Editor:
I admire Clara Hurtado?s sincerity of faith, and her admonition of her brethren in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints for their homophobia in her column printed March 22.
But her defense of the LDS Church?s position on homosexuality is either naive or disingenuous.
She writes, ?The action of homosexuality is a serious sin, just as any sexual relationship outside of marriage between man and woman is wrong in the eyes of God.?
She implies that the reason? perhaps the only reason?that homosexuality is wrong is because it leads to sex outside of marriage. This is clearly not the position of the LDS Church, which considers homosexual acts to be a sin even when they occur within marriage.
Homosexuals are regularly married by civil authorities in the Netherlands and by religious authorities (such as in the Unitarian-Universalist Church) in the United States. Correct me if I?m wrong, but the homosexuals in these marriages are still sinning, as far as the LDS Church is concerned.
In fact, if the only thing wrong about homosexuality were the absence of marriage, the Church would support marriage rights for homosexuals! Instead, it recently supported an initiative in California to keep civil marriage illegal for homosexuals.
Ms. Hurtado should ask herself why her tithing dollars go to keep people living in sin, when their sinning would be ended if they were just allowed to marry.
In reality, the LDS Church considers homosexual acts to be wrong, within marriage or not. The issue of marriage, and here in Utah, the illegality of homosexual acts themselves, are just smoke screens put up to distract people from the real prejudices of the Church.
If ?the Church is True,? there is no need to sugarcoat its doctrine. If homosexuality is wrong, the faithful such as Ms. Hurtado should stand up and say so proudly.
Kirt Wackford
Graduate Student, Biology