Marriage and Tolerance
            Marriage between a man and woman is ordained of God, as mentioned in The Family: A Proclamation to the World. The family structure is based around the idea of a man and wife raising their posterity in an environment of love, faith, and happiness. Something that is being discussed more regularly is same-sex marriage and the effect it has on society.
            Same-sex marriage is a topic that is talked about all across the world, not just in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and definitely not just in Christianity as a whole. My professor provided my class with some questions that we can talk about in our blog post and there is one she mentioned that I would love to discuss. Please keep in mind that everything I share here is not at all a reflection of BYU-Idaho or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is all opinions by me and my thoughts of these topics that we discuss in my class. The question she mentioned was, “As Latter-day Saints, do we blow out of proportion the redefining of marriage? Why or why not?” I would like to point out that to me, there is a difference between redefining marriage in a gospel aspect and as a political aspect. In a church aspect, we should not “redefine” marriage. God is never-changing and He has made it very clear how important marriage between a man and wife is and how central it is to His plan. That is something that will never change.
In a political aspect, I do believe that some, not all, Latter-day Saints blow it out of proportion. While we believe in the traditional family, we often forget that we must LOVE and NOT JUDGE. That includes those who choose to lead “different” lives than we believe in. We forget that God gave EACH one of us agency, and that includes choosing those we fall in love with. I think that as a church, we need to open our arms to these people and not shut them out because of who they are and who they love. While as members at defenders of ordained marriage, we should always protect the sacred nature of that marriage, but not belittle anyone else who live a different lifestyle in the process. It is not our place to judge and if God loves them still, then we must follow suit. Because He knows better than we do. He loves perfectly. And we should strive to do the same.

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