Packer’s Speech Prompts National Controversy, Revisions

A general conference sermon in which Apostle Boyd K. Packer defended the LDS role in Proposition 8 and denied that homosexuality is inborn ignited a national controversy, triggered a massive demonstration at Temple Square, and prompted a rare revision in the published version of the speech.

Elder Packer, President of the Quorum of the Twelve, said that confusion among young people can lead to spiritual danger, focusing his remarks on pornography and sexual immorality.

“Some suppose that they were pre-set and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and unnatural,” Packer said during the 3 October morning session of General Conference. “Not so! Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone? Remember he is our father.”

Elder Packer’s remarks appeared to refer to homosexuality. He added that the Proclamation on the Family “qualifies according to scriptural definition as a revelation” and condemned “laws against nature”—which seemed to be a reference to same-sex marriage.

“If we are not alert, there are those today who not only tolerate but advocate voting to change laws that would legalize immorality, as if a vote would somehow alter the designs of God’s laws and nature,” said Elder Packer. “A law against nature would be impossible to enforce. For instance, what good would a vote against the law of gravity do?”

“Regardless of the opposition, we are determined to stay on course,” Elder Packer added. “We will hold to the principles and laws and ordinances of the gospel. If they are misunderstood either innocently or willfully, so be it. We cannot change; we will not change the moral standard. We quickly lose our way when we disobey the laws of God. If we do not protect and foster the family, civilization and our liberties must needs perish.”

Elder Packer’s speech came two weeks after Apostle Dallin H. Oaks delivered a speech in the Tabernacle asserting that “laws governing marriage and family rights and duties are state laws,” which federal courts and the federal government ought not to supersede. Oaks warned that “if the decisions of federal courts can override the actions of state lawmakers” on issues such as marriage and adoption, “we have suffered a significant constitutional reallocation of lawmaking power from the lawmaking branch to the judicial branch and from the states to the federal government.”

Elder Packer’s denial that homosexuality arises from “inborn tendencies” resembles the position affirmed by Bruce C. Hafen of the First Quorum of the Seventy in a 2009 speech. Speaking to a conference of Evergreen International, an organization for same-sex attracted Mormons who desire to remain chaste, Hafen rejected the notion that same-sex orientation is inborn and therefore cannot be changed. Hafen maintained that in the early 1970s, American psychological and psychiatric associations capitulated to pressure from gay activists and ceased to identify homosexuality as a disorder, “not because of any change in actual medical findings.”

Responses

Elder Packer’s address triggered a variety of responses, from expressions of support to disappointment and condemnation.

Author Carol Lynn Pearson and blogger Laura Compton, both Californians who have advocated acceptance for gays and lesbians in the LDS Church, are two of the Church members who publicly responded  to Elder Packer’s remarks.  Pearson called Packer’s speech “an anomaly” which “hurt my heart, because I receive all the time emails from young gay Mormons who feel so diminished and defeated.” Pearson recently launched Proposition Healing (PropositionHealing.com), an initiative to reconcile LDS members and the gay community; the project is based on her earlier experience bringing Mormons and homosexuals together to share a meal and listen to one another during the LDS campaign in support of Proposition 8.

Laura Compton, who two years ago organized LDS opposition to California’s Proposition 8, said she was troubled by Packer’s remarks. “So many Mormons have worked hard to increase understanding of what homosexuality is and what it means to be faithful,” Compton told the Salt Lake Tribune. “Now we have this [anti-gay] message coming from the pulpit in General Conference by the President of the Quorum of the Twelve. It seems like hitting a brick wall. Hopefully, this won’t make people stop and say, ‘It wasn’t worth it.’”

Elder Packer’s remarks also attracted attention from outside Mormon circles. Bloggers tarred Packer as “a closet case,” “a dinosaur,” and “one more school yard bully harassing gay kids.”

“Certain opponents of same-sex marriage feel emboldened to unleash harsh rhetoric,” Margaret Talbot wrote in the New Yorker magazine as part of an editorial addressing a range of current gay-related issues. “On October 3rd, Boyd K. Packer, who, at eighty-six, is the second-highest leader in the Mormon Church, proclaimed, ‘Some suppose that they were born preset and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and unnatural.’”

“Beware the hatred-licensing power of words like ‘impure’ and ‘unnatural,’” Talbot added editorially.

LGBT organizations were incensed by the timing of Elder Packer’s speech, which came in the midst of a string of suicides of young gay people, some of them triggered by acts of bullying across the U.S. Among the suicides were Todd Ransom, 28, who killed himself in Battle Creek Canyon, Utah, near Pleasant Grove on 19 July, and Colt David Hansen, 28, who died in Salt Lake City on 3 November. Ransom and Hansen are two of forty gay Mormons now listed on an online suicide memorial sponsored by Affirmation: Gay & Lesbian Mormons.

Protests in Utah

On 7 October, gay activists organized a demonstration destined for Church headquarters. “We are every color of the rainbow,” organizer and former LDS member Eric Ethington told the crowd gathered at City Creek Park. “And we are tired of watching our children die.”

“We are who we are,” Ethington said. “We cannot change, and you [Elder Packer] cannot change us. The more you say this, the more dead bodies you leave behind.”

“To the youth of the Church who watched [General Conference],” Ethington added, “we love you. You are beautiful and perfect just the way you are. Do not listen to others who do not love you for who you are.”

Protesters walked to Temple Square and silently lay down on the sidewalk head-to-toe, completely encircling the two blocks of Temple Square, with people lying four deep in some sections. Organizers estimated a crowd of 4,500 people, while LDS-owned ksl.com reported that “little more than 600 people” showed up. The Deseret News estimated between 2,000 and 3,000 protesters.

Two smaller demonstrations were held during the same week elsewhere in Utah. In Ogden, several hundred people marched from the Marriott Hotel to the Ogden City Municipal Building. Organizer Theresa Novak, a Unitarian minster, told the crowd that “our young people in particular need to know that they are worthy of love, care, dignity, and respect, no matter who they are or who they love.”

In St. George, some 60 people gathered for a rally in Vernon Worthen Park.

National LGBT Leaders Launch Petition, Converge in Utah

The Human Rights Campaign, the largest U.S. org-anization lobbying for gay rights, issued a statement on 4 October calling Packer’s sermon “inaccurate and dangerous,” adding that statements like his “fuel anti-LGBT violence and teen suicides.”

“Words have consequences, particularly when they come from a faith leader. This is exactly the kind of statement that can lead some kids to bully and others to commit suicide,” wrote Joe Solmonese, president of HRC. “When a faith leader tells gay people that they are a mistake because God would never have made them that way and they don’t deserve love, it sends a very powerful message that violence and/or discrimination against LGBT people is acceptable. It also emotionally devastates those who are LGBT or may be struggling with their sexual orientation or gender identity. His words were not only inaccurate, they were also dangerous.”

The Human Rights Campaign set up an online petition asking Elder Packer to recant his statements. In response, Latter-day Saints launched a grassroots Facebook initiative entitled “we love you–President Boyd K. Packer,” with the goal of sending Packer 100,000 letters of support.  Marishia Hannemann told the Salt Lake Tribune she was sending Packer a supportive letter because she knows he’s right. Hannemann, 49, described herself as a lesbian but explained that she stopped having sexual relations with women when she rejoined the church 14 months ago. “I pray about it, and I pray that I will be blessed with a good man to marry and marry in the temple,” Hannemann said.

On 11 October, a group of national and local LGBT leaders gathered in Salt Lake City to deliver the online petition, which by then had gathered 150,000 signatures. A press conference featured Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese, WordPerfect founder and philanthropist Bruce Bastian, Affirmation president David Melson, and health care and social work professionals.

LDS spokesperson Scott Trotter waited for the delegation outside the Church Office Building on Temple Square. Surrounded by a large crowd of reporters, photographers, and LDS security personnel, Trotter shook hands with Solmonese and received the 800-page petition.

Official LDS Responses

Five days after General Conference, the LDS Church posted to its website a modified version of Elder Packer’s remarks. His statement that the Proclamation on the Family “qualifies according to scriptural definition as a revelation” was removed. Elder Packer’s denial of “inborn tendencies toward the impure and unnatural” was changed to a denial of “inborn temptations toward the impure and unnatural”—a revision that seemed to leave open the possibility that homosexual attractions might in fact be caused by inborn “tendencies.” The rhetorical question “Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone?” was removed.

LDS spokesperson Scott Trotter minimized the importance of the changes, maintaining that “Elder Packer has simply clarified his intent.”

The video and audio versions of Packer’s remarks were left unedited.

On 10 October, the LDS-owned Deseret News issued an editorial titled “A Call for Civility Following Mormon Apostle Boyd K. Packer’s Address.” The statement strongly condemns “activists [who] began this week with a grossly misguided caricature of the LDS Church’s support of traditional morality.” “The tactic is now all-too familiar,” the editorial read. “Take a statement out of context, embellish it with selective interpretation, presume hostile intent, and then use the distortion to isolate an entire group, in this case, a church.”

The editorial affirmed the Church’s “shared condemnation of hate and violence toward gays and lesbians, its mutual support of anti-discrimination laws for gays and lesbians, and its compassionate ministry to LDS Church members who have same-gender attraction.”

“Perhaps the focused attention has come because the LDS Church continues to assert principled opposition to same-sex marriage, a view shared by most Americans,” the editorial added. “For activists in the LGBT community who reject what Latter-day Saints and members of other faith traditions believe to be the divine origins of marriage between man and woman, there may simply not be room for agreement on this important issue.”

On 11 October, hours after national LGBT leaders delivered their petition to Temple Square, Michael Otterson, managing director of public affairs for the LDS Church, read a statement condemning anti-gay bullying. The statement was unusual in that it used the word “gay,” which the Church normally avoids.

“We have all witnessed tragic deaths across the country as a result of bullying or intimidation of gay young men,” Otterson read. “We join our voice with others in unreserved condemnation of acts of cruelty, or attempts to belittle or mock any group or individual that is different—whether those differences arise from race, religion, mental challenges, social status, sexual orientation, or for any other reason.”

Gay activist Eric Ethington challenged the LDS Church to give the anti-bullying statement the same prominence as Elder Packer’s speech. “Mil-lions of church members watched, listened, or read Boyd K. Packer’s speech given during their general conference 10 days ago,” Ethington wrote on his blog, “and by comparison, very few will hear this statement the Church released yesterday.”

“If the LDS Church is truly serious about doing its part in ending this seemingly endless stream of youth suicides,” Ethington added, “we ask that they prove their words by having their statement read in a similar manner across the pulpits of every Ward, Stake or Branch in the United States.”

On 24 October, Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the First Presidency, delivered remarks at a regional conference that seemed intended to further meliorate the tone of Packer’s speech. “Many questions in life, however, including some related to same-gender attractions, must await a future answer, even in the next life,” Uchtdorf said via satellite to more than 200,000 Utah Mormons. “Until then, the truth is, God loves all his children, and because he loves us, we can trust him and keep his commandments.”

Emeritus BYU professor Bill Bradshaw is pleased with Uchtdorf’s remarks. “I totally agree that no matter what the cause or what we eventually find out is the definitive explanation,” Bradshaw told the Salt Lake Tribune, “it doesn’t alter our opportunities nor obligations to treat our gay brothers and sisters like everyone else—with Christian kindness.” Along with his wife Marge, Bradshaw co-chairs Family Fellowship, a support group for LDS parents of gays and lesbians. As a microbiologist, Bradshaw favors a biological explanation of the causality of homosexuality.

“I have spent a long time investigating the published evidence from empirical studies, and I know that the overwhelming evidence strongly favors the position that sexual orientation is programmed by biological mechanisms,” Bradshaw added. “The evidence that it’s a choice or that it’s programmed by social or psychological forces is lacking.”

According to a recent the Salt Lake Tribune poll, 44 percent of Utahns believe that it is possible for those with same-sex attraction to change it, while 25 percent said they aren’t sure. Among Utah Mormons, 55 percent believe same-sex attraction can be changed, while 30 percent said they aren’t sure. According to a recent poll, 65 percent of Americans believe that religious messages are connected to rising rates of suicide among gay youth.