how can you stay in a church which teaches such terrible things about gay people?
I stay for a variety of reasons, but one is that by being here church members and leaders have to see that queer people exist and confront that what they teach about and require of us is unfair.
I think religions give people a purpose for their life, to feel like their life has meaning. Before science, religion attempted to explain the phenomena observed, but science has taken much of that role.
For thousands of years, people only observed the sun and planets from earth without telescopes or other tools, and it appeared that earth is at the center of the galaxy, everything revolves around the it. The Catholic Church came up with a beautiful theology for why earth is the center of God's creations and everything circles around us.
Galileo Galilei improved on the telescope and used it to record evidence that the earth actually orbits the sun. This challenged the theology of the church. Rather than recognize the reality of the evidence, the church declared Galileo a heretic and put tremendous pressure on him to make him recant the sun-centered theory, banned the publishing of his work, and kept him under house arrest the remainder of his life.
It took a hundred years for the Catholic Church to lift the ban on printing his works, it took about another 100 years for the Catholic Church to permit the teaching of heliocentrism, and another 150 years before the church apologized and officially acknowledged Galilei was correct.
I believe this story describes the danger for religions and churches, which is that they love their theological stories so much that they are willing to deny reality and to suppress evidence which contradicts what they've taught.
The LDS Church believed in white superiority and supported this with teachings and restrictions against dark-skinned people of African descent. Science eventually showed that race is not a biological reality but rather a social construct, and that humans actually began in Africa and emigrated from there to the rest of the world, meaning all of us could be said to be of African descent. Still the church clung to its teachings even as society evolved to see that people are similar and deserve to be treated equally with dignity and respect without regard to their race or ethnicity. It was late to do so, but eventually the LDS Church lifted the restrictions and abandoned the teachings because to not do so would harm the church because these were considered obviously racist and wrong. I can't imagine the church would be thriving today if it still held those racist teachings and restrictions.
Similarly, queer people exist. We don't fit the theology of the LDS Church. The church fought hard against gay rights and gay marriage, and currently is taking hard stances against trans people because it valued the theology more than the reality of queer people and their lives.
It isn't just the LDS Church. It seems everyday somewhere in the United States a new law is being proposed to make life tougher for queer people, to limit their access to health care, to remove their pathways to create their own families, to roll back legal rights that they use for their protection and to build their lives. These laws are being pushed by Christians who see gays, trans and queer folks as a direct challenge to their beliefs.
I'm old enough to have seen a big softening in the LDS Church towards gay people, and I believe more change will come. I also truly believe the church soften it's stance regarding trans people. If for no other reason than facts eventually win out.
