One of the foremost leaders of the Mormon Church, Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland, addressed the staff at Brigham Young University 2021 University Conference recently, but his speech was intended to reach a much larger audience, including students and the broader community.
Holland could have chosen to speak to any number of critical topics, including the life-upending pandemic that will soon round the corner on two years of uncertainty and strife. He could have instilled comfort and hope and leaned into the offerings that have long made organized religion a place people turn to in their darkest moments for refuge.
It came as no surprise to me, though, that Holland instead devoted nearly 1,500 of his 3,700 words trying to reconcile how his church should not condone or advocate for LGBTQ people, who, his says, members have “spent hours with them, and wept and prayed and wept again in an effort to offer love and hope.”
Holland’s vitriol was cemented when he invoked what many would interpret as violent language, particularly in a school setting, conjuring guns as a means of protecting the religion and particularly the doctrine of the family and so-called traditional marriage.
“I would like to hear a little more musket fire from this temple of learning,” he said.
I don’t know about you, but I can think of a few alternative ways to show love for our LGBTQ brethren than weeping or wielding firearms. Unless, of course, you are crying tears of joy to celebrate their bravery in stepping into their true selves, the selves that they were born into, that God intended, and which The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long made us hide, or else risk ostracization or excommunication.
I know firsthand how the church time and again has chosen to impose fear and judgment and exclusion over embracing all of God’s creations as they are. I spent my entire life in the church trying to live up to its insurmountable expectations to lead a life that ran inherently counter to who I am. I am a deeply faithful person who believes in God and Christ. But in order for me to maintain my relationship with them, I, as a queer human, had to leave.
Five years ago, I took a step back and realized that I had been party to something awful. I had clung so tightly to an institution that catered to hate and bigotry. I saw how it manipulated people, drove them to the brink, and over it. I saw how people took their own, precious lives — BYU students included — because they were made to feel they were unworthy by the church, told they would never make it past the pearly gates of heaven because they were sinners, simply for who they are or who they loved.
I saw the hurt that was coming from those students at BYU after Holland’s epithets, which were intended to sniff out the faculty that were sympathetic to the extreme duress LGBTQ students at BYU were facing. These students now have little hope that there will be any change. A hostile environment got even more perilous after Holland’s speech. They have no refuge. Is that what Jesus would have done? My heart says, most definitively not.
It is these reasons and a lifetime more that I submitted my resignation to the church. I should have left a long time ago. I should have left when I saw children killing themselves over how they were being treated. I didn’t, and I will always feel shame and guilt over that.
I know I am not alone.
People are in fact turning away from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in droves, with more than one-third of all kids being raised in the church leaving and more yet disengaging at higher rates than any generation prior, according to Pew. Indeed, as other Christian denominations, including the pope himself, have shifted, even if slightly, in order to accommodate today’s social realities and bring more people into the fold, Holland and the LDS Church are doing the opposite. They are leaning into the most egregious tenets and moving on the wrong side of history.
Nothing good ever came of digging one’s heels into quicksand. The church will only stand to lose more people and render itself irrelevant as younger generations who are more open to accepting the full spectrum of who we are and who we love come of age. But the urgency remains that young people are suffering at their hands all the while.
I don’t know for sure what the church is considering or what they might do, but I do know that in order to truly open your arms to those willing to come into your ranks, you must first lay down your musket.
Stefani Seeley
Stefani Seeley, a mom, retail employee and exiting life-long member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She spent most of her life in the The Wasatch Front region of Utah as an active member of the LDS Church.
