THE LDS CHURCH AND HOMOSEXUALITY – AN OPINION

                There seems to be little doubt that the LDS Church has serious issues with homosexuality.  During the Fall (2010) General Conference, Apostle Boyd K. Packer characterized homosexuality, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, as “impure” and “unnatural.  He also said same sex attraction can be reversed.  The remarks apparently ignited a firestorm among the LGBT – the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community – and the Tribune is playing it up.  What is also obvious is that the pro homosexual activists don’t like the idea that homosexuality may have an environmental factor. 

                A few years ago some psychologists were so frustrated over their inability to reverse same sex attraction that they decided it a kindness to help their patients adjust to their sexual orientation.  A few so called experts even proclaimed that homosexuality had a genetic origin.  However, the validity of that argument is still up in the air.  In the mean time the gay and lesbian advocates have organized and evolved into a political powerhouse, at least some politician think so.  Having had some experience with dealing with homosexuals while a sex crime investigator I have formed some strong opinions which tend to correlate with Apostle Packer. 

                Homosexuality is a moral issue regardless of same sex advocates succeeding in making it a legal issue.  Moral issues come within the province of churches.  The LDS Church is right to be concerned about homosexuality because Mormonism revolves around marriage “between a man and a woman” and “raising up a righteous seed” – the seed being Mormon believing children.

                 From a Mormon perspective, I think it is a fair impression that the LDS semiannual conference is produced primarily for Church inspiration of the LDS membership.  The remarks by the speakers are directed to the membership.  Therefore, when Elder Packer said same sex attraction can be reversed, it must be assumed he was directing his remarks to LDS homosexuals or LDS members who due to circumstances may become gay.  This reasoning leads one to suspect that the LDS Church might have a homosexual problem. 

                Back in the 1970s when I was a sex crime investigator in the S L County Sheriff’s Office, although I was not an active member of the LDS Church I was alarmed over how many active LDS members I was arresting for various sex offenses – involving homosexual offenses.  I wrote a letter to the First Presidency outlining my concerns.  A couple of weeks later I was contacted by an Assistant to the Twelve.  We met and I turned over to him statistics I had compiled, emphasizing that the recidivism rate was much lower among those offenders who had received psychological counseling.  I learned sometime later that the LDS Church initiated a program where member could receive counseling.  I do not know if my meeting with the Assistant had anything to do with it. 

                I suspect the LDS Church’s contention that same sex attraction can be reversed is supported by competent study. 

                Back in the 70s a prominent psychiatrist told me homosexuality was an extension of the masturbation stage.  A young man at this stage in his life may experience an exciting highly satisfying erotic experience.  Then later in life heterosexual experiences are disappointing.  Over half of the men I found it necessary to contact were what was then called by the homosexuals, “switch hitters,” meaning they were bisexual or could swing either way.  These men had wives and families, leading double, troubled life. 

                The Church position suggests that homosexuality has an environmental cause and effect.  Assuming that is correct then it stands to reason that we as parents and society can innocently create environments where homosexuality has a chance to flourish.  With that in mind I find it ironic that the missionary program of the Church, except where married couples are called, may be interpreted as an environment where homosexuality might gain a toe hold.  Young men age 18 and thereabout are paired together proselyting night and day for two years, forbidden to fraternize with the opposite sex, all at a time when testosterone is surging through their newly matured bodies.  This is an age that can still be considered the masturbation stage.

                The military can be interpreted as a homosexual environment.  I spent over three years in the Navy on a destroyer where sailors lived together in tight, closed quarters.  Most of us were between the ages of 17 and 25.  With a ships compliment of 275 men there was not one known incident of homosexuality.  While at sea weeks at a time our conversations were about home, hunting, fishing and girls.  On liberty, we tried to live up to the sailor’s reputation of a girl in every port.  In Japan, China and the Philippian liberty ports there was a never-ending supply of prostitutes, if you were so inclined.  The Navy never objected.  In reflecting back, as bizarre as it might seem, I believe those prostitutes acted as an antidote against homosexuality – a morbid, repulsive  condition that many of us young sailors found out was not uncommon in the British Navy. 

                The use of the word “attraction” is less provocative than the use of the word “erotica.”  I think a more accurate statement would be “same sex erotica.”  After all, isn’t that what homosexuality is all about, eroticism?   With that said it seems to me that in order to reverse same sex erotica a skilled psychologist must somehow convince the homosexual’s brain that heterosexual erotica is far more satisfying. 

                Love making and sex goes deeper than the mechanics of masturbation.                It involves a lot of fantasy and mystery.  In other words, the brain plays a big part in love making.  For example, what if adult homosexuals in growing up were abused by older sisters or other girls?  Maybe he had an overbearing Mom who treated him as a secondary child as opposed to his sisters.  I’m talking about incidents that may turn a young male mind against the female sex.  Some psychologists suggest that there is a connection between male homosexuality tendency and the mother. 

                There is no question that erotica plays a major part in homosexuality.  Mother Nature implanted in our DNA ecstatic sexual pleasure to insure that we perpetuate our species.  It is primarily found in the male Y-chromosome, the mission of which is to replicate itself and it doesn’t care how it is done – rape, tricky, seduction, polygamy ….  The Y-chromosome has no conscience. 

                It is the brain that invented mores that prevents young men from giving full rein to their sexual desires.  The function of the churches is to reinforce those statutes prohibiting selfish sexual behavior like rape and child molest.  But sometimes society, government and yes, churches, send conflicting messages that confuse the erratic, dysfunctional mind.

                We place great value on sexual prowess, at the same time punish aberrant sexual conduct.   This extraordinary emphasis on sex often has a disastrous impact on an inadequate or inferior personality – resulting in rape, pedophilia, voyeurism, exhibitionism and yes, homosexuality.  Pornography is a multimillion dollar industry in the business of exploiting the Y-chromosome – the male sex urge.  To be fair, women are not immune to sexual exploitation.  The adult pornography merchants offer for sale sex devices, literature and filthy pictures that appeal to lesbians and women interested in masturbation. 

                Women go out of their way to paint, powder, coiffeur and dress – making themselves as attractive and as seductive as they can, then act insulted if an admirer whistles, smirks or gloats. 

                It is an easy sidestep from a sex crime investigator to a polygamist muckraker because, unfortunately, the mental motivation is often synonymous.   That is because the practice of polygamy is often sexually motivated.  Mormon polygamists claim to be living higher laws, suggesting that they are above the laws of the land.  But you will find an inordinate number of pedophiles among Mormon polygamists, much higher than in mainstream society, because of the authoritarian nature of Mormon fundamentalism. 

                Freedom and liberty it seems is a capricious institution on one hand – providing and incentive for unbounded creativity and productivity, on the other hand, it must tolerate a semblance of crime, corruption and perversion.  I agree with Elder Packer if he inferred that homosexuality is primarily environmental.  But homosexuality, or pedophilia for that matter, cannot be reversed by piety in and of itself.  It takes professional physicians skilled in the workings of the mind.

                If homosexuality has a genetic antecedent I think geneticists would be able to trace the gene from parent to sibling, but it can’t.  Homosexuality more often than not suddenly appears in families where there is no genetic history to support it.  The only way genes can be culpable is when it produces a physic or brain that makes it vulnerable to an environment conducive to a homosexual orientation. 

                In my opinion homosexuality is a choice influenced by a dysfunctional environment much like Mormon polygamy is a chosen lifestyle influenced by a culture.  The gay and lesbian factions have built around them a culture that benignly redefines homosexuality as an alternative, acceptable, even a noble orientation.  It is a subliminal attempt to erase the guilt that has shrouded this century old affliction.  In that regard, I don’t blame them.  But homosexuality is a vice, like it or not.  Alexander Pope hit it on the head when in one of his poems he discerned truly:   

                “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet oft, familiar with her face, We must first endure, then pity, then embrace. “

                (My god, what a superb mastery and understanding Pope had with the English language. The wisdom in that one simple quote is equivalent to six chapters of the New Testament and nine tenths of the Book of Mormon.)