Mormon rule changes aimed at gays send advocates reeling

It’s a matter of understanding right and wrong.

“We regard same-sex marriage as a particularly grievous or significant, serious kind of sin that requires Church discipline”, Christofferson said in the interview. It also blocks babies in same-gender parent homes from receiving a name and a blessing within the church.

The Mormon Church would see their acts as a promise to continue to follow church doctrine in the future. But Elder Christofferson pointed to a precedent for the changes, citing similar policies regarding children from polygamous families. After all, they welcome the faultless children of murderers and rapists with open arms, and no little one whose parents have abandoned them would ever be barred from participating in Mormonism.

“I am no better now than an illegal polygamist”, Kitchen said. “Ever since Proposition 8, there have been attempts by the church to reach out, to formulate relationships with LGBT Americans”, said Matthew Bowman, a historian and author of “The Mormon People”. The couple has been trying desperately to stay in the church despite a harsh reception to their son coming out.

Beard was raised in the LDS Church and has been married to her wife for eight years.

Thus, it was fear and self-loathing, not divine insight, that inspired church Elders to defy the wisdom of Christ and deny the blameless children of same-sex couples entry into their sect. “It does feel like they’re cutting us further off from the community”. “This town is mainly Mormon so they are going to be facing a few persecution”. Most children in the LDS church are baptized when they are around eight years old.

Beard said she couldn’t be a part of a religion that is hurting her family. As a former Mormon myself, I will admit to sometimes being a little too eager to believe the worst about my former church. Many children of LGBT parents may feel caught between the new policy and the commandment to honor one’s parents.

Yesterday, November 5, from the deepest, darkest cavity of LDS headquarters, where not even Christ himself can venture, came a pestilent, homophobic plot to alienate and embarrass the children of same-sex couples.

– They disavow the practice of same-sex relationships.

“Nothing is lost to them in the end if that’s the direction they want to go”, he said, “and in the meantime, they’re not placed in a position where there will be difficulties, challenges, conflicts that can injure their development in very tender years”.

In the past two years, they have learned their father is gay and endured their parents’ divorce.

A highly-placed Mormon says the church’s idea of family “is not just a peripheral issue in the Mormon Church”. “That only works with heterosexual couples”. The Mormon Church faced severe backlash during its fight against same-sex marriage in California in 2008.

A few find the new rules contradictory to these recent church messages, including guidance from a church website created in 2012 to urge more compassion for LGBT people.

Troy Williams, executive director of the gay rights group Equality Utah and a former member of the faith, said all churches have the right to welcome or exclude whomever they choose.