One of my Lithuanian students sent a note the night of the terrorist attack on Paris expressing appreciation for an essay I had written after 9-11 titled, “America’s War on Terrorism: One Latter-day Saint’s Perspective,” and informing me that there…
Author: Bob Rees
A Welcome Message
Today’s announcement by LDS Church leaders in support of legislation banning discrimination against LGBT individuals in Utah is welcome, although as someone who has been involved in fighting for the rights of LGBT individuals for more than four decades, I…
Enigma
Enigma “Enigma”—“An inscrutable and mysterious person” (Merriam-Webster) “Homosexuality is an Enigma.”—title of a 1967 CBS documentary by Mike Douglass I went to see “The Imitation Game” on Christmas day with some of my children and grandchildren. The film is about…
Holy Envy at Midnight
by Robert A. Rees I had holy envy1 in the middle of the night! Awakened by a strange dream, I opened my kindle and read a news report in the current New Yorker, “A Bombshell Document at the Vatican Synod.”2…
Refuge for My Soul
by Robert A. Rees One Sunday morning a number of years ago when I lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains, before departing for church, I read on the internet a statement by a Church leader about gays and lesbians which…
Biblical Standards of Sexual Morality and Employment
The article, “Faith Groups Seek Exclusion from Bias Rule” New York Times, 9 July 2014), strikes me as illustrating how difficult it is for religious groups to avoid the appearance of hypocrisy, which Jesus condemned more frequently and vociferously than…
The Devil is in the Details
During a recent trip to the Philippines on behalf of the Liahona Children’s Foundation, I found myself in a car with some Philippine saints as we were travelling across Manila to screen children to ascertain their levels of malnutrition. We…
A Bible, a Bible! Sodom, Lot, Biblical Translations, Homosexuality and Other Strange Matters
When Duane Anderson and I wrote our piece on Sodom, I insisted on using the NIV translation of Genesis because I found it clearer and more accurate. I did not foresee, although I should have, the reaction of some readers…
Howard Anderson: A Compassionate Stake President & Friend of Gays
Howard Anderson, former president of the Los Angeles Stake, passed away last week. I had known Howard for a very long time. He was the President of the California Mission when I first started teaching at UCLA in 1966 during…
Twelve Years: Black Slaves and Gays
Robert A. Rees “Analogy: a comparison between two things that are similar in some way.” (Bing Dictionary) There are no perfect analogies but even imperfect analogies can be useful. The following analogy may be particularly imperfect but it may also…