Editor’s Note: To do something a little different, we would like to present the research of Gary Horlacher, Ph.D. His study, Homosexuality Among Highly Religious Mormons (or HAHRM) will be presented here in serialized format, once a week, initially covering seven blog posts. We encourage our readers to comment and discuss this highly interesting research. [...]
Posts under ‘Coming Out’
Journey of An Ex-Mormon: With Faith, All Things Are Possible
I knew I was different from a very young age. I remember, around 7 years old, when other boys in my neighborhood would want to go out and play baseball on Sundays, I wanted to go to church, to worship God. When I was 10 years old, some Mormon missionaries came through our neighborhood. They [...]
I Love Who I Am
I was born and raised in the Mormon faith. I went to church every week, I went to youth group every week, and I read my scriptures and prayed every day. I knew I was going to serve a mission, get married in the temple, and raise a family in the church. Nothing was going [...]
Pioneer Day at the Hotel Utah Saloon
On a Sunday evening in July, a couple dozen former Mormons and guests packed the upstairs alcove in San Francisco’s Hotel Utah Saloon. Some had driven more than two hours for the yearly Pioneer Day gathering, a chance to regain some of the community for which the Church is known. The draw endures for decades: [...]
Waiting Outside the Gate
It’s a cold December day on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. My family and I approach the Salt Lake LDS Temple for my brother’s wedding. I love to see the temple, I’m going there someday, the words I sang as a young eager primary boy echo in my mind. From the beginning of my [...]
An Unconventional Testimony
I grew up in Alabama, where one of the few beliefs the many Baptists and the not-so-many Mormons held in common was that being gay meant being pathologically oversexed, so much so that gender didn’t matter. When I left for college up north, I wasn’t concerned about challenges to my faith. I’d been a [...]
The Calling
George Cole LGBT Mormons Asked to Participate in Survey Affirmation Calendar July 14-31 “Mormons, Mothers and Monsters” staged in Pitssfield, Mass. July 15 Movie Night & Potluck in Salt Lake July 24 Pioneer Day</a August 1 Deadline to submit a nomination for the Mortensen Award August 3-6 Sunstone Symposium in Ogden August 15 Deadline [...]
Affirmation Messenger, 21-Sep-10
Growing up, I had a friend who’s uncle was, to put things gently, a couple of bricks short of a load. He was a nice enough guy, but every now and then he would say or do something that was just, well, bizarre. Fortunately, we lived in a small-enough town that everyone dismissed it, saying, “Oh, it’s just Uncle Billy.” But sooner or later, there comes a time when you have to stop making apologies and excuses for the behavior of other people.
Bigotry and Stereotypes
UPDATE: I should have spent a little more time on this one. It appears to be either (1) a humor site, or less likely (2) much farther off the deep end than originally thought. I apologize for the inconvenience. Over at ChristWire Stephenson Billings asks Is My Husband GAY? Right now in America there are [...]
Affirmation Messenger, 30 August 2010
Faith matters. The one thing we all have in common is faith. For most of us it was faith that Joseph Smith is a prophet, that the church is true, and that Jesus Christ is our savior. I think a fair number of us still hold at least one of those points to be true, [...]