LETTER: Leave religion out of it

To the editor:

Let’s face it, Jesus taught us a lot of things. While His ideas can be interpreted from many perspectives, from Branch Davidians to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, one constant Christian message is love. Love and acceptance. I am continually dumbfounded at how unlike Christ many of his followers can be. Still, the doctrine of religiously zealous imperative continues to implement itself in a majority of opinions in our campus community.

I wish to present another idea, the simple possibility of a mistake in the common LDS belief on homosexuality, that “homosexuality is simply a weakness that can and should be overcome,” much like the history of mistakes made by a church still in its infantile stages compared to other major religions.

While there is undoubtedly wisdom in much of the church’s doctrine, I beg you all to consider some alternatives to blind faith. These are sometimes known as “facts,” the first being that susceptibility to homosexuality has been mapped to the human genome, creating little controversy. Homosexuality has zero negative influence on the Mormon Church, other than the few occasions involving its own clergy. I wonder about the community’s vehemence on this subject, rather than any number of subjects that actually do affect the LDS community, like the largest Per Capita consumption rate of Prozac in the country. While many people of the LDS faith tend to bastardize sexual orientation, I am appalled that you can seem to disregard factors in our own lives and “valued” community, which seem a bit more pressing. While covert and copious pill-popping may not seem as imminent a threat as one person’s individual preferences, I urge you to consider actually acting Christ-like, and accept and love people for who they are, how they grow, and what they choose, especially when it is not in any way detrimental to your own lifestyle. I believe pointless hate has been expressed in recent letters to the editor. Finally, I feel inclined to ask religiously imposed and pointless hatred in the future to be either subdued or solved as an alternative to imposing bigotry on the conscience.

Skyler Bosworth