Recently, Nate Oman, who until recently, I had some respect for, wrote the following to support a regressive ("progressive") approach to marriage (emphasis added):
What
are we to make of the layering of rules and theologies that govern marriage
sealings? There are two sources of ambiguity. The first is the brute fact of
multiple marriage sealings that seem to imply eternal networks that do not
mirror nuclear families. Such multiple sealings are not an exceptional part of
temple practice. Millions of such ordinances have been and continued to be
performed for the living and the dead. There are a variety of possible
responses. Although its popularity has waned since the Manifesto, one might
affirm eternal polygamy on a massive scale. This is not theologically
attractive to most contemporary Latter-day Saints and has been rejected by many
high Church leaders. (President McKay explicitly stated his belief that
polygamy was not an eternal principle.)
This is, at best, a half-truth. McKay did not explicitly
state any belief that polygamy was not an eternal principle. McKay believed
that there would be people who would be polygamist in the hereafter but
plural marriage was not a requirement for exaltation. There is a world of
difference; Oman is trying to sneak into this a denial of "eternal polygamy," and with it, trying to score a point against other traditionally-held values about marriage ("if LDS were wrong about 'x' they might be wrong about 'y'"). Note the following from McKay's journal:
February
3, 1956, First Presidency meeting.
. . . I explained that it was my understanding regarding plural marriage that
the having of more than one wife is not a principle but a practice. The
principle of the eternity of the marriage covenant revealed to the Prophet
[Joseph Smith] and all the blessings pertaining to that may be obtained by a
man with one wife. (Confidence Amid Change: The Presidential Diaries of
David O. McKay, 1951-1970, ed. Harvard S. Heath [Salt Lake City: Signature
Books, 2019], location 3132 of 17167 of kindle ed.)
If I were to say that you do not
have to be a vegan to be a faithful Latter-day Saint is not the same as saying
no vegan can be a faithful Latter-day Saint. But that is what happens when you
have an evil agenda: you will misread anything to suit your “progressive”
purposes.
The Scriptures are "heteronormative," btw. While focusing on the Bible, an excellent book on this topic is that of Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001). On p. 288 of this book, when addressing 1 Cor 6:9-11, Gagnon writes the following, showing the seriousness of this issue and why Oman et al., are putting souls in jeopardy:
Paul was clearly concerned that believers might return to former patterns of sinful practices, including same-sex intercourse, practices that could lead to loss of salvation. In Rom 6:19, he writes “just as you (formerly) presented members as slaves to uncleanness and to lawlessness for the purpose of (living in) lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for the purpose of (living in) holiness.” The reference to “uncleanness” identified with “sin” in 6:16-18, 20, 22-23 and shameful practices in 6:21 and leading to “death” according to 6:16, 21, 23, is a clear allusion to the range of sinful behaviors enumerated in 1:24-31, particularly the description of same-sex intercourse in 1:24-27. The entire discussion of 6:1-8:17, including the section of the argument in 6:15-23, is aimed at establishing that gentile believers who return to the pattern of sinful activity that characterized their former pre-Christian existence will not inherit eternal life (8:12-13). There would be no point to the discussion unless there was a realistic possibility in Paul’s mind that gentile Christian could once more succumb to and come under the sway of the same sinful impulse operating in the “flesh” in manifold forms.
