Nevertheless, the Church must continue preaching that homosexual acts are serious sins. This is going to create a stigma. That stigma may help curb some sinful behavior. It may also open some wounds. Didn’t stop Jacob from speaking bluntly to the Nephites from the steps of the temple.

“Tough love” is a much abused concept. The trick putting the emphasis on the “love” and not the “tough.” And you can bet that the recipients of even the truest tough love will scream to high heaven about the “tough” part. Anyone who has successfully raised children know this.

I’ve observed that almost any discussion on the Internet involving anything connected to sex has a high probability of degenerating into a discussion of homosexuality and homophobia.

The consequences for any honest discussion of any aspect of sexual morality seems obvious.

If young people at the margins really can be ‘recruited’–I don’t know–then the stigma may be worth it,especially* if part of the stigma is natural so you can’t get rid of it anyway (there’s evidence that homophobia is to a degree just as innate as homosexuality). I am a few years out of high school, but in my time it wasn’t the religious kids who were bullies. It was the louts, because being gay was effeminate, and effeminacy in a man is bad, no matter how many counselors say otherwise. Also to consider is the possibility that the association of homosexuality, especially male homosexuality, with increased rates of drug use, mental illness, suicide, and etc. may not all be due to outside oppression. There may be a brokenness there. And the plight of people who can’t hold hands in public moves me not at all.

In any case, I am glad to see you retract your claim that stigmas and coercion are unchristian because they interfere with free agency. We Mormons have a reflex to say that when we run across a policy we don’t like. We should resist the reflex.

I agree that bullying and harassment are problems. I don’t think that more counseling, more “awareness,” and more PC is the solution. That is, really, taking the hair of the dog that bit you. The solution is more discipline and more virtue. Define manliness up, instead of watering it down. This should help on the bullying end, as will not making young men feel like acceptance of something they find repulsive is being forced on them. The solution is also to provide some sense of meaning and purpose beyond status and the brutalized idolatry of sex–which again, requires us to endorse the moral code and something other than dishwater acceptance of everyone doing what feels good to them.

homophobia – that must be the finest bit of propaganda I know of. Disapproving is not hating and it is infinitely wearying to be accused of that when one is not hating at all.

Second, if we want to be filled with love, we need to ‘bridle our passions’, not give them free rein. Alma 38:12
In contrast, we are told that the hearts of men will wax cold, because of iniquity. Matt. 24:12

While the stigma against homosexuality may encourage “the right kind” of sexual behavior, it brings with it a host of other evils.

Bullies will exist no matter what. But if we want love, we need to teach love, but that certainly does not mean we accept all behavior. I love my children, but I don’t put up with, or accept, everything they do.

Love is more than, and different from, just having everyone accept any variety of LGBT.

Bookslinger (and others) seems to be explicitly condoning at least a certain level of homophobia (his words) in society, apparently on the basis that persecution towards LGBT people decreases the likelihood of some people commiting sexual sins.

My experience tells me that, even if he is right, it isn’t worth the cost. While the stigma against homosexuality may encourage “the right kind” of sexual behavior, it brings with it a host of other evils.

I have a friend who is a teacher, and identifies as a lesbian. When she walks down the street with her girlfriend of many years, she has to constantly ask if it’s safe to hold her hand, or if that might provoke somebody into beating them both. It’s a very real threat, it’s happened to people she knows, and she shouldn’t have to live with it.

She teaches at a school where any student who doesn’t strictly conform to gender roles (a boy who doesn’t like sports, for instance) is called a faggot and bullied, by kids who spend their Sundays in church learning that homosexuals are abominable and evil.

I can not accept such a savage and brutal system of oppression, even if it means that a few more people might have sex I don’t approve of.

Jenni,
I’ve largely stayed out of this discussion, but its just not at all obvious that the gospel requires us to never, ever have stigmas or discouragements or encouragements. Excommunication is a stigma, but we still have it. Promises of eternal glory is an incentive, but we still have it.

I’m not going to argue with you about the causes or morality of homosexuality, but I have to take issue with what you’ve said.

You seem to say that we need some level of stigma and homophobia to keep “the marginal cases” from “becoming” homosexuals. This is the same stigma that helps drive kids (whose ‘cases’ aren’t so ‘marginal’) to suicide. The same stigma that gives bullies an excuse to abuse and sometimes kill other people, since they’re just disgusting sinners anyway. The same stigma that makes so many people live lives of dishonesty, fear and shame. It breaks up families and marriages, and causes so much pain.

I hope I’m misinterpreting you, but it sounds to me like you’re saying we need to coerce people into ‘righteous’ behavior using the threat of violence (physical or emotional), rather than allowing each person their own freedom and accountability to choose right or wrong. How could any Christian support that?

Of course, Card is conservative and Wurtzel is a member of the credentialed, liberal caste, so it’s okay. Yet no one is allowed to discuss it.

My mother said when she was a hippie in the 60s she had lots of gay friends – until several of them admitted to her that they “recruited” children as a way to propagate the species.

But nope, never happens. We aren’t allowed to discuss it cause we’re all a bunch of homophobes.

And then, please realize that first-time sexual encounters have a high tendency for imprinting. Ask a psychologist what “early exposure” or first-time experiences of any sexual sort, or especially a fetish or kink, does to a person.

All too true. But you can’t say it in public, because it might suggest homosexuality is a choice for at least some of its practitioners, and it might suggest that “gay recruitment” is a real phenomenon.