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Coming Out | She couldn’t bring herself to ask me…

Posted 7 years ago Tagged Boyfriends choir Mothers

I never realized I had to come out as gay. Personally, I have known I was gay since 5th grade. I’ve always been very small, but athletic, not overly feminine, but just enough that I considered the fact I was … Read the rest here

Latter Gay Stories

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IN or OUT of Mormonism.

Latter Gay Stories

8 hours ago

In April 1981, Elder Hartman Rector Jr., a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, stood at General Conference and told Mormon families that children with a “happy family experience” would not “want to be homosexual.” He called homosexuality “an acquired addiction” comparable to drugs, alcohol and pornography. This wasn’t an obscure comment from a private meeting. It came from the General Conference pulpit.

Think about what that teaching did inside Mormon homes. If your son was gay, maybe you hadn’t given him a happy enough childhood. If your daughter was gay, perhaps something had gone wrong in your family. Parents were handed guilt while their gay children were taught to see themselves as addicts—something acquired, something broken, something a better family might have prevented.

Then something remarkable happened: over 20 years later the Church removed that entire section from the published version of Rector’s Conference talk. The official transcript online today goes directly from Rector saying children will want families of their own to a discussion of family history. The homosexuality passage is simply gone.

Contemporary reporting and historical documentation preserved what he actually said from the pulpit—even after the church’s deletions.

Today, the Church handbook says it “does not take a position on the causes of same-sex attraction,” and Church Family Services has stated that efforts to change sexual orientation are ineffective and harmful.

But deleting paragraphs out of a General Conference talk doesn’t delete what it taught people to believe about themselves or their children. Queer Latter-day Saints heard it. Their parents heard it. Many of us built our marriages, families, expectations and entire lives around teachings the Church would later quietly delete.

The words might have been deleted from the transcript, but the consequences did not. And here we are today. ... See MoreSee Less

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Latter Gay Stories

9 hours ago

The state of South Carolina approved nearly $3.7 million in grants for museums, orchestras, festivals and theaters across the state—but two organizations were carved out despite having already gone through the same review process: the Greenville Gay Men’s Chorus and Proud Mary Theatre Company. Both are LGBTQ+ groups. They were told to return in October and defend their “artistic merit” before the commission would decide whether to release the money.

Emails obtained through public records requests show commissioners personally objected to the groups because of their LGBTQ+ focus. Jessica Rourke wrote that she would not fund organizations “structured around specific sexual orientations”. Russell “Rip” Parks called the groups “totally inconsistent with what the SCAC wishes to promote” and said they could “promote their agendas privately,” but should not receive state support.

The dispute began as commissioners questioned whether the grants conflicted with a Trump executive order targeting federal funding for “gender ideology,” even though Trump’s executive order did not control South Carolina’s state arts grants.

The ACLU of South Carolina later warned that using anti-LGBTQ viewpoints in grant decisions could violate the First Amendment. And when the commission approved the remaining grants, it also adopted a rule saying recipients could not use state money to “promote any ideology”—some lawyers called this the commissioner’s attempt at trying to cover their 🫏.

The money being held back is small when considering the full package: $13,050 for the Greenville chorus and $2,063, plus $1,803 in bridge funding, for Proud Mary.

Both organizations received state arts grants last year and had already made it through the commission’s thorough process. But out of nearly 180 recipients, just these two LGBTQ groups were told to prove themselves again. No one else.

Greenville Gay Men’s Chorus has since launched a fundraiser to cover the expected shortfall. Executive director Mary Adam warned against allowing legislators to hand-pick which art receives support, leaving only “the art deemed appropriate by the state.”

Their GoFund Me is here: gofund.me/aebb1fa55 ... See MoreSee Less

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Latter Gay Stories

1 day ago

If you’re in—or around Utah, pick up your tickets for this event! I know Jason CoZmo well enough to know that his love and respect for Dolly cannot just be told with words alone.

One of the world’s most visible and recognized Dolly impersonators is right here in Salt Lake City!

www.facebook.com/share/p/1HcWJgHrL3/?mibextid=wwXIfr ... See MoreSee Less

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Coming Out | She couldn’t bring herself to ask me…

Latter Gay Stories

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