I think a lot of the time people assume that their values are universal. And they don’t understand which aspects of their values are actually universal and which aspects are very specific.
I love to communicate, and I love music. That’s why I always thought not being able to hear would be a tragedy.
Some autistic people may emerge from their condition, but nobody knows when and why.
There is no question that abuse, drugs and exposure to violence at home can exacerbate someone’s criminal tendencies enormously. But there are many, many criminals who don’t come from that background.
The more gay people can tell our stories, the more other people will accept gay people.
I think it’s up to the parents to determine whether what they’re doing is consigning their child to difficulty. It’s not as though they were crippling their children after they were born.
With children who have never said a word, parents tend to assume, for better or for worse, that there isn’t any language there.
I would certainly not want my child to be schizophrenic. I wouldn’t want him or her to be a criminal either. If, on the other hand, I had a deaf child, it would help that I have developed a real admiration for Deaf culture.
I feel, as a matter nearly of faith, that if you have known a certain amount of suffering and have emerged out of it into the light, you are obliged to share that light with as many of the still-beleaguered as possible.
There is neither a cure for nor a way to repair autism. There is no implant like there is for the deaf.
I don’t believe that there is anyone of faith whose faith would not be strengthened by those experiences of family.
A lot of people are very political when they are young, and then they outgrow it.
I know one gay ex-Mormon who is a talented, self-destructive alcoholic. Whenever he is drunk and going on a tear, we are back to the Mormon Church and his being thrown out of the Mormon Church and growing up with this sense of being evil.
I’d had a vaguely Jewish upbringing, but no deep connection to faith.
I think what the Church should ideally do, and does appear to do in the context of straight relationships, is to support people in crossing from the easier pleasure of momentary carnal satisfaction, into the more difficult pleasure of love and family and relationship.
It’s deeply humbling to realize that there is no such thing as a society with a purchase on truth.
I understand why there would be prohibitions on straying from monogamy because of the harm that it does not only to the person who is betrayed, but also to the person who is betraying. “Betray” is a sort of shorthand for what happens.
When a church manipulates the law to say, “These people are lesser,” it takes a lot of resilience to hold your head up and say, “I am not lesser!” Some people can do it and some cannot; and some of those people who cannot will be destroyed.
I don’t understand what the nature of God is. But I do have the feeling that I’m at some feet, and lucky to be there.
If really good people who are deeply committed and who are thriving spiritually have to beat down the nature with which they seem to have been born and cut themselves off from the full realization of love, how can that be pleasing to God?