Ep 414 – Infant General Conference – Oct 2017

Here you go…

As is evident in our family proclamation, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are blessed with unique doctrine and different ways of viewing the world… they are also blessed with blowhard leaders who use words like evident, unique, and different as an opening euphemism for complicated, outdated, and institutionalized homophobia. We are different and unique, which is to say we are the same and commonplace for everyone fifty years ago.

We Latter-day Saints participate and excel in many worldly activities, for example, those primarily involving business, real estate, and teenage werewolves. We also excel at maintaining tax exempt status and giving back the minimum in humanitarian aid to look good enough to build buildings for hardly anyone to enter. The good kind of worldly.

But on some subjects we forego participation as we seek to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, and his apostles, ancient and modern and me. Jesus is definitely with us today as his teachings in the New Testament clearly give us numerous examples of his love for big buildings and excluding others.

Now I would like to share with you a cherry-picked Jesus parable blah blah savor godly things and not worldly things blah, definitely not ironic in relation to how I just mentioned that the Church excels in many worldly activities. Let me double down on that cognitive dissonance.

Be not conformed to this world, for the wisdom of this world is foolishness… unless you choose to wear a dark suit, white shirt, and red tie, like me today which is somehow wise and not foolish and not worldly and isn’t conforming… The point is, don’t waste your time finding counter-examples of everything I say even if they’re literally staring you in the face.

In the scriptures we read, “who so ever will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God…” taking this rhetoric literally has nothing to do with religion broadly being a problem in modern society. It’s a great scripture. My use of it here is simply limited as foreshadowing for how I want you to interact with gay people.

What is the meaning of this scriptural commandment to be not of the world? Especially considering I explained how we Mormons can be of the world sometimes? Well, succinctly, less civil rights, and more accounting and business. That makes perfect sense if you think about it… not at all.

President Thomas S. Monson summarized this teaching. Let me quote him while the video feed cuts to a non-distracting picture of him smiling like a clown, quote, blah blah, vigilant, blah, world, blah, reject, blah, standards, blah blah, that which fore unto desireth thou lest be thou unbeknownst witherto thy will… blah blah eternal life, blah kingdom of god, end of quote.”

God created this earth according his plan to provide his spirit children to experience mortality as a necessary step to the glories he desires for all his children. While there are various kingdoms and glories, some are gayer than others. And God desires us to be in the least gay of them all, and calls this: eternal life in families. This is more than salvation. Salvation is an individual matter whereas exaltation is a sexist, polygamous family matter.

The restored gospel of Jesus Christ and the inspired family proclamation which I will discuss later while not making reference to my poorly structured talk for which I must preview a topic three minutes before talking about it… the restored gospel and the family proclamation include essential teachings for mortal preparation for exaltation, never mind that polygamy as the major part of exaltation is not really discussed there within. That is not relevant or ironic at all with what I will discuss later like I like to remind you of before discussing that which I will share.

Even as we must live with the marriage laws and other traditions of a declining world where poverty is at its lowest, and literacy is at its highest, those who strive for exaltation must make personal choices in family life according to the Lord’s way whenever that differs from the world’s way. For example, if you are a man and your wife dies, you can marry another woman and be with both of them after this life.

In this world, we grow by making a succession of right choices through obeying the commandments. Despite developmental psychology suggesting otherwise, Jesus wanted me to tell you that you won’t grow in this life unless you are obedient to the Church.

And now I’d like to drone on about conflicts with family who disagree with you or, rather, who disagree with me… as I am sure you are wondering how you should react when your friends or family disagree with me. Remember to ALWAYS choose the Lord’s way, instead of the world’s way. That is, please dear God, agree with me — so few do — and disagree with them, and you’ll get exaltation and the many wives that come with it, unless you’re a woman, and then you’ll get to share one man with other women OR unless you’re gay and then you’ll have to live in the gay kingdom with Hitler. We the brethren still argue among ourselves which of those made up realities is more fucked up. In the end, it doesn’t matter because New Testament Jesus loves them both, I assure you.

In the Church’s 1995 proclamation, which I’ll weirdly refer to by its year to remind you that it’s neither old nor new but also the last time we tried anything even sort of resembling modern revelation… In the Church’s 1995 proclamation “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” we the while old men who run this Church, outline the way families should be for exaltation, except for the part about polygamy which isn’t in there.

Our way of defining family to include polygamy for eternity is, not surprisingly, different than the way through which children are raised today in the world through co-habitation and same-sex relationships without polygamy predestined for eternity.

Those who do not believe in or aspire to exaltation and its included polygamy, might suggest that modern revelation isn’t so modern if its most recent occurrence from 20 years ago is what I feel the need to point to today as the fundamental basis for how to live life… the best information I have on this topic is something written in the nineties.

Let me remind you one more time, this was written nearly a quarter century ago and now translated into scores of languages. These two pieces of information seem meaningful to mention, but for the life of me, I don’t know why… Oh, I remember now, this is the Lord’s way of re-emphasizing something. And I want to take this opportunity to explain how modern revelation works or doesn’t work, depending on how you look at what I’m about to say.

The language we used in the proclamation was proposed, reviewed, and revised… subject-less passive voice was determined to be the way through which this modern revelation should come forth. During this revelatory process, a proposed text written by committee was presented to the first presidency, who oversee, promulgate, obfuscate, propagate, disseminate, and brain-fart-aplate Church teachings and doctrine, exactly how the Apostles must have done it in Jesus’s time.

I testify that the proclamation on the family, and the polygamy part not included in it, is a statement of eternal truth. The will of the Lord for his children who seek eternal life and polygamy. The proclamation and polygamy are the basis of Church teachings about eternal life and will continue to be so for the future. Consider it as such, live by it, embrace the hypocrisy, and you will be blessed as you press forward toward eternal life and polygamy.

One more time: I testify of the truth and eternal importance of the family proclamation and polygamy, revealed by the Lord Jesus Christ to his Apostles through a committee for the exaltation and polygamous eternity of the Children of God. In the name of Jesus My Favorite Bigot Christ, amen.