AMERICAN FORK —Plans have been cancelled to discuss same gender attraction as one of two “serious social problems” tonight atAmericanForkHigh School.Kelly Smith, a member of the PTSA board, said the entire board hadn’t agreed to include the discussion on same gender attraction, along with pornography at the meeting.
I’ve seen three cancer patients in the last several months who made some very bad decisions regarding their care. The first was a woman who noticed a tumor when it was small, but refused to believe (or was too scared to admit) that it could be something dangerous. She waited for several years before presenting to the emergency room for weakness which turned out to be secondary to blood loss through her tumor that now was probably more than 10 or 15 pounds in size. Needless to say, she didn’t do well.
For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. (Mosiah 3:19)
Being a father has taught me a lot, and I’m sure over the years I’ll be learning a lot more. I finally get why a father would “inflict” his children. I inflict them on a regular basis with unpleasant things that make little sense, like brushing their teeth. They have to wash themselves sometimes, and occasionally are required to relinquish a toy and go to bed. It’s a hard life.
No, really. It is a hard life.
Plays about gay Mormons attracting audiences nationally
The Salt Lake Tribune - March 15, 2008
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I think Gov Spitzer is a good man. He’s done a lot of good for New York, and regardless of your politics, it was nice to see a man who wanted to base his administration on ethical reform, and who was quite successful in doing so in many ways. Unfortunately, then you’ve got the whole character problem now that he’s been exposed as a hypocrite, patronizing a high brow prostitution ring the likes of which he’s spent a lot of his career bringing down.
I’m left wondering how he could have made such poor decisions, but then I remember that he’s only the latest in a long line of political leaders who have been brought down by sexual temptation.
A T&S post today reminded me that a while back I went to the doc for depression. He knew I was a medical student (at the time) and therefore knew all the screening questions and the answers that would land me the diagnosis. Our conversation was nice regardless, and can kind of be summed up as: “So… do you want some drugs?” I decided to give it a shot. Truth is, there’s more to taking such a prescription than you’d think. For one thing, now I ought to declare depression as a part of my past medical history every time I visit a health care provider, from my dentist to my optometrist. Insurance companies can claim it as a pre-existing condition in the future, since the diagnosis is in the chart.
The trick is, I didn’t know then and I still am not sure now whether I’m really depressed.
Today as I was hanging out with a really good looking friend I remembered the old “Lock Your Heart” article we were required to study with our companions on my mission. I don’t remember much from the article, but I remember that it involved painting the toenails of married women. This, apparently, is bad. President Kimball probably wouldn’t have approved of my offering my friend a massage tonight, which I had every opportunity to do, but thankfully didn’t. He’s having a lot of back problems and it’s been acting up lately, he tells me. (My friend, that is, not President Kimball.) Massage therapy has helped him in the past. My wife had to leave for a while to run some errands. It was all adding up fast to a very tempting situation.
Another problematic use of Scripture in gay-affirmative theology has to do with very different cultural mores—and I want to emphasize cultural—concerning same-sex love and affection. Frankly, modern Western culture doesn’t really seem to know what to do with it. It all gets lumped into the “gay” category. As quoted in a recent North Star article, poet-philosopher Sam Keen wrote,
‘Normal’ American men are homophobic, afraid of close friendships with other men. The moment we begin to feel warmly toward another man, the ‘homosexual’ panic button gets pressed. It makes us nervous to see French or Italian men strolling down the street arm in arm. Must be queer! From a cross-cultural perspective it is we who are odd; close male friendship is the norm in most societies and is usually considered a more important source of intimacy than romantic relationships. The celebrated friendships of David and Jonathan or Achilles and Patroclus reflect a valuation more typical than the American pattern of acquaintanceship or a quick slap on the butt after making a touchdown. In most nontechnological cultures, friendship makes the world go round, not money or sex.”
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