Mormon and gay: Church says you n be both | CNN

Contents:

• MORMON AND GAY: CHURCH SAYS YOU N BE BOTH
• CAN YOU BE BOTH MORMON AND GAY?
• “MORMONS N BE GAY, THEY JT N’T DO GAY”: DENSTCTG SEXUALY AND INTY OM AN LDS PERSPECTIVE
• THE MORMON CHURCH ANNOUNC PRO-HOMOSEXUALY POLICY — BUT GAY PARISHNERS SLAM AS NOT ENOUGH
• RISG NUMBERS OF YOUNG ADULT MORMONS THE US ARE GAY, LBIAN OR BISEXUAL
• MORMON AND GAY: CHURCH SAYS YOU N BE BOTH, BUT ACTIVISTS SAY ISN'T ENOUGH
• CAN MORMONS BE GAY
• CAN YOU BE A GAY MORMON?

MORMON AND GAY: CHURCH SAYS YOU N BE BOTH

Now he and his wife Elizabeth are featured promently on “Mormon and Gay, ” discsg how they have grown together as the new materials gave them the tools for “a healthy dialogue.

As public opn – and scientific unrstandg – on sexualy has shifted wh remarkable speed, many nomatns, cludg Mormon lears, have had to grapple wh a difficult qutn: How do they mata tradnal doctre that homosexual acts are sful, while acceptg and misterg to gay and lbian Mormons who scerely wish to rema part of their church? “Church Teachgs” is loted on a separate page; roughly 1, 700 words and five vios on “lovg one another” prece the first direct statement that “homosexual activy is a s.

Fulmer, who self-intifi as a gay Mormon and is featured on the new webse, said the new materials “give a steppg stone to have more open munitn about this and to te others on how to help and how to rpond to somebody who is gay. Trevor Johnson, a gay man who was raised Mormon but rigned his membership after gettg engaged, said, “When I first me out, the most damagg thg was feelg like people didn’t believe me that I was attracted to men.

CAN YOU BE BOTH MORMON AND GAY?

Keetch both say they have bee more ted on homosexualy through their volvement producg the materials — a two-year procs which volved the church learship, LGBT advocy groups and mental health profsnals. In a church found on the ncept of ntual revelatn, many members qutn what those “future updat” uld be — cludg whether the church will revoke s ntroversial policy on the children of gay parents. Prr to 1950Homosexualy regard by church as “s that dare not speak s name” 1952“Homosexualy” is ed publicly by a senr church lear for the first time, lled an “abomatn” parable to masturbatn and btialy1969Homosexualy regard as “curable” by a senr church lear; beg “forced” to heterosexual relatnships is enuraged 1976Church-sponsored Brigham Young Universy nducts electroshock therapy for 14 gay Mormons1978-81Church fac public backlash for opposg Equal Rights Amendment, argug uld extend legal protectn to “lbian and homosexual marriag” 1990sLears beg referrg to homosexualy as same-genr attractn, acknowledgg the realy of sexual attractn while nmng the s of actg on those feelgs 2008-09Church attempts to balance “relig liberty and nondiscrimatn” polil advocy, mpaigng agast legalizatn of gay marriage California and supportg a nondiscrimatn ordance Salt Lake Cy2012Church “gay” for the first time public munitns.

In a seri of vios on “Mormons and Gays, ” lears ask members to “fd mon ground” while “beg te to relig beliefs”2015“Handbook of Instctn” for church lears is updated wh a new policy barrg children of same-sex upl om church baby blsgs and baptism. Same-sex marriage is regard as apostasy and grounds for exmunitn2016Church lnch new “Mormon and Gay” sectn on s official webse, which Mormon lears ll for creased dialogue about homosexualy, and gay Mormons share their experienc as active, celibate church members. But none of the top church lears ordaed to the hight level of the prithood have mented on the new materials, somethg Mayne said is ditive of a wars towards a perceived “gay agenda” at the hight levels of the church.

“MORMONS N BE GAY, THEY JT N’T DO GAY”: DENSTCTG SEXUALY AND INTY OM AN LDS PERSPECTIVE

He hop the church’s top learship will speak wh homosexual married upl to unrstand that “a gay uple is really two Mormon people hopg to e as close as possible to everythg that we value and hold ar as a relign: fai, mted relatnships, lovg one another. This exchange reveals the pable tensn faced by a church attemptg to both nmn same-sex marriage and clu gay members — all while navigatg a ti of creasgly antagonistic public opn. Dpe his homosexualy they have all agreed wh his cisn to stay te to the doctr of Mormonism, cludg temple marriage, which n only be “between a man and a woman” and is “ordaed of God” as one of the relign’s most sacred venants.

Sce he published his 6, 000-word g-out post last week, Weed’s announcement has gone viral— even got a vote of support om fluential blogger Andrew Sullivan, who is himself both openly gay and Catholic.

THE MORMON CHURCH ANNOUNC PRO-HOMOSEXUALY POLICY — BUT GAY PARISHNERS SLAM AS NOT ENOUGH

Others, however, like Andrew Sullivan, see differently: If “some gays really want to marry women, ” Sullivan wr, “and they are not ceivg anyone, ’s totally their choice—and their right not to be mocked for .

In the years sce California’s Proposn 8, some members of the relign, upset that their church had bee so closely associated wh tolerance, have taken steps to advance what they nsir a more “Christ-like” attu toward gay men and women, Mormon and otherwise. Connell O’Donovan, a scholar of Mormonism’s history wh homosexualy, argu that Joseph Smh, the founr of the Mormon Church, “ified heterosexualy when he troduced the doctre of a Father and Mother Heaven—a dive, actively heterosexual uple paradigmatic of earthly sexual relatnships. ” Those words are om the church’s quasi-nonil pamphlet “The Fay: A Proclamatn to the World, ” first published the mid-1990s—a perd when publicly g out as gay was not a viable optn the Mormon Church, acrdg to Kendall Wilx, an Emmy-award-wng filmmaker and former executive producer Brigham Young Universy’s broadstg partment.

RISG NUMBERS OF YOUNG ADULT MORMONS THE US ARE GAY, LBIAN OR BISEXUAL

The theraptic regim often volved not only psychoanalysis, but “aversn ndng, ” which patients snapped themselv wh a bber band or received an electric shock when shown sexually explic homosexual imag, wh the goal of replacg aroal wh anxiety. Many gay men and women left the church, of urse: Wilx scrib a great “exod” durg the 1980s and 1990s stemmg om the relign’s rigid stance on homosexualy and the sometim abive therapi LGBT people endured on the advice of lol lears.

MORMON AND GAY: CHURCH SAYS YOU N BE BOTH, BUT ACTIVISTS SAY ISN'T ENOUGH

And the Mormons did not always leave on their own acrd: Countls were shunned by their muni, by people who believed that homosexualy was a choice, and an immoral one. In the years followg Stuart’s suici—one of many among gay Mormons—the Matis have dited themselv to rg for Mormon men and women who, like their son, feel alienated and ashamed about their sexualy. While the Matis sist that homosexualy is immoral, a posn that Fred says “is cut stone, ” Fred also matas that “there has been too much foc on the ‘e’ and the ‘cure.

Over the past , the Matis have worked California and Utah not only to provi re and support for gay Mormons, but also to te straight Mormons about “the tth of same-sex attractn, ” Fred says. This past March, at a BYU-sanctned panel discsn, “Everythg you wanted to know about beg gay at BYU but were too aaid to ask, ” three stunts shared—wh an overflow crowd of their peers—their experienc tryg to navigate life at the relign’s flagship universy as gay Mormons. How n gay Mormons tly be Mormon if they are nied the experience of a mted partnership, one which, through adoptn and other means, children n be raised the church?

” That shift foc would allow the LDS Church to unrstand nsensual, homosexual sex takg place monogamo relatnships the same way unrstands the sex beg had by straight married upl. Unlike the 1978 revelatn that allowed black Latter-day Sats full participatn the Mormon Church, the kds of reforms required to make gay Mormons full and equal members of the Latter-day Sat muny radilly change the way Mormons thk of their (explicly male, implicly heterosexual) “Heavenly Father. Earlier this month, thoands of gay rights activists were joed by new alli as they marched through downtown Salt Lake Cy the 29th annual Utah Pri Para, passg jt two blocks south of Temple Square, the ternatnal headquarters of the LDS Church.

CAN MORMONS BE GAY

Erika Munson, a mother of five and the founr of “Mormons Buildg Bridg, ” anized the Mormons’ participatn the para, hopg to show that Mormonism isn’t—or at least shouldn’t be—agast the gay muny. For example, the recent “Strangers Zn” effort enuragg Latter-day Sats to requt church disciple “ solidary for other wrongfully exmunited and otherwise discipled Latter-day Sats”1 was -iated by the father of a gay-intified son and was partly rponse to the proposed disciplary actn of John Dehl, which is purportedly related to his LGBT advocy efforts.

To beg, I chose as the tle of my talk a statement that ptur nicely a trifecta of social nstctn, rctnism, and ntroversy: “Mormons say you n be gay, you jt n’t do gay.

CAN YOU BE A GAY MORMON?

When we tegorize people rctively as “gay, ” “straight, ” or “bisexual, ” or as simply a pot along the Ksey Sle, assum that sexualy is one-dimensnal and that exists upon a sgle lear ntuum. The popular cultural myths that eher people are “born gay” or that they chose to be homosexual or that their homosexualy is ed by parental nurturg (or lack thereof) are all rctnistic and nnot expla much, if anythg, about the velopment of sexualy and sexual sire.

The Amerin Psychologil Associatn’s official pamphlet addrsg sexual orientatn nces this pot, notg that ultimately, “There is no nsens among scientists about the exact reasons that an dividual velops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lbian orientatn. ”8 Some rearchers have postured that there is no such thg as “homosexualy, ” but rather “homosexuali”—that there are multiple sub-populatns wh different etlogi makg for qualatively different experienc of sexualy that all lay wh a broad and diverse umbrella we ll “homosexualy” or “same-sex attractn. Anyone who is “heterosexual” knows they are not attracted to all or even most people of the oppose sex, and those who are “homosexual” know they are not attracted to all or even most people of the same sex.

Given the diversy of experience, and the varied persistence of that experience, for whom might homosexual behavr bee a s and for whom is simply unfair, as some would characterize, to require dividuals who experience homosexual attractn to live the standards guidg sexual behavr and relatnship as articulated by Church lears?