#stuart craig

This is behind a paywall, but I’ll share some quotes, especially what queer Mormons are quoted as saying. It will give you the essence of the article.

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Stacey Harkey was 30 years old and an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints living in Provo when he approached his bishop to let him know that, for the first time in his life, he had decided to date men. 

What followed was a confusing back-and-forth as Harkey sought clear guidance on what level of intimacy he was allowed to engage in without jeopardizing his standing in the church.

“My bishop told me if I crossed any lines, we would have to ‘handle it,’” he said. “But when I asked him what those lines were, he just responded with ‘any homosexual behavior.’”

“I don’t think that there’s really any guidance,” said Stuart Craig, a pilot and 28-year-old gay Latter-day Saint who is in his first committed relationship with another man, “except that it’s not really encouraged at all.”

“We’re pioneers,” said Calvin Burke, 26, who is gay and works as a media manager for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.

“Doctrinally, there’s nothing sinful about romantic relationships between me and another woman,” said Bee, a bisexual 19-year-old freshman at BYU who also asked that her real name not be used for fear of scrutiny from the school and church leaders. “I’ve read the scriptures and the only thing I could find was that sex comes after marriage. But, culturally, people think it’s a sin if I hold a woman’s hand.”

Taylor Petrey, author of “Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism,” traces the current ambiguity in queer Latter-day Saint dating culture to the church’s willigness in recent years to allow members to openly identify as LGBTQ, while at the same time no longer encouraging queer members to try to change their orientation through prayer, faithful living and heterosexual marriage.

In 2019, Dallin H. Oaks, who is next in line to assume the church presidency, stated that going forward “the immoral conduct in heterosexual or homosexual relationships will be treated in the same way.”

Later that year, current church President Russell M. Nelson echoed this same language in a BYU devotional, saying “that homosexual immorality would be treated in the eyes of the church in the same manner as heterosexual immorality.”

Kendall Wilcox — a 51-year-old gay member of Mormons Building Bridges — is less convinced. “The operative word in the new General Handbook isn’t ‘heterosexual’ or ‘homosexual,’” Wilcox said. “It’s ‘immoral.’ And the church still considers all homosexual behavior immoral.”

Wilcox, too, has seen a rise in the number of queer Latter-day Saints who are choosing to date. But not all are given equal treatment along the way, he warned.

“If you’re a white guy, you’re getting away with it way more than females, trans folks and people of color,” he said. “That’s just a very ugly fact.”

One point that all agreed was completely unambiguous was the fact that church leaders’ assertion that the faith holds straight and queer single Latter-day Saints to the same sexual standard is false.

“It’s great P.R.” said Christian Harrison, a 50-year-old gay Latter-day Saint living in Salt Lake City, “and utter rubbish.”

Other interviewees noted practical and safety concerns unique to trying to date as an active, queer Latter-day Saint.

Take, for instance, queer BYU students who choose to date, Harrison said. All it takes is one person in the relationship to feel guilty and threaten to out the other.

Both on and off campus, Burke said, the fact that many queer Latter-day Saints don’t feel like they can be open about their relationships gives room for predators to flourish.

“A healthy relationship involves you introducing the other person to your friends and you get their opinion and feedback because they can see things you don’t,” he said. “But the element of secrecy means none of that happens.”

When asked what, if anything, they would ask President Nelson, those interviewed offered a range from the practical to the theological, as well as the personal to the institutional.

Nearly all focused around a hope for greater clarity about their place in the faith.

“We see the fruits of the policies and the way that we treat queer Latter-day Saints,” Burke said. “Those fruits are suicide, heartbreak, broken homes, broken families and shattered dreams. If I were to meet with Nelson personally, I’d ask him: Is there something more that God is trying to tell us because of this? Is there something that we’re not yet listening to?”

Harkey echoed this sentiment, saying, “People are dying — children are dying — because of the way that we talk about these issues. I would just want to know why anything else comes before that.”

Finally, Adam McLain, who is gay wanted to know how the church’s prophet-president has gone about learning about queer issues. “Has it just been through reports delivered to him and the brethren?”

Happy 79th, Stephen Frears.

Dangerous Liaisons premiered in Los Angeles, CA on 11 December 1988.

Christopher Hampton adapted his own play, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (which was an adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos‘ 1782 novel) for the screen, directed by Stephen Frears.

“The Burrow”