Invictus Pilgrim formerly blogged at invictuspilgrim.blogspot.com. For personal reasons, he has taken that blog private and has started at new blog at mohosapiens.blogspot.com. The following was his initial post on his new blog. A little over 15 months ago, I was prompted (not in the Mormon sense, but in the common-usage sense) to start blogging ...
A breakup between NARTH and Exodus International has been years in the making. But before I get to it, I think it’s interesting how it’s coming up at the same time that actress Cynthia Nixon is being lambasted by gay rights activists for saying she’s gay by “choice” (and rejecting a bisexual label): I understand ...
I’ve been thinking about how a couple leaders of the LDS Church have vocalized how they wouldn’t mind the 2009 nondiscrimination laws in Salt Lake City (in housing and employment, on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity) be expanded across the state of Utah. Specifically, what they’re interested in is duplicating how those ...
The oldest Catholic newspaper in the US published and quickly retracted an article that suggested that same-sex attraction is caused by Satan. The logic went like this: Disruptive imbalances in nature that thwart encoded processes point to supernatural actors who, unlike God, do not have the good of persons at heart. [...] When natural causes ...
North Star is a Church-affiliated organization that serves as “a place of community for Latter-day Saints dealing with issues surrounding homosexual attraction who desire to live in harmony with the teachings of Jesus Christ and the values and doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Since it formed in 2006, it has ...
I wanted to get my two cents in on this topic, including the way the topic is being handled. Thanks to chanson for bringing together the links. A quick summary: Last month, Mitch Mayne, an openly gay man in a San Fransisco ward was called to be ward executive secretary, a position in the bishopric. ...
I read in the paper the a few weeks ago of the death of General Authority emeritus Marion D. Hanks. Elder Hanks very nearly had the privilege of being the first person I ever came out to. Here’s the story, which happened some 32 years ago. My father was a stake president during my adolescent ...
“He must have seen the large tractor trailer approaching from under the Couch Street overpass and timed the jump. Bobby executed a sudden and effortless back flip and disappeared over the railing. The driver tried to swerve, but there was no time … Robert Warren Griffith, age twenty years and two months, had died instantly ...
I just received word that the Human Rights Campaign — in cooperation with Equality Utah and the Utah Pride Center is organizing a number of fun events in Salt Lake City this coming weekend! For example, on Saturday afternoon, in the library, there will be a panel on supportive families and healthy communities and their ...
I felt disheartened as I walked away from the restaurant. I had just had lunch with a former priesthood leader (whom I call “John”) who had responded relatively compassionately to a coming out letter I had sent to a few former close family friends. His response, among the few I had received, had been the ...
There was a heated discussion here a few months ago about mixed-orientation marriages. What doesn’t feel resolved for me is how to assess the patriarchy gay Mormon men engage in when they marry women. A couple aspects that seem obvious are the fact that the power of the priesthood runs through men only, so that ...
A recent post on a Mormon-themed group blog asked the question What are some of the common themes that emerge in patriarchal societies? It then compared these societies with Mormonism. There were a number of parallels. To me, the most interesting aspect of this article was what it didn’t mention. Here are the salient items ...
I have to say that, a year ago, I knew of only a handful of LDS families that were said to have gay members, but I knew nothing of any challenges they may have faced because of this. I had no knowledge of damage that had been done to families by the Church’s involvement in ...
I came across this article in the Advocate that lays out the following argument: since the majority of Americans don’t think think gay/lesbian intimacy is morally wrong or sinful (based on a 2010 poll), we now to need to “allow for some discrimination and relinquish the ‘zero tolerance’ mind-set.” In short, “We need to give ...
I probably don’t need to tell you that there have been some amazing Gay Pride events recently. Which didn’t go unnoticed by the LDS church. (Sadly, I didn’t get to go — at least not this year.) On a related note people are analyzing and rethinking their marriages (among other parts of their journey). And ...