Mormon Church Relaxes Some Anti-Gay Policies

In what ought to be a lesson to the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, the Mormon Church is relaxing one of its anti-gay policies that victimized the children of LGBT headed families and barred the children from baptism in the Church.  In conjunction with the Mormon Church's decision to not oppose an LGBT non-discrimination law in Utah, it shows some effort to reconcile Church doctrine with modernity and likely also is a reaction to Utah's sky high teen suicide rate.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the development.  Meanwhile, Roman Catholic schools continue to throw out children of gays or refuse them enrollment, punishing children for who their parents are.  Here are article highlights:

Tom Christofferson was in the shower on Thursday morning when he missed a phone call with huge implications for the lives of LGBTQ Mormons and their families.

Christofferson is gay. His brother, Todd Christofferson, is a member of the highest body of authority in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Todd was calling Tom to let him know that the LDS Church was about to roll back a controversial 2015 policy that automatically labeled Mormons in same-sex marriages apostates and barred their minor children from being baptized—a rite required for membership in the LDS Church and seen as necessary for eternal salvation. Under the new policy, same-sex marriages are still considered a “serious transgression,” according to a Church announcement, but not definitively apostasy. The children of LGBTQ couples can now be baptized.

The presence of LGBTQ Mormons is an undeniable reality in the LDS Church. The Church acknowledged the widespread pain caused by the former policy: “While we cannot change the Lord’s doctrine, we want our members and our policies to be considerate of those struggling with the challenges of mortality,” said Dallin Oaks, one of two counselors to the president of the LDS Church, in a statement.  

Married LGBTQ Mormons are no longer automatically labeled apostates, and they are put on slightly more even footing with straight couples: “Immoral conduct in heterosexual or homosexual relationships will be treated in the same way,” Oaks wrote in the announcement. Children living with these couples can be baptized, as long as parents know that they will be taught that LGBTQ relationships are wrong.

For many current and former Mormons, however, the consequences of the 2015 policy cannot be undone. Their relationships—with the Church, with their families, and with God—have been irreparably damaged.

LDS leaders consider both the 2015 policy and Thursday’s new policy to be matters of revelation, even though one effectively reverses the other.

But as this new announcement demonstrates, Church leaders clearly heard the objections from LDS community members. In a living faith tradition like Mormonism, relationships—between neighbors, relatives, or, say, a gay Mormon and his brother in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles—have the power to shape the context of revelation.

Even with this new policy change, LGBTQ Mormons occupy a fraught space in LDS life. Those in same-sex relationships, or who have gone through a gender transition, live with the knowledge that their choices are condemned by Church teachings. And for LGBTQ believers, the theological consequences of their sexuality and identity are serious: Mormons teach that families can be bound together for eternity, and LGBTQ families are not included in that vision.

On a practical level, the 2015 policy cut many LGBTQ families off from participation in LDS communities. Parents couldn’t stay even loosely connected to the Church through their children, and some felt that it was cruel for the Church to ostracize kids because of their parents’ choices and identities.

“There was a lot of suffering caused by the policy, and it’s going to be hard for a lot of hearts to heal from that,” says Gustav-Wrathall. Like others, he draws a connection between the policies of the LDS Church and the high rate of suicide among LGBTQ teens in Utah, while acknowledging that it’s impossible to know the cause of most suicides. “What parents must be feeling,” he said, is: “Would my child still be here with me if this policy hadn’t happened?”