Recreational Marijuana

[Tuly]

I have a hard time believing that this is in our ballot. I am against it. This is from Deseret News. I actually have the letter but can't seem to post it.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/8656 ... juana.html

LDS leaders ask Mormons to oppose legalization of assisted suicide, recreational marijuana
By Tad Walch@tad_walch
Published: Oct. 13, 2016 9:30 p.m.



SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — The LDS Church's First Presidency is asking the faith's members in four western states to oppose bills that would legalize doctor-assisted suicide and recreational marijuana use.

Church President Thomas S. Monson and his counselors sent a letter Wednesday to Mormons in Colorado, where Proposition 106 would legalize physician-assisted suicide.

"We urge church members to let their voices be heard in opposition to measures that would legalize physician-assisted suicide," said the letter signed by President Monson, President Henry B. Eyring and President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, who make up the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

They sent a similar letter Wednesday to Mormons in Arizona, California and Nevada about marijuana legislation.

"We urge church members to let their voices be heard in opposition to the legalization of recreational marijuana use," the letter said.

The LDS Church leaders referred both to church policies as well as research-based reasons for opposing the measures.

The letters are also an example of the church's insistence that the Constitution gives both the church and its members the right to speak up in the public square. In Colorado, Catholic bishops are maintaining the same position. Their website opposing Proposition 106 quotes Pope Francis: "A good Catholic meddles in politics, offering the best of himself, so that those who govern can govern," Pope Francis.

[Ian]

i'm grateful for prophets and other church leaders who "meddle in politics" and i oppose the legalization of physician-assisted suicide and recreational marijuana use.

[Steve]

I really appreciated reading about the Church's involvement in the interfaith group letter sent to President Obama, Senator Hatch, and Congressman Ryan regarding the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights' report. From that report:

The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.

This from our own government. The interfaith response to the outrageous statement included a quote by President Obama from 2006:

Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition (Call to Renewal, Building a Covenant for a New America, 2006).

The same letter declares:

A robust and respectful debate over ideas is not something harmful to be demonized. Rather, debate is good for our democracy, and should be encouraged. Slandering ideas and arguments with which one disagrees as “racism” or “phobia” not only cheapens the meaning of those words, but can have a chilling effect on healthy debate over, or dissent from, the prevailing orthodoxy. Such attacks on dissent have no place in the United States where all religious beliefs, the freedom to express them, and the freedom to live by them are protected by the First Amendment.

I too am grateful that the prophets of God, together with other faith-driven leaders around the world, "are both determined and unafraid to speak the truth about beliefs we have held for millennia." We must cast away our fear as members of the Church and boldly declare truth despite the careless or malicious accusations of traitors and tyrants. I too am against the legalization of physician-assisted suicide and recreational marijuana use.