Hundreds of people resigned from the Mormon church over the weekend, while church leaders issued a statement clarifying its new baptism guidance about children raised in families led by a same-sex couple.
More than 1,000 adults gathered Saturday to sign letters of resignation from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), Deseret News reported.
“We will heal the wounds the LDS church has caused,” said a speaker at the mass LDS resignation rally to the crowd, according to KUTV in Salt Lake City, which estimated nearly 2,000 people turned out for the protest.
Many people who said they were resigning told social media that they were already inactive members of the Mormon church, media reports said.
Brooke Swallow, who stopped attending church in 1997 and resigned her LDS membership three years ago, conducted the event.
Born and raised LDS in Orem, Utah, where she now raises her children as secular humanists, Ms. Swallow called the protest “preventative activism,” Deseret News said.
Meanwhile, LDS leaders sought to clarify their Nov. 5 policy update to its leadership handbook, which said children raised in a same-sex household may no longer be baptized while they are minors.
Instead, these children must wait they are 18 years old and ready to personally say they believe in LDS tenets, including those on marriage and relationships.
Church teachings hold that marriage is only the union of one man and one woman, and that it is sinful to engage in homosexual sexual relations and unmarried cohabitation.
Church leaders “want to avoid putting little children in a potential tug-of-war between same-sex couples at home and teachings and activities of the church,” Michael Otterson, managing director of LDS Church Public Affairs, said in a statement Friday.
That statement noted that current LDS policy already says a married adult may not be baptized if their spouse objects, and that anyone whose parents practice polygamy must get special permission for baptism “so they know that” such a practice is “not acceptable” in LDS.
“The vast majority of church members understand that there has been no doctrinal change with regard to LGBT issues,” Mr. Otterson said Friday.
In a separate statement, the Council of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles clarified that the new policy does not affect baptized, active children who are being raised by same-sex couples.
“All children are to be treated with utmost respect and love,” LDS leaders Thomas S. Monson, Henry B. Eyring and Dieter F. Uchtdorf said in their statement. “They are welcome to attend Church meetings and participate in Church activities. All children may receive priesthood blessings of healing and spiritual guidance.”
The LDS has 15 million members worldwide and is growing, Deseret News reported.
• Cheryl Wetzstein can be reached at cwetzstein@washingtontimes.com.
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