Mormons: Standing on the Side of Love

I wrote this comment on YouTube:

Thank you to everyone poured their hearts into making this video.

I could nitpick about the phrase “same sex attraction” or some of the other phrasing, but I recognize that the people who are in this video are struggling with their feelings, thoughts, teachings, and societal messages that they have received over decades. In the face of this they have they have chosen love.

Many of the comments accuse Mormons in this video of trying to “repair their image” or arguing that they are part of a “hateful cult”. I’m not going to make excuses for Prop 8 or many other anti-GLBT efforts that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has engaged in.

No church is perfect.

My own liberal faith has its negative history in our treatment of GLBT people. In Unitarian Universalist LGBT History & Facts it notes that “In 1969 the first UU minister came out as homosexual on the national scene: Rev. James L. Stoll. He never served a congregation again. Prior to that, ministers discovered to be gay were fired from their congregations (though once one was rehired as a custodian).” Yes, that was 43 years ago, and as a faith we’ve walked on a path of greater acceptance and inclusion. I know this path was trail blazed by many individual Unitarian Universalists who shared their vision of love in the face of others who sowed mistrust, uneasiness, and half-platitudes of acceptance.

Both the Mormons in that video and I agree on at least one: a vision of love and inclusion.

I know that the Mormon community isn’t where I’d like them to be on accepting GLBT people, but I fully embrace those Mormons who are Standing on the Side of Love. I welcome them into my community, my home, and my heart.