The Law and The Gospel: Where does one end and the other begin? (self.politics)

submitted 8 months ago by mdundee

I am often perplexed when I hear people speak about how they are thankful for living in a country where we are free to live our religion, yet in the next sentence they talk about how some things other people believe in ought to be illegal because it goes against our beliefs. (And I'm not talking about prop 8 here. Please don't turn this into a prop 8 discussion) Where in your opinion should the line be drawn? What are the benefits and pitfalls of your suggestion?

I'll start with myself. I believe that the separation of church and state should be very strict. I can not in good conscience advocate for prayer in public school. In my mind it just doesn't belong. Public school gives us education in worldly things. Church provides the counterbalance. We don't need to bring church into public school (And if you desperately want it then there are private schools.)

Same with courts, parliament (I'm Swedish), health care or any other public function. They do not have a religious function and can therefore not disseminate or endorse any specific religion. They should simply not bring it up unless it is relevant to the business at hand.

The pitfall of course is that the world becomes a bad influence. By allowing things that we believe to be sinful and destructive we also expose ourselves to them. This requires greater strength of character on our part. To be able to live in the world but not of it.

The benefit is that by making sure that things stay carefully separated we avoid having to live under another religions laws. Lets face it,. We are a minority. Even in North and South America where there are millions of members we still make up only a small fraction of the population. The chance that a religiously motivated law will reflect our values is minimal. So my advocating religiously motivated laws we would set ourselves up for a world of hurt down the road. I think it is with this in mind that the lord gave us Doctrine and Covenants section 134.

I might be preaching to the choir here on zionlist but it is shockingly often that I see people in my surrounding laud freedom and work towards restricting other peoples freedom.

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iamdeathgrrr 1 point2 points3 points 7 months ago* [-]

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godluvr 0 points1 point2 points 7 months ago[-]

mdundee [S] 1 point2 points3 points 7 months ago* [-]

My opinion is that marriage is not something the state should deal with at all. Create a neutral civil union and leave marriage to the churches. Let each church decide what they choose to recognize as marriage.

And yes. For the sake of consistency I think marijuana should be legalized. It is less destructive then alcohol and tobacco and it is hypocritical that one can land you in jail for years while the other is approved or even encouraged by society.

The current marijuana laws lead to suffering and does not deter use of the drug (Both the Netherlands and Portugal have decriminalized marijuana and find that the use of both marijuana and hard drugs has decreased along with drug related crime). People who would try it in the foolishness of their youth and then never again are now locked up in prisons and then deprived from legal employment for life thus forcing them to turn to crime to survive.

Legalize marijuana but make it subject to heavy taxes and age limits. Criminal gangs will stop trafficking it in a heartbeat as they will lose all their customers (Just like what happened with alcohol after prohibition ended) to legal alternatives. Thus the connection between marijuana and hard drugs will be cut and you can finally take a huge load of your legal system so they will once again have the resources and manpower to deal with real crime (burglaries, assault, rape, etc. etc.) Did you know you jail ten times more people then any other nation on earth yet you still have more street crime? Is it because of the inherent evil and criminal nature of the american citizen? Or is it because you use your justice system as an agent of vengeance instead of an agent of reform (This was btw one of the things Joseph Smith ran for president on. Turning prisons from storage places to reform facilities.)

cookiecaper 0 points1 point2 points 7 months ago[-]

I strongly agree on the marijuana thing, and hope we see it soon.

I'm not as convinced about abandoning marriage as a whole. I know a lot of people take that position because it's agnostic and simple, but I don't know that it's consistent with the Church's perspective or teachings.

The Church asked members to support Proposition 8 in partial reference to the negative effects on heterosexual marriage rates in Scandinavian countries who'd legalized "same-sex marriages" or otherwise diluted the ideal of faithful male-female matrimony. Such legalizations are tacit endorsements in the public psyche, and it makes marriage seem less relevant or important.

In an apostate world, we find lots of people clamoring for this because marriage as an institution is already devoid of its value; these people look on marriage as a bundle of legal conveniences. They "play house" for long periods before they ever officially wed, and many do so because it's much easier to break ties in the event things turn sour.

Such attitudes are exactly antithetical to the message of The Family and other critical elements of the Church's mission and teachings. We learn that "marriage between man and woman is essential to His [God's] eternal plan". Should we not seek to endorse that?

Legal marriage is the endorsement and promotion of the institution and solemnity of the traditional family by the state. The state is interested in this institution because it is by far the biggest source of good, peace, and civility in the lives of people; if someone has a strong, supportive family, they are much, much more likely to be happy, productive, and law-abiding (and The Family charges us with the upbringing of "law-abiding citizens"). Encouraging or endorsing families founded upon irrevocable sinfulness and immorality (irrevocable for the family because homosexual parents by necessity must break up the 'family' to repent (that is, they must stop living as sexual partners)), or even diminishing male-female marriage as the ideal (like, by stopping traditional marriage ceremonies), will only make our situation worse.

That's what I've been able to formulate as I've pondered things the last few years. It is somewhat contradictory to my other political ideology, so I'm trying to figure that all out. I feel pretty good about this, not as good about the rest; am thinking.

iamdeathgrrr 0 points1 point2 points 7 months ago[-]

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