LDS silence hurt

Published March 17, 2013 6:42 pm

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In 2009, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints backed Salt Lake City's ban on housing and employment discrimination against gays, and LDS apostle Jeffery Holland called it a model.

Even though the church reportedly came "this close" to backing an almost identical bill for the state, it ultimately remained silent, and SB262 failed.

Comes Sen. Stuart Reid, R-Ogden, once an official LDS Church spokesman, to fill the void created by the church's silence. Reid champions gay discrimination laws. In an op-ed for the LDS Church-owned Deseret News, he wrote that because homosexuality is immoral, the state should "purposely discriminate against it to protect society from its harm."

Everyone's entitled to their opinion. Using Reid's I'm-right-you're-wrong logic, early American colonists once outlawed differing minority religions to protect society from their harm. America grew up and developed religious tolerance.

Today, while you may think another's beliefs will send them to hell, you don't work to ban them from practicing their religion; in fact, you defend their right to believe whatever and support laws banning discrimination based on religion.

Mormons don't have to accept homosexuality in order to give gays the same basic rights they themselves so fervently claim.

Matthew Ferguson

Salt Lake City

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