NOM

If Kirton/McConkie had been around in the mid-60s...

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is deeply concerned that the ongoing conflicts between religious liberty and Civil rights is poisoning our civil discourse, eroding the free exercise of religion and preventing diverse Americans of good will from living together in respect and peace. Lawmakers across the nation, including members of Congress, are working to enact or strengthen laws that ensure persons of color fair access to important rights, such as nondiscrimination in areas like housing, employment and appropriate public accommodations. The Church is on record favoring reasonable measures that secure such rights.

At the same time, we urgently need laws that protect the rights of individuals and faith communities to freely gather, speak out publicly, serve faithfully and live openly according to their religious beliefs without discrimination or retaliation, even when those beliefs may be unpopular. This includes the right of religious organizations and religious schools to establish faith-based employment and admissions standards and to preserve the religious nature of their activities and properties.

This does not represent a change or shift in Church doctrine regarding marriage or chastity. It does represent a desire to bring people together, to protect the rights of all, and to encourage mutually respectful dialogue and outcomes in this highly polarized national debate.

Conflicts between rights are common and nothing new. When conflicts arise between religious freedom and civil rights, the Church advocates a balanced “fairness for all” approach that protects the most important rights for everyone while seeking reasonable, respectful compromises in areas of conflict. The Church affirms this as the best way to overcome sharp divisions over these issues. The Church supported the 2015 "fairness for all" legislation in the Utah Legislature that successfully protected both religious freedom and rights of person of color in employment and housing and that has helped facilitate greater understanding and respect.

The Civil Act now before Congress is not balanced and does not meet the standard of fairness for all. While providing extremely broad protections for African-American rights, the Civil Rights Act provides no protections for religious freedom. It would instead repeal long-standing religious rights under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, threaten religious employment standards, devastate religious education, defund numerous religious charities and impose secular standards on religious activities and properties. The Church joins other religious organizations that also strongly oppose the Civil Rights Act as unbalanced, fundamentally unfair and a path to further conflict.

The Church calls upon members of Congress to pass legislation that vigorously protects religious freedom while also protecting basic civil rights for persons of color. It is time for wise policymakers to end this destructive conflict and protect the rights of all Americans."

Yup. Alternative history?

Brent wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 8:48 am Yup. Alternative history?

This has the right cadence and tone I would expect out of Kirton McConkie being the ventriloquist behind an LDS public relations announcement. Even if this is fake(?), it still sounds like what conservative LDS leadership was thinking at the time. I can imagine Ezra Taft Benson, Ernie Wilkinson, and Cleon Skousen grousing about this exact topic in 1964 using far less polite language.

https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/ ... l-approach]

Yeah, the Church statement makes me want to puke. Oh, it is going to be harder for you to be jerks to LGBT persons? You don't get to spew your hate without someone calling you on it? Boo-freakin'-hoo. There is nothing in the Equality Act that the LGBT community shouldn't have had all along.

This is really about a privileged group of religious people who never had to fear being held to account for devastating the lives of those whose sexuality they disagreed with. For decades they got to wreck people lives with their bigotry, and now they are acting like they are the victims. They are angry about losing a right they never had.

And this is simply not true:

Conflicts between rights are common and nothing new. When conflicts arise between religious freedom and LGBT rights, the Church advocates a balanced “fairness for all” approach that protects the most important rights for everyone while seeking reasonable, respectful compromises in areas of conflict.

They don't want "fairness for all" - they fight for what they want, what's fair for our LGBT brothers and sisters be damned. They didn't want "fairness for all" during Prop 8, and they sure don't now either.

Grow up LDS Church, or whatever it is we're supposed to call you these days. Why don't you drop the self-pity and act with love and compassion on this topic for a change?

This is pretty unreal - considering the damage that the LDS church has done to the LGBT cause in the first place, it is ballsy to now oppose something that gives them protections because it might leave you vulnerable for attacking their lifestyle.