Talk Is Cheap 

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It’s been a while since I’ve checked in with God. He’s particularly busy at this time of year, but in my experience, he appears to have all the time in the world and is always willing to sit down for a good chat. I was interested to get his take on the new Mormon website in which it seems the Church is softening its stance on homosexuality.

I caught up with the Man Upstairs down at the City Creek mall, where he spells the regular Santa during his lunch hour and lavatory breaks. God was near the end of his shift playing Santa (which he pronounces “Santy,” for some reason), and after telling a tousled-hair tyke with a runny nose to be sure and get enough roughage into his diet, He and I repaired to a cozy coffee emporium near Nordstrom. We engaged in the usual small talk—the weather, how the Jazz are doing, the demise of Rick Majerus, what a knucklehead Senator Mike Lee is—and then got down to business.

Deep End: Have you had a chance to peruse the new Mormon website?

God: You mean Love One Another: A Discussion of Same Sex Attraction? Yeah, though I was a bit confused for a minute, because I thought to myself, “Hello!” Is the church—which, as Yogi Berra used to say, “always ceases to amaze me”—now coming out in favor of gay love? But pretty quickly, I realized the church was talking about loving gay people, not about gay people loving one another.

D.E.: But isn’t that better than trying to turn gay folks straight, or telling them to shape up and get married?

God: The church realized how much they screwed up with the Prop 8 deal, so they’ve been on a PR blitz to show how full of love they are.

D.E.: Love is good, right?

God: Words are cheap. As the great country singer and philosopher Merle Haggard once wrote in a song, “Love is as love does.” Here you got the church saying how much they love gay people, but they don’t want gay people to love other gay people. Seems to me love is love, no matter who does it. The church is saying that Mormon love is somehow better than gay love.

D.E.: Hang on. On their website, various and sundry General Authorities say that gay folks can’t have sex and get married “in this life,” but that “a just God will provide them with ample opportunity to do so in the next.” That’s not such a bad deal, is it?

God: Hey, as far as I’m concerned, gay folks should have just as much ample opportunity to get laid in this life as up in Heaven. And another thing, it kills me that apostles like Dallin H. Oates seem to know exactly my policies on all sorts of things. How the hell does he know what my law is, let alone my opinions?

D.E.: I think his name is actually Dallin H. Oakes.

God: Oakes, shmoakes. Whatever. And I wish that whenever he drops my name, or my son’s name, he wouldn’t make it sound like he’s using the Tabernacle organ pedal to give our names some sort of spiritual kick in the ass. “Gawwwd. JEEEZus.”

D.E.: Speaking of Jesus, a lot of faithful saints were kind of upset when Apostle Oates, I mean Oakes, was quoted in The Salt Lake Tribune as saying, in the context of same-sex attraction, “It is no sin to have inclinations that, if yielded to, would produce behavior that would be a transgression. The sin is in yielding to temptation. Temptation is not unique. Even the Savior was tempted.” Is Apostle Oakes suggesting that Jesus had inclinations of the homosexual variety?

God: You know, if he did, so what? Some of his disciples were pretty darned good-looking. There was a lot of tittle-tattle going around Palestine about the Savior hanging out with all these rugged-looking fishermen. As I told him at the time, you can’t worry about what other folks think. Furthermore, what people did in the bedroom 2,000 years ago or what they do today is their own damned business. My time is just about up—I’ve got to go play Santy for the kids. But let me finish by quoting the Love One Another website: “Sexual intimacy is a powerful and beautiful thing.”

Hey, what’s good for Mormons is good for gay folks, right?

D.P. Sorensen writes a satire column for City Weekly.