Osmond Family Split On Civil Gay Marriage; Marie Osmond Supports It, And Alan Osmond Opposes It

The orchestrated surge of interest in gay marriage which has caused the greater society to take sides has also caused members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to pick sides as well. And that battle has even split Mormon families, to include the famous Osmonds. While Marie Osmond has come out in favor of civil gay marriage, her brother Alan Osmond has come out in opposition.

Of course, the media is all ga-ga over the fact that in an ABC News profile that aired over this past weekend, Marie Osmond, in the course of talking about her lesbian daughter Jessica Blosil, came out in support of civil gay marriage. She said the God she worships is a God of love, not of fear, which is absolutely true. HuffPo then quotes her as saying "I believe in [my daughter's] civil rights, as a mother. I think that my daughter deserves everything that she desires in life. She's a good girl. She's a wonderful child...I don't think God made one color flower. I think He made many."

Of course, Marie Osmond is hinting that she considers marriage a "civil right", a contention which is sharply disputed. The U.S. Constitution does not enumerate marriage as a civil right. And for those who point to Loving v. Virginia, that decision was not intended to transform marriage into a "civil right", but merely to rule that a state could not refuse to sanction a marriage simply because of race. The court ruled that Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute violated both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. One reason why some people desire to apply the decision to gay marriage was because in Loving v. Virginia, Earl Warren referred to marriage as a "basic civil right" in his written opinion, but that's only one opinion. Comments appended to the WorldNetDaily post on the story indicate the largely-conservative readership did not receive Marie Osmond's announcement well.

Alan Osmond has taken the opposite point of view on gay marriage, going so far as to emcee a pro-family rally in favor of traditional marriage at the Utah State Capitol Rotunda on March 26th, 2013. The rally, entitled “A Celebration of Marriage – Every Child Deserves A Mom and Dad”, was intended to coincide with the national March for Marriage in Washington D.C. in response to Supreme Court arguments over Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Although the Utah media virtually ignored this event, Kathryn Skaggs provides more details. Alan, who currently serves on the high council of the Orem Suncrest Stake in Orem, Utah, previously penned an article in which he opined that being gay is not necessarily genetic and that reparative therapy can work under certain circumstances. Regarding reparative therapy, Alan Osmond wrote the following:

“The fact that not all methods of treating those who struggle with homosexual attraction are successful, and that no method is successful for everyone, has been distorted by activists into the claim that no method is helpful for anyone. … The simple truth is that, like most methods in psychiatry and psychotherapy, the treatment of homosexuality has evolved out of eighty years of clinical experience, demonstrating approximately the same degree of success as, for example, the psychotherapy of depression.” Other researchers note treatment success rates that exceed 50 percent, which is similar to the success rates for treating other difficulties.

Three major LDS-friendly resources for ministering unto gay Mormons include Evergreen, North Star, and the Center for Gender Wholeness.

Of course, reparative therapy has its problems; ill-informed people have misused it in the past and made life more difficult for gays. Human Rights Campaign has condemned reparative therapy, but there is actually disagreement amongst gays about its value. Unfortunately, those few gays who are open-minded enough to try reparative therapy are often bullied into silence by the gay rights activists. A 50 percent success rate indicates that properly-managed reparative therapy can be helpful.

If reparative therapy for gays should be abandoned because it doesn't always work, then should we also ban air travel simply because a plane crashes once in a while? Perhaps the real reason why gay activists oppose reparative therapy is because it would reduce their numbers -- and corresponding leverage upon the rest of the society.