“I don’t want the Church if the Church doesn’t want me” - Mormonism’s impact on LGBTQ+ people: A case study of LGBTQ+ ExMormons

Abstract

This study aims to find out ‘Mormonism’s impact on the lives of LGBTQ+ people’ and explore ‘the reasons why LGBTQ+ Mormons choose to leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).’ LDS Church has a long history of discrimination against its queer members and also notoriously campaigned to support Proposition 8 which was a California ballot proposition to define marriage between a man and a woman in 2008. The Church’s current rhetoric on LGBTQ+ people is “it is not a sin to have same-sex attraction but it is a sin to act on it.” The Church also announced its support for the Respect for Marriage Act at the end of 2022. While the previous studies usually include both queer Mormons and queer ExMormons, this study involves only ExMormons and takes its departure from a human rights perspective. Two important dimensions in the human rights field such as discrimination and freedom have been utilised to analyse the data and discuss the research questions. Semi-structured interviews with nine LGBTQ+ ExMormons from the USA were carried out. A qualitative content analysis has been adopted to analyse the data through theories of discrimination and freedom. The study focuses on results that impact the lives of LGBTQ+ Mormons such as reinforced gender roles, the Church’s lagging behind the US society, feelings of shame and denial of sexuality, celibacy and depression. Additionally, the levels of discrimination queer ExMormons have been exposed to and how they have chosen to leave the discriminatory environment have been discussed by operationalising discrimination and freedom.