This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
For all the hardships endured by all the people who walked 1,300 miles from the Mississippi River to the Great Salt Lake, in a way it was easier for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to quit American culture in 1847 than it is today.
Then, the westward migration of the Mormons was very much in the American tradition of young men going west, as Horace Greeley advised, or, in the words of Mark Twain, to light out for the territories. For all the pain, disease, violence and death that attended the travels of the Mormons and so many other refugees, the promise of a new land, a new start, life on your own terms, by your own hands, was the worthwhile reward that lay at the trail's end.
Now, there's no place left to go. No more frontier. No spot on Earth that isn't in instant touch with every other part. So whatever feeling leaders of the LDS Church may have that American culture is not a fit place to live and raise a family must find a new way to manifest its destiny.
The church's recent declaration that not only those who enter into a now-legal same-sex marriage, but also their children, are to be excluded from the treasured rites and rituals of the LDS faith smacks of nothing less than an attempt by church leaders to draw themselves apart from the wider culture. And to do it by behavior, because it is no longer possible to do it by distance.
If that's the goal, that would really be a tragedy. For the church and for the rest of us.
The firestorm of rebukes and hot tears — mostly from within the LDS fold — that followed the policy pronouncement was all the stronger because, recently, it seemed that the church was doing its best to make its peace with aspects of mainstream American culture that were not of its making.
The church seemed to have learned from the beating its image took after it led the fight against same-sex marriage in California's Proposition 8 campaign back in 2008. This year, the church backed a landmark compromise that allowed the LDS-dominated Legislature to approve a statewide law that bans housing and workplace discrimination against LGBT humans.
And it was only a few weeks ago that LDS Apostle Dallin Oaks pointedly refused to join the bandwagon of those claiming that a previously obscure county clerk in Kentucky should put her religiously motivated anti-gay beliefs ahead of her sworn duty to issue marriage licenses to all those legally qualified.
Render onto Caesar and all that stuff.
Of course, all that was external. Internally, the LDS hierarchy can make any rules it wants. It can label same-sex couples as apostates and exclude the children of those unions from baptisms, missionary calls and other cherished rites of passage. It can command all members in good standing to wear pixie hats and walk into church backwards.There is no political route, no civil court, available to overturn those decisions. Nor should there be.
The church should still reverse itself. Though a "clarification" issued Friday by the church leadership will make that harder.
Before, the controversial policy might be dismissed as low-level functionaries clumsily trying to turn the dogmatic into the bureaucratic. Now, though, the whole matter literally has the signatures of the faith's top leaders, making it a lot harder to live down.
The church faces a potential wave of resignations. This would fit with the findings of recent surveys, such as the giant Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Research Center, that ever-larger numbers of people, while still believing in a concept of God, have no use for organized religion.
People increasingly see what has always been true, that individuals, not a select elite, are responsible for their own moral judgments.
Still, a minimally contrite "Never mind" from the church would put the hearts of many an LDS mom and grandma at peace. It would remove a potentially deadly stigma from many a gay person, LDS and otherwise. Which is reason enough.
But the church needs to walk back this unforced error to regain its voice of moral authority, a voice that calls for such things as human decency in immigration policy and the expansion of health care access to the poor.
The social good of the LDS Church, and of all religions, comes from an ability to speak truth to power, as on such matters as the abolition of slavery and the Civil Rights Movement.
But that is lost if the church seeks earthly power for itself, or if it horribly abuses the power it has over its own followers.
George Pyle, a Tribune editorial writer, hereby commands all of his devout followers to have a donut.