Love Makes a Family and Other Lies

This morning for our family devotional I felt prompted to take a slight detour from our regular Book of Mormon reading and read the Family Proclamation.  I found out a few days ago my older son was having a lesson on families today.  The school district we live in has partnered with a prominent LGBT activist group to teach “kindness, tolerance, and diversity”.  That’s not really their goal though.  Their goal is to introduce and normalize LGBT propaganda to young children.  There are plenty of programs out there that teach tolerance, kindness and diversity without an LGBT focus  I found out about this group and their program at the parent night which was held the first week of school.  As much as we all hate going to those things, it was a good thing I went, and noticed in the display of books on the teacher’s desk of the curriculum materials from this group.  Friends, pay attention, and be “that parent”.  I’ll share my experiences meeting with the superintendent of the school district about this program in a later post. Continue reading

The Flip Side of the Coin – Mormon Youth Bishop Interviews & Abuse

[ Cross-Posted from J. Max Wilson’s blog: Sixteen Small Stones ]

Recently critics and dissidents have been clamoring for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to abolish the common practice of having lay bishops hold private interviews with youth in which they ask them questions about sexual morality and the Law of Chastity.

Many of these critics are concerned about the propriety of having a bishop talk about sexual issues with young men and women alone as well as the potential for abuse. And they point to legitimately tragic anecdotes from people who feel that the practice had a negative effect on them as youth. Some even claim that it facilitated abuse by a bishop.

Earlier this year, the church announced that it would update its policies to optionally allow youth to have a parent attend the interview with them. The church provided bishops with standardized questions to be asked. And parents and youth were also to be given information about the kinds of questions and topics that would be included in the interview beforehand.

But the changes do not seem to have appeased the critics, who will not be satisfied until they have pressured the church to abolish the interviews completely and with them any enforcement of the Law of Chastity.

I just wanted to raise a point in support of the interviews that I have not seen made elsewhere, and that I hope the critics will seriously consider:

What about youth who are being sexually abused by their own parent? Continue reading