Oct 7, 2025
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I see some criticism of President Nelson in your posts. It doesn't seem appropriate
I'm going to share the words of Nathan Kitchen:
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Complicated. Highly complicated. This is the only description that can adequately describe all the emotions, thoughts, and feelings I am sitting with as I digest the news of Russell M. Nelson’s death. All the news and social media right now contain soundbites: peacemaker and changemaker. The truth always lies behind the surface of the soundbite. I had a front row seat to what was happening in the margins to LGBTQIA+ Latter-day Saints during his tenure as president of the Church. I tried my hardest to reliably chronicle this for my fellow Latter-day Saints in my memoir with BCC Press, The Boughs of Love: Navigating the Queer Latter-day Saint Experience During and Ongoing Restoration, so that you could see it alongside me. Most of the time, I felt like I was shouting in the wind. And maybe I am. But I cannot sit idly by and watch the greatest creation of queer spiritual refugees in the history of the Church and not say something.
In the coming days, many of those in the margins will not share the same perspectives on President Nelson’s life and legacy as the majority of the Latter-day Saint population. The margins are complicated. There, we are always holding seemingly contradictory truths in the reality of our lived experiences. The margins are that liminal space where we honor and respect the dead as we honor and respect our lives.
I say this with all the love and tenderness I can muster: Just stop and listen to those in the margins. Over the coming days, we will share our lives, experiences, and thoughts in the wake of President Nelson’s death and in anticipation of an Oaks' presidency. These perspectives may seem provocative, but please understand that they are valid and thought-provoking. They are true. LGBTQIA+ people are reliable reporters of their own experiences. Let us not separate from one another as we hear these voices from the margins.
Statement by Affirmation on LDS Church’s support of Respect for Marriage Act
Affirmation LGBTQ Mormons, Families & Friends appreciates the work that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is doing with outside LGBTQ groups to secure housing and employment rights, as well as its support to codify marriage equality in the United States.
We wholeheartedly congratulate our LGBTQ peers in the civil arena who have worked tirelessly, often partnering with the Church, to help move the Respect for Marriage Act forward. A great deal of good can come about through constructive politics and good faith negotiations as we work together to ensure protections and equality for LGBTQ people in their civil life.
Affirmation is mindful that LGBTQ Latter-day Saints do not have the option to engage in constructive politics or good faith negotiations to address prejudice, harassment, and discrimination that occurs within their spiritual home. Nowadays, LGBTQ Latter-day Saints and their families have a lot to be jealous about concerning the relationship the Church has put the time, attention, and resources to foster with outside LGBTQ organizations in the civil arena. A great disconnect exists between the public sphere and the faith home of LGBTQ people, where Latter-day Saint families are offered less protections and equality within the Church for their LGBTQ children than what is granted them by the laws of the land.
Religious freedom strategies—such as supporting a bill to protect marriage equality in exchange for protections that allow internal LGBTQ discrimination—solve external issues for both the Church and the LGBTQ community, but ignore the internal reality of LGBTQ Latter-day Saints within their spiritual home, especially those who participate in marriage equality or gender self-determination. Every hour an LGBTQ child is born into a Latter-day Saint home. They are a perpetually renewing internal resource within the Church and a population that one cannot ignore indefinitely by only opting to act in the civil arena.
It is time for the Church to get serious and put the same extensive time, attention, and resources into their own LGBTQ members and their families that they have done with outside LGBTQ groups. No amount of religious freedom success can compensate for failure within our spiritual home.