Affirmation: Gay & Lesbian Mormons - Affirmation and The LDS Church

Affirmation and The LDS Church

Affirmation has sometimes denounced the LDS Church. Affirmation members have come forward to describe the aversion therapy they were persuaded to undergo in the 1960s and 1970s at Brigham Young University, an LDS Church school. Gay students at Brigham Young University in 1977 widely distributed an anonymously published pamphlet called Prologue: An Examination of the Mormon Attitude Towards Homosexuality which described the aversion therapy, persecution of gays, and irregular behavior by the administration and faculty of Brigham Young University such as entrapment by the BYU security forces, recruiting student spies, and recruiting young Mormon women to attempt to sexually convert gays to heterosexuality by encouraging gay men to get married to these women in order to "cure" their homosexuality. The pamphlet said a significant percentage of the students at BYU were in fact gay and that psychologists had noted that it seemed that there was a larger percentage of Mormon gays than in any other religion. This pamphlet led directly to the formation of Affirmation in June 1977.

In October 1999, some Affirmation members in Salt Lake City protested the LDS Church’s lobbying and funding of initiatives in California and other states to keep the traditional definition of marriage.