"If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out"

My LGBTQ+ friends and church family: 

I'm sorry the institution that brought us together continues to reject you, willfully misunderstand you, and persecute you. I'm sorry for your pain. In whatever way it helps, I'm the Church too. There's always room next to me.

And I swear to God, if any of you conservative, follow-the-prophet-off-the-edge-of-a-cliff, don't-say-Mormon-it's-a-slur-now types have something to say about it, I will unhinge the underpinnings of your entire worldview until you're as broken and lost as you've made LGBTQ+ people feel.

My words are so feeble to express the anger in my heart for the people I love, and how sick to death I am of them being hurt by bullies in pews and suits. 

Beware of the evil behind smiling eyes and faces. That's what prophets taught me. 

That's what these policies of exclusion and punishment are.

 

Our Heavenly Parents are not defined or constrained by the smallness and frailty in us. No one can separate them from the love they have for their children. They will love and bless with arms outstretched, unceasingly. This changes nothing in the kind and heart of any God worth worshiping. 

This is what I know to be true. I have felt it testified to me in every interaction I've had with the LGBTQ+ community. 

This prejudice, this refusal to yield to affirmation and acceptance is not of God. This is human fear and failure, pure and simple.

I made covenants to serve God, not men. These policies are the words of men, and they will crumble to dust and be silenced forever when we finally arrived home in Their presence. 

That's the hope and faith I'm leaning on today: that God is great when we are not.