In a recent
devotional, Dallin Oaks spoke against the moral evils one finds today,
including homosexuality and transgenderism:
Along with these challenges—and caused by them—we
are confronted by a culture of evil and personal wickedness in the world.
This includes:
Ÿ Dishonesty
Ÿ Pornography
Ÿ Perversions
Ÿ The diminishing of marriage
and childbearing
Ÿ The increasing frequency and
power of the culture and phenomenon of lesbian, gay, and transgender lifestyles
and values
Ÿ Finally, you live in a
culture that focuses on individual rights and desires rather than the
responsibilities and cooperative efforts that have built our societies.
A
major cause of these cultural deteriorations is the loss of belief in
absolutes. A century ago, private and public morality—the sense of
moderation and restraint necessary to the survival of a free society—were
universally understood to rest on the reality of absolute right and wrong,
decreed by God and ultimately enforced in a final judgment. Then, as this
faith was undercut, public morality sagged into the safety net of ethics, a set
of rules based on philosophy, pragmatism, or legalities, which rely on
enforcement by individual self-interest or imperfect bureaucracies.
Removed from their foundation of an absolute right and wrong, ethics and
legalities have been unable to hold back the tide of immoral conduct that now
threatens to engulf us. People have cast off conventional morality and
old-fashioned restraints. Our society is now in peril from increasing
dishonesty, frightening increases in personal violence and other crimes, and
shocking increases in public dependency attributable to deterioration in the
solidarity of the family. (Anxiety
in Stressful Times)
Needless to
say, “progressive” members of the Church are triggered as a result, just as
with his October 2017 General Conference talk where he denounced the moral
evils of homosexuality. My response? Good—the true colours of many so-called
members of the Church are coming out in public with disagreeing with the
explicit scriptural and moral teaching of the Church.