Backlash over Mormon LGBT rule change spreads among faithful

Church documents leaked last week revealed a new policy defining any Mormon in a same-sex marriage to be an apostate.

The new rules bar children living with gay parents from being baptized until they’re 18. The rules also make gay marriages a sin worthy of expulsion.

“The surprising impact has been the amount of people who are confused and troubled and disturbed and, frankly, repulsed, ” said Mason, associate professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University in California. “And these aren’t just progressives and LGBT advocates….”

Leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn’t require legal representation, but Naugle said that his forms simplify the process and he acts a buffer between clients and church leaders who may try to convince them not to leave.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – Transportation officials say they plan to increase the speed limit to 80 miles per hour on a stretch of Interstate 15 in southern Utah, although there are plans to lower speeds in other parts of the region.

Considering that the LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance recently passed in Utah had the outspoken support of the Church many LGBT Mormons consider the new update a slap in the face. Church spokesman Eric Hawkins didn’t immediately have any comment.

It’s “pitting child against parent”, Lauren Elise McNamara, one of the event’s organizers, wrote on Facebook. As it stands, these children would not be allowed to be baptised until they come of age, 18, and formally denounce their parents relationship. And these aren’t people with LGBT ties. “These are ardent, faithful, in-the-box believing Mormons who can’t abide this”, said Wendy Montgomery, an Arizona Mormon who has a 17-year-old gay son and who co-founded Mama Dragons, a group for church mothers with gay children.

Church leaders said the changes were created to reiterate the conservative faith’s doctrinal opposition to gay marriage and provide clarity to lay leaders around the globe asking questions after last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriages.