Quote Originally Posted by NorthwestUteFan View Post
The way the FP/Q12 works is they need to be unanimous on a decision before they will make a statement on a policy.

There are rumors that a number of them are amenable to allowing full activity and fellowship to gay and lesbian couples, including allowing temple recommends but short of allowing temple sealing for these couples. We can speculate as to which ones will support or oppose such a proposition, but suffice to say there is zero chance we will see anything like this so long as Boyd Packer draws a breath.

We have a friend whose teenaged daughter is living life as a boy (self-selected transgendered) . While he's is genetically female, he has a boy's name, dresses like a boy, acts like a boy, and is for all intents and purposes a well-adjusted teenaged boy. He also will not attend church because frankly there simply is no place for a person like that in the church. His parents are supportive, as is our bishop who agrees that church might not be a healthy situation psychologically.
LDS ideology works well for heterosexual people. It calls sinful all those who fall outside the norm. It cannot account for them, so it makes them an Other without any solution other than a promise of a better time in the eternities. Theologically, to an intersex person, that could (and probably does) feel almost like God does not love you as much as others, because the ordinances are denied to you for something that you 'know' is not a choice.

The consequences of that 'knowledge' in the homosexual Church member are pathological. They 'know' that they are sinful. They 'know' that others will reject them. They 'know' that their sexuality is forbidden. The pathology of these knowledges causes a lifetime of self-loathing and spiritual despair, leading, I would imagine, the vast majority to leave the Church. Current Church ideology presents the situation as welcoming them back, providing they remain chaste, repent, and only engage in heterosexual relations with their spouse.

Until the Church's ideology can account for biological mutations that fall outside of the current conceptions of gender (read: normal male and normal female) then it (the Church's ideology) will remain pathologically (in the sense of the suffering/consequences this ideology causes in gays' and their families' lives) opposed to actions that it deems contrary to the 'knowledge' that it currently has about gender, same-sex attraction, and homosexual sex acts. It's not homosexuality being a choice that causes the ideology to balk at change. That's easy enough to justify in the current one. The real rub lies in the ones that you cannot explain away easily (this link is safe for work). The biologically male children with vaginas and clitorises and the biologically female children with penises and the 250,000 kids born with ambiguous genitalia each year. How does the ideology convince them that they're made in the image of God when their gender is female, they're attracted to men, but their penis is going to be there next to their husband's when they go to have sex on their sealing day?

Until the LDS ideology can justify the existence and acceptance of these people as whole and natural children of our Heavenly Father, then the ideology for most members will continue to function thusly:

MEMBER:"I have several homosexual friends. They have adopted children, are loving parents, faithful companions, and great neighbors. I don't know why the Brethren are always saying that the calamities foretold by prophets will come about because of these people."

GENERAL CONFERENCE: "THAT'S PRECISELY WHY YOU HAVE TO BE CAREFUL!"

We still don't know what causes someone to be homosexual. If it's genetic or environmental in the womb, then calling it a sin robs us of our agency.

The ideology currently denies that this is the case. We've seen the ideology change in the past about other things that were once considered immoral. This one, however, does not appear as simple to resolve given the other theological ramifications.