The LDS Church's Awful New Transgender Policies

I'm busy writing my book, and I don't feel like writing much else. Let me just say a few words about the LDS Church's recent transgender policy change before I drop a video to compensate for not saying more words. I was asleep when it did its gay policy change in 2015, but I'm not asleep now, and shit like this is why I won't leave the church alone. These policies are pure discrimination. They're not loving. They have nothing to do with Jesus Christ. All that talk about love and Jesus Christ in the handbook is gaslighting, plain and simple. Anyone who knows what love is can see that this is not it. By choosing to treat transgender people like child predators, the LDS Church is taking its cues from Republicans, not revelation. (And Republicans, in turn, took their cues from the Nazis. I'm serious. Portraying LGBTQ+ people as child predators is straight out of the Nazi playbook.) This approach is factually as well as morally wrong. It's a well-known, indisputible fact that children are far more likely to be abused by clergy members, including Mormon bishops, than transgender people. The statistics aren't even close. But of course, when actual child abuse happens, the church sweeps it under the wrong and takes as little accountability as it can possibly get away with. It's not trying to protect children. It's just pandering to assholes who worship Donald Trump. If Jesus leads this church, I'm Mary Magdalene.

This policy change has Dallin Oaks' fingerprints all over it. He's been a voice for bigotry in the highest levels of the church since he became an apostle in 1984 and wrote a legal brief suggesting that homosexuals should be barred from "those types of employment and activities that provide teaching, association and role models for young people" and that the church should formally oppose homosexual marriage because it "would depopulate a nation, and, if sufficiently widespread, would extinguish its people." Oaks is a poster child for people who think they're a lot smaller than they are. He's going to do a lot of damage as the prophet, and he very well might already be the de facto prophet. It's more likely than not that he got these policies pushed through because Russell Nelson has declined too much to lead the church. If so, it will be interesting to see how the church tries to hide that at his hundredth birthday party in a few days - unless he dies before then, which I admit I would find funny. I don't wish death on him, but there's nothing sad about a 99-year-old man dying, and announcing hundredth birthday parties in advance just seems prematurely optimistic to me.

That reminds me, though, this week I argued with a Mormon who insisted that his church never fought against legalized same-sex marriage because it's poltiically neutral. I thought he was gaslighting me, but it turns out he was just really, really, really ignorant. He actually thought the campaign against Proposition 8 was something that a few wealthy Mormons did of their own volition, not something that the goddamn First Presidency asked every Mormon in California to do. I don't know how that level of ignorance is even possible.

Anyway, here's the video in case you've bothered to read this far but don't know what I'm talking about.