My Stance On Free Will And How It Relates to Gay Marriage

As a Mormon and an American, two ideologies that I believe strongly in are free will and individual liberty.

That means that I can have whatever religious belief I want. It also means that anyone else can marry whoever they want, even if it is against my personal belief, so long as it doesn't interfere with my individual liberty -- i.e. I'm not being forced to marry outside of my beliefs or wants or *ahem* being forced to buy health insurance.

As a person of faith, I believe that God put us on this Earth with the gift of free will. Now why try to take away from others that one thing which God gave equally to all?

As a Mormon, I believe in the doctrine that the Constitution is inspired of God. As an American, I believe in individual liberty, which is what this country's Founding Father's strived to provide us with and what we all should be working to preserve.

I believe that to use one's Christian faith to claim a right to take away another's free will is hypocritical at best.  I also believe that to live in America and claim one's own individual belief as an argument to take away another's individual liberty is counter to the primary founding principle of this nation!

How Will I Be Judged?

I've come to firmly believe that how we are judged in the next life will have little to do with whether we call God Allah, Elohim, Jehovah, Christ, Zeus, Odin, Brahma, Ahsonnutli, L. Ron Hubbard, or believe in no god(s) at all; little to do with how many animals we've sacrificed; little to do with how many baptisms we've performed; little to do with how many idols we've built; little to do with how many funerals we've picketed; little to do with how many people we've beheaded as heretics; and much to do with the effort we've put into loving others.

I've come to this conclusion through open and respectful exchanges of ideas and beliefs with people from a variety of theologies and backgrounds. Talking with, and being accepting of, those whose belief systems are different than yours is only harmful if you choose to make it so.

Loving those with belief systems different than yours is helpful if you choose to make it so.

So how will we be judged? I believe it is our love of others that we will be most strongly judged by. Not just our love for our spouse(s), our children, our parents, our siblings, our aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, minister, pastor, bishop, or others within our own congregation. But our love for ALL of mankind.