A reply to Sean.
One more of ExC's many thought experiments. Highly unlikely in the real world. But possible, with the Mormon doctrine of continuing revelation.
I like to speculate. Keeps the grey matter from decaying faster than it already is. It's the way a fundamentally slothful man tricks himself into thinking he is exercising.
Mormons are indeed, as your family holds, not Christians, but post-Christians. I have delivered myself of my pontifical opinions on this question several times. But in my current mood, if orthodox Nicene Christianity is going to stab you in the back, then maybe that's not so important.
Alas, too, the historical ground under the LDS church is like Swiss cheese. And I think you'd find the aesthetics of Mormon worship very offputting: on a regular Sunday, as low-church as you can go, and in the Temple, a combo of Masonic, hotel lobby and CinePlex. Plus, they take up all your free time. My pal D says he sometimes wishes he were Catholic so he'd be left alone by his church.So I'd hold off on converting just yet.
My own musings on what homosexual (men) are for fall in the same ballpark as yours. The classic fields we wind up in are mentoring and ornament, intellectual and spiritual culture-transmission and the arts. Looking at it from a Hellenic perspective, these are masculine pursuits...although a lot of gay men practice them in a feminine way. This need not be so. After all, some of the earliest signs of hominid evolution into true humans include ritual and art. Women make babies, men make cultures.
What lesbians are for I will, of course, leave to them to decide. To do otherwise would be sexist patriarchal oppression...
Straight men have always created initiatory and maintenance institutions to shape masculine identity, though they are now in tatters. Homosexual men have either had to adapt as best they can within those or, typically now, flee them into darkest LGBTQland. In some future combo of sci-fi world and traditionalism, society would recognize that such men will always exist and will set up institutions for us, both to become our best selves and to serve the larger value of the culture that men create. So that this time, we remain adjunct allies serving the male tribe rather than bonding ourselves with the women in bringing the whole thing down.
As my novice master used to say, in his fake Amish accent: Vee grow du zoon olt und du late schmart.
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Thanks for the heads up, Ex. Getting days off for holy days of obligation is difficult enough. I couldn't handle a religion that is more intrusive than that. I could possibly accept the Great Apostasy if Mormons said that it was a gradual falling away from Jesus' intention for the Church, and not a sudden, deliberate act.
Odinism is too disperse and varied a movement to try and state a definite stance on homosexuality- hell, Odinism is just one brand of Norse Neopaganism, which all have internal theological and political divisions. Some think it is a Zionist conspiracy. Some think it is fine, but require that homosexuals still have biological children. Some are fine with unions, but draw the line at same sex-parenting. Etc., etc. My own reading suggests that exclusive homosexuality was seen as odd and something that somebody could be mocked for, but to call another man "arg" (The Old Norse slur for an unmanly or homosexual man) was punishable by dueling. Anal sex was a no-no (if the men were equals, it denigrated the passive partner to a servant, and sexually passive men were thought to be less likely to be able to lead), but there are strong references to berserkers engaging in mutual masturbation, and Odin was known to perform oral sex on men to fuel his sex magic.
-Sean
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