Teach Me Oh Lord, To Love Like You

This essay was published in February of 1990, in the following context: The Supreme Court had declared in 1986 (Bowers v. Hardwick) that a Georgia law prohibiting sodomy even in the privacy of one's own home was constitutional. I was also writing this essay to a conservative Mormon audience that at the time would have felt no interest in decriminalizing homosexual acts. In that context, my call to "leave the laws on the books" was simply recognizing the law at that time, and my call to not enforce it except in flagrant cases was actually, within that context, a liberal and tolerant view -- for which I was roundly criticized in conservative Mormon circles as being "pro-gay." Those who now use this essay to attack me as a "homophobe" deceptively ignore the context and treat the essay as if I had written it yesterday afternoon. That is absurd -- now that the law has changed (the decision was overturned in 2003) I have no interest in criminalizing homo...

Here's one of the many things I detest about the NoH8 campaign, the gays that are blatantly fighting for a hierarchical position as a family structure, women who believe that they need to have everything just so that they aren't being "taken advantage of" and liberals who don't understand Christianity. Don't belittle my beliefs to promote your own. I understand you might not accept Jesus Christ as your savior, but don't try to evaporate or water down the religion by making it "uncool" to believe in it verbatim. Sure there were things that went down in the Bible that aren't popular ways of doing things today - but you have to understand the Bible encompasses thousands of years of history. Taking the passages out of context, is something a kid might do. Don't feed the straw-man argument. You are better than that. Writing up flow diagrams - also childish. If you want this society to be degraded to the point where everyone is just shouti...