Scott Chester

I’m not exactly thrilled with how hot it was today. We were only one degree away from hitting 100! I guess I was just enjoying the cooler weather too much. Fortunately, I spent most of the day in the office and didn’t even know how hot it was until I was coming home.

I spent my evening making phone calls for prop 8. I called a bunch of houses in Murrieta to find out how they were planning on voting. Unfortunately, most of the calls went to voicemail Hopefully the messages I left will be well received. It seemed like there was more that expressed a strong vote for Proposition 8 and defending traditional marriage as between a man and a woman. There were some that told me it was none of my business and there were some that we totally for gay marriage. It is probably going to be a close race which is why we need to push so hard on this.

I was talking with Scott tonight about the proposition and other things in general. Again it hit me at how the division in the church over this issue is not good. I completely believe that we need to keep our mind in these things. While we don’t need to blindly follow our prophet, we do need to think if we are sustaining him and if we truly believe he is a Prophet of God. If we can’t follow his counsel on a simple thing like this, how are we going to follow it down the road. Isn’t it possible that he can see where this is going and how major of an impact this “little” definition is going to have on our society? I was talking with one lady tonight on the phone and I wanted to tell her about our Church. I chose to respect the request that we don’t proselyte while working on this. She was on the fence of how to vote and it seemed she didn’t know what could be coming or the direction we have in this matter.

I also see the argument for separation of church and state. This simply isn’t an issue of that though. Marriage has always been defined as between a man and a woman. Yes, it was defined as such in Genesis, long before our country was formed. Our country was formed with the bible in mind and also with freedom of religion. While we have freedom to practice what we please, we don’t have the authority to choose who God will choose to marry. If we want to go down the separation road, it becomes so clear as Sister Dowden pointed out how important this matter is that the Church is willing to stake the Church in this battle.

This has been an interesting week with working Monday, being off on Tuesday and now working two more days before being off again. I think I could get used to it, but I probably shouldn’t. I’m glad things have been so busy in the office, it has helped keep me out of trouble and I certainly haven’t had any time this week to cause any at home.