Looking at the calendar, I think I've been spending a little too much time on President Uchtdorf's talk. As good as it was, and as many blogworthy points it made, I still have an entire session of Conference talks to cover, and I only have a little more than half a month to cover them in. If I can blog about the last session's talks with time to spare, I might come back to this one, but I'd really like to complete blogging about last General Conference before the next General Conference begins.
In his Sunday Afternoon Session talk, Preserving Agency, Protecting Religious Freedom, Elder Robert D. Hales taught us about the importance of preserving religious freedom. This is not a topic that I would like to spend a lot of time on, partly because I don't like to get political on this blog, but mostly for other reasons.
I'd really rather that this topic wasn't important to cover. If our religious freedom was totally secure, as it should be, we wouldn't need a General Conference talk telling us how important it is to preserve it. I don't like the idea of my religious freedom being in jeopardy, but we keep seeing people getting sued and imprisoned for acting according to their beliefs. Granted, some of them may be abusing their freedom by trying to restrict the freedom of others, but that's really not for me to discuss. I don't know enough about the situation to blog about it.
Which leads me to another reason I'd rather not be blogging about the need to protect our religious freedom: I don't know enough about what's going on. I don't know which laws would protect or threaten our religious freedom. I don't know which bills, measures, and candidates I should be supporting. In general, I don't know anywhere near enough about politics to be qualified to talk about it, especially not on a blog.
I know that religious and civil freedom is important. I, personally, would love to take the stance of "live and let live." I'd love to let everyone act according to their consciences, as long as they don't hurt anybody or society as a whole, but how can I know whether something would be harmful to society? What changes should we allow and promote, and what changes should we resist and prevent? How tolerant should we be? I am undecided about much of politics, but it all seems so important that I know I shouldn't maintain that stance for long.
Part of "living and letting live" is protecting people's rights to act according to their own consciences, but whether that means supporting two people's decision to get married or supporting another person's decision not to get involved in that wedding in any way, is a difficult question to answer. When freedom for some means bondage for others, it can be difficult to know which side to support. But since this is a topic that really cannot be avoided, I guess I have no choice but to deeply consider my feelings and decide which side I'm on. This isn't a pleasant topic to consider, but unfortunately, it is terribly important.
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