I’ll tell you what, CW. Since you’re the only one here who’s suggesting that equal rights for homosexuals is different than civil rights in general, why don’t *you* tell us what exactly you think makes them different? (Feel free to use your best Delbert Stapley impression—maybe you can find someone who encouraged equal rights for homosexuals, and then was murdered or drowned.)

“And when you suggest that the Church is going to eventually embrace homosexual rights are you suggesting that the current teaching is not inspired?”

I don’t know what the LDS church is going to eventually embrace or discard, CW. The track record thus far makes such predictions rather risky. Wouldn’t it be nice if millions of your tithing dollars went to humanitarian aid to the sick and starving, rather than to trying to write discrimination into what Joseph Smith taught was an *inspired* Constitution?

The real issue, IMO, is that many historical LDS leaders fervently believed that their flawed views were consistent with (or are even the embodiment of) certain gospel doctrines, and that they apparently didn’t have the ability to spiritually discern the difference between a gospel truth and a nefarious departure from that truth.

Aaron, exactly right. Moments like this ought to be a powerful reminder to us that we don’t believe in the infallibility of our leaders. We’re sometimes tempted to adopt some kind of semi-infallibility; many of us would treat a personal message like this from a general authority as a divine imperative. Yet the moral vision of this letter is obscure. How unfortunate it would have been if this document had slowed the cause of equality in our country. How heroic that Governor Romney had the courage and moral vision to instead become an outspoken advocate of civil rights! May we go and do likewise.

But what’s the difference? When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. Whether you teach racist ideas because you believe they are culturally necessary or because you believe they are part of God’s plan, you’re still a racist.

Aaron will correct me if I’m wrong, but I read his post (#28) as being not about how a wrong take on an issue is justified, but how it is arrived at in the first place. Why do they see their viewpoint as being central to a correct view of God? I can only assume they applied the same pattern to arrive at truth they teach to us.

If they can apply the pattern and arrive at such a very wrong conclusion, what does that teach us about the pattern and the nature of the knowledge it yields?

I never understand how people equate homosexual rights with civil rights. What exactly do you think they have in common?

Proof that you don’t have to wait 50 years to be embarrassed by your statements, CW.