LAST SUNDAY, I CAUGHT another glimpse of what it might be like to sit as an LGBTQIA congregant in a chapel surrounded by people you love, while they are comforted by a sermon that depicts your greatest hope as evil. If you’re LDS, you’ve likely had a high councilor deliver a classic sermon like the one mine did last Sunday, one that used thinly veiled language to praise those who resist “the pressures of the world” which “call good, evil and evil, good” by “fully sustaining the prophet.” While this language may be used to encourage avoidance of various sins, in this instance, it was also clearly coded as a rebuke against those of us who don’t accept and promote current LDS doctrine and policy about LGBTQIA people as eternal truth, whether we be LGBTQIA ourselves or an outspoken ally. The assumption is that if we disagree with the fallible human who serves us in the priesthood office of prophet, we disagree with God. Today, I’m not going to run a convoy of reason through the gaping holes in that logic. Rather, I want to speak specifically as an ally who was subjected to a type of public rebuke.

I don’t know if the high councilman knew he had a blogger in the congregation with a history of specific dissent, but many present did, considering I’ve known some of them for 20+ years. Among them, there are likely those who felt pleased I was present for the rebuke. I hope some felt concerned I’d been hurt by the coded accusation I promote evil. Some among my readership may wonder how and why I continue to subject myself to the kind of alienation I experienced Sunday. So here I am, using this limited space to scratch the surface of it all. 

I don’t know this high councilman, not even by name, but, in a way, I do know him because I know his expressed viewpoint. I don’t begrudge him his orthodoxy. We’ve all been taught that good LDS believe and do what we’re told by prophets, or we hide our discomfort and wait for it to go away. When it doesn’t, we’re told we lack humility. I’m paraphrasing, but he preached all of this, offering as evidence Elder Bednar’s 2018 teaching that prophetic revelation is a conclusion, not an explanation, and that evidence proving the prophet right in all things will eventually dawn. The high councilman then advised us to pray for confirmation. That’s the talk in a nutshell.

I doubt the speaker sees the irony in suggesting it’s an act of faith to approach God in prayer with a predetermined conclusion. Our faith should be reserved for God, not assigned to God’s servants. Once mortals substitute faith in God for faith in God’s servants, thinking the latter proves the former, they’ve laid in their path the ultimate stumbling block. In Mormonism, it’s called stiffneckedness and occurs when someone won’t turn their face to God because they think they already know the direction to go.

I suggest, however, that there’s no end-result difference between following “the world” and following the prophet if we do so because social pressure bears down on us. The social pressure I felt to conform last Sunday was smothering, but not just for me, for every congregant present. When there’s only one answer that’s acceptable, there’s only one way to fit in. Praying for confirmation this way is antithetical to praying for guidance, inspiration, and knowledge. The idea that we should pray for confirmation until we get it is far more likely to shift us toward cultural indoctrination than bring us closer to truth. This applies to all spiritual matters, whether a teaching falls from the lips of a man ordained as a prophet or not. 

Why do I dissent regarding policies about LGBTQIA people? Because I’m called to, because I save my spiritual trust–my faith–for God, and because my prayers for confirmation have led me toward compassion, and that compassion introduced me to grace, both my need to receive it and my need to give it. I dissent because I’m here to fulfill a specific mission that cannot be achieved by surrender to anything or anyone other than itself. I dissent because Jesus has shown me how to take courage and how to disagree with religious leaders who, like all of us, are still working to understand the pure love of Christ. I dissent because no policy nor doctrine that has ever been delineated through the mortal lens (as each must be) is more important than the person it impacts. I dissent because I don’t believe that God has a separate grading system for LGBTQIA people. I dissent because I must follow the spiritual promptings I receive.

At church, we’re often taught that the purpose of gospel living is to keep us safe so we can return to God. If this is the foundation of a person’s commitment to Christ, their motivation to obey probably stems from fear–the fear they won’t measure up, the fear of being wrong, etc. Jesus was never motivated by fear, only by love. He forgives us in both our sin and our misunderstanding. He guides us, he welcomes us. I want to be like that. That kind of pure love cranks the mortal heart open so wide that we’re able to perceive one another as trying our best to figure out this complicated world we’ve been born into. One of the joys I’ve found in using love as my motivation (yes, even for dissent) is the destruction of fear in my spiritual life. I don’t fear being wrong, nor condemn others for being wrong. Well-meaning rebukes by those without my same experience or witness are understandable, even when they wound.

Perhaps we differ in our perspective and motivation, but I’m confident that we agree on the worth of souls. LGBTQIA souls are intertwined with all of us who are cishet. According to LDS doctrine, we are created of the same divine matter. Their hearts are as good as ours. When a man decides to marry another man, or a woman another woman, they form a family that will allow them the same blessing of human bonding, the same joy in their children, and ensure them the same growth opportunities marriage offers heterosexual couples. Withdrawing the membership from a married, gay or lesbian couple for pursuing the same path celebrated for heterosexuals is cruelty. Just because those set apart as prophets in the LDS church don’t see this doesn’t mean I should stop myself from seeing it. 

The high councilman proposed that a spiritual witness requires no evidence before we act upon it. What he seems to have forgotten, or perhaps has never known, is that Latter-day Saints once considered our religion a scientific one; Joseph Smith assured us that the Church he headed would accept truth wherever it is found and promised to incorporate that truth into our faith practice. Brother Joseph embraced secular learning, creating the School of the Prophets for the sole purpose of learning truth that came into the world through doors other than the ones opened by religion. D&C 9: 7-9 teaches us to use our minds in study, then go to God for revelation. It doesn’t tell us revelation comes as a conclusion that awaits evidence, but suggests precisely the opposite–that evidence is an important part of revelation and a springboard God uses to teach us.

I will act on the spiritual witness I’ve received to stand as an ally, but that witness isn’t without secular grounds. We already have evidence that full inclusion of LGBTQIA people, without caveats or asterisks, is the loving approach churches should be taking, not limiting or denying them full participation. This conclusion has been revealed by virtue of those trained in neuroscience, biology, genetics, and psychology, as well as through evidence offered by the lived experiences of queer people. The ancient cultural attitudes and practices recorded in the Old and New Testament by humans who were entirely ignorant of these disciplines should never be used to erase truths revealed today through these means, nor should our religious culture pressure us to ignore them. We are called to be truthseekers.

Allies, the orthodox may decry your advocacy, but your advocacy is how you’re implementing the pure love of Christ, and your perspective doesn’t need external validation for it to be authoritative. Your divine lineage and the love within you is authority enough. Remember, those who decry your allyship, casting it as a refusal “to fully sustain the prophet,” have, historically, always embraced the eventual policy and doctrinal shifts advocacy has encouraged. Hearts change when options appear. So, allies, be bold and take courage from the example Jesus set. Find strength in knowing that light is light, and you have light. That light is growing.

Light wins.

Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me. (D&C 9:7)

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