Wednesday, December 3, 2008

I did follow my conscience in the voting booth and ignored my church

I was shocked when our Bishop announced from the pulpit that church leaders would be seeking members to become politically active and work against our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. Surely there is some legal implication to this religious attack on their civil rights. Our stake President told the local paper that no in-church campaigning was done but that was a lie! This gracious, kind, good man was forced by church leaders to do what he did but I also know the LDS church preaches free agency adamantly and he could have chosen otherwise. But if he had, he would have lost everything and been excommunicated and shamed and shunned by the church leaders in Utah and elsewhere. My best friend is a gay man, one of the best people I have ever known. It is important to me that he knows I did follow my conscience in the voting booth and ignored my church. I am so sorry for what the Mormon Church and the Catholic Church did. I am ashamed to have been Catholic most of my life and Mormon now. If there were ever legal action taken against what the church did I promise I would testify they did use "church" to manipulate "state" and violated your civil rights.

3 comments:

  1. Just want to thank you for this, you are restoring my faith in America for Standing up for the very principles this nation is founded on.

    Thank you so much for restoring my faith in humanity.

    Sincerely,

    Jim George

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  2. I just stumbled across ur blog--I will be reading more--you are the most honest blogger I've read so far---I wanted to tell u that. I respect what u said above--I was raised Southern Baptist and they actually asked me to leave 'Bible' studies a couple of times because I questioned the "pro-life" thing(I told them maybe I would want an abortion if I was raped--I didn't think that they could judge unless they were in each individual situation-which is impossible), AND I told a "teacher" that he was responding to my question in "church answers"-He wasn't being real--It was a cop out- you know-he answered my questions with "Well...what do you think Jesus would do?!". I was like- "I'm asking YOU that!!"
    Ugh! I t seems like many times the people who are the least open to discussion and questions are the ones who claim to know all the answers.
    So many Christians look down on Muslims, Jews and the like-but they just do what their gospel says--just like us.
    God may have given us a holy book, but he also gave us brains, and my brain says that people have touched that book and edited and translated the heck out of it--really people!
    Step 1)Read
    Step 2)Think
    If step 2 contradicts step 1, learn more and make a decision using the reasoning ability that God gave you!
    ...sorry--I've gone off on a tangent-Hope I made sense... :)

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