The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (popularly known as the Mormon Church) has launched “Mormons and Gays“, a website from which it updates its doctrine on homosexuality and collects various personal testimonies in an attempt to ingratiate itself with their homosexual believers. A gesture that takes place at a time when positions in favor of LGBT rights are multiplying among the most progressive sectors of Mormonism.
The Mormon church admits, for example, that being homosexual is not a choice, insists that being attracted to people of the same sex is not a sin (having homosexual relationships is) or recognizes that in the past it was wrong to recommend people Homosexuals marry persons of the opposite sex. The Mormon church even admits that one can be openly homosexual and a Mormon clergyman, as long as they remain celibate.
Since 2010, the Mormon Church stopped considering attraction between people of the same sex a sin, however, maintaining homosexual behavior as sinful (a policy similar to that maintained, for example, by the Catholic hierarchy). At that time it was a significant advance: until then homosexual desire was considered sinful and the guidelines of the Mormon Church included the recommendation to refer those who felt said desire to a "professional", a recommendation that disappeared from the "manual of instructions” that the church makes available to its leaders.
Movements in favor of LGBT rights
It so happens that in recent times positions in favor of LGBT rights have been multiplying among the most progressive sectors of Mormonism. More than 300 members of Mormons Building Bridges (“Mormons building bridges”, we could translate, a group that wishes to convey a message of love and solidarity towards the LGBT community, participated in the LGBT Pride celebration in Salt Lake City, Utah, in June , the "Mormon state" par excellence. A gesture that was celebrated by the well-known screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, openly gay and born into a Mormon family, who participated in that same Pride as a "grand marshal". Shortly after, more of a hundred Mormon believers abandoned the discipline of the church in an act in Salt Lake City, among other reasons as a protest against their attitude against same-sex marriage.
Already weeks before, young LGBT university students, students of the most important Mormon university in the United States, recorded a beautiful video for It Gets Better (a well-known campaign against the suicide of LGBT teenagers) in which they commented on their process of accepting their own sexuality. Shortly after, it was Mormon parents of LGBT youth who picked up the witness and recorded a second video, in this case referring to their own experiences as parents.
Movements that do not lose their importance if they are situated within the framework of the evolution that American society is experiencing with respect to the recognition of same-sex couples: it should not be forgotten in any case that the Mormon Church stood out in 2008 as one of the most active lobbies in favor of the passage of Proposition 8, the amendment to the California Constitution that prohibits same-sex marriage. In fact, he even lied about the amount of his donations to the homophobic campaign and hid the true amount. An amendment, by the way, that has been declared contrary to the United States Constitution by the federal justice, and that now awaits the ruling of the United States Supreme Court.
