What is your view of families and diversity?

I am able to carefully consider my audience when I speak to groups and to alter my message in order to avoid offending those who are listening. I believe that I have a responsibility to be conscious of these factors and also competent in addressing them. I am very comfortable in situations where I am talking to people of different ethnic groups and cultures. I believe that people can sense my honest intent to communicate in a sensitive way.
In the past I have argued hatefully with people about both religion and politics. However, over the intervening years I have been able to interact with many different people and gain insight from these conversations. I also had the wonderful opportunity to spent time in a different country getting to know the people in their homes. The interaction that I’ve had with people of different ethnicities, religions, and political persuasions has impacted me greatly.
As I listen with an open mind, to people of different cultures, as they speak from their hearts about what they truly value and believe. I can see the image of God, in their faces. I feel once again that we all come from God (as LDS people believe) and that we all have the same wonderful potential. It is my belief that we are all alike in the eyes of God and that he loves us all equally. In the eyes of God the learner is just as valued as the teacher. Regardless of skin color, gender, nationality, or ethnicity we are all part of one great family throughout the earth. I believe that those who have limited access to information about the way things truly have been in the world, and the way that they truly are at present, will be assessed by God according to the knowledge that they were given.
I view the world through three great lenses. I view religion based on my belief in a merciful God who loves all of his children and will give all of them a chance to find ultimate and everlasting happiness. I view politics through my belief that all honest and good people in every nation and political party can be players on the same great team as good world citizens and work together for the good of all mankind. I view ethnicity and culture as a vast garden containing both weeds and beautiful flowers.
I believe that every ethnicity and culture has both positive and negative aspects from which we can all learn. I believe that the key to cultural competence is to look for the beautiful and learn from it, while at the same time being sincerely grateful for the wondrous variety which exists in this garden that we call our world. After all, I believe that it was God himself who laid the foundation for all of the different ethnic groups in the world when he confounded the languages at the tower of Babel. I believe that all of the diversity in our world was put in place by our creator in order to help His children learn valuable lessons about cooperation, tolerance, and the importance of pure love.