It is election day, and since I am blessed to live in this country with many wonderful freedoms, I am taking advantage of one of those freedoms to ask you to vote.  It is not only important that we vote today, but it is important that we vote to protect what is right and good.  

This morning I was reading an article called, The Perils of Raising the Title of Liberty, and it really hit home.  It quoted a talk given many years ago by Elder Neal A. Maxwell, and I hope you will take his words to heart as you make your choices about taking a stand this day: 

If people, however, are not permitted to advocate, to assert, and to bring to bear, in every legitimate way, the opinions and views they hold which grow out of their religious convictions, what manner of men and women would we be?

If we let come into being a secular church which is shorn of traditional and divine values, where shall we go for inspiration in the crises of tomorrow? Can we appeal to the rightness of a specific regulation to sustain us in our hour of need? Will we be able to seek shelter under a First Amendment which by then may have been twisted to favor irreligion? Will we be able to rely for counterforce on value education aided in school systems which are increasingly secularized? And if our governments and schools were to fail us, would we be able to fall back upon and rely upon the institution of the family, when so many secular movements seek to shred it?

God bless you and keep you, my special friends, to the end that you will carry out each and every assignment given to you so very long ago. You have been measured and found adequate for the challenges that will face you as citizens of the kingdom of God; of that you should have a deep inner assurance. Be true to that trust, as all of us must . . .

Neal A. Maxwell, “A More Determined Discipleship,” Ensign, Feb 1979, 69–73

The day has come when we can no longer sit on the sidelines and let things happen, but must make our position known.  Remember Captain Moroni as he took his stand against the kingmen:

Alma 46:12 And it came to pass that he rent his coat; and he took a piece thereof, and wrote upon it— In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children . . .