With a clear invitation to gay Mormons to "stay with us," The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today launched a new website aimed at providing "greater sensitivity and better understanding" among Latter-day Saints with regards to same-sex attraction. "When people have those (same-sex) desires and attractions our attitude is, 'stay with us,'" said Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles during a video that introduces the subject of the website. "I think that's what God is saying: stay with me. And I think that's what we want to say in the church: stay with us, and let's work together in friendship and commonality and brotherhood and sisterhood. "Here (in the church) more than anywhere, it's important that there be love, that there be hope," Elder Christofferson continued. "We want to be with you and work together."
From a public relations perspective it would be easier for the Church to simply accept homosexual behavior. That we cannot do, for God's law is not ours to change. There is no change in the Church's position of what is morally right. But what is changing — and what needs to change — is to help Church members respond sensitively and thoughtfully when they encounter same-sex attraction in their own families, among other Church members, or elsewhere.
We believe that with an eternal perspective, a person's attraction to the same sex can be addressed and borne as a mortal test. It should not be viewed as a permanent condition. An eternal perspective beyond the immediacy of this life's challenges offers hope. Though some people, including those resisting same-sex attraction, may not have the opportunity to marry a person of the opposite sex in this life, a just God will provide them with ample opportunity to do so in the next. We can all live life in the full context of who we are, which is much broader than sexual attraction.
Charles Pierce puts Jim DeMint's exit from the Senate in perspective
Nobody better personifies the casual cruelty, the reckless disregard for the general welfare, the heedless contempt for the idea of a general political commonwealth, and the deep fealty to the rising power of oligarchy in this country than does DeMint, who first rode into the Senate by arguing, among other things, that gay people should not teach in the public schools. And no institution embodies those same qualities, which fairly define modern movement conservatism, than does The Heritage Foundation, which is little more than a talking-points mill at which the primary intellectual debates seem to center on who will write this week's crapola of the op-ed page of The Washington Post, and who will be appearing with Piers Morgan that night. Heritage's claim that it is a font of serious policy ideas dies with the fact that it is now going to be run by the biggest loon in the pond. This is a match made on a plane somewhat lower than heaven.
And DeMint will practice this "casual cruelty" and "reckless disregard for the general welfare" while earning far more money than he did as a Senator from South Carolina.
The outgoing president of the Heritage Foundation enjoyed a salary of over $1 million while Jim DeMint will likely fetch a higher price. But as far as he's concerned, this is all for the cause, not for the money.
Sen. Jim DeMint, who has announced he will leave the Senate to lead the Heritage Foundation, told Rush Limbaugh on Thursday he feels he can do "more good for the conservative movement outside the Senate" than in it.
The conservative movement can do more good for Jim DeMint if he's outside the Senate, that's for sure.
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I have reservations about citing Gallup, but even if their numbers are off by a few points, this is still really bad for Republicans and great for President Obama.
27 percent of Americans approve of the way Republican leaders in congress are handling fiscal cliff negotiations, while 63 percent disapprove. The president, meanwhile, is in positive territory.
In my opinion, if these numbers hold up it will serve as proof that the election was a mandate and that the president will earn high marks for sticking to his position even if the country ends up suffering after base-jumping off the so-called fiscal cliff.
As we've pointed out many times now, what the Republicans are proposing is actually worse than sequestration, so it would be foolish to entertain it.
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This is what marriage equality looks like:
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"Fire Boehner": Speaker's head demanded over Tea Party purge -
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