Teresa Schofield told the AP that she stopped attending Mormon services more than a decade ago.
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The exodus came in response to the church’s new policy for LGBT members, which bans baptisms for children of gay couples until the child turns 18, among other homophobic new rules.
Johansen rescinded his order Friday, but not before the issues simmering beneath five years’ worth of renewed goodwill and camaraderie boiled over in just a week. While she still has two brothers who are active in the church, she, her boyfriend and her two children resigned on Saturday. Nathan Kitchen, a gay Mormon father of five, said that gives him hope his children will be allowed to keep enjoying all the faith’s privileges. “Is collaborative dialogue even worth it?”
The Mormon church is known for keeping close tabs on its followers, gathering an extraordinary amount of records on their lives, movements and faith.
The new church policy follows a landmark US Supreme Court ruling in June that legalised same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage may be legal, but it’s still a serious sin in the eyes of the church. Many were gay and trans, but a few were family members or simply allies fed up with the church’s exclusionary regulations. It does not apply to children who have one gay parent and might not live with them full time.
This Saturday, according to The NY Times, approximately 1,000 Mormons queued up in Salt Lake City to formally withdraw. “Being excommunicated is worse than dying in Mormondom”. One candidate, Jackie Biskupski, went on to become the city’s first gay mayor. Such a biography might prove politically fatal in most of conservative Utah but not in the small liberal enclave in the state’s capital.
The changes marked a dramatic detour from the religion’s recent push to carve out a more compassionate stance on LGBT issues. “Now, they can’t. For them to be castigated and cast aside because of me being trans, that’s not right”.
LDS attempted to downplay the protest, claiming that only 4 percent of those who pledged to resign identified as practicing Mormons.
BBC reports that the response to the new policies has been criticized by both liberal and conservatives in the faith. Dehlin said that the church risked bringing greater obscurity upon itself in a world that increasingly accepts same-sex marriage.
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“We would like to let folks understand there is a life after leaving Mormonism”, Swallow said. “That’s the way it felt”. “Increasing prejudice and discrimination for my child who never chose her orientation and only wants the same plan of salvation that everyone else gets”. “I can’t promise I’ll try, but I’ll try to try”.
