The consumption of alcohol is increasing among youth. Targeting young audiences, advertisers portray beer and wine as joyful, socially desirable, and harmless. Producers are promoting new types of alcoholic beverages as competitors in the huge soft-drink market. Grocery and convenience stores and gas stations stock alcoholic beverages side by side with soda pop. Can Christians who are involved in this commerce be indifferent to the physical and moral effects of the alcohol from which they are making their profits?
In at least one country where homosexual activists have won major concessions, we have even seen a church pastor threatened with prison for preaching from the pulpit that homosexual behavior is sinful. Given these trends, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must take a stand on doctrine and principle. This is more than a social issue - ultimately it may be a test of our most basic religious freedoms to teach what we know our Father in Heaven wants us to teach.
There are people with physical disabilities that prevent them from having any hope - in some cases any actual hope and in other cases any practical hope - of marriage. The circumstance of being currently unable to marry, while tragic, is not unique.
Every teaching position, every missionary position can be held by single people. We welcome to that kind of service people who are struggling with any kind of temptation when the struggle is a good struggle and they are living so as to be appropriate teachers, or missionaries, or whatever the calling may be.
Those who enjoy the blessings of liberty under a divinely inspired constitution should promote morality, and they should practice what the Founding Fathers called civic virtue.
Persons who have cleansed themselves of any transgression and who have shown their ability to deal with homosexual inclinations and put them in the background, and feel a great attraction for a daughter of God and therefore desire to enter marriage and have children and enjoy the blessings of eternity - that's a situation when marriage would be appropriate.
There is no fullness of joy in the next life without a family unit, including a husband, a wife, and posterity. Further, men are that they might have joy. In the eternal perspective, same-gender activity will only bring sorrow and grief and the loss of eternal opportunities.
A person with homosexual inclinations, where they're kept under control, or, if yielded to are appropriately repented of, is eligible to do anything in the Church that can be done by any member of the Church who is single.
If you are trying to live with and maintain ascendancy over same-gender attractions, the best way to do that is to have groups that define their members in terms other than same-gender attractions.
I think it is an accurate statement to say that some people consider feelings of same-gender attraction to be the defining fact of their existence. There are also people who consider the defining fact of their existence that they are from Texas or that they were in the United States Marines. Or they are red-headed, or they are the best basketball player that ever played for such-and-such a high school. People can adopt a characteristic as the defining example of their existence and often those characteristics are physical.
Alcohol is the number one addictive drug in our day.
The time has come in our society when I see great wisdom and purpose in a United States Constitutional amendment declaring that marriage is between a man and a woman. There is nothing in that proposed amendment that requires a criminal prosecution or that directs the attorneys general to go out and round people up, but it declares a principle and it also creates a defensive barrier against those who would alter that traditional definition of marriage.
Law has at least two roles: one is to define and regulate the limits of acceptable behavior. The other is to teach principles for individuals to make individual choices.
It is not enough that we are under call or even that we are going in the right direction. The timing must be right.
There are certain indicia of marriage - certain legal and social consequences and certain legitimacy - which if given to some relationship other than marriage between a man and a woman tend to degrade if not destroy the institution that's been honored over so many thousands of years.
The coup de grace which ends the patient's life altogether is quite equivalent to the drastic modification in the institution of marriage that would be brought on by same-gender marriage.
There is not a right and a wrong answer to every question.
The Atonement of Jesus Christ is powerful enough to reach out and cleanse you if you are repentant and give up your sinful behavior, but I urge you not to embark on that path because repentance is not easy.
It seems to me that a Latter-day Saint parent has a responsibility in love and gentleness to affirm the teaching of the Lord through His prophets that the course of action he is about to embark upon is sinful.
Motive is also important in our quest for knowledge and in the questioning that accompanies it. In commenting on our duty to educate for eternity, Eugene England writes: Teaching or learning - with the Spirit of God simply means (though it is not simple) that we are doing so with an eye single to eternal, not worldly, values, with an eye single to lasting development of the mind and spirit and to useful service to others, especially to aid in their lasting development of mind and spirit.
Materialism, which gives priority to material needs and objects, is obviously the opposite of spirituality
My duty as a member of the Council of the Twelve is to protect what is most unique about the LDS church, namely the authority of priesthood, testimony regarding the restoration of the gospel, and the divine mission of the Savior. Everything may be sacrificed in order to maintain the integrity of those essential facts. Thus, if Mormon Enigma reveals information that is detrimental to the reputation of Joseph Smith, then it is necessary to try to limit its influence and that of its authors.
The greatest power God has given to His sons cannot be exercised without the companionship of one of His daughters.
Well-taught doctrines and principles have a more powerful influence on behavior than rules.
The people are the source of governmental power. Along with many religious people, Latter-day Saints affirm that God gave the power to the people, and the people consented to a constitution that delegated certain powers to the government... The sovereign power is in the people.
