In Ed Smart’s personal and poignant coming-out letter, the father of kidnapping survivor Elizabeth Smart voiced an all-too-familiar cry of agony: The religion he belonged to his whole life is no longer a place of “solace.”
Smart’s faith community, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-days Saints, teaches that being LGBTQ is not against the doctrine, but acting on it is.
The Utah-based faith has a website, mormonandgay.org, and leaders offer regular admonitions to love LGBTQ members, even as the church staunchly insists on a life of celibacy or marriage to a person of the opposite sex as the only moral choices.