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FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
FAIR has compiled an exhaustive list of responses to concerns had by the LGBT members of the Church and other critics regarding the Church’s position on homosexual sexual behavior. This compilation responds to all the common contemporary criticisms of the Church’s position, but there may be others that arise in the future.
One of them may go like this: the advent of reproductive technology is coming upon us quickly. One article from CNN reported that scientists are now able to reproduce a synthetic mouse embryo from mouse stem cells.[1] An article from NBC News reports that scientists are marching towards being able to create sperm cells and egg cells from a person’s stem cells, thus potentially allowing same-sex couples the ability to create their own biological children by fusing the normal eggs of one the hypothetical lesbian partners with the stem-cell-created sperm of the other lesbian partner or the sperm of one of the hypothetical gay partners with the stem-cell-created egg cell of the other gay partner.[2] Post fertilization, the zygote can be implanted in a female’s womb for incubation and birth.
Thus, if we are able to reproduce without male-female copulation, then why should we believe in the institution of marriage any more, much less the primacy of heterosexual relationships generally?
Another criticism may go like this: machine reproduction ensures that an infant is not born with any significant defects, and we can actually screen them genetically and edit their genome such that they’re much less susceptible to diseases,
So how can we respond when people say that the purpose of male-female unions has basically been supplanted by machines that allow us to do what males and females do but maybe even better?
The easiest response to this criticism is just to reassert that male-female copulation is an instrinsic good rather than an instrumental good.
The great Greek philosopher Aristotle considered all things to have a telos or purpose for which they were created/designed. He believed that things (including human beings) flourish when they adhere to their telos. Telic thinking (aka "teleology") became the foundation of Aristotle’s theory of morality (known as “virtue ethics”). According to Aristotle, human excellence consists of adhering to their telos to be virtuous.
The scriptures and other official pronouncements of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have a similar view of human sexuality. They teach that men and women are designed to be united with each other sexually after marriage. Scripture repeatedly affirms that men and women are meant to be united sexually—becoming "one flesh”.[3] Becoming “one flesh” does not merely refer to physically joining the complementary reproductive sexual organs of a man and woman (and more particularly toward the end of procreation and family life: the all-encompassing, instrumental, and intrinsic good of male-female unions),[4] but also to that man and woman becoming psychologically and spiritually unified through their sexual union. Individuals, communities, and nations flourish when men and women adhere strongly to this “telos”. Sex is therefore a relational (rather than isolated) act between married men and women for Latter-day Saints.[5] Any act that takes men and women away from living in accordance with that design (or at least has a high probability of taking them away from it) is going to be viewed as sinful/immoral by the Church.[6]
Notes
FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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