Once again children and the family are the social values you use to persuade your members to rally against same-sex rights to marriage. Your appeal discounts the increasing number of non-traditional families on your rolls, overshadows any religion's overarching dogma of morality, and promotes a dangerous mindset.

 

Your letter of June 20, 2008 and subsequent doctrine indicate that “Marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God, and the formation of families is central to the Creator's plan for His children. Children are entitled to be born within this bond of marriage.” I disagree.

 

Children are entitled to be raised by a good parent. There's enough evidence to indicate that “this bond of marriage” is in fact not the plan de facto for functional children. Mothers and fathers do not default to even mediocre parenting because they have a marriage license and/or the blessings of God's representatives. The ideology prescribed in your letter indiscriminately snubs another of the Church's demographic, single parents or any parent not constituted by your “traditional” mores.

 

Denying gays and lesbians the right to marry isn't about the sanctity of marriage. It's about the morality of it, your morality, your ransom for righteousness. If marriage's sacredness was truly rooted in its morality, perhaps legislation should be passed to deny any person the right to it who has engaged in any sexual or moral deviancy decried by men who are no less affected.  

 

So why deny a demographic who show no more nor less monogamous capabilities than heterosexuals, the same rights and privileges that marriage affords two people in love? Outside of the Church's context, outside the “broad-based coalition of church's and other organizations,” it's not a sex thing, it's an equality thing.

 

Your letter also encourages a dangerous mindset among your membership. Is there any capacity to the idea of encouraging members to donate “means and time to assure that marriage in California is legally defined as being between a man and a woman?” Is there any thought given to the extremism a statement like this encourages and facilitates? This statement, your statement, President Monson, fosters division and fans hate already stoked in the hearts of your self-righteous constituency. I have seen it first-hand in the Mormon enclave of my neighborhood, my children's schools, and my employment.

 

Recommending to your obedient disciples to take action against a demographic - even one of its own membership, those celibate brothers and sisters on your rolls - is  contrary to the simplicity in what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints claims to root its doctrine.

 

Lost is the Savior's teaching to love one another in the bigoted appeal of your letter. Is bigoted too strong a term? Your own Second Counselor in the First Presidency, President Marion G. Romney in your own publication of the Ensign, September, 1981, states “that a person would be better dead clean than alive unclean.” It's on your website.

 

And such is the impetus of your crusade. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicates that almost a third of completed youth suicides are done by gay and lesbian youth. Your own enclave, the State of Utah, leads the nation in suicides of young men ages 15 to 24 years. Certainly there are causes more worthy of your attention than denying rights to human beings.