Mormon apologist: Being gay and other ?????defects????? are just ?????bad things [that] happen?????

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_Lemmie
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Mormon apologist: Being gay and other “defects” are just “bad things [that] happen”

Post by _Lemmie »

Peterson has said some horribly insensitive things, so this shouldn’t surprise me, but somehow it still shocks.

DanielPeterson Sledge a day ago

Sledge: "Then, of course, you would have to answer "why did God make gay people?""

Why does he make near-sighted people? Why are children born with spina bifida and Down syndrome and congenital heart defects? Why did God make some people less attractive than others? Why was my granddaughter born improperly formed? Why did she die just three days after her birth?

Sledge: "See, I don't believe he purposefully makes his children suffer. We make ourselves suffer by the choices we make, yes, but not by virtue of being born."

We live in a world in which bad things happen. That's the nature of the place.

... Sledge: "I will choose the side of love and compassion for everyone, no matter who they love."

So will I. And I judge you to be wrong.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 5023431039
Saying that being gay is the same as any other “defect,” even ones that cause death, is NOT being on the side of compassion. What a horrible thing to say.
_Everybody Wang Chung
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Re: Mormon apologist: Being gay and other “defects” are just “bad things [that] happen”

Post by _Everybody Wang Chung »

Professor Lemmie,

Excellent find. Remember, DCP recently called on his readers to boycott Amazon because they stopped selling books that promoted shock therapy as a cure for homosexuality.

DCP really, really hates gay people.
"I'm on paid sabbatical from BYU in exchange for my promise to use this time to finish two books."

Daniel C. Peterson, 2014
_moksha
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Re: Mormon apologist: Being gay and other “defects” are just “bad things [that] happen”

Post by _moksha »

Sledge: In a hundred years, which side of history will you be on?

Peterson: In 1930s Germany, I hope that I would have been on the wrong side. I don't take my marching orders from a deified, infallible, personified History.
I hope Dr. Peterson means he would not be employed as a lieutenant to Joseph Goebbels. Besides, what would a non-drinking Mormon be doing in a beer hall no matter how putschy they were?
Cry Heaven and let loose the Penguins of Peace
_mcjathan
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Re: Mormon apologist: Being gay and other “defects” are just “bad things [that] happen”

Post by _mcjathan »

Gay people that God hates? It is what it is.
_Shulem
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Re: Mormon apologist: Being gay and other “defects” are just “bad things [that] happen”

Post by _Shulem »

Sledge JESUS: "I will choose the side of love and compassion for everyone, no matter who they love."

DCP: So will I. And I judge you to be wrong.

Jesus: Judge not.

Peterson is no Christian. He's fake.
_Dr LOD
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Re: Mormon apologist: Being gay and other “defects” are just “bad things [that] happen”

Post by _Dr LOD »

moksha wrote:
Mon Aug 10, 2020 10:18 am
Sledge: In a hundred years, which side of history will you be on?

Peterson: In 1930s Germany, I hope that I would have been on the wrong side. I don't take my marching orders from a deified, infallible, personified History.
I hope Dr. Peterson means he would not be employed as a lieutenant to Joseph Goebbels. Besides, what would a non-drinking Mormon be doing in a beer hall no matter how putschy they were?


Bolshevik Cheka are a better fit for some of our Mopologetic friends. Watch the first three minutes. The subtitles are OK, but they get the point across.

https://youtu.be/X_RSDqBn0bA
_moksha
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Re: Mormon apologist: Being gay and other “defects” are just “bad things [that] happen”

Post by _moksha »

Image
"Come here you naughty, naughty boy and I shall smack you with my fabulous sword. Afterward we can
get some cookies and milk at the Cougareat, but no hand holding or someone will snitch to
President Wilkinson and that Honors Committee down in the dungeon."
Cry Heaven and let loose the Penguins of Peace
_Lemmie
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Re: Mormon apologist: Being gay and other “defects” are just “bad things [that] happen”

Post by _Lemmie »

Oh dear.

Kiwi57 Sledge • 2 days ago

Then, of course, you would have to answer "why did God make gay people?"
In order to demonstrate that that question requires a particular answer, you need to answer the following:

<edit> Dan has listed some of the very birth defects that I had in mind, many of which are far worse than an unfortunate attraction towards members of the same sex. We live in a fallen world, where not only people, but the very conditions into which we are born, and over which we have no control, are necessarily imperfect.

Why should "gay" people be so privileged as to not have to deal with such things?

http://disq.us/p/2b2tu0t
So, if you are gay, you are “necessarily imperfect,” and surely you don’t think you should be “so privileged” that you should not have to deal with that as a “birth defect.”

This is beginning to make sense. Kiwi and Peterson are insistent that those who are gay MUST treat their sexual orientation as a BIRTH DEFECT that must be fixed.
_Physics Guy
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Re: Mormon apologist: Being gay and other “defects” are just “bad things [that] happen”

Post by _Physics Guy »

Lemmie wrote:
Mon Aug 10, 2020 11:52 pm
This is beginning to make sense. Kiwi and Peterson are insistent that those who are gay MUST treat their sexual orientation as a BIRTH DEFECT that must be fixed.
Fixed if possible, otherwise faithfully endured.

I think it's a consistent position up to a point. Even as recently as twenty years ago I used to have the same sort of theory, as a fairly evangelical Christian, that homosexuality was a kind of unfortunate handicap. You couldn't just say that God wouldn't do that to people, because some people definitely do get stuck with bad conditions in life. That was the party line with which I grew up.

Even back then, though, I began to consider that people born with difficult conditions were totally allowed to do whatever they could to live as fully as possible. Nobody was telling people with paralyzed legs that they just had to sit still because humans were created to walk and rolling in wheelchairs was unnatural. So even if gay relationships were somehow inferior to straight ones, why couldn't gay people do the best they could?

Of course, once I actually got to know more gay people it became clear that there was nothing inferior about being gay. Some gay people are unhappy, some are unhappy about sex in particular, but duh: that's not inferior, that's human. Let those who have never been unhappy about sex throw the first stones. So for me the whole idea that being gay was some kind of handicap was just a bad theory that failed to fit reality. I'm embarrassed now that I ever entertained it, but at least I don't think I did much harm by holding that received opinion. I never argued for it that I can recall; the only use I remember making of the theory was to argue, as above, that even if it was true it didn't seem to imply that gay people couldn't be themselves.

I don't think it's fair to say that because Peterson thinks of homosexuality as a sort of birth defect he must therefore hate gay people. I'm sure he doesn't hate anyone who was born with any of those other conditions he lists. He's just stating his theoretical party line about what it means to be gay.

The problem, though, is that Mormon teaching makes being gay into a life sentence to involuntary celibacy or to a doubly unfulfilling marriage. So while it's one thing, perhaps, for individuals to have wrong ideas about what being gay means, it's a whole other thing for a church to impose those ideas on gay people who grow up in that church. That's not like condescending to people in wheelchairs: it's like going around breaking people's legs.

It might be consistent, in the sense that IF Mormon beliefs were all true, then the Mormon attitude to homosexuality would be kind and right. But for me this is a case where the principle of Pascal's Wager works against a religious belief. If you uphold the Mormon teaching on sexuality and it turns out to be wrong, then you do grievous harm to a lot of people for no other reason than your own blind adherence to a ridiculous theory. That's a major downside to taking the Mormon position. To me it's a good reason not to bet with the Mormons on this.
_Dr Moore
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Re: Mormon apologist: Being gay and other “defects” are just “bad things [that] happen”

Post by _Dr Moore »

If we swap homosexuality with black-African skin color, and rewind the clock 45 years, almost everything about this thread would be the same. Pattern recognition of LDS leaders' repeated social retardation and insistence on holding to old ideas because, well older old men held those ideas too, is part of why it hurts so much and is driving families away from the church at record rates.
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