6 Thoughts on the Repeal of the ‘November 5’ Policy

A few people have already asked me how I feel about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ rescinding of its ‘November 5 policy’, which officially defined gay marriage as ‘apostasy’ and banned the children of same-sex couples from being baptized or blessed until they turned 18 (and renounced their parents’ living arrangements). I thought I’d respond publicly given my recent (and gratifyingly widely read) piece about my disengagement from the Church because of my gay identity.

1– This is a step in the right direction

First off, this is a good move by the Church. The November 5 policy will go down in history as one of the worst moves the Church ever made. Period. It caused pain, disaffection, doubt, mass resignations, alienation, shaming – all things a religion is supposed to alleviate, not generate. Many completely active, died-in-the-wool Mormons felt deeply uncomfortable with it. After years of making sincere steps towards showing love and some kind of acceptance towards the LGBTQ community, the Church wiped its gains away with a press release. To those of us in the community and in the Church, the policy was sickening. It didn’t even make sense, except as some knee-jerk response to the US Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage nationally. The Church tried to justify its move by comparing the policy to its policies on the baptism of children in polygamous families, but that just felt spurious and on a very different scale. And it seemed to…