There are many, many good things about Mormonism. Its anti-gay-marriage stance is not one of them. Mormon apostle Jeffrey Holland’s recent speech at BYU indicates a strikingly high priority on an anti-gay-marriage message. (I don’t think this says much at all about Jeffrey Holland as an individual Mormon Church leader. He may well have been assigned by more senior Mormon Church leaders to give the anti-gay-marriage message that he did at BYU.)

Views differ, and religiously-based anti-gay-marriage views should be given some respect even by those like me who viscerally disagree with those views. But to me it seems a gross distortion (or a gross devolution) of Mormonism to let those anti-gay-marriage views overshadow other key teachings of Mormonism. Beyond supernaturalist views about the atonement of Jesus Christ and about the ability of any sincere seeker to get distinct inspiration from God that I think most Mormons would agree are much more important than an anti-gay-marriage message, Mormonism is one of the key reservoirs of belief in personal responsibility these days—that by dint of effort, one can make one’s own life better and contribute to making the world a better place.

Jordan Peterson tells the story of giving a talk about personal responsibility to students at Harvard—who had to be quite accomplished to get admitted—and having many come up afterward to tell him how meaningful that message was to them and how no one had ever given them that message of personal responsibility like that. I got that message of personal responsibility growing up in Mormonism. I am grateful for that. This is the kind of message that Mormonism should be telling the world, going up against the tide that emphasizes injuries and rights without sufficiently balancing that emphasis by also talking about responsibility and personal agency.

Here are some of the passages from Jeffrey Holland’s talk at BYU’s 2021 University Conference that I think overemphasize the anti-gay-marriage message. I add bullets to separate different passages:

• Then Elder Oaks said challengingly, “I would like to hear a little more musket fire from this temple of learning.” He said this in a way that could have applied to a host of topics in various departments, but the one he specifically mentioned was the doctrine of the family and defending marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

• We hope it isn’t a surprise to you that your Trustees are not deaf or blind to the feelings that swirl around marriage and the whole same-sex topic on campus. I and many of my Brethren have spent more time and shed more tears on this subject than we could ever adequately convey to you this morning, or any morning. We have spent hours discussing what the doctrine of the Church can and cannot provide the individuals and families struggling over this difficult issue. So, it is with scar tissue of our own that we are trying to avoid — and hope all will try to avoid — language, symbols, and situations that are more divisive than unifying at the very time we want to show love for all of God’s children.

• In that spirit, let me go no farther before declaring unequivocally my love and that of my Brethren for those who live with this same-sex challenge and so much complexity that goes with it. Too often the world has been unkind, in many instances crushingly cruel, to these our brothers and sisters. …

  … we have to be careful that love and empathy do not get interpreted as condoning and advocacy, or that orthodoxy and loyalty to principle not be interpreted as unkindness or disloyalty to people.

• … students and the parents of students who are confused about what so much recent flag-waving and parade-holding on this issue means. Beloved friends, this kind of confusion and conflict ought not to be. … show empathy and understanding for everyone while maintaining loyalty to prophetic leadership and devotion to revealed doctrine. … we do all look forward to the day when we can “beat our swords into plowshares, and [our] spears into pruning hooks,” and at least on this subject, “learn war [no] more.” … I have focused on this same-sex topic this morning more than I would have liked, I pray you will see it as emblematic of a lot of issues our students and community face in this complex, contemporary world of ours.

Jeffrey Holland suggests it has been hard for Mormon Church leaders to find a good way to deal with the issue of gay marriage. To quote again:

I and many of my Brethren have spent more time and shed more tears on this subject than we could ever adequately convey to you this morning, or any morning. We have spent hours discussing what the doctrine of the Church can and cannot provide the individuals and families struggling over this difficult issue.

Bringing gays who are not willing to deny their gayness or remain totally celibate into full fellowship in the Mormon Church would indeed require changes of a magnitude that would require what Mormon Church leaders considered a major revelation from God (as extending the priesthood and other aspects of full fellowship to Blacks did in the 1970s). But an immediate big step up in the welcome gays feel in the Mormon Church is well within current doctrine: instruct local bishops that they are the primary ones to get inspiration from God about how to help the gay members in their congregations.

There is a step further that which might be within current doctrine (though obviously not within current policy). One reasonable interpretation of the Mormon doctrine of marriage is that marriage in a Mormon temple is the only real marriage from a religious point of view. Getting married in some other way is actually a no-no. However, a marriage legal according to the law of the land is sufficient to make a sex act within that relationship not a violation of God’s law. And the Church’s anti-divorce view extends to divorce from civil, non-temple marriages. It would reduce a lot of suffering if this attitude were taken toward gay marriage. Like any marriage not in the temple (which has no provision for gay marriage), a gay marriage could remain a no-no. But though the marriage itself was a violation, sex within such a legal marriage would not be a sin under this policy. And, it would be even better if the Mormon Church’s discouragement of divorce or breakup of civil, non-temple marriages extended to gay marriages. To me, divorce is a terrible thing (though sometimes all of an individual’s options in a given situation are terrible). Which will the Church treat as worse, divorce or gay marriage?

It is very hard for me to see the saving power of an anti-gay-marriage message.

But I don’t want the other part of my plea in this blog post to be missed. Even if the Mormon Church decides to press its anti-gay-marriage message just as vigorously as it is setting out to do, I think it should make much greater efforts to take its message of personal responsibility to the world, as Jordan Peterson is doing. That message of responsibility and personal agency does have saving power! It can transform people’s lives in a way everyone beholding the change can see is a big step up.

Don't miss these posts on Mormonism:

• The Message of Mormonism for Atheists Who Want to Stay Atheists

• How Conservative Mormon America Avoided the Fate of Conservative White America

• Inside Mormonism: The Home Teachers Come Over

• Will Women Ever Get the Mormon Priesthood?

• The Mormon Church Decides to Treat Gay Marriage as Rebellion on a Par with Polygamy

• Flexible Dogmatism: The Mormon Position on Infallibility

• The Mormon View of Jesus

• David Holland on the Mormon Church During the February 3, 2008–January 2, 2018 Monson Administration

• New Mormon Prophet Russell Nelson Shakes Things Up

• Less is More in Mormon Church Meetings

• Hal Boyd: The Ignorance of Mocking Mormonism

• Mormonism Wanted to Show It Was American. Now What It Means to Be American Is Up for Grabs—McKay Coppins

Also, don’t miss these Unitarian-Universalist sermons by Miles:

• Teleotheism and the Purpose of Life (video here)

• The Egocentric Illusion (video here)

• The Message of Mormonism for Atheists Who Want to Stay Atheists (video here)

• So You Want to Save the World (video here)

• The Mystery of Consciousness

• The Message of Jesus for Non-Supernaturalists (video here)

• UU Visions

• Sharing Epiphanies

• Godless Religion

Other Posts on Religion:

• What If Jesus Was Really Resurrected?

• Easter Skepticism

• Sam Brown and Miles Kimball on Teleotheism

• The Teleotheistic Achievement of the New Testament

• An Agnostic Grace

• An Agnostic Prayer for Strength

• An Agnostic Prayer for Awareness

• An Agnostic Invocation

(By self-identification, I left Mormonism for Unitarian Universalism in 2000, at the age of 40. I have had the good fortune to be a lay preacher in Unitarian Universalism. I have posted many of my Unitarian-Universalist sermons on this blog. There are more that I need to clean up and post.)