Op-ed: To accept same-sex marriage, LDS Church must accept same-sex sex

"Well, I guess you can be married," some Mormon bishops will soon have to say to some members of their congregations. "Just don't do any cohabitating." Then, of course, will follow the joke about how gay marriage is just like straight marriage.

For decades, an unmarried, opposite-sex couple has been able to come into full LDS membership just by getting married. And never mind the LDS Church's own certification. Our couple's opposite-sex sex is justified by a ceremony in a Catholic Church, in city hall or at the Wal-Mart where the couple met.

With last week's Supreme Court ruling, gay Mormon couples might wonder why their sexually active, opposite-sex neighbors, who fight like hyenas, who show up at church only on major holidays, who were married in the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel and Slot Parlor by a guy dressed as Elvis, can be legitimate Mormons, while they, the same-sex couple, cannot participate fully in their LDS ward even though the couple attend church faithfully, serve happily, care for their children with devotion and their loving, legal and lawful marriage was solemnized in a church by a United Church of Christ minister.

"Marriage," clearly, is not the issue. The LDS Church's opposition to same-sex marriage is really, ultimately, opposition to same-sex sex.

The LDS Church has muted its characterization of homosexuality as a choice, but, in LDS policy, gay sex is still something a person chooses and, like burglary or selling used cars, it's still wrong. Without nationally legal same-sex marriage in the United States, the church has been able to represent its opposition to same-sex relationships as opposition to promiscuity, the opposite-sex practice of which the church also opposes.

In fact, its anti-promiscuity stance may be the church's way forward in this brave, new world.

Historically, the LDS Church thought much differently about where sex could happen. Early Mormon marriage policy simply ignored government certification. At least 15 of the 50-some women whom Brigham Young married were, according to the government, already otherwise contracted. Augusta Adams, for instance, was still married to non-Mormon Henry Cobb when she was sealed in a temple marriage to Brigham.

Nor did LDS marriage concern itself much with sex. Zina Huntington was pregnant with her husband Henry Jacobs' child when Henry personally consecrated Zina's marriage across a temple altar to Brigham Young. When Mary Richardson appealed to Brigham Young for help with her marriage to an impotent man, Brigham, Utah's governor, married her to another — ahem, able — man, by whom Mary subsequently bore two children. Simultaneously, Brigham, the president of the church, sealed Mary to her impotent partner, with whom she lived and raised her children.

The church's 1890 manifesto, which constituted a doctrinal revolution, acknowledged the "law of the land" as the authority over where sex between two people should take place. This century-old concession to a secular government gives the church a rationale by which it can accept sex in the legal, anatomy-blind marriages the same government now certifies.

The opposite-sex couple married in the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel can have sex on Saturday night and can happily attend LDS Church services in the morning as full members. If, in this case, perfectly secular marriage certification bridges the separation of church and sex, so be it in other cases.

Yes, a policy that "sexual relations are proper only between two people who are legally and lawfully married" would mean a reversal of what a host of LDS apostles have asserted as dogma. The LDS Church has undertaken such reversals before. The revolutions did not kill the church. On the contrary, these revolutions made the church healthier and happier, kinder and more Jesus-like. Indeed, fluidity in doctrine, policy and practice may be the great thing that Mormonism's continuing revelation can offer the world.

The national legalization of same-sex marriage gives the LDS Church a mechanism by which it can recognize same-sex sex as part of what is not only justified but perfectly appropriate between two people who have — by secular authority — committed themselves to each other, and who have committed themselves, together, to their communities.

David Mason is chair of Theatre and director of Asian Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis. He is the author of "Brigham Young: Sovereign in America," "Theatre and Religion on Krishna's Stage" and "My Mormonism."