#hahahahahahhaa i am. hmmmm this was a lot

[criticalrolo]

Hey Hope you're doing okay It's a really random question (feel free to ignore it) but it just happened and I saw your ex-mormon tag My cousin who grew up in a very strict mormon family and got married at nineteen and had two kids very young Just came out as a lesbian and left her ex husband As someone who was in this religion, do you think she can stay in it and will be accepted? Like is there lgbt space there ? And even if there is what's the general view on the inside ?

Short answer: no

Longer answer: Mormons will talk about how they “love” lgbt people but you have to know that this is pretty much. just a straight up lie when you compare their beliefs and practices to how they want to be perceived as loving Everyone No Matter What. 

In mormonism, it is required that gay people stay completely celibate for their whole lives until they die and God “sorts things out” in heaven, meaning that a gay man would be “given” a wife or a lesbian would be “given” to a husband. And by celibacy, they mean no having any sort of romantic inclinations ever. All gay thoughts must be repressed, no holding hands, no kissing, CERTAINLY no marriage. They are required to just stick out being alone in this life until God can make you straight in the afterlife. Hopefully I don’t have to explain to anyone that telling gay people “everything will be better and God will fix you once you die” is. not great.

The additional problem with this is, Mormons believe in an “Eternal Plan of Happiness” which necessitates marriage in the mormon temple for someone to be truly happy. Other kinds of marriage/living together without being married outside of mormonism (referenced specifically in a gay way lmao) aren’t “real” marriages.

Iconic quote from a church apostle Jeffrey Holland:

“Can you see the moral schizophrenia that comes from pretending you are one [in marriage], pretending you have made solemn promises before God, sharing the physical symbols and the physical intimacy of your counterfeit union but then fleeing, retreating, severing all such other aspects of what was meant to be a total obligation?” (Ensign, 1998, pg. 76-77)

From 2015-2019, it was mormon doctrine that if a gay person got married, they would be automatically excommunicated and their children would not be allowed to join the church until they were 18, no longer lived with their gay parents, and specifically disavowed their parents’ marriage. Making being gay a more heavily punished sin than murder/rape/etc.! If your parent commits a crime in mormonism, then you personally are not judged or restricted at all. If your parents are gay, then you have to take specific steps to distance yourself from them. From a church that thinks that the only way to be truly happy is to be Mormon and take all the necessary steps in mormonism such as baptism and being sealed in marriage you can see why this is such a huge deal to them to deny it to people! (This policy was reversed in 2019, which makes it kind wild to think that god apparently changed his mind about how severely to punish gay people within a span of four years. don’t worry now gay marriage is just equivalent to murder/rape instead of being worse)

The church has been staunchly opposed to every form of progress for lgbt rights for decades. In 2008 they advocated heavily for prop 8 in california, which would deny lgbt people the right to marry. They’ve also been vocally anti-gay marriage in their own sermons and addresses to the mormon population in a service called General Conference. As a lesbian who was mormon until I turned 18, I can tell you without any doubt that an anti-gay message was worked into nearly EVERY lesson/sermon/etc. It’s been their THING for the past 20 years or so, once everyone called them out on being racist and they had to try to stop that. (the insanely racist aspects of mormonism is ANOTHER post for another time)

Let’s go through some of my favorite anti “same sex attracted” quotes from the past couple of years!

“Our knowledge of God’s revealed plan of salvation requires us to oppose many of the current social and legal pressures to retreat from traditional marriage or to make changes that confuse or alter gender or homogenize the differences between men and women,” Oaks said in an address to the church's General Conference in October. Those pressures, he said, come from none other than Satan, who “seeks to confuse gender, to distort marriage, and to discourage childbearing, especially by parents who will raise children in truth.” -Dallan H. Oaks, General Conference Oct. 2018

“There are no homosexual members of the church.” David A. Bednar, Feb. 23, 2016

pretty much anything Boyd K. Packer ever said, fuck this guy for real

more boyd again I hate this man

“There are some men who entice young men to join them in these immoral acts. If you are ever approached to participate in anything like that, it is time to vigorously resist. While I was in a mission on one occasion, a missionary said he had something to confess. I was very worried because he just could not get himself to tell me what he had done. After patient encouragement he finally blurted out, 'I hit my companion.' 'Oh, is that all,' I said in great relief. 'But I floored him,' he said. After learning a little more, my response was 'Well, thanks. Somebody had to do it, and it wouldn't be well for a General Authority to solve the problem that way.' I am not recommending that course to you, but I am not omitting it. You must protect yourself.“ - Boyd K. Packer, 1976

There’s about a million more, but a good summary exists here on wikipedia about the church’s changing homophobic stances. Including all the electroshock therapy at BYU! good times.

Here are some good videos that explain why mormons trying to say they’re not homophobic are Complete Bullshit

On a more personal level, I can tell you that my experience with homophobia in the mormon church has been pretty devastatingly awful and I’m still experiencing the repercussions of being raised in an environment that actively told me what a horrible thing I was for Being Gay. Not all experiences are universal of course, but I can pretty much guarantee that any lgbt people still in the church are experiencing some major cognitive dissonance in order to justify their treatment there and keep believing that this is what God wants for them.

The homophobia usually isn’t outwardly violent and obvious -- it’s always couched in “language of love” while still conveying the meaning that gay people are inherently bad and will be better off once they die. Some people are still trying to change the church’s general opinion about this, especially the younger generation. The fact is, though, that the mormon church is inherently homophobic and that its doctrine cannot be separated from that. So, your cousin might know some good people who will do their best to accept her in spite of their mormon beliefs. Just know that those people will also probably be believing all the above things I’ve stated as absolute truth/doctrine at the same time.