Boyd K. Packer - Cleansing the Inner Vessel

In the October 2010 General Conference, Boyd K. Packer gave a talk entitled "Cleansing the Inner Vessel".  This talk generated a lot of controversy, which I may go into later, but for this post I want to focus on one specific analogy that he used.

Years ago I visited a school ... the teacher told me about a youngster who brought a kitten to class. ... It went well until one of the children asked, "Is it a boy kitty or a a girl kitty?" ... Finally, one boy raised his hand and said, "I know how you can tell ... You can vote on it!"

There are those today who ... advocate voting to change laws that would legalize immorality, as if a vote would somehow alter the designs of God's laws and nature.  A law against nature would be impossible to enforce.  For instance, what good would a vote against the law of gravity do?

Although he doesn't come right out and say it, he's likely referring to legislation regarding rights for homosexuals, specifically the right to get married.

I have a couple of issues of this. To demonstrate the first one, I'll extend Packer's story about the children who were attempting to identify the gender of the kitten.

"I know how you can tell," said a young boy.  "You can vote on it!"

"Silly youngster," said the wise old man. "You can't determine the gender of that kitten by voting."

The children look at him, eager to hear the answer.

"You need to pray about it."

You can't vote against the facts of nature.  But you can't have revelation against them either.  The fact is, same-gender attraction seems to be something that has a genetic basis. If you're interesting in understanding this further, I recommend listening to a BYU Professor talk about the biological origin of homosexuality.

Homosexuality is also found in a number of other species. In a literal meaning, it's natural--it exists in nature. No amount of legislation or revelation will change that.