(This is a work in progress and I invite feedback from other LGBTQ+ people about their experiences with Mormonism or other religions.)
LAST UPDATED 10/23/24
Being LGBTQ+ and Mormon creates an inevitable crisis between two internal obligations: to live in harmony with your human nature, and to live in harmony with your community. This crisis exists because the doctrines, policies, and practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, along with the norms and expectations of the culture surrounding that institution, stand in stark contrast with the natures and lived realities of LGBTQ+ people.
All LGBTQ+ members of the Church automatically live in the tension of this dynamic and all respond to it in different ways—some more and some less functional and effective. It seems self-evident that the more consciously a person approaches this dynamic the better able they will be to navigate it. Life decisions will be made, whether or not they are consciously considered and whether they have positive or negative long-term consequences.
Having spent many years conducting psychotherapy with members of other faiths, I can say with complete confidence that much, perhaps even most, of what I’ve written here applies to all high-demand religions. The specifics will be different in other faiths, but generally speaking, the tethers I describe exist in all such religions. I invite input from people of other faiths about their experiences.
Before going further, let’s take a moment to consider terminology. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has requested that individuals who speak and write about the Church use specific terminology. I am choosing to follow those guidelines where they work and to set them aside where they do not work. Thus, according to the Church’s request, I use the term “the Church” to refer to the institution of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the term “Latter-day Saints” to refer to individuals who presently believe and participate at some level in the Church.
In contrast with the Church’s request, I use the term “post-Mormon” to refer to individuals who no longer believe and/or have discontinued their participation in the Church, whether or not they are still members of record (the Church doesn’t offer a suitable term for this demographic). And I use the term “Mormonism” to refer to the entire phenomenon of the institutional Church; its members; its system of beliefs, policies and practices; and its culture and cultural influence (the term for this suggested by the Church is too imprecise).
I am post-Mormon, having been obligated to resign membership in the Church in 2019 after coming out and choosing to align my life with my natural sexual orientation. During the fifty-plus years preceding that change, my thinking and daily living revolved around Mormonism. My faith in the “restored gospel of Jesus Christ” was extremely strong and absolutely determinative in my response to my same-sex attraction during my teens and most of my adulthood.
Because homosexuality has no place in the Church’s version of the gospel of Christ, I too gave my natural homosexual orientation as little place as possible in my life. Ironically, my attempts to minimize it required enormous attention and focus so that it became, after all, a central defining feature in my life. Sexual repression became my full-time job—literally. And as a leading expert in the field of sexual orientation change efforts, I succeeded at it until, in my fifties, I was so psychoemotionally starved I could no longer resist nature.
I am still in the process of emotionally working through all of the positive and negative influences of Mormonism on my life —both obvious and hidden. Nevertheless, in approaching this topic, I intend respect toward the Church, its leaders, and its members. I take no position here regarding the validity or truthfulness of any tenets or practices of the Church. And my intent is not to influence anyone with regard to their membership or participation in the Church. I am advocating nothing and suggesting no specific course of action other than consciousness and individual deliberation regarding the topics raised. My hope is to point out possible obstacles with which LGBTQ+ Latter-day Saints and post-Mormons may have to contend, especially if they should choose to live their lives with full authenticity.
Long before my coming out in 2019, I struggled to understand and articulate how Mormonism negatively affects the thinking, behaviors and psycho-spiritual wellbeing of LGBTQ+ people. For many years I’d heard apologists for the Church try to minimize the struggles of lesbian and gay people. Arguments such as “the law of chastity applies equally to all members” compared us inappropriately to straights. I knew intuitively such arguments were wrong but it was extremely difficult for me to articulate why—probably because I too was trying to defend the Church and thus couldn’t see clearly the full scope of its impacts. Parting ways with the Church in 2019 relieved me of the need to defend Mormonism and I began comparing it to a woodchopper that destroys the minds of LGBTQ+ people. My openly-gay post-Mormon perspective allowed me to see more clearly the damage so many gay men and women had suffered from their experiences in Mormonism. But still, I couldn’t explain exactly why or how.
In the fall of 2024, I was working with a new cohort of clients—men who were trying to break free from curbing, repressing, and hiding their homosexuality because of the influence of Mormonism. My own history gained clearer focus through them. I began to see more explicitly the ways in which Mormonism—the institutional Church; its theology, doctrines, policies and penal system; and the culture around it—had bound up our sexuality, bound up our thinking and free will, and also bound us to the Church itself. I could picture us all unable to move about freely or to escape because we were held by many tethers—some external and some internal. I identified seven tethers in all. Without the opportunity to release ourselves from these tethers we are destined to remain in that tension, bound up inside ourselves and bound to Mormonism, even long after we’ve left it behind.
Each person responds to each tether in a unique way. Sometimes the bind is like a leash that limits the range of our thinking or behavior. Sometimes it’s like being bound up in a rope so you can’t move. And sometimes it can be even more dangerous—a hangman’s noose is also a tether.
The seven tethers I’ve identified fit into three distinct groups. The first group includes tethers 1 – 3, which are: 1) patriarchy, 2) conformity, and 3) sentimentality. These three can be considered the foundation for adherence, by which I mean staying within the Church and faithful to its theology, doctrines, policies, and moral attitudes. These three tethers don’t impact LGBTQ+ people alone, but work on all Latter-day Saints. And they are basic to all high-demand religions.
The second group includes tethers 4 and 5, which are: 4) imperatives related to orientation and gender and 5) purity culture. For the majority of Latter-day Saints, these are nothing special, just additional doctrines, policies, and commandments in a Church that is replete with doctrines, policies, and commandments. But for LGBTQ+ members, these tethers bind our sexuality and gender expression. They are the crux of dissonance; an unavoidable schismatic line that proceeds from doctrine and runs from there through our minds, hearts, and bodies, dividing us within ourselves and from the Church. Most of the push-back toward the Church from LGBTQ+ people and our allies focuses on these two areas, most particularly on the imperatives, because they are so obviously exclusionary and repressive. But to fully understand the extent of the dissonance, dissociation and distress they cause, they must be understood in the context of the other tethers.
The third group includes tethers 6 and 7, which are: 6) social bonds and 7) fear of the unknown. Whereas the first set of tethers is the foundation for adherence and the second set is the crux of schism, this third set is the threat and punishment that is ever present like a sword of Damocles hanging forever over the heads of every sexual and gender diverse Latter-day Saint and many post-Mormons as well.
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