Article "How Mormons Will Come to Accept Homosexuality" - roadmap for JWs?

by sir82 5 Replies latest jw friends

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  sir82

  Check out this article:

  http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2014/11/mormons_will_accept_homosexuality_mormon_church_leaders_use_revelation_to.html

  It gives a history of how some Mormon doctrine has changed over the years.

  Any of this sound familiar?

  In fact, Mormons have been revising their doctrines all along. The revisions are driven by cultural and political changes, though the church attributes them to revelation.

  Mormon leaders didn’t see the light till they felt the heat. Beginning in 1882, the U.S. government outlawed polygamy, jailed church officials, and confiscated church property. In 1890, the Supreme Court upheld the confiscations. That’s when revelation struck the church’s president, Wilford Woodruff:

  President Woodruff saw that the Church’s temples and its ordinances were now at risk. Burdened by this threat, he prayed intensely over the matter. “The Lord showed me by vision and revelation,” he later said, “exactly what would take place if we did not stop this practice,” referring to plural marriage. “All the temples [would] go out of our hands.” God “has told me exactly what to do, and what the result would be if we did not do it.”

  Woodruff issued a manifesto pledging that the church would no longer sanction polygamy.

  The article goes on to speculate that similar cultural or legal pressures could force the Mrmons to receive a new "divine revelation" about homosexuals. JWs seem to respond with "new light" to cultural, economic, or political pressure as well.

  How much you wanna bet that, for example, if the US threatened to remove the tax-exempt status of any 501(c)(3) that refused to admit homosexual members, or threatened to confiscate property of religions that refused to perform gay marriages, suddenly there would be "new light" emanating from the JW popes?
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  Junction-Guy

  You bet they will someday! All they have to do is use the same twisted reasoning they use for their doctrines and apply it to that--and bingo they will change it. I have no doubt they will have new light.
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  OneEyedJoe

  I don't see it happening anytime soon. Not as long as those homosexuals insist on designing tight pants for us to wear!
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  Vidiot

  sir82 - "How much you wanna bet that, for example, if the US threatened to remove the tax-exempt status of any 501(c)(3) that refused to admit homosexual members, or threatened to confiscate property of religions that refused to perform gay marriages, suddenly there would be 'new light' emanating from the JW popes?"

  Strangely enough, I can actually see the courts steadily going in that direction in the future, but considering the rhetoric coming out of WTHQ reiterating all their ultra-conservative stances, they seem far more inclined to draw lines in the sand than compromise, these days.

  Which, IMO, is good, in that it ensures their decline.
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  OneEyedJoe

  Strangely enough, I can actually see the courts steadily going in that direction in the future, but considering the rhetoric coming out of WTHQ reiterating all their ultra-conservative stances, they seem far more inclined to draw lines in the sand than compromise, these days.

  Which, IMO, is good, in that it ensures their decline.

  I tend to agree, what I really see happening if some country begins sanctioning religions that ban homosexuals from joining is this:

  1. Fight it to the highest court in the land.

  2. Upon losing, issue a public statement that they do not ban homosexuals from joining nor do they excommunicate them for being homosexual.

  3. Issue a private letter to the elders (not to be read nor disseminated publicly in any way) that anyone who participates in homosexual behavior (not mearly being a homosexual) has disassociated themselves by their actions.

  4. Stop talking about homosexuals as openly in the publications, but continue to make it a topic for CO talks and at conventions.

  With any luck the reputation their earning themselves in the legal world will make it obvious what they're doing and expose them.
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  Junction-Guy

  I actually don't see the WT fighting this in court--for if they did, that would put them alongside bible believing churches in doctrinal matters. I see them embracing it in the future, and for that they will grow. They are a self preservation cult, and as they have proved in the past they are willing to compromise their beliefs when it suits them financially--just think Mexico vs. Malawi, UN, etc etc. This is the one hot button issue that the media loves to embroil itself in--just think about it, all the things the WT has done--forbidding blood transfusions, denying children a normal upbringing, denying all holidays, ruining families and lives--yet the media could care less, but if they stand against gay marriage, they will face the wrath of the liberal media and the world--and their membership would falter. They will adapt, if ever so slowly!