Dear Editor,
A letter in Tuesday’s Readers’ Forum encouraged permitting homosexual marriage on the grounds that they people should allowed to exercise their agency.
The letter admitted that such marriages were wrong, but it also stated, that everyone should have the agency to do whatever they want, as long as their actions do not hurt anyone else.
I have considered this same opinion several times as I have struggled to determine my beliefs, and I have decided that I cannot support it.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks addressed this very matter in an article, “Weightier Matters,” in the January Ensign.
He wrote, “few concepts have more potential to mislead us than the idea that choice, or agency, is an ultimate goal.”
The war in heaven to secure agency was fought and won. But people today are using the idea that choice is a goal to oppose legal restrictions on choices that are made such as abortion or homosexual marriages.
Elder Oaks added, “Using the argument of ‘choice’ to try to justify altering the consequences of choice is a classic case of omitting what the Savior called ‘the weightier matters of the law.'”
Speaking specifically of abortion, Elder Oaks wrote, “If we are anti-abortion in our personal life but pro-choice in public policy, we are saying that we will not use our influence to establish public policies that encourage righteous choices on matters God’s servants have defined as serious sins.”
The same principle applies to homosexual marriage.
Let us stand up for truth and righteousness by pushing for public policy that encourages proper choices by enforcing appropriate consequences.
Layne Smith
West Valley City
