Protest of Mormon LGBT policy draws hundreds

Earlier this year the Mormon church said it would support laws protecting LGBTI people from discrimination in housing and employment. The event comes in the wake of the church’s policies concerning the children of same-sex couples which came to light November 5. With 1,000 letters of resignation already submitted online, attorneys received an additional 1,500 letters at the Salt Lake event, which were placed on the lawyers’ letterhead to expedite the process. For those attending the mass-resignation, the camel’s back was finally broken. She told Fox News: “I’m resigning today because Jesus says love everyone”. It did, however, release a video explaining the new policy. Written in the church’s “Handbook 1”, a book of instruction and guidelines for the church’s lay clergy, same-sex couples are declared “apostates” and subject to excommunication.

The park was a 15-minute walk from Temple Square outside the Salt Lake Temple, the meeting place of the church’s First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve Apostles. But Mormon leaders have said sex should only happen between a married couple, and that they can not sanction same-sex marriage.

“It felt like a gut punch”, says Kendall Wilcox, a faithful member of the church, who says these policy updates go against everything he’s been working for.

Those children would have the option once they turn 18.

Though the church didn’t specifically address joint custody like Kitchen has with his ex-wife, he thinks the clarification gives his local church leader discretion to avoid implementing the rules against his children.

The brief letter came with a longer one from the church’s press office emphasizing that no doctrine was changed.

“We had an incredible turnout”, Naugle said, according to CNN.

“After all the years of different policy changes and people excluding people for not believing the same things, I’ve just never had a strong balance”. A spokesman said there are probably not many children in this situation.

If history is any guide, church leadership won’t reverse its position regardless of how many people leave the LDS church in response to the new policy, said Mason, author of The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South. “Their sense is, ‘We can ride this out, ‘” he said.

On Monday, a prominent Utah LGBT group hosted a “Family Homo Evening”, a play on the Mormon ritual of family home nights where gay-supporting Mormons gathered to show solidarity. From the street, drivers waved and honked their horns.

Three of Unsicker-Montoya’s siblings are resigning, as well as his ex-wife, who has been going to church with her parents and the kids. “And a lot of people have taken their lives over this issue in our church”.