Apostles counseling members about the queer community has become a consistent feature of General Conference. This blog explores this trend and some potential effects.
Every 6 months and always just a few days before, I realize general conference weekend is this upcoming weekend. In my youth I looked forward to it, as a young parent I eagerly awaited it, and now I nervously anticipate it. Those of us in the queer community understand that having our identity counseled about during gencon has become as routine as the floral arrangements that adorn the stand. It’s a fact that we will be talked about by speakers whom we have trusted and that many of our family, friends, neighbors, law-makers, and employers trust these men and recognize them as prophets, seers, and revelators.
There’s a great duality in general conference that I’ve yet to fully wrap my head around. There’s a huge emphasis on love and compassion which feels at odds with the consistently degrading messages about the queer community. Such messages include proclaiming our life experiences “counterfeit” and describing us as being under Satan’s power and bringing about the destruction of the family. Our romantic relationships are reduced to “same sex attraction” which emphasizes only the physical part of a partnership. A partnership just as dynamic and rich as heterosexual ones. It’s difficult to reconcile how members can love me but also believe that my own relationships and identity are a threat to their marriage, family, and society.
Usually the week after conference my social media is filled with gratitude for #gencon posts, links to inspiring talks, and pictures of visiting the beautiful Utah canyons, but it’s an incomplete picture. Hiding among the gratitude posts next to the memes of helpline numbers for the LGBTQ+ community (and especially its youth) is the elephant in the room. The elephant being all the messages given that we with our “non-traditional” families cannot exist in exalted eternities. I have a lot of good memories of conference but as I’ve grown older I can see how gencon increasingly strains relationships due to counsel about the queer community. What is said about us causes pain for many members, past and present.
If I voice my worries leading up to conference it’s common to hear “just don’t listen then” or “why do you care?” Sought out or not, people still get exposed to the harmful messages whether that’s through news, social media, break room chatter, or altered relationships. For many, it comes from unwelcome text messages from “concerned” loved ones. This is all to say that conference doesn’t exist in a vacuum. What’s said gets repeated, internalized, and causes action. For example, counsel to not be alone with a member of the opposite sex can influence employment or promotions. Counsel about youth can alter friendships, and counsel regarding queer children can drastically change family dynamics.
I don’t understand why every conference includes remarks about the LGBTQ+ community that can affect our family, social, and work relationships let alone inspire helpline memes. I hope for a gencon free of describing fellow humans as poisoned wells, dead trees, counterfeit, bitter fruit, destroying families, and under Satan’s power. In reality, until members hold their leaders accountable for their harmful messages as loudly as they celebrate the inspiring ones, we can expect the rhetoric to continue to become more dire.
