Equality

I find it fascinating how quickly people assume that because I am religious, I am automatically a judgmental, bigoted, prejudiced douchebag. Let me tell you, a person is not defined by their religion, race, sex, sexual-orientation, class, money, clothes, etc. They are defined by their ATTITUDE!!!

I have learned this from working at Togo's for so long. I just go about my business treating everybody the same and I don't care who the person is, what they look like, how they're dressed, or anything… if they're rude to me, I'm not going to like them.

The same goes in my everyday life. I go about my business being polite, courteous, generally happy, etc. but if someone is rude or unkind, then I'm not going to like them. I don't care if they're white, black, Mexican, gay, straight, male, female, old, young, covered in tattoos, missing all their teeth, or whatever. And that goes the other way around. If someone goes out of their way to be nice to me, I will automatically think they are super awesome.

I live by the Golden Rule: "do unto others as you would have others do to you". Basically I try to treat everybody the way I would want them to treat me in any situation.

So now we come down to the point… people attacking me and others like me because of our beliefs. I would just like to say flat out that I think it's a bit hypocritical for people to judge and get angry at us whenever we try to voice any sort of opinion. Like, it's OK for everyone to have an opinion as long as it's the same one, right? Anyways, I just want to clarify where I stand here:

This whole gay rights thing is definitely a touchy subject. Our church teaches us to love everyone, it is one of Christ's teachings "love thy neighbor". It's not "love thy neighbor except for the gays". And I do truly strive to do that. As I said above, I go about my day mostly indifferent to everybody around me unless they rub me the wrong way or do something to make me particularly happy. This includes gays. But if a gay person just happens to tick me off… I won't like them. If they do something nice to me like tip me $5, then I'll love them forever. This goes for any other person.

As for the legalizing of gay marriage… people think that because we oppose it, we hate gays. This is not so. I myself fully accept that there are people out there who are different. But we believe that God has consecrated that marriage is to be between man and woman. We feel the need to keep that holy bond that our Divine Creator himself designated. God is very important to us, he is our Father in heaven, he loves us and we love him. We truly believe that he is an actual being looking out for us, so we try to uphold his commandments.

We are not saying that those people who want to get married are stupid and evil and don't deserve happiness. We are not saying that we hate them and are actively out to get them. We are only trying to uphold our own beliefs. Because don't our beliefs matter too?

(It's funny, I've been hit with "what if your religion was illegal?" or "you don't know how hard it is". Really? Mormons don't know suffering? Clearly you don't know your history. The entire beginning of our church was full of persecution, tar and feathers, being run out of different towns, and an actual extermination order. And believe me, we are never allowed to forget our ancestors ;P)

So when a religious person begins attacking the gays, it is not the religion that is doing it, it is the PERSON. I say again, people are not defined by religion, they are defined by their attitude!