Mormon lgbtq essay
It’s November 2015, and I’m a freshman at Brigham Young University. I see my roommate Rachel stay up from her seat in our Latter-day Saints church congregation and stride down the aisle and out the door. And I’m not the only one who turns my head. Half of the congregation glances at her as she leaves the church service and the other half tries to pretend they didn’t notice.
Moments before she walked out, the speaker had been complaining about the uproar over the new church policy that prevented children of LGBTQ parents from getting baptized and declared those in queer relationships “apostate,” a disciplinary measure that resulted in automatic excommunication and put them in the same league as murderers and sex offenders. I want to walk with her, but I’m still in the closet. Even though Rachel’s a straight woman with no skin in the game, she has more strength than me to stand up for what she believes in.
I’m not writing this to convince anyone that this policy was wrong or un-Christlike, because I don’t possess to anymore. This week, the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints announced it rescinded this policy due to “continuing revelation” from God. Children from LGBTQ
A gay Mormon teen (age 16) writes an essay for English class
by Kayden Maxwell
Hero Journey
There is an indescribable feeling when you grow up expecting your life to follow a very defined path, and everyone around you follows the same formula for a happy life, but one day you arouse up and realize you don’t fit into the plan. And everything you know falls apart.
I spent the earliest years of my life learning exactly how to live it. My future, along with everyone else’s future, was all planned out:
obtain baptized,
attend school,
accept the priesthood,
attend church and scouting activities,
provide a mission,
come home,
go to college,
discover a beautiful woman and marry her as rapid as possible,
have children,
and dedicate the lie down of life to them.
It’s a wonderful life arrange, really. And I was fine with it.
But I knew I was alternative somehow. I could never understand why or how, but I simply wasn’t the same as those around me. I was always surrounded by my wonderful female friends. Proximate all of my friends were girls.
“I’m a ladies’ man,” I simply assumed.
And that was how elementary school went.
Come middle university, I realized that I didn’t develop any feelings for any
I’ve heard you are a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. What are your opinions on gay rights, particularly in light of the church’s controversial relationship to the LGBTQ+ community? (Also related: Do you still consent with the views you expressed in 2008 in your essay about Dumbledore’s homosexuality?)
I am a practicing and faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As part of that, I support the leaders of the church, agree them as my spiritual advisors, and believe they are led by God.
That said, on the position of gay rights, I find my own values more liberal than the general tenor of the church. Over the years, through interaction with wonderfully patient members of the LGBTQ+ community, I consider I’ve come a distant way.
My current stance is one of unequivocable aid for LGBTQ+ rights. I support gay marriage. I support trans rights, the rights of non-binary people, and I support the rights of trans people to affirm their retain identity with love and support. I support anti-discrimination legislation, and have voted consistently along these lines for the last fifteen years. I am marking the posting of this
“Understanding and Including Our LGBT Brothers and Sisters,” Liahona, October 2021
In the first few months after being called as a bishop, I was surprised when three sets of parents in my ward each approached me in secret to let me know that they had a youth who identified as gay or transsexual . In each case, the parents expressed sincere love for their child coupled with various levels of concern that their child would not fit in the ward community.
Eventually, other families also shared similar knowledge with me, and I realized that even though I wasn’t too familiar with these experiences, as a bishop I had the privilege of helping all of my ward members establish a more unified community, no matter what they were experiencing.
I quickly realized that to be a more powerful bishop, I needed to be willing to try to understand the experiences of members who identify as LGBT and their families. So, through earnest and open conversations, trial and error, a lot of study, and relying on the Lord for understanding, I learned a lot about how I could provide greater support to members in these circumstances as they struggle to come unto Christ.
My eyes were opened to the need
The Mormon state is seen as deeply homophobic. Yet, from polygamy to identity festival, Mormons themselves are a distinctly lgbtq+ lot
‘Salt Lake is a very homosexual place,’ said the historian J Seth Anderson after he and his husband became the first gay couple to be married in Utah, in 2013. When most non-Utahns think of the state, probably the last thing that comes to intellect is ‘gay’. Instead, they might ponder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, aka Mormons), whose members constitute 42 per cent of the population. Or maybe they think of Republicans, who outnumber Democrats nearly four to one.
While counterintuitive, Anderson’s statement about Salt Lake City’s queerness is true in most senses of the word. First, Utah defies norms and boundaries. For many who examine queer theory, queerness isn’t just about who you value or your sexual identity. It’s also a lens for understanding how world defines what’s considered normal or other , and how these definitions affect diverse behaviours and groups of people. In that sense, Utah can be seen as queer because it defies or ‘queers’ normative identity in the Merged States. Second, Salt Lake is simply home to a lot of gender non-conforming people