#ldstemple

Dear Lord, how long will you suffer your queer children to cry out to you for succor? How long will you allow your ignorant straight children to exclude us? How long until we can be free? How long until you explain that their hatred towards us is antithetical to Christ's gospel and that they've been wrong and need to repent for their treatment of us? For driving so many of us to suicide? For failing to mourn with us and failing to comfort us when we wept before them as they had covenanted?

Why do you spare the feelings of your straight children who "would be shaken to hear about a change in doctrine" while your queer children grapple with knowing the truth before our octogenarian leaders are willing to look past their human frailties, their prejudices and biases, and ask with real intent for the truth?

Will it be like your black children that were excluded by Brigham Young's racism and the racism and cowardice and human frailty of every other prophet and apostle who did not rectify it for over a century? How many of your children were excluded and derided for being who you made them to be? For pushing against church authority and doctrine for racial equality and knowing the truth long before 1978, a scant 40 years ago? How many of us must suffer the same fate today? How long must we suffer at the hands of your ordained servants, as did so many of your black children for so long, for simply being as you made us?

How long must we suffer exclusion from church blessings? How long must we suffer the epithet "apostate" from those who have never understood the gospel, who for their entire lives have spurned the stranger, the sick, the afflicted, the poor, and the marginalized with violent political rhetoric and self-righteousness? Who draw near unto you with their lips on Sunday yet their actions and politics deny you every other day? Who preach "Love one another" from the pulpit and then preach Fox News from their hearts and hate anyone who is different and has lived different lives, loved different loves?