#Boyd K. Packer

[pressforwardsaints]

[lemuel-apologist]

No, idiot, it's because you're a religious minority, so it's notable.

[nerdygaymormon]

LDS LGBTQ Anniversaries for 2023

For 8 years I’ve been in charge of creating my stake’s calendar. In addition to stake meetings & activities, I include holidays and significant LDS anniversaries like when it was the 175th anniversary of the founding of Sunday School or 40 years ago priesthood and temple blessings were restored to members of African descent. 

This year there's only 1 significant anniversary I put on the calendar: Sept 21st will be 200 years since the angel Moroni first appeared to Joseph Smith.

For readers of this blog, here’s a few anniversaries this year that may be of interest:

75 years ago

April 1948 - Gay BYU students Kent Goodridge and Richard Snow met with church president George Albert Smith. They were in love and wanted to get a clarification of their ‘status.’ President Smith treated them with great kindness and told them to "live their lives as best they could" in their companionship. They had gambled making this appointment and worried they could be excommunicated on the spot, instead they left feeling loved and valued. 

Unfortunately, this live-and-let-live attitude didn’t last long as President Smith's successor, David O. McKay, felt homosexuals "should be excommunicated without any doubt, that the homosexual has no right to membership in the Church."

30 years ago

May 18, 1993 - Apostle Boyd K. Packer gave an address to the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve, and the Presiding Bishopric, in which he stated there are three great threats to the LDS Church: the gay/lesbian challenge, the feminist movement, and scholars 

September - The September Six are excommunicated for publishing scholarly work against or criticizing church doctrine or leadership. This was widely reported in national press and resulted in a chilling effect on academics challenging approved church narratives

25 years ago

October - Mormon-raised Russell Henderson and his friend Aaron McKinney tortured Matthew Shepard and left him for dead in Wyoming. The shocking crime made international news. The outrage over this crime eventually lead to the Matthew Shepard Act in 2009 which expanded the federal law’s definition of “hate crime” to include sexual orientation and gender identity. In 2018, Matthew's ashes were moved to the Washington National Cathedral

15 years ago

Chieko Okazaki, the first person of color to serve in an LDS Church general organization presidency, was first counselor in the General Relief Society President when she published a book in which she wrote “A family with a gay child is not a failed family. It's a family with a member who needs special love and understanding and who has love and understanding to give back.”

California’s Prop 8 - Church leadership heavily encouraged members donate time and money to pass Prop 8 which would ban same-sex marriage in California. About 1/2 of the money raised for its passage came from Mormons. The proposition passed and immediately there were protests at temples in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, and the church received a lot of negative exposure. Since then the church has preferred behind-the-scenes roles in its efforts to combat queer rights

10 years ago

Dec 20, 2013 - Same-sex marriages became legally recognized in Utah. Seth Anderson & Michael Ferguson, both former Mormons, are the first gay couple to get married in Utah 

5 years ago 

January 2018 - The documentary "Believer" featuring Imagine Dragon's lead singer Dan Reynolds premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Reynolds discussed the intersection of LGBTQ people in the Mormon community. Later in the year he appeared on The Ellen Degeneres Show and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and spoke of LGBTQ Mormons and suicides

January 2018 - Josh Weed, the most famous LDS gay man in a mixed-orientation marriage, announces that he & his wife will get a divorce. They apologize to everyone who ever had their story held up as an example that gay people can get married and stay in the Church.

February 2018 - Church-run Family Services states it no longer provides reparative therapy or sexual orientation change efforts

February 2018 - Richard Ostler starts a podcast called “Listen, Learn, and Love,” which has LGBTQ members/former members share their stories

March 2018 -  BYU sponsors its first LGBT campus event, a panel of four students--Kaitlynn Wright, Ben Schilaty, Sarah Langford and Gabriel Cano–answer student-submitted questions

As president of the LGBTQAI+ and Allies Club, Jill Stevenson worked with administration at Southern Virginia University, a predominantly-LDS liberal arts college, to get the university to officially recognize the club, and to allow same-gender dancing on campus

June 2018 - The Church’s Family Search website starts allowing same-sex marriages to be recorded

July 2018 - The Provo Freedom Festival allows LGBTQ groups to participate in the parade due to a contract it had signed with the city of Provo which included a non-discrimination clause.

Dec 2018 - Stacey Harkey, a cast member on BYUTV’s popular show Studio C, comes out as gay

[usmiletk]

"Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold." – Zelda Fitzgerald

"The giving of love is an education in itself." — Eleanor Roosevelt

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." — Robert A. Heinlein

"Love understands love; it needs no talk." — Frances Havergal

"True love is putting someone else before yourself." — Frozen

"Mature love has a bliss not even imagined by newlyweds." — Boyd K. Packer

"We're all a little weird, and life's a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it LOVE." — Dr. Seuss

"I saw that you were perfect, and so I loved you. Then I saw that you were not perfect and I loved you even more." — Angelita Lim

[familytreequotes]

“Genealogical work has, I fear, sometimes been made to appear too difficult, too involved, and too time-consuming to really be inviting to the average high priest.” Boyd K. Packer

[73ironath]

WASHED CLEAN

As we all look forward for a special place and persons to meet after this time out, it would be proper to consider this story as told by Boyd K. Packer. As it may be the kind of response by those who we shall meet at the gate before we enter in.

"It was crowded and so we join the long line waiting to be seated. I was the first just behind some well dressed women. Even without turning around, the stalely woman in front of me soon became aware that we were there.

She turned and looked at us. Then she turned and looked me over from head to toe. There I stood in that sweaty, dirty sooty wrinkled uniform. She said in a tone of disgust. "My what untidy men."..I felt as dirty as I was uncomfortable and ashamed."

It is a custom among men, that when we are invited to a feast, we put the best clothes. The clothes are always clean and beautiful and it does attracts. But to our spirits bodies that carries our flesh, the best clothe many of us do not wear - the spirit.

When worldly conscious, the clothes attracts; as Satan will whispers some words has led so many to defile their spirits. This is one of the worst sins the spirit can't bear. Such defilement make the spirit to proclaim: "My what untidy man! woman!

The withdrawal of the spirit energize Satan to enforce his Entourage to dominate the defiled flesh, inspires with his silly wisdom, to cover ones wickedness.

As one defiled the body, ones spirit comes down, tongues contaminated, life disorganized, pure revelations become vague.

Many have become slaves to Satan because they did not continue as they once started, light-minded, and material thing

With the covenant, pure sermons and the laws kept and the application of the atonement we can washed clean and experience this at the last day: Joseph F. Smith

"Had a dream..as fast as I could possibly do.. finally came to a wonderful mansion. As I approached, I saw a notice "Bath."..I went in and washed clean.. opened my little bundle and found clean white clothing.. put them on and rush to the mansion..I knocked, a man stood there (Joseph Smith). He looked at me a little reprovingly - Joseph you are late..I took confidence and said yes, but I am clean...

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[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting; it destroys. I could tell most of the secretaries in the church office building that they are ugly and fat. That would be the truth, but it would hurt and destroy them. Historians should tell only that part of the truth that is inspiring and uplifting."

-- Elder Boyd K. Packer, “Faithful History: Essays On Writing Mormon History”

[i-love-books-because-reasons]

“The mind is like a stage. During every waking moment the curtain is up. There is always some act being performed on that stage. It may be a comedy, a tragedy, interesting or dull, good or bad; but always there is some act playing on the stage of your mind.

“Have you noticed that shady little thoughts may creep in from the wings and attract your attention in the middle of almost any performance and without any real intent on your part? These delinquent thoughts will try to upstage everybody. If you permit them to go on, all thoughts of any virtue will leave the stage. You will be left, because you consented to it, to the influence of unrighteous thoughts. … When they have the stage, if you let them, they will devise the most clever persuasions to hold your attention. They can make it interesting all right, even convince you that they are innocent, for they are but thoughts. What do you do at a time like that, when the stage of your mind is commandeered by the imps of unclean thinking, whether they be the gray ones that seem almost clean or the filthy ones that leave no room for doubt? If you can fill your mind with clean and constructive thoughts, then there will be no room for these persistent imps, and they will leave.”

— Boyd K. Packer

[jesusisrightlds-blog]

One of the adversary's sharpest tools is to convince us that we are no longer worthy to pray. No matter who you are or what you may have done you can always pray.

[pressforwardsaints]

[return-to-virtue]

A merchant man seeking precious jewels found at last the perfect pearl. He had the finest craftsman carve a superb jewel box and line it with blue velvet. He put his pearl of great price on display so others could share his treasure. He watched as people came to see it. Soon he turned away in sorrow. It was the box they admired, not the pearl. Why build these [buildings] glorious, If man unbuilded goes? In vain we build the [world], unless The builder also grows.

Boyd K. Packer

[nerdygaymormon]

Which apostle was advocating for violence against gays? Was this in a conference talk?

Elder Boyd K. Packer gave a talk in General Conference in 1976 titled "To Young Men Only." This talk was then published as a pamphlet from 1980 to 2016, and when I was a teenager in the 1980's it was read annually in Aaronic Priesthood quorums.

In his talk, Elder Packer said that some men entice other men to join them in homosexual behaviors. Then he told the story of a missionary who confessed he hit his companion, but Elder Packer didn't provide any details of why this missionary hit him, but by putting it where he did in his talk, implied it was because the companion had come out as gay and suggested they might engage in homosexual behaviors together. (I was a missionary in the 1990's and while I can imagine someone sharing that they experience these feelings, I cannot imagine a missionary feeling safe enough or bold enough to suggest to his companion that they engage in sexual activities together, not in the 1990's and certainly not in the 1970's)

"After patient encouragement he finally blurted out, 'I hit my companion.' 'Oh, is that all,' I said in great relief. 'But I floored him,' he said. After learning a little more, my response was 'Well, thanks. Somebody had to do it, and it wouldn't be well for a General Authority to solve the problem that way.' I am not recommending that course to you, but I am not omitting it. You must protect yourself."

Imagine being a teenager, gay and in the closet, hearing this every year. I remember one year the other guys started chanting "smear the queer, smear the queer." I thought, "If they ever knew, they would beat me up."

Spencer W. Kimball was president of the church at that time. As an apostle and as president, he had said or written that homosexuality was gross, heinous, obnoxious, abominable, a vicious sin, ugly, degenerate, unnatural, base, a waste of power, a deep sin, and an end to the family and civilization, and could be totally cured. Elder Packer's remarks about using violence to 'protect yourself' went further than what other leaders said but wasn't totally out of place.

It took until 1995 for an apostle, Dallin H. Oaks, to denounce "'gay bashing'—physical or verbal attacks on persons thought to be involved in homosexual or lesbian behavior." It was also in his article where for the first time an apostle suggested that "perhaps such susceptibilities are inborn or acquired without personal choice or fault," that maybe it's not a choice but more like being susceptible to an addiction, similar to tobacco, gambling, or alcoholism.

A lot has changed, but more change is needed.

[alliluyevas]

going to make a mormon apostle name generator ai

[tinynavajoreads]

True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior. The study of the doctrines of the gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior. . . . That is why we stress so forcefully the study of the doctrines of the gospel. 

- Boyd K. Packer