife with children in an intact marriage – come increasingly under assault. (LDS.org website)

Challenging that notion we have the Mormon Prophet John "The Assaulter" Taylor:

... the one-wife system not only degenerates the human family, both physically and intellectually, but it is entirely incompatible with philosophical notions of immortality; it is a lure to temptation, and has always proved a curse to a people.

2. Strong, stable families, headed by a father and mother, are the anchor of civilized society. (LDS.org website)

Putting a body slam on that nonsense is Mormon Apostle George Q. Cannon:

It is a fact worthy of note that the shortest lived nations of which we have record have been monogamic. Rome...was a monogamic nation and the numerous evils attending that system early laid the foundation for that ruin which eventually overtook her.

3. The experience of the few European countries that already have legalized same-sex marriage suggests that any dilution of the traditional definition of marriage will further erode the already weakened stability of marriages and family generally. (LDS.org website)

As they say, to BE the prophet, you have to BEAT the prophet...and these modern Mormons just can't beat Brother Brigham Young!:

Since the founding of the Roman empire monogamy has prevailed more extensively than in times previous to that. The founders of that ancient empire were robbers and women stealers, and made laws favoring monogamy in consequence of the scarcity of women among them, and hence this monogamic system which now prevails throughout Christendom, and which had been so fruitful a source of prostitution and whoredom throughout all the Christian monogamic cities of the Old and New World, until rottenness and decay are at the root of their institutions both national and religious.

So, early Mormon leaders taught that monogamy was the source of a lot of evil. Today Mormon leaders teach that gay and lesbian marriage will be the source of a lot of evil. The end result is that they all end up looking like fools.

Past leaders have been wrong about civil rights for black people, ERA, monogamy and a host of other things. The worst thing to come out of all of this is that future generations of Mormons will have to once again tell people "But that was just personal opinion...it was never official doctrine."

In conclusion I think we all want to know one thing: Did Mark Peterson ever get to see his wife naked?