LGBT Issues

Healing Together: The Lonely Intersection of Faith and Sexuality

Matt Koster

Dialogue 56:2 (Summer 2023) 109-112
“My wife has left me because I’m attracted to men. I can’t live with myself for hurting her. God has abandoned me for going against the teachings of the Bible. I don’t deserve to be alive.” His despair was overwhelming.

On Tradition and a Nonbinary Revolution

Ray Nielson

Dialogue 56.1 (Spring 2023): 83–89

A couple months earlier, I had written to a friend back in Utah. It was June and she was celebrating Pride. I asked her to send me something. I’d been feeling terribly lonely in the missionary culture and wanted a physical reminder that there were others like me out in the world. She mentioned pronoun pins, and in a moment of rash decision I asked for “they/them” as well as “she/her.” Why not? I guess I thought, what harm could it do?

Transcending Mormonism: Transgender Experiences in the LDS Church

Keith Burns

Dialogue 56.1 (Spring 2023): 27–55
Enjoy an interview about this piece here.

Desiring to better understand how people are navigating these complex identity negotiations, I interviewed seven trans and/or gender nonconforming Mormons between eighteen and forty-four years old living in various regions of the United States as part of my graduate studies at Sarah Lawrence College in New York

Queerness Is Mormonism Is Queerness Blaire Ostler, Queer Mormon Theology

Adam Mclain

Queerness—the lived identity of LGBTQ+ and non-­normative people—and Mormonism—the theological and social structures adhered to by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-­day Saints—always seem to be at odds. Blaire Ostler’s Queer Mormon Theology: An…

Trans in the Chapel: Attending Church as a Newly Out Transgender Woman

Emily English

Dialogue 55.3 (Fall 2022): 107–109
Enjoy the following piece in audio form here.
My eyelashes were subtly coated in matte black mascara, on my cheeks a light dusting of dusty rose-colored blush powder, just enough that I could feel comfortable and almost myself.

I Am a Child of Gods

Blaire Ostler

Dialogue 55.1 (Spring 2022): 99–118
Mormon feminists should consider how to better include intersex, nonbinary, and trans women in their ambitions. Queerness is more than homosexuality.

A Queer Heavenly Family: Expanding Godhood Beyond a Heterosexual, Cisgender Couple

Charlotte Scholl Shurtz

Dialogue 55.1 (Spring 2022): 69–98
Although the concept of Heavenly Mother is empowering for many women, the focus on God as a cisgender, heterosexual couple also limits who can see their own divinity reflected in the stories told about God. First, with Heavenly Mother as the only female divinity, divine expression of womanhood is restricted to motherhood. This excludes many women, including women struggling with infertility, women who do not wish to become mothers, and transgender women who experience motherhood differently than fertile, cisgender women.

Gendering Mormon Studies—At Last! Amy Hoyt and Taylor G. Petrey, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender

Christine Talbot

Women’s and gender studies emerged out of the women’s and sexual liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s, movements the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints vigorously opposed. The so-called New Mormon History flourished around the same time, opening the field to new approaches

After a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology: A Ten-Year Retrospective

Taylor G. Petrey

Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 111–137
Ten years ago, my article “Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology” was published in Dialogue. I did not know what to expect when it made its way into the world, but it ended up being a widely discussed piece and has been accessed tens of thousands of times. The public discussion about my ideas was both critical and appreciative. In the wake of the article, my own research and thinking have also developed.

Queer Bodies, Queer Technologies, and Queer Policies

Blaire Ostler

Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 99–109
Reproductive gender essentialism claims exclude trans persons for their gender identity. However, these same arguments, when taken seriously, also exclude infertile and intersex women too. Such a strict definition of “man” or “woman” does not simply exclude trans folks but also any body not fulfilling its biological utility. After all, biological potential and utility is the basis of a biological sex assignment

Unpacking Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Mormonism Taylor G. Petrey, Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism

Alison Halford

Inevitably at some point, due to structural white patriarchal privilege and a central and abiding concern with discrete gendered bodies and heteronormative relations, the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will…

Variety of Perceptions of God Among Latter-day Saints

Taylor Kerby

Dialogue 54.1 (Spring 2001): 29–68
Non-LGBT members of the Church tend to believe God is more involved and loving (non-judgmental) than LGBT members do.

The Theological Trajectory of “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”

M. David Huston

Dialogue 54.1 (Spring 2021): 17–28
Huston argues that we should interpret that text in its historical context and glean from it new possibilities. Drawing on feminist interpretive strategies, Huston reads for the “theological trajectory,” rather than the plain meaning, to discern principles that might endure beyond a narrowly heterosexual nuclear family.

Queer Mormon Histories and the Politics of a Usable Past

Alexandria Griffin

Dialogue 54.1 (Spring 2021): 1–16
Essentially, the debate becomes whether it is appropriate to apply the adjectives “gay,” “homosexual,” “transgender,” or similar terms to persons who lived before these terms had any meaning. Yale historian John Boswell freely used the term “gay” for medieval and ancient subjects who expressed a preference for same-sex romantic and sexual relationships, while recognizing it was a label impossible for them to apply to themselves, “making the question anachronistic and to some extent unanswerable.”

Modern Mormonism, Gender, and the Tangled Nature of History Gregory A. Prince. Gay Rights and the Mormon Church

Benjamin E. Park

Few topics have dominated modern Mormon discourse as much as those related to homosexuality. Especially following the contentious and engrossing debates surrounding Proposition 8—the electoral battle in California in 2008 over the legality of same-sex…

Hug a Queer Latter-day Saint

Blaire Ostler

Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 33–44
“Queer Polygamy,” is an innovating mashup that looks beyond monogamy as the only authorizing type of same-sex relationships—it really pushes the boundaries of what queer scholarship had done. Drawing on contemporary polyamory to critique the limitations of heterosexual monogamy, and putting that into conversation with the LDS tradition of plural marriage, Ostler imagines a new type of polygamy, queer polygamy, that sheds the patriarchal baggage of the 19th century version and its continuation in fundamentalist Mormonism, as well as thinking beyond its presumed heterosexulity.

Ace of Saints

Marissa Burgess

Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 108–123
I felt free. I felt empowered. I might fall in love and get married, or
I might not. Either way would be fine. I didn’t need to have the same
life path as all of my friends and family. I realized that I am the way I
am, and I couldn’t change it. I needed to respect it. I had to listen to
myself, and not to everyone around me, including Church leaders. I
had to follow my heart and do what makes me happy, and it would all
get figured out in the end.

Review: That We May Be One: A Personal Journey Tom Christofferson. That We May Be One: A Gay Mormon’s Perspective on Faith and Family

Gerald S. Argetsinger

Tom Christofferson’s That We May Be One exploded onto the LDS book market with a series of news releases, interviews, and appearances.

From the Pulpit: Why I Stay

John Gustav-Wrathall

Dialogue 50.2 (Summer 2017): 209–213

“I was excommunicated from the Church in 1986. I am a gay man in a twenty-five-year-long relationship with my husband Göran Gustav-Wrathall. We were legally married in July 2008. Over the years, people have asked me how it is that I could consider myself Mormon if I’m not a member of the Church. What covenants are there for me to renew on Sunday morning, sitting in the pews, as I pass, without partaking, the sacrament tray to the person sitting next to me? To the extent that there is a relationship between me and God that has the Church as a context, real as it is to me, it is invisible to outside observers. That’s okay. I stay because I cannot deny what I know.”

What Do We Know of God’s Will for His LGBT Children?: An Examination of the LDS Church’s Position on Homosexuality

Bryce Cook

Dialogue 50.2 (Summer 2017): 1–52

“What do We know of God’s Will for his LGBT Children?: An Examination of the LDS church’s position on homosexuality” divides it up into a “doctrinal, moral, and empirical perspective.” Cook’s goal is to understand, to encourage empathy, and to encourage people to see current teachings on homosexuality as incomplete. In this way, it has a lot in common with earlier pastoral approaches. The analysis here is strong, and this division is a version of other theological traditions of reasoning from scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. This essay asks some great questions and raises some pretty serious critiques about the problems with contemporary LDS teachings and practices. “The longer this change takes,” he writes, “the more we will lose gay people, their family members, their friends, and other sympathetic Church members, particularly younger people who do not see same-sex marriage as a threat to society or a sin against God.”

The Mama Dragon Story Project

Kimberly Anderson

Dialogue 49.2 (Summer 2016): 61–80

The photographs and essays featured in this issue of Dialogue come from Kimberly Anderson’s Mama Dragon Story Project: A Collection of Portraits and Essays from Mothers Who Love Their LGBT+ Children

In Our Lovely Oubliette: The Un/Intended Consequences of Boundary Making & Keeping from a Gay Mormon Perspective

Christian Harrison

Dialogue 49.2 (Summer 2016): 51–60

“Of course, I didn’t really want to be a wife. But I was eight years old, and in my mind, if all I really wanted from the future was a husband, then that must mean that I wanted to be a wife.”

The Art of Queering Boundaries in LDS Communities

Roni Jo Draper

Dialogue 49.2 (Summer 2016): 45–50

“I am the mother of a queer son. I am also an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as a professor at Brigham Young University, where I teach courses in literacy education, educational research methods, and multicultural education.”

Youth Suicide Rates and Mormon Religious Context: An Additional Empirical Analysis

Benjamin R. Knoll

Dialogue 49.2 (Summer 2016): 25–44

Much has been discussed and written regarding whether or not the rate of LGBT youth suicides in the Mormon community has risen in the wake of the November 2015 handbook policy change that categorizes same-sex married couples as “apostates” and forbids baptism to children in same-sex married households.

The LGBTQ Mormon Crisis: Responding to the Empirical Research on Suicide

Michael Barker

Dialogue 49.2 (Summer 2016): 1–24
The November 2015 LDS handbook policy change that identified mem- bers who participate in same-sex marriages as “apostates” and forbade children in their households from receiving baby blessings or baptisms sparked ongoing attention to the topic of LGBTQ Mormon well-being, mental health, and suicides.

Solus

Anonymous

Dialogue 10.2 (Fall 1976, Reprinted Spring/Summer 2001): 67–74
An active church member shares his struggles of being in the church while being gay.“Solus,” S-O-L-US-, latin for alone, by an anonymous gay may in the Fall 1976 issue is the first entry on this topic in Dialogue. This is likely the first instance of an LGBTQ voice in any LDS publication. It marks the beginning of the modern LDS LGBTQ movement.

Warning: Labels Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

Val D. MacMurray

Dialogue 10.4 (Fall 1977): 130–132

MacMurray cautioned against people labelling themselves or others “homosexuals.” He argued that it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy and that it was an impediment to a cure. This would become a major theory of Elder Boyd K. Packer and others who instituted a cultural taboo on the term that lasted until the early 2000s when self-labelling became somewhat more tolerated. This doctrine has its roots in reparative therapy theories.

Intersexes in Humans: An Unexplored Issue in LDS Traditional Beliefs

Duane E. Jeffery

Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 107–113

In the Fall 1979 issue, an LDS evolutionary biologist wrote a really important piece, ahead of its time in some ways, challenging the idea of binary gender in his article, “Intersexes in Humans: An Introductory Exploration.” Duane laid out the problem clearly—we can’t say that sex is binary by divine design when it is not binary in nature.

The Burden of Proof: Peculiar People: Mormons and Same-sex Orientation

Gary M. Watts

Can You Change?: Born That Way? A True Story of Overcoming Same-Sex Attraction

Marybeth Raynes

The Logical Next Step: Affirming Same-Sex Relationships

Gary M. Watts

Dialogue 31.3 (Fall 1998): 49–57

In Fall 1998 just a few years after The Family Proclamation, Gary Watts wrote, “The Logical Next Step: Affirming Same-Sex Relationships.” He notes the inner conflict that gay LDS members faced, having to choose between their desires to have a relaitonship and their desires to be in the church.  It draws a lot of personal experiences and conversation to assess the issues. And he proposes that affirming committed, monogamous same-sex relationships would not change doctrines about reserving sexual initimacy for marriage, but proposed that these relationhips would not be eligible for sealings.

“In a Dark Time the Eye Begins to See”: Personal Reflections on Homosexuality among the Mormons at the Beginning of a New Millennium

Robert A. Rees

Dialogue 33.3 (Fall 2000): 137–151

Rees’s Fall 2000 artice is titled “”In a Dark Time the Eye Begins to See”: Personal Reflections on Homosexuality among the Mormons at the Beginning of a New Millennium.” A straight man and local LDS leader, Rees shares his own experience counseling with LGBTQ members and their struggles, from “gay bashing” violence, most famously the murder of Matthew Shephard, to prejudice and more. Rees talks about his own changed perspective on this issue that started when he was a singles ward bishop in LA in the 1980s and shares what he had learned along the way. Rees calls for a number of steps and changes as a body of the church to improve these conditions.

A Case for Same-Sex Marriage: Reply to Randolph Muhlestein

Wayne Schow

Dialogue 40.3 (Fall 2007): 50–60

These articles were about legal arguments. The case against argued that marriage was already tenuous and allowing same-sex marriage would doom it, suggesting that people would become homosexuals if same-sex marriage were an option.

The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage

Randolph G. Muhlestein

Dialogue 40.3 (Fall 2007): 11–41

These articles were about legal arguments. The case against argued that marriage was already tenuous and allowing same-sex marriage would doom it, suggesting that people would become homosexuals if same-sex marriage were an option.

Four Reasons for Voting Yes

Russell Arben Fox

I don’t live in California, and so the questions of what I thought of Proposition 8 and of my Church’s involvement in it were never presented to me with any more force than that of…

The Political Is Personal

Mary Ellen Robertson

As a California native, I have a stake in my home state’s politics, especially on social issues such as same-sex marriage. I was living in Pasadena, California, in 2000 when Proposition 22, defining marriage as…

An Evangelical Perspective

Lindsey Chambers

As an evangelical Christian living in California, I had mixed feelings about the Christian community’s involvement in Proposition 8. I had just started attending a new church during election time. One Sunday, I was handed…

How We Talk about Marriage (and Why It Matters)

Robert K. Vischer

A decade from now, same-sex marriage will likely be the law in a majority of states. Given the domino effect of legislatures embracing a cause that has successfully claimed the mantle of equality, coupled with…

The Church’s Use of Secular Arguments

Kaimipono Wenger

One fascinating development in the Proposition 8 debate in California was the extent to which secular arguments-involving legal, political, and sociological claims-came to take center stage, even in announcements from the Church itself. The Church’s…

Two Modes of Political Engagement

David Watkins

The hard-fought campaign over Proposition 8, which in November 2008 rescinded the legal right to marriage for same-sex couples in California, is evidence of an important political success for religious conservative political groups who support…

Six Voices on Proposition 8: A Roundtable

Russell Arben Fox

Dialogue 42.4 (Winter 2009): 106–141
After Prop 22 passed, it was overturned by the courts as a violation of the equal protection clause of the CA constitution. Opponents of same-sex marriage devised a new proposition to amenda the CA constitution to ban same-sex marriage and the LDS church announced its public support and activism for the measure in the summer of 2008 before the november election. It was a deeply contentious issue bringing national attention to the church whose members provided the bulk of the funding for its passage, nearly $40m. The issue was a breaking point for many in the church and the above roundtable attempts to offer a variety of legal and religious arguments for and against the measure. 

The Fabulous Jesus: A Heresy of Reconciliation

Scott C. Davis

As a student of history, I have to admit, however reluctantly, that Jesus didn’t wear pashmina ascots or Armani sunglasses—but neither did he wear white shirts, dark suits, and a bicycle helmet. Jesus wasn’t fabulous…

Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology

Taylor G. Petrey

Dialogue 44.4 (Winter 2011): 106–141
From Editor Taylor Petrey: “Toward a Post-heterosexual Mormon Theology”  was actually the first major article I ever published. I did not know what to expect, but it ended up being a widely discussed piece, accessed tens of thousands of times.⁠ To this day I still receive notes of appreciation for this article. 

Same-Sex Attraction

Clifton Holt Jolley

“As Our Two Faiths Have Worked Together”—Catholicism and Mormonism on Human Life Ethics and Same-Sex Marriage

Wilfried Decoo

Dialogue 46.3 (Fall 2013): 106–141

Wilfred Decoo writes in 2013 ““As Our Two Faiths Have Worked Together”— Catholicism and Mormonism on Human Life Ethics and Same-Sex Marriage.” He expains, “I analyze a number of factors that could ease the way for the Mormon Church to withdraw its opposition to same-sex marriage, at least as it concerns civil society, while the Catholic Church is unlikely to budge.”

Review: Families are Forever and Ever and Ever Vivian Kleiman, dir. Families Are Forever [DVD]

Robert A. Rees

Dialogue Topic Pages #6: LGBT Issues

(author)

This month, we are looking at the history of scholarship on LGBTQ issues. If you’re catching this in June when it is released, Happy Pride Month. I have to say that this is an incredibly…