The Millenialist, Mormonism, and Prop 8

It's about time that I identify myself as a practicing, orthodox member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It was not my intention, at the beginning, to allow for the obvious confusion that would arise from a Latter-day Saint writing about Millennialism. I never intended for the trends that I choose to call "Millennialism" to be identified with the Mormon idea of the Millennium, or thousand-year reign of Christ. In fact, it would be better to draw a contrast.

I originally wanted to speak quietly, bridging as well as possible the gap between academic and popular writing, and point out motions that I have seen in American culture in the past thirty years. My academic background is in culture, the arts, and languages, and I believe that I am more than qualified to say, "I've noticed something interesting or different . . ." I expected that only a few of my friends will read this blog, but I confess that I'd hoped that, eventually, it might be heard by others. It's a fantasy, but it's one I share with many, I'm sure.

What has happened to make me explicitly insert my religion into personal academic and cultural meditations?

Proposition 8, the California Constitutional Amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

What is intersecting here is my feeling that it is very likely that a majority of Americans will accept same-gender marriage as normative within a generation, my sincere religious hope that it doesn't happen, and my sincere religious fear that--if it happens--it will be devastating to American life in less than a century.

The wide-spread acceptance of homosexuality is being nurtured through the schools. School children, especially in large urban areas, are carefully groomed by the schools to believe that homosexuality is not unnatural, and that, if two people truly love each other, they should be allowed to marry--or do anything that they deem essential to their sexual happiness. It is very unlikely that, given current movements in the schools, traditional marriage will be able to hold out on a national level. That coupled with the genuine appearance that same-gender marriage causes no (immediate) damage to a culture, will erode the resistance to it.

This, I think, will become one of the hallmarks of Millennialism. Traditional marriage will cease to exist as a cultural phenomenon in America.

I don't think it will go down without a fight, however, and I can easily see a second Civil War on this very issue. Constitutional crises, proposed national amendments, conventions, and political disorder could foreseeably come about in the near future.

Furthermore, within a hundred years if the traditional family continues to erode, or if it ceases to exist, it will very likely become necessary to legislate reproduction, much as is currently happening in China and Italy. Un-reproductive promiscuity will abound.

If there is no Civil War.

As a religionist, however, I am hopeful of many things. I am hopeful, for example, that Millennialism will end at the beginning of the true Millennium. I am hopeful that persecutions will galvanize support for traditional marriage (it is already happening), and that will delay the worst--perhaps indefinitely. I am hopeful that people will see reason in the current arguments, and can agree to disagree--even with love and acceptance of each other as individuals and human beings. I believe in miracles.