The Death and Resurrection of “the Homosexual”

This final chapter traces the intertwined theological, linguistic, psychological, and political transitions LDS leaders instituted in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Church leaders adopted new terms like “same-sex attraction,” and eventually returned to the terms “gay,” “lesbian,” and “homosexual” as acceptable. The Church also introduced new teachings about homosexuality in the afterlife and new policies for transgender folks. As same-sex marriage was legalized in the United States, church leaders increasingly shifted away from “family values” to “religious freedom” to frame their opposition.

Sodom and Cumorah

This chapter follows a competing set of ideologies for thinking about same-sex relationships from the 1950s to the 1980s, from moral causes and cures to psychological causes and cures. Mormon theories of homosexuality focused primarily on men and believed that it was a result of deficient masculinity. Church leaders invested in new institutions and theories to provide a cure to homosexuality during this period, including both pastoral counselling and reparative therapy. There also emerged a new anxiety about the word “homosexuality” as conveying unchangability, and LDS leaders cautioned against using the term. New teachings on transgender identity also arose in this period.

Modern Mormonism and Gender Theory in Context

The introduction sets the parameters of the book’s focus on Modern Mormonism in America, which arises after World War II. It further sets this period in the context of gender theory and the history of sexuality, to explore how Mormon approaches to these topics are situated between competing theories of sexual difference in modernity, gender essentialism and gender fluidity.

Pure Marriage

From the 1950s to the 1970s, Mormons preached against interracial marriages and in favor of patriarchal marriages. This chapter explores the interrelationships between race, gender, and sexuality in Mormon thought in this period. As part of a broader conservative investment in values of home and family, Latter-day Saints embraced these teachings as core doctrines to stabilize racial and gender differences in the face of erosion of difference. These teachings underwent changes after a 1978 revelation ended priesthood and temple restrictions for Black LDS members.

Mormonism in the History of Sexuality

This book has explored one example of a set of teachings that are widely believed to be quite stable in Mormonism but have actually been open to dramatic changes. LDS teachings about marriage, gender roles, sexual difference, and sexuality have undergone remarkable transformation since World War II. Teachings on marriage, sexual practices within marriage, and gender roles all trended toward greater liberalization during the period of modern Mormonism, even if they lagged behind broader cultural changes. But this progress had its trade-offs. Latter-day Saints could accommodate liberalizing trends on race, marriage, sexual contacts, birth control, and gender roles in part because their attention focused on homosexuality as a particularly egregious problem.

Proclaiming the New Heterosexual Family

In 1995 Church leaders issued “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” which codified LDS teachings on sex, marriage, and gender roles. The document coincided with further accommodation to feminist concerns, but increased legal and political opposition to same-sex marriage. Church leaders backed political campaigns with the Religious Right in Hawaii, California, and elsewhere to ban same-sex marriage, at the same time also showing greater accommodation to other LGBT rights. Church teachings on homosexuality also evolved in this period to confront biological etiologies, but remained committed to reparative therapy.

Politics and the Patriarchal Order

This chapter explores how Mormons engaged with the politicization of gender roles in its anti-feminist crusade against the Equal Rights Amendment and its anti-homosexuality efforts in sodomy laws. Church leaders joined with an emergent Religious Right that was reshaping American politics. These efforts warned against gender fluidity and sought to protect against it in the law and culture, especially with respect to women working outside the home. But Church leaders also began to adopt moderate feminist reforms, including softening teachings on patriarchal marriage to accommodate egalitarian relationships, birth control, and more permissive sexuality within marriage.