Homosexuality and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - Homosexual Mormons

Homosexual Mormons

There are no official numbers for how many members of the LDS Church are attracted to their own gender. LDS Family Services estimates that there are on average four or five members per LDS ward who experience same-sex attraction. The most recent outside study, conducted in 1972, shows that between 10-13% of college aged Mormon men reported past experimentation with homosexual behavior, which was similar to the percentage of non-Mormon men who reported past experimentation. The study did not include homosexuals who did not have a homosexual experience. Gary Watts, former president of Family Fellowship, estimates that only 10% of homosexuals stay in the church. Others dispute that estimate, saying numbers in support groups for active Latter-day Saints and for self-identified gay Mormons are comparable. Many of these individuals have come forward through different support groups or websites stating their homosexual attractions and concurrent church membership. A number of personal accounts were published in the book A Place in the Kingdom: Spiritual Insights from Latter-day Saints about Same-Sex Attraction. Other personal experiences are documented on the LDS SSA Resources and People Can Change websites. Others have shared their stories through the Ensign, through the Evergreen International website and blogs. There is a variety of terminology used, including "Moho" to refer to a Mormon homosexual. The following are some of the more prominent individuals within the gay and ex-gay Mormon community:

Practicing Mormons

  • Ty Mansfield served a mission in the New Hampshire Manchester Mission, graduated from Brigham Young University, and is currently a family therapist in Texas. He chronicled his coming to terms with his sexuality in a co-authored book with Fred and Marilyn Matis, In Quiet Desperation: Understanding the Challenge of Same-gender Attraction, published by Deseret Book in 2004. Ty later married and recently published another book on homosexuality, also by Deseret Book, in 2011, titled Voices of Hope: Latter-day Saint Perspectives on Same-gender Attraction--An Anthology of Gospel Teachings and Personal Essays.
  • David Matheson admitted to himself that he was attracted to men when he was 22 and married. Following seven years of therapy, he claimed to have changed his sexual orientation. He has since become a licensed professional counselor and has made his clinical focus to be "helping men who want to diminish unwanted homosexuality and feel whole as men." He is the clinical director of the Center for Gender Wholeness, co-creator of the Journey into Manhood weekend, and a director of People Can Change. He has written the Evergreen International Workbook for Men, Four Principles of Growth, and has made several media appearances talking about overcoming homosexual attractions. He does not say he is completely straight, but "straight enough."
  • H. Stuart Matis, a celibate homosexual, stated that "straight members have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up gay in this church. It is a life of constant torment, self-hatred and internalized homophobia." Stuart later committed suicide at an LDS meetinghouse in Los Altos, California. After two of his gay friends also committed suicide, Affirmation members began to hold suicide vigils around the country to raise awareness about suicide prevention and the destructive consequences of what they considered to be homophobic treatment by church adherents. Suicide victims are posted on its website. Matis' story is described in the book In Quiet Desperation: Understanding the Challenge of Same-Gender Attraction and was later inspired and created into the play "Missa Solemnis or The Play About Henry" written by non-Mormon playwright Roman Feeser. Matis' death was described in the controversial 2010 documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition.
  • Mitch Mayne, a currently celibate homosexual member in San Francisco, serves as an executive secretary to the LDS bishop in the local Bay Ward (congregation). He has promoted family acceptance of LGBT youth and hopes to serve as a bridge to the gay community. He has also promoted the idea that all people with homosexual feelings, including those who are involved in homosexual behavior, should be welcomed into the church with no consequences for their sexual choices. He has said that he is not committed to Church teachings about homosexuality and could well enter a gay relationship in the future. He claims that church leaders are mistaken in their teachings about homosexuality. So Mayne is an example of a new kind of activist, people who treasure their membership in the LDS Church, but who don't accept its teachings in this area.
  • Jason Park admitted his homosexual feelings at the age of 31 after being married 4 years. After founding and participating in the original Evergreen International\Evergreen support group and going through therapy, he has since ceased his homosexual behavior and found peace with his feelings and happiness in his family life. He has since written 3 books concerning homosexuality (Resolving Homosexual Problems: A Guide for LDS Men; Understanding Male Homosexual Problems: An Introduction for Latter-day Saints; Helping LDS Men Resolve their Homosexual Problems: A Guide for Family, Friends, and Church Leaders) and a scholarly paper Overcoming Male Homosexual Problems. He is a popular speaker at Evergreen International conferences.
  • Rich Wyler was excommunicated from the church for a time, but has since rejoined the church. He was married and then widowed. He is the founder and executive director of People Can Change and co-creator and leader of Journey into Manhood. He established Higher Path Life Coaching and began coaching professionally in 2005. He leads telephone-based coaching group called "A Wife's Journey: Caring for Yourself and Your Family When Your Husband Struggles With Homosexuality or Addiction."

Former Mormons

  • Bruce Bastian served an LDS mission to Italy, graduated from Brigham Young University, and married in the LDS temple before coming out. He and a BYU professor developed and co-founded WordPerfect software for word processing. He currently serves on the Board of the Human Rights Campaign, America's largest lesbian and gay rights political action committee. In 2008, Bastian donated $1 million to fight California Proposition 8 (2008), which officially and legally defined marriage as between a man and a woman within the state of California.
  • Dustin Lance Black is a gay writer for the HBO Series Big Love about a fictitious polygamous sect in Utah. In 2008 he won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay for Milk, a movie about the slaying in 1978 of gay civil rights leader and San Francisco City Supervisor, Harvey Milk. Black is now a widely-revered gay civil rights advocate himself.
  • John Cameron is a former Brigham Young University student who participated in electro-shock aversion therapy sessions on campus in 1976 with the goal of changing his sexual orientation to heterosexual. The controversial therapy was conducted by PhD student Max Ford McBride under the direction of Dr. D. Eugene Thorne of the Psychology Department. While hooked to electrodes, the subjects were shown pornographic images of men while simultaneously being shocked. The experience was so traumatic for Cameron that he left Mormonism. In 2006, he finished writing a play about his experience, titled simply 14, in reference to the fourteen men who were the subjects of this particular experiment. The play was first staged at the University of Iowa in 2007.
  • Michael Glatze is a former gay rights activist and publisher of Young Gay America YGA Magazine. Glatze has since left homosexuality and was baptized into the LDS Church. He stresses that "Jesus, however, is what, ultimately, changed me." Glatze left the church within two years after his conversion and considers himself a conservative Christian.
  • Kate Kendell is a lesbian lawyer from Utah who currently serves as the Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. She graduated from the University of Utah in 1988 and became the first staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah. Kate and her partner, Sandy Holmes, live in San Francisco with their two children, as well as Kate's daughter from a previous marriage.
  • D. Michael Quinn is a well-known historian of Mormonism and former professor of History at Brigham Young University. He was excommunicated in September 1993 for publishing historical accounts he claimed revised traditional Mormon history. He then came out of the closet as gay and published Same Sex Dynamics Among Ninetheenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example in 1996. He currently resides in Los Angeles.

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