Celestial Marriage

The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement in June 2008 too all of its church members in support of Proposition 8 in California. The Proposition when passed would change the Californian constitution to define marriage as only between a man and woman. With a lot of help from the Church and its members, the Proposition was passed in November and no more gay marriages were performed.

Elder Russell M. Nelson from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gave and address titled, "Celestial Marriage" in General Conference in early October. As he prepared for his address slated for the first weekend of October, there was no doubt he was looking at the poll results (Sept. 9-16, Sept. 23-24) for the impending referendum that showed a resounding “NO” to Proposition 8. If the proposition were to be passed, more effort would be needed to sway the vote the other direction. General Conference also has as diverse audience of 13 million people, more than half of whom live outside the United States. If Elder Nelson were to specifically mention the upcoming proposition he would risk alienating more than half of the audience who do not live in the United States. While he never mentions Proposition 8 specifically, he was speaking directly to those involved in the referendum. A few days after the discourse, Elder Ballard is quoted, “We know that it is not without controversy, yet let me be clear that at the heart of this issue is the central doctrine of eternal marriage and it's place in our Father's plan.” This is why E. Nelson decided to address celestial marriage. The following paragraphs discuss how E. Nelson said the right thing, at the right time, in the right place to motivate the church members to action.

He begins his address with an analogy of shopping and marriage. Some marriages are of the best quality, some less, and then some are shoplifted, which would include homosexual relationships or marriages as well as those who choose not to be married but are living together. By associating these marriages with something as distasteful as shoplifting, the audience is more disgusted with the low morals of the world. Shoplifting is a crime that we are trying to prevent in America. It is something we are cracking down on. E. Nelson tells us indirectly that these shoplifted marriages should be treated the same. In order to ensure that his US audience associates these shoplifted marriages with homosexuals he states in the following paragraph that his purpose is “to declare as an Apostle of the Lord that marriage between man and a woman is sacred.”

He then continues to expound on the role of gender and family in the exaltation individuals, “Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose…The earth was created and this Church was restored so that families could be formed, sealed, and exalted eternally…the man [is not] without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.” In other words he is saying that our gender matters because without our families we cannot be exalted and live with our Father in Heaven again and families are formed with a man and a woman bonded in marriage. Homosexual marriage is an obvious opponent to such values. His bold declarations leave no other viable option than that of eternal marriage.

E. Nelson continues, “Some marital options are cheap, some are costly, and some are cunningly crafted by the adversary.” He doesn’t define which options fall into these three categories but let’s the reader decide on his own. With the upcoming proposition weighing on their minds, there is no doubt that thoughts of homosexual marriages entered their minds. The audience was left to make its own decision on the matter based on their understanding of the doctrine which was explained earlier.

This address was used to morivate the members of the Church to take a stand at a time when the going would be very rough. By having their testimonies of the doctrine strengthened and fortified, they were willing to act. The timeliness of his message no doubt played a big part in getting the bill passed, considering that over 40 % of the out of state contributions to support Proposition 8 came from Utah, the headquarters of the Church. Their contributions played the key role in swinging the referendumb.

Brandon Hellewell