Greg Prince, part 1 - LDS Church response to homosexuality
A friend suggested I check out Greg Prince. He’s has a Ph.D. in pathology and worked on the prevention & treatment of pediatric diseases. He also has written several articles and books on LDS religious history and theology, the most notable being David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism.
In 2010 he was interviewed for The Mormons which aired on PBS:
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“In the '70s [the issue of homosexuality] came out, literally, as a national and international issue. And the initial response of Mormonism ... was harsh, was hard-line, made an assumption that this was a chosen lifestyle that could be altered, even if it required brutal therapy to alter it. In the ensuing decades we have come to realize that some of the assumptions under which we were operating were mistaken. We have come to realize that telling a gay man to get married and that would solve all problems was a huge mistake, and it's one that we don't repeat knowingly.
We have not yet gotten to the point of understanding the biology of homosexuality, to the point where that understanding enlightens the policy and the behavior of individual Mormons toward homosexuality. ... Are we going to tell [gay individuals], "You must live alone for the rest of your life because you can't fit in this other mold," or are we going to let those people live as what they are, even if it is different than what we are? I hope we can get to that point. What we call it, how we structure it, I don't know. But I think it is cruel to apply different standards of behavior to one group than we do to other groups. ..
The church did a survey 10, 20 years ago and found that half the members of the church were of single families, which means that one-third of the adult membership of the church is single, either never married, widowed or divorced. So to cling to the notion that the only acceptable family unit is a mother, father and children flies in the face of reality. We can accommodate single parents in the church; we should be able to accommodate other forms of family life that are strong, that are nurturing, that are faith-promoting and that are enduring -- but we haven't been able to do that yet. ...”
