LETTER: Cox a traditional Utahn

Editor,

Jon Cox, the author of the column “Fine line between homosexual acceptance and tolerance” in the March 30 Utah Statesman, represents those who consider themselves traditional values kind of guys. They’re traditional all right – traditional bigots. In most states the closet has opened wide, but Utah continues to drag its feet. Must ‘traditional’ Utahns wait until God has a miraculous change of heart and tells the prophet that homosexuality, like black skin, is no longer profane? Thinking people aren’t waiting for revelation. Jon stands on the wrong side of the line he’s drawn. The rest of us are comfortable on the right side. Unbeknownst to Jon, huge numbers of gays and lesbians left the closet (with many straights welcoming them) long before he went on his mission to spread the fallible ethics of a succession of white, heterosexual men claiming to speak for an infallible god.

Typical of self-described traditionalists who prefer obedience to thought, Jon follows his religious leaders blindly – ethics by dogma, morality from without, doctrine over reason. Jon quotes one of those white, heterosexual men, LDS past President Spencer Kimball, as evidence that homosexuality is “a deep, dark sin.” Note Kimball’s connection of “dark” to “sin.” Although he came of age in the post-polygamy era of the mainstream LDS church, Kimball remained a traditional segregationist opposed to interracial marriage. As he put it:

“We are unanimous, all of the Brethren, in feeling and recommending that Indians marry Indians, and Mexicans marry Mexicans; the Chinese marry Chinese and the Japanese marry Japanese; that the Caucasians marry the Caucasians, and the Arabs marry Arabs.” (“The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball,” p. 303)

President Kimball preferred to keep the bulwarks of apartheid in place rather than allow love to break them down. Jon and his ilk are doing the same today to our gay family members. President Kimball was wrong about interracial marriage and wrong about homosexuality. Yes Jon, “wrong is still wrong.”

Mark Ellis