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Lds scriptures on blackberry1/4/2024 The goal of this post is to improve members' and leaders' understanding of the LDS principle of religious freedom. In this blog, I will demonstrate that attempts to ban gay marriage do conflict with what the LDS scriptures have to say on religious freedom. Todd Christofferson gives me the right (well, God gives me the right) but Elder Christofferson reaffirmed it, saying among other things, "There hasn't been any litmus test or standard imposed that you couldn't support that if you want to support it, if that's your belief and you think it's right." Moreover, Prsident Joseph Fielding Smith was once asked, to what extent Church members are required to accept the words of Church leaders as absolutely authoritative? He replied in part, "members of the Church are under obligation to accept the teachings of the authorities, unless they can discover in them some conflict with the revelations and commandments the Lord has given" (he was referring, of course, to the four Standard Works of the Church). Some members may wonder what gives me the right to disagree with top Church leaders on the gay marriage debate, while still calling myself a Mormon. I have been meaning to write this blog for a long time, but the apparent confusion around the definition of religious freedom convinced me that now is a good time to provide some clarification on the matter - using only the LDS Scriptures. And finally, when the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples could now be married in all 50 states, many Latter-day Saints felt their "religious freedom" was somehow under attack. We even throw around the term "religious freedom" in an effort to defend the LDS Church's push to deprive LGBT people of the civil right of marriage. We defend the idea of "religous freedom" when it means our freedom to set and enforce the standards of membership in our Church, without the ( imagined) threat of interference by the government. The bad news is that many LDS members and leaders have devised really creative ways to sidestep the language of this Article in order to justify LDS efforts to infringe on the rights of a marginalized group. With this in mind, true religious liberty never included the right to infringe on other people's basic rights. That's the good news. It is purely the application of the Golden Rule to the question of religious liberty. "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" ( Matthew 7:12) One might ask, 'How central is the Golden Rule to Jesus' Gospel?' He answers, "this sums up the Law and the Prophets." With this in mind, the 11th Article of Faith is the logical extension of an absolutely core Gospel principle. The framework of the Prophet's statement on religious freedom mirrors the logic of Jesus' core Gospel teaching - the Golden Rule. But this Article of Faith isn't just an LDS novelty, some brand new concept that was invented by Joseph Smith, which is merely tangential to the message of the Gospel. The principle was laid out in plain, concise language by the Church's founder, Joseph Smith, and it has become one of our most memorable Articles of Faith. Latter-day Saints don't have to look very far to find out what our doctrine is regarding religious freedom.
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