(Admin note) No More Strangers is a new forum seeking to advance the dialogue regarding LGBT people and Mormonism. As such, it has the good fortune of having bloggers who have made significant contributions to Latter-day Saint LGBT people, their…
Category: Spirituality
I practiced the wrong song!
I heard a story in church on Easter morning about a pianist who was accompanying a service a few years ago. After one beautiful musical number, she started the final song for the group to sing. It didn’t sound quite…
Why We Must Not Give Up On The Church (And Reflections On An Inspiring Event In The Chicago Stake)
Last year, after my class on Mormon history, in which I had discussed with my students the Mormon belief in modern day revelation and modern-day prophets, I overheard the following comment in a conversation between two of my students: “The…
Easter Reflections of a Gay Man
By Aaron Tabacco (cross posted from his blog Quorum of the Outcasts) You know, the entire Passover and Easter season used to be my very favorite time of the year for spiritual renewal. Not in a social connect-with-family-and-friends-and-food sort of way…but…
Heavenly Mother Intervenes for a Gay Man
By Edward J. (originally from his blog gailymormon) I delivered this talk in sacrament meeting at the Washington DC Third Ward on Sunday, January 20, 2013. The first counselor in the bishopric asked me to speak on how the gospel has…
Gifts From My Faith Tradition
My family and I sat huddled in our small living room staring intently at the projection on our wall. We were in the middle of a slideshow of the story of Joseph Smith that the missionaries had come to show…
Outing Esther
By Johnny Townsend (originally from his blog Queer Mormon) Women do not often have starring roles in the scriptures, so when they do, it must be because they’ve done something extraordinary. Surely, women did many more interesting or incredible things…
My Little Brother’s Mission
By Sam Clayton (originally posted to his blog http://carnivalsofaffection.wordpress.com/) My little brother Emmett was recently denied his wish to serve a 2-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church), because he revealed that he could…
No Respecter of Persons
From a very early age I was taught that God was fundamentally fair. We were given laws and told to obey. We were taught that we would be punished for disobedience. We were taught that there was an atonement and…
To Young Men Only: The Gay Version
By Joseph Broom For many of us older gay Mormon guys, the attitude of the LDS Church toward homosexuality was succinctly stated in a talk entitled “To Young Men Only,” given by Elder Boyd K. Packer in priesthood session of…