Tiny little victories
Jun. 26th, 2013 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bladesparkIn the slew of excitement about the supreme court ruling and things in Texas and such (you should check out what Ursula Vernon has to say about said excitement, btw) I wanted to share one more tiny little victory.
Last Sunday in church the Bishop read an official letter from the First Presidency of the church (ie. the Prophet himself and his two counselors.) That means it was read in pretty much every congregation of Mormons in the entire world last week. Anybody who missed it then will probably be reading it this week. And here's what it said, summed up: "We still support the Boy Scouts. We want our youth to strive to live the church's values, which include not having sex outside of marriage. Nothing has changed that, and nothing has changed the fact that any boy who strives to live said values is welcome into the scouting groups run by the church."
It never actually said the word "gay", but what it did say was pretty much "yes, we agree, the gay kids can come too." I mean... it could have been more inclusive. I could have left out the bits that amount to "so long as they're not sleeping around", but the church has always applied those bits to the straight kids too, so it's hardly discrimination. :) And it's not like you get thrown out of scouting if they find out you've had sex, you'll just get "counseled" to death by well-meaning people. Mormons are good at the well-meaning, loving, happy, inclusive smothering. :P
Anyhow, it made me really happy to hear that. I had honestly wondered, when the Boy Scouts announced the change, if the church would do yet another stupidly homophobic thing. They didn't.
It's a tiny step, but "by small and simple things are great things brought to pass", which is a passage from the Book of Mormon. :)
Last Sunday in church the Bishop read an official letter from the First Presidency of the church (ie. the Prophet himself and his two counselors.) That means it was read in pretty much every congregation of Mormons in the entire world last week. Anybody who missed it then will probably be reading it this week. And here's what it said, summed up: "We still support the Boy Scouts. We want our youth to strive to live the church's values, which include not having sex outside of marriage. Nothing has changed that, and nothing has changed the fact that any boy who strives to live said values is welcome into the scouting groups run by the church."
It never actually said the word "gay", but what it did say was pretty much "yes, we agree, the gay kids can come too." I mean... it could have been more inclusive. I could have left out the bits that amount to "so long as they're not sleeping around", but the church has always applied those bits to the straight kids too, so it's hardly discrimination. :) And it's not like you get thrown out of scouting if they find out you've had sex, you'll just get "counseled" to death by well-meaning people. Mormons are good at the well-meaning, loving, happy, inclusive smothering. :P
Anyhow, it made me really happy to hear that. I had honestly wondered, when the Boy Scouts announced the change, if the church would do yet another stupidly homophobic thing. They didn't.
It's a tiny step, but "by small and simple things are great things brought to pass", which is a passage from the Book of Mormon. :)