BIG LOVE
one else,” she said. She’d long ago
stopped obeying the Mormon prohibition against blasphemy.
SALLY’S FRIENDS include a
handful of lesbians with Mormon
backgrounds, and nearly all of
them share her desire to be seen
as normal. “I get up early, I eat my
breakfast, I love my spouse,” said
one woman in her 50s at a brunch
at Sally’s house the morning of
the big wedding reception, ticking
the items off on her fingers.
Another woman said she still
felt deeply tied to Mormon culture, even though the church had
excommunicated her for being
gay some 20 years ago. “You can
take the girl out of the church,
but you can’t take the church out
of the girl,” she said.
Sally and others hope the
church will come to see same-sex
commitments as no less deserving
of praise and pride than heterosexual marriages. And they can already point to signs that Mormon
institutions are inching in that
direction. Over the past several
years, the church has backed state
and local anti-discrimination
measures protecting gay people.
Early last year, it acknowledged on
a church website that gay people
HUFFINGTON
03.09.14
“do not choose to have such attractions” — a step away from its
previous position that gay people could change their sexuality
through prayer and therapy.
Perhaps the most striking sign
arrived last month, when the
church announced it would not
be filing a friend of the court brief
in the unfolding legal battle over
“You can take the girl
out of the church, but
you can’t take the
church out of the girl.”
same-sex marriage in Utah, as it
did last winter in a pair of briefs
supporting Proposition 8 and the
Defense of Marriage Act.
What the church has yet to
signal, however, is any intention
of discarding its basic theological view that same-sex marriage
is wrong. Just because the church
sits out the fight in Utah doesn’t
mean that it will open the doors
of its temples to gay couples. For
that to happen, under LDS doctrine, the president of the church
would have to receive a revelation
from God, not unlike the one that
led to the renunciation of polygamy more than a century ago.
Opposing sides of Utah’s mar-