|
Letter from: Doug Marshall
Re: Gay Mormon hoped suicide would help change church
Dear Editor:
'Gay Marriage'
Among my closest friends are several same-gender couples. They have been together an average of over 10 years, they are loving and stable and committed, all are homeowners and taxpaying citizens, some have raised children together. Beyond this close circle are several dozen other couples I know, some quite well.
I absolutely cannot understand how their being allowed to marry, to have the nearly 14,000 legal rights that go with marriage in this country, will harm me and my wife and 4 children in any way.
This is an especially strange position to be held by the Church that was almost destroyed for practicing polygamy - and as a counselor and social historian, I clearly see the oppression that went on around polygamy as the catalyst for the current political activism of the Mormon Church in joining in the oppression of another group of people around the right to marry and form legally recognized families.
I was a memeber of the Mormon Church for almost exactly 20 years. I left for several reasons, some of which were purely personal. But the decision of Church leaders to join the political campaigns of the right-wing also contributed. The Church and bulk of the Members were on the side of Bull Connor in the Civil Rights Movement, and have continued on that path today.
I celebrate the decision in Vermont, and I expect that the Church will have another "Official Declaration" in about the year 2020, and Mormons will suddenly recognize another portion of the Human Race as Human Beings who who love and form families and worship God.
But until that happens, I expect Mormons to be pretty hateful and bigoted, just as many were against black men and women for a hundred years.
Doug Marshall
P.O. Box 2443
Tucker, GA 30085
dougthepooh@juno.com
|
