Thanks for allowing me to waste 15 minutes on your website.

Are you an idiot?

Thanks for taking the time to think carefully and share your insights. Finding truth is at times like trying to design a logo. You have to work through a lot of stupid ideas, or less than stellar ones to come up with one that is exceptional, durable, and effective. Other times its as simple as looking down and really seeing that remarkably gorgeous leaf on the ground. Sensing it’s artistry, complexity, its inherently beneficial life-cycle design that does so much more than look attractive.

I’ve been thinking a bit about truth this morning and the last few days. How valuable it is. How difficult or easy it can be to find and follow it. How it can require sacrifice and at times making a stand on it’s behalf. How relative so many find it, and yet it is only relative from our perspective. Recently, I have been thinking of Proposition 8 in this regard. I have a number of dear friends who are gay who live in various places in the country. One of them, along with his young partner came for a visit a couple of weeks ago. We had them and some mutual friends to our home for a fun filled evening. I love this guy. I was sad to see his anger and frustration as he spoke of attending his daughters LDS ward at BYU and hearing them speak in favor of proposition 8. I’ve known most of my gay friends over decades and have been friends with them prior to their “coming out.” They are exceptional people and I feel blessed to know them and have seen them bless my family and many others. I feel badly for his frustration and anger, but also for the side he has taken on this issue.

I feel there is an unwillingness by many gay’s and heterosexuals to see the complexity of their desire to enter into marriage with the same sex, that is unfortunate. During the Proposition 8 campaign there was much bigotry against the LDS church and its members exhibited by many of the very people who felt they were fighting bigotry. This is even though the LDS church is in favor of civil unions or domestic partnerships to ensure that all people can enjoy the same rights as married people. But a same-sex union is not the same as a marriage any more than a homosexual is the same as a hetrosexual. They have different names because they describe different sexual orientations. Their unions, should also have distinctions. Democrats and Republicans are both labels for good Americans, but they are designated by different names, indicating to themselves and others, a certain ideology that they espouse. Independents (of which I am one) take on that label because they don’t want the distinction of the two major parties. The Greeks had different words for various types of love. Not because they were trying to exclude or penalize anyone, but because, factually, they observed different forms of love. Why must the same word–marriage–rooted in thousands of years of secular and religious tradition and meaning across multiple cultures, be changed to mean something different than it has ever meant before?

Why can’t we live in peace, each enjoying the rights of legal union, but calling it factually and rightly, by different names? Can those same good people, who have often suffered bigotry and the challenges posed by same-gender attraction, have the insight and magnanimity to allow there to be a difference? And can those who are heterosexual respond in love and understanding to those who are different in their orientation?

May I encourage us all to think carefully about the truths we promote or adhere to. And let us do it with respect and appreciation of the divine and good within all of us.