The Church has just issued an official response to the petition offered by the Human Rights Campaign. Article from the HRC here; full article available from the LDS Newsroom here. Text of the official response below:

My name is Michael Otterson. I am here representing the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to address the matter of the petition presented today by the Human Rights Campaign.

While we disagree with the Human Rights Campaign on many fundamentals, we also share some common ground. This past week we have all witnessed tragic deaths across the country as a result of bullying or intimidation of gay young men. We join our voice with others in unreserved condemnation of acts of cruelty, or attempts to belittle or mock any group or individual that is different – whether those differences arise from race, religion, mental challenges, social status, sexual orientation, or for any other reason. Such actions simply have no place in our society. [Read more…]

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]

My friend Damon’s new book, The Religious Test: Why We Must Question the Beliefs of Our Leaders, will be published later this month. It’s already attracting attention (partly due to a well-placed précis of the book which Damon wrote for the Washington Post), and it should: it’s an excellent book. It isn’t so much a scholarly work that will fundamentally affect how people think about the history, nature, and role of religious belief in a liberal society like our own, but a thoughtful and scholarly work of argument, one that has the potential to orient much of our thinking about religious candidates for office and religious claims in public life generally. The thesis of the book, in a nutshell? Damon is a liberal, through and through, and he worries about what he sees as all the illiberal ways (some of which are easily recognized, but some of which are not) in which the American electorate, voters and parties and interest groups alike, often fail to ask the hard–even “religious”–questions of those who come before us, asking for a vote with one hand, while keeping their Bible (or Koran, or Book of Mormon) close by with the other. [Read more…]

BYU political scientist Valerie Hudson recently published a now much-discussed LDS feminist argument against same-sex marriage.  The central thrust of her argument is that there is a trade-off between gender equality and acceptance of homosexuality, and that Mormons should favor gender equality by opposing same-sex marriage and acquiescence toward homosexuality more generally.  The normative part of this argument depends on the empirical claim: that there is indeed a trade-off.  Can this assertion survive empirical scrutiny?  If not, Hudson’s entire essay basically fails. [Read more…]

This is not a post about whether we should have same-sex marriage.  Rather, it is an exploration of the ways that strategic options for same-sex marriage proponents and advocates of traditional restrictions on marriage are evolving.  What kinds of arguments are likely to be meaningful to persuadable people? [Read more…]