At some point during conference weekend I came across a tweet from someone who said that they had sent their children outside to play while President Oaks was speaking. (I tried to find the tweet, but it turns out “oaks children outside” returns a large number of mostly arboreal results.) As near as I could gather, they wanted their children to hear the rest of conference, but not the “bigotry” of President Oaks.

I’ve always found such selective belief to be a little bit baffling, but I suppose, given the choice between someone listening to 95% of conference or none of it, that I will take the 95%. But it’s also baffling because contrary to the individual just mentioned, I feel like if my kids need to hear anything it’s the talks of President Oaks. I thought his talk Two Great Commandments was particularly important, and not just because he was making exactly the same point I was making here. 

On the broader subject of LGBT issues, in November of 2015, when the Church announced the controversial policy declaring that same-sex married couples were apostate and furthermore preventing their children from being blessed and baptized, you know what I felt? Relief. I was relieved that there was finally a firm stand from the Church in opposition to the creeping spread of fully normalizing all things LGBT. 

When they rescinded it earlier this year, as you can probably imagine, I was disappointed. But to circle back, it helped me to know that President Oaks was okay with it. Not to denigrate any of the other apostles, but when President Oaks gets up, I know he’s fighting in the same battle I am, and if he felt like it was a good idea to retract that policy then I’m going to trust him on that, even if I don’t entirely understand the reasons and even if I think it may have done more harm than good, with President Oaks in the trenches I know it wasn’t done ignorantly, but in full knowledge of the blood and sins of this generation.

And of course, perhaps most important of all, by making him his First Counselor, it’s good to see that the Prophet evidently agrees with me.