Families are Forever
by Rev. Ricky Hoyt
August 24, 2008
On June 20 of this year, a letter was read in every worship service of every congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the state of California. I want to read that letter to you now.
The letter is printed on the letterhead of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from the Office of the First Presidency, which is the three-person, ruling body of the church.
The letter is titled, “Preserving Traditional Marriage and Strengthening Families” and it begins, “Dear Brethren and Sisters:
“In March 2000 California voters overwhelmingly approved a state law providing that “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” The California Supreme Court recently reversed this vote of the people. On November 4, 2008, Californians will vote on a proposed amendment to the California state constitution that will now restore the March 2000 definition of marriage approved by the voters.
The Church’s teachings and position on this moral issue are unequivocal. Marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God, and the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan for His children. Children are entitled to be born within this bond of marriage.
A broad-based coalition of churches and other organizations placed the proposed amendment on the ballot. The Church will participate with this coalition in seeking its passage. Local Church leaders will provide information about how you may become involved in this important cause.
We ask that you do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time to assure that marriage in California is legally defined as being between a man and a woman. Our best efforts are required to preserve the sacred institution of marriage.”
Our congregation’s Board of Trustees has recently approved a resolution expressing exactly the opposite position on the same ballot initiative, Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that would eliminate the rights of same-sex couples to marry in the State of California. Our congregation is currently discussing the resolution and we will have a chance to vote on the matter after our service on September 28.
Here is an important difference between our Unitarian Universalist faith and the Mormon faith. In discussing and debating the issue, allowing each person to explore their own conscience and their own call to faith, and then concluding with a vote of the membership, we are following a democratic process grounded in the individual experience and wisdom of each church member, not an authoritarian decree from the head of the denomination. The outcome of our vote will only express the opinion of this particular Unitarian Universalist congregation. We won’t presume that all other UU congregations would adopt the same position. Nor do we assume that the position expressed in any approved resolution necessarily represents the faith position of every individual member of this congregation.
The Mormon process is quite different, as you can see. A position is decided for all the church by the group of three men who form the First Presidency, consisting of the current President of the church and two advisors appointed by him. And although that sounds somewhat democratic the Mormon President is not actually elected. He is simply the eldest member of a group called the Quorum of Twelve Apostles who ascends to the presidency upon the death of the previous President and then selects a new Apostle to replace him on the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, who are always men, by the way.
When The First Presidency decides an issue for the church, their decision is binding on all Mormons. Individual congregations cannot take a different position, and although individual church members could secretly disagree, disagreement with the church teaching would be counter to their understanding of the faith.
I make a point of this because it illustrates a very important difference between the basic worldview of our Unitarian Universalist faith, and not only the Mormon faith, but of many other religious traditions around the world. And that difference displays itself not only in such ways as the process of how a church makes decisions on current social issues, and whether that position is binding on all its members, but also why a church like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints would take the position that it does on a question like eliminating the rights of same-sex couples to marry, and why our congregation’s Board of Trustees took the opposite position.
When our Board voted to approve the resolution that our entire congregation will be voting on next month, they grounded their position in the principles of our faith. The resolution specifically mentions the first two of our seven principles but I’m actually talking about an even more fundamental principle of our Unitarian Universalist faith. I’m talking about a worldview that goes to the heart of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist, a core belief that we all share. I’m talking about what I call our multi-path theology, and I’ll explain what I mean by that in a minute.
The position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is also based on a fundamental religious principle. Their position is also based on a belief. Their position on Proposition 8, and the reason that the issue is important enough for the First Presidency to write a letter to be read to every congregation urging them to use their means and time to pass the proposition, is also a religious principle. “Why does it matter?” You might be asking. “Why would three old men in Utah care whether non-Mormon gay and lesbian couples receive legal protections in the State of California?” The answer has nothing to do with hate. It has to do with religious belief.
Mormon theology believes that families, not individuals, are the fundamental unit of salvation. The eventual progression of human persons from before birth, through the experiences of this life and on through the life to come, requires, if one is to reach the highest levels of fulfillment, the creation and preservation of a family, meaning one man, one woman, and children, lots and lots of children. The highest levels of salvation are closed to people who do not marry a person of the opposite sex and then have children with their mate. Adults who do not marry or who marry but don’t have children have not fulfilled their spiritual purpose and will end up eventually in a lesser form of existence having fallen short of their potential. And children born into a family that does not have a mother and a father, or raised by a single parent or a same-sex couple are severely and unfairly handicapped in their ability to reach their divine purpose.
This is the theology that stands behind the statement in the letter read to Mormon congregations on June 20.
The Church’s teachings and position on this moral issue are unequivocal. Marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God, and the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan for His children. Children are entitled to be born within this bond of marriage.
Mormons believe that the family of a father and a mother and many children is not only the divine plan for families on earth, but it is the divine structure throughout all creation. God is literally the father of every human person on earth. There is also a Mother in Heaven who is God’s wife, and the two of them sexually produced all of the billions of spiritual children who are eventually born of human parents on earth.
Mormons believe that Jesus is one of God’s spiritual children. Jesus and God the Father are two separate beings for the Mormons, so they are Unitarians in one sense of the word. For Mormons Jesus was literally born of God and the Mother of Heaven in the spiritual realm, and then born of God and Mary in his earthly body. Mormons speak of Jesus as “our eldest brother” the first born of God’s billions of spiritual children, including also you and I.
After being born on earth each human person is urged to find their own opposite sex partner and to begin their own family. In the Mormon church the marriage of a man and a woman is not merely “until death do us part” but for all eternity. Mormon marriages are ritually “sealed” in a Temple uniting the couple in eternal marriage. Eventually, after their death and according to the merits of their lives while they lived, a married, opposite-sex couple can eventually ascend to a level where they become gods themselves. And their spiritual children can eventually populate their own planet just as we are the spiritual children of our God and his wife.
There is a famous saying in Mormon circles that neatly sums up this theology. “As we are now God once was. As God is now, we may be.” Meaning married to an opposite-sex spouse with lots and lots of children.
You can see then why the family is so central to Mormon culture. It’s not just that the see strong families as the backbone of society, or the most healthy arrangement for child-rearing, or a bulwark against the evils of secular society. They do believe all that, but the deeper motivation is this belief that a strong, intact family: mother father and children, is God’s plan and intention for every human being, and is also essential for human persons to reach their highest spiritual potential and satisfaction.
So what happens then to the rest of us, gays and lesbians, single persons, the married folks who choose not to have children or who cannot have children due to infertility, the formerly married who had children with a partner they no longer wish to spend all eternity married to?
Well Mormon theology teaches that all of us will have a second chance. After death our spiritual evolution will continue and we will continue to be offered opportunities to find an appropriate mate and begin our spiritual purpose of producing lots and lots of children. And eventually we will either choose properly or we will be assigned to one of the two lower heavens.
The problem, then, you see, with same-sex marriage, is that it seems to present an equal and legitimate alternative to heterosexual marriage, while Mormon belief is clear that there is no alternative to heterosexual marriage. By giving a stamp of governmental legitimacy to these marriages, Mormons fear that people will be led astray from fulfilling the divinely ordained duty of marrying and giving birth to their own biological children which is the only path to spiritual fulfillment and satisfaction.
It doesn’t matter how happy two men or two women are in their relationship, their earthly happiness doesn’t count because you can’t get to God that way. It doesn’t matter how loving a same-sex couple are to their children, whether their own by a previous relationship or adopted, if a couple can’t give birth to their own children than a couple is not following God’s plan. Two men or two women, or a single parent, can’t substitute for a father and a mother, and the children of such a family are deprived of the earthly model of the divine ideal that they must learn to emulate for their own eventual salvation.
The underlying religious principle here that is shared with many other religions and which is exactly opposite of the underlying religious principle of Unitarian Universalism, is the notion that there is only one right way of being in the world and that nothing else will be successful in bringing spiritual fulfillment. The underlying religious principle of so many religions is that there is one true path that every person must follow, and that only that single path leads to God. Any other path leads to a place that at least slightly misses the mark, and most other paths lead directly to misery and damnation. Every person is required to learn and understand the one divinely-ordained way of living, and to strive as best as they are able to exactly follow that one path. And a corrolary to that belief is the belief that every person is actually capable of living that one model and if they refuse to follow that model the failure is due to their own willfulness, or ego, or sin.
Well God bless Unitarian Universalism, that sees a different way. God bless Universalism in particular which begins with the fundamental notion that there are billions of equally effective paths leading toward spiritual fulfillment and satisfaction. It is our firmly held and core belief that there is no one right way of being in the world but that there are billions of right ways unique to every person, and the very diversity of ways of being human in the world is part of the divine blessing, and the task of finding your own way by your own experience is the heart of spiritual practice.
The Mormon church sees a same-sex marriage as a perversion and a parody of the one acceptable marriage of a man and a woman, where many Unitarian Universalists see a same-sex marriage as something to celebrate and support on its own terms. The Mormon church sees a single person as the unfulfilled half of a future marriage, rather than, for some single persons, a satisfying life in itself. A childless couple is a Mormon tragedy. And a Mormon couple that must resort to adoption in order to raise children is a noble but sad situation that will hopefully be corrected in the next life.
There’s an incredible amount of judging going on in this religious perspective. Every possible variant of human experience is held up against the one true divine ideal. And unfortunately against that measure every one of us will be found lacking. Every person is a failed version of something better and truer and happier. Every physically disabled person is a failed physically able person. Every mentally disabled person is a failed mentally able person. Every gay and lesbian person is a failed heterosexual. Single persons are marriage failures. And even every marriage is a failure when held against the ideal. “Shouldn’t I be happier?” a spouse wonders. “Shouldn’t I love my husband, or my wife more? Why aren’t my children more successful? How did I fail? And what would happen if my friends in church learned the secret doubts of my heart?”
The mistake is to think that there is only one true divine ideal, an abstract Platonic ideal for all human lives that all of us must strive to emulate. This is a false teaching. It doesn’t lead to happiness or fulfillment; it leads to shame and guilt. Even if followed successfully it would only lead to a boring monotone sameness to the world, when the clear evidence of creation points to the conclusion that the divine energy loves diversity and difference and branching out into the new and the untried. The successful parts of creation, the ones that find continued life and happiness are the ones that can adapt and change to new circumstances, and that find ways of partnering with other forms of creation to achieve a symbiotic balance.
I don’t want you to be like me, because then I’d miss out on all the unique glories of knowing you as you are. And if you and I were the same then you and I working together couldn’t achieve anything I couldn’t just do by myself. I love difference. I love your differences. I love being different myself. I even love the differences of Mormons. I’m glad they’re here. I just don’t want the whole world to be Mormon.
And I love my family. My parents (a man and a woman) have been married for 55 years and gave birth to 4 children. Congratulations to them. They provided an excellent environment to raise a family and an excellent example of a loving marriage. But I’ve seen many other examples of satisfaction and fulfillment in my friends and in the congregations I’ve served: single people, gay and lesbian people, transgender people, adults with children, and adults without children, divorced people, remarried people, some remarried several times, and some people who lost a spouse to death happily married a second time, and some couples happily unmarried for many years.
Anybody who would judge any of these ways of being as “less than” some abstract ideal, or incapable of leading to true spiritual fulfillment and satisfaction are blind to a great deal of beauty and joy of the world. And that’s a spiritual shame.
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