California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure that sought to amend the California Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman, overturned the state’s Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.
Though this happened in California, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Utah-based religious institution, greatly influenced the passing of the amendment. Its actions regarding Proposition 8 set a precedent for the Church and its culture in Utah.
For queer people and the Church to peacefully coexist, the Church must acknowledge the harm it caused with Proposition 8 and must listen to its queer members to figure out how to move forward.
Belief or Discrimination?
From conversion therapy in the ’70s at Brigham Young University, an LDS Church-owned school, to excommunicating gay couples and restricting their children’s membership, the Church hasn’t exactly been queer-friendly.
The Church displays its anti-queer beliefs in current documents like the 1995 Family Proclamation. Church leaders spread anti-queer rhetoric over the pulpit, like apostle Jeffrey Holland reiterating the church’s “musket fire” analogy in 2021. BYU’s current honor code also bans same-sex romantic behavior.
Calvin Burke, an LGBTQ+ member of the LDS Church, asserted that queerphobia is not intrinsic to the religion and “doesn’t jibe” with its scriptures. The Church’s position on Proposition 8 was “unnecessarily antagonistic,” he said.
Proposition 8 & Beyond
The Church campaigned against gay marriage in California and Hawaii in the ’90s. In 2008, it sent a letter to California congregations, asking members to do all they could, including donating their “means and time” to support Proposition 8.
According to the documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition, local LDS leaders pressured members to donate money to the cause, and the church raised millions for it. As shown in leaked Church documents, the Church’s “grassroots program” trained members to persuade voters in favor of the amendment. Members went door-to-door advocating for Proposition 8.
Utah doesn’t have a clear separation of church and state. Due to the state’s religious culture, the Church’s policies also affect Utahns who aren’t Church members. The Church has the right to its belief system, but it must not push harmful legislation.
The Church’s website states that “obedience is the first law of heaven.” Members’ support of Proposition 8 was proof of their obedience to Church leaders, who they believe speak for God. This indicates that if leaders supported queer people, many members would follow suit. It might earn the Church a better standing with queer communities inside and outside the church and make Utah safer for them.
Last year, the Church expressed support for the Respect for Marriage Act, because it included “necessary protections for religious freedom” while codifying same-sex and interracial marriage.
But since the Church hasn’t apologized for its shameful actions in 2008, how can the community know if its leaders feel remorseful? How can queer Latter-day Saints know if their Church is a safe place?
Time for Change
Queer and LDS aren’t mutually exclusive terms. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, over one-fifth of LDS college students in the U.S. identified as LGBTQ+. When the Church advocates against queer rights, it hurts its own members and loved ones.
“We’re not some outside group,” said Burke. “We’re y’all. We sit on the same pews.”
The Church also believes in loving everyone, but this rings hollow to queer ears. Love involves owning up to wrongdoing and making amends.
Burke said Church leadership must seek to understand and listen to those it hurt. He’d like to see systemic and discursive changes, over the pulpit and in the handbook, that honor LGBTQ+ people within the Church. Until it does this, he said, “The Church will continue to be essentially a haven for folks who are deeply prejudiced.”
Local church groups must work to become safe for queer members. Leaders must invite excommunicated queer people back to Church. If the Church really has changed since Proposition 8, advocating for queer rights would show queer members that their religion supports them.
Still, while the Church must be held accountable, it cannot expect forgiveness.
LDS and queer people will coexist, whether in the same state, classroom or meetinghouse. Church leaders must apologize and try to repair the harm they caused by pushing Proposition 8 and other anti-queer policies and practices.
There is no battle — LGBTQ+ people are not attacking the Church. Members should put away their muskets and bring out their compassion.
Laura • Jan 17, 2024 at 10:08 am
It is unfortunate that Caroline Jarvis did not have an opportunity to have a dialogue with my Gay brother before he passed away in 2016. He lived with AIDS for 21 years. He was not a member of the LDS religion, but he did invite the missionaries to his home after listening to my side of the story. My husband and I joined in 1982 while living in New York City. It was Proposition 8 that gave my brother and I an opportunity to communicate with each other and find common ground. From 2008 to 2016 we became much closer. He called me every Sunday morning before I went to church. I would share my lessons or talks with him, and he would give me feedback from a nonmember’s perspective. He was upset about the commercial the LGBTQ+ community put out that spread lies about the missionaries searching people’s homes. He felt the money spent on that campaign from both sides could have gone for far worthier causes, like helping the homeless in California. He also felt that a religion should not have to change their beliefs to satisfy the LGBTQ+ community. When he heard any of his friends “Mormon-bashing” he would defend the faith and tell them that his sister is a member. Likewise, I was not ashamed to let members of my religion know that my brother was Gay (or whatever the politically correct word is now).
What the leaders of the church are doing now is far more beneficial than words of apology. Both the leaders and members are seeking understanding and compassion, but there are some in the LGBTQ+ community that continue attacking the church, like it appears you have been doing in your articles by taking a personal vendetta against the church. An apology would not change that. My brother apologized for the behavior the LGBTQ+ community. He said it takes listening to both sides and not bashing one another to find a solution. I agree with my brother. The same is true for politics.
Lisa • Jan 6, 2024 at 9:18 am
The Church does not need to apologize for protecting their teachings and sacraments. Arguably, the LGBTQ community should refrain from attempting to hijack the sacrament of marriage which the LDS Church (among man other) hold as sacred. The sacrament of marriage is for the union of a man and a woman. Let the LGBTQ+ community have their own union ceremony.
yahuah • Dec 23, 2023 at 11:06 am
who keeps believing what these guys say all these flip flops should of by now told people how false lds is no one should be going to lds at all imo
John Hedberg • Dec 21, 2023 at 4:21 pm
I think the Equity crowd on Campus “must apologize” for the harm they cause by teaching everyone that if you’re straight, you therefore hate people who are not, and if you’re pale, you therefore hate people who are not, and if you’re Christian, you therefore hate people who are not, and if you’re male, you therefore hate people who are not. This is actual hate-speech coming from the lying crowd who protests endlessly that hate is wrong, except that they are hate-typing every person who might identify with these groups, which is itself the worst kind of bigotry.
The ideal of civil rights is supposed to mean that everyone, no matter how they look or identify, is supposed to be lovable and accepted for being human, something we all share equally, and so how you were born or what ideas you find beautiful at the moment have absolutely no bearing on your worth as a person or your value as a member of society. The Equity crowd has not only failed us all in this mission, but they preach the opposite: anyone who doesn’t agree with Equity’s hatreds must therefore be an awful person, anyone who doesn’t agree with Equity’s picked preferences must also be atrocious. These hatreds and preferences have a name: prejudice.
So, when the Equity yokels preach about diversity and inclusion, they only mean inclusion of diversity which agrees with their prejudices and feelings, and to heck with everyone else, no matter how they look or identify. That’s racism, misogyny/misandry, homo/hetero-phobia, religious bigotry, ethnic stereotyping, and transphobia all rolled together, because if any diverse person from any group has an opinion or experience that doesn’t agree with the hatreds or prejudices of the Equity crew, those transgender people are dehumanized, those LGBTQ+ folks are dismissed and excluded, those BIPOC & intersectional persons are demeaned and defamed falsely as haters, and so all individuals no matter how they look or identify are called bigots just for being themselves, for having their own lived experience and their own opinions based on their experience, and for having compassion for any whom the Equity “screw-loose gurus” don’t have compassion for (the name Chloe Cole immediately comes to mind as someone whom they suppressed and dehumanized, but there are plenty of others).
When is the Church of Equity going to apologize for perjuring, abusing, and harassing all the folks on campus who have zero problem with anyone else’s diversity, as long as we can get equal respect for our own, people who just want to be ourselves and interact, to earn and learn alongside everyone else, but who don’t share the pet hatreds of the Equity defamers and pathological narcissists?
“Belief or discrimination”? Diversity, EQUALITY, and Inclusion, never Equity.
Equity appears to believe that hatred against human groups or individuals is “kosher” as long as those hatreds conform to whatever “Equity” feels at the moment. For 75 years, Jewish people have been among the most solid on the side of civil and human rights, and yet Equity has decided to hate-label Jewish people as “genocidal” for no cause, except that they decided to defend themselves from atrocities committed against them by another group which “Equity” goofballs happen to favor this week.
That’s all it takes: disagree with the Prophets of Equity about who deserves their equity (discrimination) the most, and suddenly you’re a racist, even if you accept everyone and belong to a group that’s poly-racial, or you’re a colonist, even if you’re defending your own ancestral lands against the people who dispossessed you. According to Equity’s priesthood, the best thing women and children and grandparents deserve for defending life and Love and heritage is to be swept out of existence “from the river to the sea”, as if Auschwitz wasn’t bad enough for everyone to learn that hatred itself, against any people, is wrong: this is the line where human rights begin, but Equity’s hatred has no boundaries to keep human beings safe and whole.
Being treated with Equality is to treat every human being with Love as children in God’s eyes (By Whatever Name), all equally fallible and forgivable, equally beloved, the way a good parent Loves every child, which is how Dr. King preached the Gospel. Equity is nothing more than hatred looking for an excuse to vent itself, any excuse (clearly), but Equality is Loving everyone despite our inevitable errors and goofy imperfections, since children fall down constantly as we learn and grow into “a more perfect union” of habits, truths, attitudes, and culture which ever greater reflect the Love we receive as we mature, learn responsibilities which go along with this lived-Loved experience, and find common purpose in sharing the griefs as well as the joys of our transformative evolution in the way that God exemplifies it as a parent, through unfailing Love.
So, Equity has been teaching students to hate and exclude each other’s diversity for decades, rather than to Love each diverse individual in Equality as we Love our selves, in the beloved hope of all the humanity we hold in common together, forever. To paraphrase Dr. King, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hatred (anti-racism) cannot drive out hatred (racism); only Love can do that”.
We’re all fine, or we should be, by being exactly who we were created to be in this life. The Equity religion’s “clown car” owes us all an open apology for the endless empty fear, division, and ugliness they rain on the rest of us, for all the needless hypocrisy and suffering they cause by their preferred discrimination and hatreds, and for never giving their “permission” for everyone to simply Love each person for who we are, which means their “church” would no longer have a reason for being. How sad! 😊
Physician, heal Thy Self!
David Widtfeldt • Dec 21, 2023 at 10:17 am
In 2008 both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama were running for the presidency of the United States. At the time both were opposed to the notion of gay marriage. They have now changed their public opinions because as politicians that’s what they do. The Church answers to a higher authority than the CNN News Polls. If you have a problem with Church practices you should take it up with The Man upstairs.
Brian • Dec 21, 2023 at 3:33 pm
The destruction of the family, man and woman is part of Satan‘s plan. The LDS Church does not need to apologize and I appreciate what they’ve done in California as a good thing.
Jaime • Jan 5, 2024 at 8:33 pm
There are loving gay families that don’t have to fit inside your narrow, bigoted worldview.
It’s one thing to hold personal religious beliefs, and another to legislatively force them on everyone else. The Church was wrong to do so. It’s hateful acts will go down in history as wrong—along with all the other things it got wrong (polygamy, denying blacks the priesthood, conflating Native Americans with a fallen people with “cursed” dark skin, etc).
“Destruction of the family.” That’s rich coming from a supporter of Joseph Smith who “married” dozens of women secretly behind his wife’s back and threatened her with “destruction” if she didn’t go along with it. How sick and manipulating. And I bet you support Trump, a man who cheated on his wife with a porn star three months after she gave birth to their baby. Such “family values.”