Predictable
Jeffery Nielsen, a professor at BYU, recently pended an honest, heartfelt appraisal of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Recently a letter from the First Presidency, the presiding body of the LDS church, was read from every pulpit in the U.S. urging the members to contact their congressmen and voice their support for the measure. Nielsen felt that was inappropriate for the the church to do and said so.
When the church hierarchy speaks on a public issue and requests that members follow, it is difficult indeed if an individual feels the content of their message would make bad law and is unethical as well. I believe opposing gay marriage and seeking a constitutional amendment against it is immoral.
Currently the preponderance of scientific research strongly suggests that same-sex attraction is biologically based. Therefore, it is as natural as a heterosexual orientation, even if rare. It seems it might be caused by environmental conditions in the mother’s womb, before birth, triggering the DNA to give the fetus a homosexual orientation. Neither the mother nor the child has any choice in the matter; it is a completely natural process.
Truly, God would be unjust if He were the creator of a biological process that produced such uncommon, yet perfectly natural results, and then condemned the innocent person to a life of guilt, while denying him or her the ordinary privileges and fulfillment of the deep longing in all of us for family and a committed, loving relationship.
Even if the scientific evidence does not yet establish this beyond reasonable doubt, it seems that virtuous moderation and loving kindness require us to exercise caution before making constitutionally binding discrimination against a whole class of people based only on fear and superstition.1
A fine statement in and of itself, but he doesn’t stop there.
God is not the author of incoherence or injustice, but we humans often are. We in the LDS Church must be more honest about our history, including the past and future practice of polygamy in our official doctrine. This will be difficult, for it will reveal that we have been less than truthful in our public relations, and it will show our inconsistency with current statements opposing gay marriage.
We can no longer afford to teach only what is useful and hope people won’t discover what is true. In this day of easy Internet access, a person can find more real history of the LDS Church in 30 minutes online than the same person would in a lifetime studying approved church materials.
This is not right. Too many individuals have suffered a loss of faith when they were forced to choose between the truth or their family after innocently discovering the discrepancy between genuine history and the official story of the church.1
It’s certainly nothing that has not been said before. It’s certainly nothing that some church members haven’t thought and felt for some time. The sin, however, is giving voice to those opinions. My first thought when I read he was a professor at BYU was, “Wow. I hope he’s tenured.” Turns out he’s only an adjunct professor, and, predictably, has been fired.2
Surely he saw that coming. I’m not sure how he could not have been aware of the risk to his job. Maybe he believed that critical thinking is encouraged in an university environment when the reality is “intellectual” is a pejorative on BYU campus. (I graduated from BYU, trust me.) At BYU thinking critically is encouraged only so long as your conclusions are in line with official church positions. Public statements of conclusions derived from such thinking in opposition to official statements of the church will get you, as a church employee, fired. The church is well within its rights, as an employer, to fire an employee who is in violation of policy. It’s just supremely unfortunate that in a university context, speaking your mind is contrary to policy.
The Tribune article mentions possible action against his membership. Frankly, I see that as unlikely, though I’m sure one member of the church leadership—at whom “We can no longer afford to teach only what is useful” was a deliberate jab—would love to haul him before a church court, restraint not among his better known qualities. One statement of belief in opposition to official church policy is not enough to get you ex-communicated. If Nielsen continues to make such public statements, and makes efforts to sway other members of the church to his way of thinking, on the other hand… You can bet he’ll think twice before making his beliefs public again.
2Hollingstead, Todd, “BYU fires teacher over op-ed stance,” The Salt Lake Tribune, June 14, 2005, sltrib.com.
(Tribune articles are only freely available for seven days. After that a subscription is required to search the archives.)
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