The changes marked a dramatic detour from the religion’s recent push to carve out a more compassionate stance on LGBT issues.
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“It feels like they are extending an olive branch and hitting you with it”, said Wendy Montgomery, who is Mormon and has a 17-year-old gay son. “It’s like this emotional whiplash”. The goal was to provide clarity to lay leaders who run congregations, church spokesman Eric Hawkins said. He noted the church has always been on record as opposing same-sex marriages.
“Our concern with respect to children is their current and future well-being and the harmony of their home environment”, said the letter from President Thomas Monson and his two counselors: Henry Eyring and Dieter Uchtdorf. The couple has been trying desperately to stay in the church despite a harsh reception to their son coming out.
The policy also makes gay marriages a sin worthy of expulsion. “There’s a quality and a depth to the outburst of discontent that I have not seen before”. She said she spoke to a former regional church leader who said, if he was still in leadership, that he would ignore the policy as it pertains to children. When Mormons publicly criticize a church policy that comes directly from these men, the church and their LDS friends and neighbors may ostracize them. “However, we are disappointed that children born of same-sex parents must still “disavow” their parents’ marriage”. So even if it does come from a good place, there are real effects of it. There have been increased suicide attempts and even if that’s not the intention, that’s the message they’re sending. As it stands, these children would not be allowed to be baptised until they come of age, 18, and formally denounce their parents relationship. After they finalize and sign the paperwork to quit the church it is the group’s intent to march en masse to Salt Lake’s Temple Square near the Church’s worldwide headquarters and deposit the letters.
In the days leading up to the event, more than 1,700 church members sent requests to be removed from the church’s rolls to a local attorney who has publicly volunteered to help with the process.
“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 Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies.
That fact wasn’t lost on Mormons interpreting the new rules.
“I am no better now than an illegal polygamist”, Kitchen said.
The church clarified that the rules apply only to children living primarily with same-sex couples.
Mormon leaders said the rules for children target a narrow group since very few married gay couples want their children blessed and baptized in the church.
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“The idea of family is not just a peripheral issue in the Mormon church”. “That only works with heterosexual couples”.
