Whatever.
The Church doesn’t want to sow confusion and contention in families, and doesn’t want to allow children to sign away their lives into a religion when they are far too young to understand the consequences. Good.
Kids shouldn’t be baptized at 8 anyways.
That is way too young. Mormons baptize at eight because it is the “age of accountability.” In oher words, you are old enough to understand the difference between right and wrong. But baptism isn’t about recognizing the difference between right and wrong; it is about recognizing the difference between Mormonism, Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Atheism, and Deism, etc. I was a pretty smart cookie at 8, if I do say so myself. But I had no idea. Literally.
Kids can’t understand complex logical arguments. Most adults aren’t even capable of really understanding and expressing their religious beliefs in coherent English.
If baptism isn’t about picking a religion and coming to a determination about how you live your life, then what is it about? And if it is about those things, then why is the Mormon Church making silly assumptions that 8-year-olds are at the right age to do that? Eight-year-olds are in like 2nd grade. When I was in second grade, I think I peed my pants at school once. These are like, practically toddlers. They just barely learned to read. Some of them are still working on that!
The decision is still blatantly discriminatory.
The LDS Church is not letting in the kids of gay couples. Basically, they are saying, “We love you, but your kids need to go through a cleansing process before we will touch them.”
The decision is contradictory.
The LDS Church makes a pretty big deal about all of the blessings that come with having the Holy Ghost in your life. After you get baptized, you are bestowed with “the Gift of the Holy Ghost” during your confirmation. The Holy Ghost can still visit you if you aren’t a member of the Church, but once you get the Gift, he is basically always there, helping you along your way.
The Mormon Church never really goes into much detail about who this Holy Ghost guy is, aside from the fact that he is a member of the Godhead (along with Jesus and God), so he is basically a God. But, leaving aside the fishy bit of non-doctrine, it doesn’t really make any sense for the Mormon Church to not want to extend those benefits to some kids.
The way I see it, you have two choices: Either 1) things are predetermined and bad people do no good by trying to be good, or 2) things are not predetermined, and you can potentially be instrumental in someone else getting into the Celestial Kingdom by being a great example and by welcoming them into your church and your social circle. The Mormon Church’s decision is practical in a temporal, non-religious sense (they aren’t sowing contention within families). But, from the standpoint of “Let’s get everyone to accept the one, true gospel as quickly as possible and get them to come to the church because it really will make God’s plan come true,” it really makes absolutely no sense at all to exclude those people from the church that you fear are most likely to fall away from its teachings. Something I learned when I was young is that we learn by example from the people around us. If the Mormon Church is denying kids the ability to be around other people who would set precisely the example that the Mormon Church thinks that they would need, then the Mormon church is not really looking out for their best interest, consistent with its hypotheses that it is the one true church, etc.
Conclusion
Whatever. The Mormon Church has been anti-gay since its inception. They used to conduct electro-shock therapy, and do other inhumane stuff. The church isn’t true. It is convenient. It plays on people’s evolutionarily-driven tendencies to believe in God and morality, and their desire to wrap their perception of the world up into a neat package. But morality is just collective action (If you don’t know what that means, then feel free to ask in the comments, and we can have a conversation.). The world is a beautiful thing of order, but the order is perfectly explainable in terms of a bunch of stuff following a small set of inflexible rules over a long period of time. The world is a creature of random chance, not convenient human fantasies. The fact that the Mormon Church is willing to twist itself into knots like this just adds another straw to the argument that they don’t, at heart, even fully believe in themselves.
To all my Mormon relatives and friends out there, you know deep inside that you don’t have an irrefutable reason to believe what you believe. You believe it because you can, because it gives you a sense of stability and order. You believe it because you have always believed it. You believe it because the Cruel Truism (again feel free to ask in the comments section) makes you believe it. It’s BS. But, if it makes you happy, then whatever. ;P
About the Author
Some of you may be aware that I was raised Mormon, and identify as such no more. Some of you may also be aware that I am in a long-term relationship with my boyfriend, Trevor. If not, you are now.
Sometimes Profound 