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Evergreen Update Newsletter

May 2, 2007

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On May 1-2, PBS broadcast a four-hour special "The Mormons." The following
is the transcript of an interview with Elder Jeffrey R. Holland on the
subject of homosexuality. This text is found at
www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/holland.html

PBS: Another anguishing issue that faces you and every church:
homosexuality. On a personal level, how do you counsel people dealing with
that?

HOLLAND: ... The emotion and the pain and the challenge of [dealing with
homosexuality] has to rank among the most taxing, most visceral of any of
the issues that any religious group wrestles with. As others of my
colleagues and brethren have, I have counseled hundreds -- I don't know
how many hundreds -- of these young people. I say young people because
often that's the group that come to us most, but there are people of every
age struggling. ... The counsel I have given is that God loves them every
bit as much as he loves me; the church loves them. We do have doctrine; we
do have borders; we do have foundational pieces on which we stand. And
moral chastity -- heterosexual ... and homosexual -- are areas where God
has spoken and where the church has a position. ...

I spoke earlier about the price everyone has to pay for the blessing of
the covenant, to be counted within the institutional circle of the
blessings of the church. ... I have spent a significant portion of the
last few years of my ministry pleading to give help to those who don't
practice [homosexuality] but who are struggling with the impressions and
the feelings and the attractions and the gender confusion. Or if they do
practice or are trying to deal with it, that group I have spent scores of
hours with, if nothing else, just saying: "Hang on, hope on, try on. ...
Get through the night; get to the light." ...

I believe in that light, and I believe in that hope, and I believe in that
peace. So I offer it without apology, but I know sometimes that's thin to
people who would want more. Any more than I can see it compromising on its
heterosexual position of chastity before marriage and fidelity afterward,
I don't anticipate it that [the church] would change on homosexual
behavior. But none of that has anything to do with my belief in the value
of that soul and the love that God has for that person.

But it's just that ... there is a quid pro quo in terms of wanting the
church's blessing on our lives. If someone chooses behavior that goes in a
different direction, people choose that every day. And while that may make
me weep, ... people are free to do that. ...

I believe with all my heart that it's divine language; it's a divine
commandment. There really are "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots" in life.
And in this world, in some contemporary life, thou shalts and thou shalt
nots are not popular on the face of it; it wouldn't matter what subject.
But we'll always have some, and we'll try to help each other master that
and embrace it and see it through and be exalted on the other end.

PBS: It's tough being gay anyplace in society, in any church, but
especially here in yours.

HOLLAND: Absolutely. I don't think there's any question about that. And
it's true of so many other things about the church. We're so defined by
marriage and family. ... So it's got that added component of pain in a
church where we do advocate and expect and encourage marriage --
traditional marriage, man to a woman, woman to a man -- and family and
children. And for anyone in whatever gay or lesbian inclination may exist,
... the marriage I have and the marriage I've seen my children have and I
pray for my grandchildren to have, they say, "For me it's an experience
I'll never have." And true to the Holland tradition, I burst into tears,
and I say, "Hope on, and wait and let me walk with you, and we'll be
faithful, be clean, and we'll get to the end of this."

I do know that this will not be a post-mortal condition. It will not be a
post-mortal difficulty. I have a niece who cannot bear children. That is
the sorrow and the tragedy of her life. She who was born to give birth
will never give birth, and I cry with her. ... I just say to her what I
say to people struggling with gender identity: "Hang on, and hope on, and
pray on, and this will be resolved in eternity." These conditions will not
exist post-mortality. I want that to be of some hope to some. ...