Why Marriage, Why Family
A family built on the marriage of a man and woman supplies the best setting for God’s plan to thrive.
This is an interesting claim right off, and ya know what, it’s verifiable. We can look at numbers. Now, the idea of “Best setting” puts us into a grey area, because who knows what that means, but the basic idea he is using weasel words to get at, is that the standard family is “better” for children, and we can evaluate that with a lot of metrics.
First of all, two studies reported in June of 2012 really do show that “Traditional Mother Father” homes do better. But Mark Regnerus’ work has been discredited. He basically classified failing families as “gay” if a father lived with another man, regardless of a relationship (couch-surfing fathers suddenly become part of the “Gay” category).
Based on a re-evaluation of the data, it concludes there are minimal differences in outcome for children raised by same-sex parents and married opposite-sex parents
If we separate out same-sex marriages (Arguably what D. Todd Christofferson is arguing against, given the timing and the Supreme Court’s decisions that would follow) it turns out they do as well, or better than traditional families. And this is the default position we should hold
Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents
But let’s start with his talks points:
Bonhoeffer became a vocal critic of the Nazi dictatorship and its treatment of Jews and others. He was imprisoned for his active opposition and finally executed in a concentration camp.
Ah yes, Nazi’s. Gonna be a good talk if you start with Nazi opposers. This Nazi opposer says that marriage comes from God. Checkmate homosexuals!
Marriage is more than your love for each other. … In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to his glory, and calls into his kingdom. In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal—it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. … So love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God.”2
If we remove the concept that “God hates Gay Marraige” then these words could still be true for Gay Marriage as well.
So how does he prove that marriage is of God? He cites prophets, of course. Never mind that Moses likely didn’t exist, and there is no evidence of a worldwide flood; He skips by those and goes straight to the Book of Abraham, which has been resoundingly demonstrated to be a 500 year old common funerary text and takes it as a solid source for current political discussion.
If, then in the course of our mortal experience, we chose to “do all things whatsoever the Lord [our] God [should] command [us],” we would have kept our “second estate.” This means that by our choices we would demonstrate to God (and to ourselves) our commitment and capacity to live His celestial law while outside His presence and in a physical body with all its powers, appetites, and passions.
I want to be very clear about what he is saying in the subtext here. If you go against “traditional marriage”, you are damned. You have to demonstrate to God your commitment to His celestial law.
Turns out we can prove the LDS church is apostate via this same idea. you see “Celestial Law” was, in fact, defined as obeying polygamy prior to correlation.
Like many other unique doctrines brought about by the LDS Church, celestial marriage has gone through its share of redefining and development. Today, celestial marriage merely means to be married for time and eternity in an LDS temple. To the 19th century Mormon, celestial marriage was synonymous with plural marriage. Mormon historians concede that celestial and plural marriage were at one time inseparable. According to David John Buerger, “Celestial marriage was applied to and equated with plural marriage until the late nineteenth century” (The Mysteries of Godliness, p. 59).
” Some people have supposed that the doctrine of plural marriage was a sort of superfluity, or non-essential to the salvation or exaltation of mankind. In other words, some of the Saints have said, and believe, that a man with one wife, sealed to him by the authority of the Priesthood for time and eternity, will receive an exaltation as great and glorious, if he is faithful, as he possibly could with more than one. I want here to enter my solemn protest against this idea, for I know it is false…The marriage of one woman to a man for time and eternity by the sealing power, according to the law of God, is a fulfillment of the celestial law of marriage in part… But this is only the beginning of the law, not the whole of it. Therefore, whoever has imagined that he could obtain the fulness of the blessings pertaining to this celestial law, by complying with only a portion of its conditions, has deceived himself. He cannot do it. – Joseph F. Smith, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 20, p. 28
If a person is not “Celestial married” he is not obeying “Celestial Law” and ergo, he will not keep his second estate. you can’t get polygamous marriages in the LDS church, ergo, it cannot get you to heaven!
OMG!
Let’s turn instead to whether homosexuals have any purpose in nature. What can we observe:
Why does the God of Nature make homosexuals so useful if they are so bad for his plan?
Conclusion
Perhaps his talk should have been “Why Straight-Only Marriage” and it could have been shortened to “Religious reasons!”, which is fine for anyone to believe and have as their own religion, but when individuals and organizations try to force their moral view into law for everyone, that’s a problem.
Imagine instead there was a minister in a mega-church who started saying “Celestial Marriage is no Marriage!”. He cites scripture to prove that polygamy is evil (including Nephi 2! showing that the LDS church was wrong from the outset). He attacks temples with scripture. Then he puts millions of dollars into lobbying and propositions in states across the nation to remove temple marriage. He states that “Traditional marriage is the best setting” pointing out that traditional marriage for hundreds of years required no temple. Even Joseph Smith did not marry Emma in the temple! He quotes Christ that there is no marriage in heaven and demands that no marriage licenses be given to Mormons.
This would be obvious religious persecution to members as well as enforcing a small group’s beliefs on everyone. It is clearly morally wrong. Why is it so hard for D. Todd to figure out what he is doing, is no different?