This Day In Gay Utah History October 7

October 7th

Today is the feast day of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, lovers who were canonized as a couple.

1898 - At general conference Apostle John W. Taylor reports that in one rural area, 80% of LDS marriages involve premarital sex.

1907 Daniel McCullum who was sent to the state mental institution from Provo Last Week was apparently driven insane by the apparition of a dead friend. McCullum claimed that his friend who was killed some time ago was constantly by his side.

Radclyffe Hall

1943 Author Radclyffe Hall died. She was an English poet and author, best known for the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness. "The Well of Loneliness" was banned in several countries because of lesbian content. Published in 1928, The Well of Loneliness deals with the life of Stephen Gordon, a masculine lesbian who, like Hall herself, identifies as an invert. Although Gordon's attitude toward her own sexuality is anguished, the novel presents lesbianism as natural and makes a plea for greater tolerance. Although The Well of Loneliness is not sexually explicit, it was nevertheless the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK, which resulted in all copies of the novel being ordered destroyed. The United States allowed its publication only after a long court battle.

1959-During a radio speech, Russell L. Wolden criticized the mayor of San Francisco. "Under the benign attitude of the Christopher administration, those who practice sex deviation operate in San Francisco today to a shocking extent, under shocking circumstances, and in open and flagrant defiance of the law. So favorable is the official San Francisco climate for the activities of these persons that an organization of sex deviates known as The Mattachine Society actually passed a resolution praising Mayor Christopher by name for what the resolution described as the enlightened attitude of his administration toward them."

1962 Sunday- A committee of the Utah State Bar opposed a proposal for notifying employers when an employee has been arrested for a sex offense.  The proposal was advanced Friday as a means of protecting children from teachers and other adults suspected of sex crimes. Captain Phillip E. Brinkerhoff Salt Lake City Youth Bureau commander told the governor’s committee on Defective Delinquents and Aggressive Sex Offenders that under present law the employers may not be notified until after a conviction. And that he said is after a long time after the initial arrest resulting in an unnecessary exposure to known sex deviates. The committee took the proposal under study. Then Saturday the criminal section of the State Bar chairmaned by Jim Matsunaga, opposed the plan as an invasion of constitutional rights to privacy.  It  would give police the power to pass judgment with out trial the bar group agreed and said the proposal should be opposed as bringing more harm than good.  The committee agreed an accused should have the right of trial before his employment is jeopardized by police action. (10/07/62 Page 6B SLTribune)

Walter Jenkins

1964- Walter Jenkins, Lyndon B. Johnson's trusted friend and top advisor, was arrested for having sex in a YMCA men's room only blocks away from the White House.

1973- Metropolitan Community Church of SLC’s board hired Rev. Michael England as new pastor. Rev. England was a former Southern Baptist minister.

1975 Musician Elton John said he was bisexual in Rolling Stone magazine.

Jeffrey Holland

1980- Jeffrey R. Holland, the new president of BYU in 1980, followed policies similar to those of his predecessors in his treatment of campus homosexuals. For example, in an October 7, 1980 memo marked "PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL" which Holland sent to William Rolfe Kerr (the new Church Commissioner of Education), he noted that a BYU student named Joseph Brian Cole, in an effort "to put his life in order and prepare for a mission", had confessed to his bishop, John Bennett, of the Albuquerque, New Mexico 5th Ward, that he had participated in homosexual activities. As part of his confession, he had given Bennett the names of "four male BYU students, all returned missionaries, who were also involved in homosexual activity". The bishop had given those names and details to Elder Theodore M. Burton (as Area Administrator) and Burton had passed the information on to Holland. Holland told Kerr that this case had "both 14 stake president and Student Life implications" and asked Kerr to proceed with an investigation along both lines, "and let me know the facts." Holland concluded, "Obviously this should go quietly and discreetly." (Sadly, 30 year old Joseph Brian Cole died two days before Christmas, 1991, cause unknown.) Of the four men listed, I know that at least two, Brent C****** and David O****, were expelled from the Y, having a devastating effect on their potential educations and careers. For example, David, who was 25 at the time and a Senior in electrical engineering and music, had an extremely difficult time transferring to the University of Utah as a senior (colleges generally refuse to allow senior classmen to transfer in). Additionally, he received "unofficial withdrawals" in his classes for his last semester at BYU, which automatically lapsed to Fs, bringing his GPA down from 3.26 to a 2.89 making it even harder to transfer to another college. Fortunately the University of Utah admissions office was sympathetic to his plight and he was allowed to transfer in as a senior (Connell O’Donovan)

1985 Graham Bell is elected president of Lesbian and Gay Student Union and Richard Rodriguez is elected Vice President.

1986 Elizabeth Van Der Burgh and John Lorenzini of AIDS Project Utah begin training sessions for the Utah Department of Social Services.

1987 A US Justice Department report declared the most frequent victims of hate crimes are gays, lesbians, and bisexuals

Russ Lane

1988 The National Affirmation Conference is held in West Hollywood, California. Russ Lane, founder of Wasatch Affirmation, hosts the event as national director.

1990- Homosexuals make up the largest percentage of Utah's AIDS population, according to figures compiled by the Utah Department of Health. Since 1983, 325 cases of AIDS have been reported; 188 of the victims have died. Of the reported cases, 69 percent have been homosexuals and 6 percent have been bisexual intravenous drug abusers.  The other 25 percent of Utah AIDS cases have been reported in several populations:16 percent have been IV drug abusers and 3 percent were hemophiliacs infected by contaminated blood products. Two percent were heterosexuals that contracted the disease from an infected partner and 3 percent got AIDS through a transfusion. No cause can be determined for 1 percent of the cases.  Dr. Lynn Ford, co-director of Mountain States Regional Hemophilia Center, said two young men are known to have been infected with HIV "from a blood product which was used to treat their hemophilia." She said 40 hemophiliacs in Utah, ranging in age from 9 to mid-50s, are HIV-positive. Thirteen have developed full-blown AIDS, and of these, eight have died. In the general population, Utah Department of Health figures show 325 cases

Ben Barr

of AIDS reported in the state since 1983; 188 of those individuals have died. Ben Barr, executive director of the Utah AIDS  Foundation, said there are currently an estimated 2,500 Utahns who are HIV-infected. “But that number could be much higher." (10/7/90 E-1) (9/24/90 B1 SLTribune)

1990--Photographer Cheri Piefke displayed a photo gallery of People With AIDS at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Photographed with their friends and families their images are accompanied by handwritten statements about living with AIDS. Charles Loving, assistant director of the museum, found eight days this month to exhibit the 35 photographs and companion video project entitled "A Test of Love: AIDS in Utah."  Exhibit was brought by the word and reputation of  Ms. Cary Stevens Jones, who has been a photographer for a decade, and is executive director of Very Special Arts Utah. She was a co-sponsor of the documentary exhibit with the People With AIDS Coalition of Utah. Discrimination against a co-worker rumored to have AIDS was one reason photographer Cheri Piefke, 39, determined to combine her artistic interests with AIDS issues. She also cites San Francisco Chronicle reporter Randy Shilts' examination of the AIDS epidemic (And the Band Played On) as an essential influence. Besides, said Piefke, "People seem to feel because they live in Utah they are immune from the world” Through the People With AIDS Coalition, the Utah AIDS Foundation and several physicians, she built contacts over the next six months with young hemophiliacs with AIDS, with gay men harboring the deadly virus, with women who have passed the disease on to their children, and with the children themselves. She said she tried to meet each person on a personal level, and developed closer relationships with some of her subjects. In the process, Piefke said, "I've gotten past prejudices I didn't know I had about IV drug users and homosexuals." Piefke made many of her contacts through Dr. John Christensen, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at the University of Utah Medical Center, and Dr. Tom Evans, director of the Infectious Disease Clinic at the U. Medical Center. A photograph of Evans and his personal statement will be included in the exhibition.   Evans, 35, did his training and residency in San Francisco, and then trained in infectious disease and tropical disease in Virginia.   He came to the U. to be on the faculty in infectious diseases with an emphasis on the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS.   He said working with HIV isn't "special," but just another aspect of being a physician. Evans has found a lot of discrimination, both conscious and subconscious, against patients who are HIV-infected. "I think that discrimination doesn't go away until you actually know people or meet people. This exhibit is away of getting people as close to meeting these patients as possible without actually meeting them and realizing that they're just normal humans who happen to be infected with a virus that causes a prolonged disease. I'm hoping the public will realize HIV is something that affects your next-door neighbor, affects your nephew can affect your grandmother, can affect anybody. That's the true value of this exhibition."   You will encounter a wide variety of people with AIDS while touring this exhibit. Five-year-old Tyler Spriggs got AIDS from his birth mother, a former intravenous drug user. He's happily settled with a foster family and recently started preschool, "even though there's a bigger danger for him of picking up a disease," Piefke said. "Tyler knows he's setting an example for making every moment of life worthwhile." In his statement for the show, Tyler commented: "When I get really tired, then I'll go to live with Jesus. But I'm not tired yet." A recently married 29-year-old woman Peggy Tingey with a daughter, 10, and a son, Chance Tingey 6 months, writes: "It took a week to get the HIV test results.   It was the longest week of my life. The baby and I are positive and my husband and daughter are negative. The guilt is the hardest thing to deal with."  Michael writes about learning of his infection:  "My life flashed before my eyes as my best friend quietly embraced me and said he had AIDS and his life was to be shortened. And thus mine also."  The mother of two hemophiliac sons, ages 21 and 27, who both have AIDS, writes from a small Utah town: "Hemophilia wasn't so bad - we had learned to live with it - But this   AIDS is bad, and it's a bad feeling. I'm mad as hell - and I don't know who I'm mad at - it isn't easy and it isn't fair." The most intimate photos in the show, according to Piefke, are a series on Randy, who is shown first with his father as he enters a local hospital for a long-term stay. Later, Piefke was summoned to a convalescent center, where the family had gathered for a "goodbye" ceremony before taking Randy off life-support systems. Randy's younger brother Steven led the family in prayer. "We just basically tied into our Catholic roots in a time when we needed stable grounding and belief in something," Steven recalled. "Even in death it makes sense to be hope-filled." -  In seeking "some meaning in Randy's leaving us," Steven said he "used what the Catholic Church has always used to create a powerful statement that our love is there and our love is connected to God's love and it's all the same thing."   At the conclusion of the goodbye ritual, Randy raised his hand "with all the IVs" to clench Steven's. "We were all just silenced by that gesture."   Piefke photographed the family a last time, shortly after Randy's funeral. (10/07/90 `A Test of Love' Museum finds space for pressing exhibit  byline: Ann Poore  Page: E1 (Copyright 1990) E-3

Add caption

1993-The AFL-CIO unanimously approved a resolution to actively oppose attempts to repeal gay rights laws. The vote was held at the labor union's biennial convention in San Francisco.

1994 Friday, Youth who confessed he got angry and shot victim will be tried as adult. S.L. TEENAGER CHARGED WITH MURDER  By Scott Iwasaki, Staff Writer  Aggravated murder charges were filed Thursday in Third Circuit Court against a Salt Lake youth who will stand trial as an adult in connection with the Aug. 22, 1993, shooting death of Chet Harris. Tam T. Nguyen, 17, held with no bail posted, said in a confession to police that he became angry with Harris after the latter made homosexual advances toward him. Harris agreed to drive Nguyen and his friend, Taun Ly, 18, home and stopped in an alley near 320 Jeremy Street, according to the confession. Nguyen retrieved a gun from his home, returned and shot Harris once in the chest. The two jumped into Harris' car, drove around and returned to see if Harris was dead, said Nguyen. hen it became clear Harris was still alive, Ly got out of the car and allegedly shot Harris in the head. Nguyen and Ly left in the car for Seattle but struck a road barrier near La Grande, Ore. Local police mistook the two for runaways and sent them back to Salt Lake on a bus. They were arrested by Salt Lake police upon arrival. Last month, prosecutor Greg Warner argued a capital offense was too serious for the juvenile system to handle and dismissed defense attorney Paul Gotay's claim that Nguyen

shot Harris in self-defense. Third District Juvenile Judge Arther G. Christean said the seriousness of the crime justified adult proceedings and the move would establish the appropriate judicial forum. Ly has not been charged because of insufficient admissible evidence. If Nguyen decides to testify against him, Ly could face charges.  _© 1998 Deseret News Publishing Co.

1998- AIDS deaths drop by 47%  New drugs helped reduce the

number of AIDS deaths by 47 percent last year, dropping the disease from the 10 leading causes of death. AIDS is now the 14th leading cause of death in the United States with 5.9 deaths for every 100,000 Americans — the lowest rate since 1987, when mortality data were  first available for the disease, the government reported Wednesday. The 1997 rate is less than half what it was in 1992 and nearly one-third of the rate in 1995, the peak year. However, there was an increase in the percentage of babies born too small. Low-birth-weight babies accounted for 7.5 percent of all births last year, up from 7.4  percent in 1996. The data are from the Department of Health and Human Services' annual review of birth and death records, which had other encouraging news: continued drops in infant  mortality, births to teen-agers and homicides.

David Eccles Hardy & Family

1999 Letter to Boyd K Packer from David Eccles Hardy “Dear Elder Packer: Although we have met briefly before, it is through the context of my family that you would be able to place me.  I am the younger brother of Ralph W. Hardy, Jr. and Clare Hardy Johnson, and the son of Ralph W. Hardy, Sr. and Maren Eccles Hardy.  I most recently served as bishop of the Salt Lake University 29th Ward, Salt Lake University 5th Stake.  My wife, Carlie, is the granddaughter of the late Elder Franklin D. Richards, and the great-granddaughter of President Heber J. Grant.  I provide the context of our families and heritage for no purpose other than establishing the solid upbringing in the Gospel and the Church that my wife and I have both had. If you know the devotion to the Church of my brother Ralph and my late sister Clare, you know mine. I write this letter out of the realization that to maintain my own personal integrity, I need to inform you of the personal heartache and damage you have to some degree been responsible for visiting upon my immediate family as the author of To the One.  Although originally delivered by you as an address in 1978, the pamphlet To The One remains to this day the Church's most current and definitive written statement by a General Authority on the issue of homosexuality.  It is available to the general Church membership and the public, and my wife and I have been referred to it numerous times as we have come to grips with this issue over the past few years.  As one who has always been mindful of my Temple covenants, an unwavering believer, and a follower of my Priesthood leaders, this is not an easy letter to write. For me it represents an anguished "Crossing of the Rubicon."  I hope you will take the time to read it, for in it I have invested my very soul. Early on a Saturday morning six weeks ago, I watched as our car pulled away with my wife driving our eldest son to a new city, a new community, and a new school to complete his senior year of high school.  Ever since that morning, I have grown progressively angrier that to protect our son's life and sense of self worth, we are compelled to send him away from our home and family. You see, this community of "Saints" we live in is so steeped in ignorance, fear, loathing, judgment and qualified "love" towards our son and those who like him face the challenge of homosexuality, he twice arrived at the point where he was devoid of hope and felt he had no alternative but to take his own life.  Fortunately, he did not succeed.  My son is not manic-depressive, nor was he ever before suicidal.  He simply understands too well the Gospel and believed what his Seminary teachers and Priesthood leaders taught him about homosexuality, based upon the doctrine set forth in To The One.  My wife and I are the parents of six children - two daughters and four sons - ranging in age from twenty-three to eight.  Our oldest son at age thirteen had the courage to come to us with his growing fear that he had no attraction whatsoever to girls - the thought in fact disgusted him - but that he was very attracted to those of his same sex.  That he would come to us without fear or shame, confide in us, and seek our counsel attests to the strong relationship my wife and I have both always had with our son. (This is ironic in light of the "parental causation" theories routinely hauled-out by the  Church's LDS Social Services counselors and Evergreen as the primary cause of homosexuality.) This son was always spiritually mature for his age.  He is the finest young man I have ever known - giving, loving, supportive, honest, reliable.  Most definitely unselfish.  A leader among his peers in his school and primary classes and in his Priesthood quorums.  Since he was old enough to talk and walk, we were very much aware of certain differences that concerned us.  He carried himself differently, walking and running.  When we could get him to pick up a ball, he threw it differently.  He spoke differently.  He was not in the least interested in sports (in spite of countless practices and Saturdays we spent supporting him in sporting events that utterly disinterested him).  He loved dolls and playing house.  He loved music, literature, drama and poetry. He made friends easily with girls, but very rarely with boys.  Carlie and I listened with hope to LDS counselors and leaders who dismissed or downplayed all of this as merely a "phase."  We believed in and relied on them. The years passed, but the "phase" didn't - this in spite of our doing everything recommended to us by LDS counselors, Priesthood leaders and, of course, the teachings of the General Authorities such as you (scarce as they are is on this subject).  While we were assured by LDS counselors that this was little more than a correctable Pavlovian response and that "nothing could be easier to cure," and took hope in your confident statement in To The One: "When we understand fundamental moral law  better than we do, we will be able to correct this condition routinely. . . ," matters went from bad to worse.  One evening in 1997, while I was out of town and my wife was being assured by our well-meaning Stake President at his office that "if we just keep it quiet - the same as if someone in your family had committed adultery [our son had done nothing]- it will all be just fine, trust me . . . ," our son slit his wrists in his room at home.  Earlier in the day, it had been the " Sodom and Gomorrah" lesson in Seminary. As bishop of a student Ward at the University of Utah working with homosexual returned missionaries, I came to the painful realization that the "reparative therapy" practiced by LDS Social Services and organizations such as Evergreen (whose board of directors I then served on) was not merely ineffective, it was terribly damaging.  In every instance I found that this "therapy" accomplished little more than driving these earnest brothers and sisters, desperate to believe that they would "change," deeper into self-loathing and despondency.  Their failure to "change" as promised them by you and other Priesthood leaders - a failure ultimately arrived at by each and every one of these young men and women who were honest with his or her situation - left only three realistic alternatives: (1) practice deceit as long as possible to remain in good standing with Church and family, (2) give up completely, abandon Church and family, and turn to the only community that will accept you - the gay community, or (3) commit suicide.  By your own admission, it is obvious that neither you nor the Church as a whole has yet arrived at "a better understanding of the fundamental moral law," because your understanding of it is leading and guiding the Church in this matter, and this "condition" is anything but "routinely corrected." In To The One you make the summary statement that "some forms of these treatments [reparative therapy] are of substantial help in about 25 percent of the cases" without offering any authority for this statistic.  Where did this amazing (though still disheartening) statistic come from?  Undoubtedly it came from the experts at LDS Social Services.  Unfortunately, however, LDS Social Services must not follow-up on their patients over any extended period of time. My experience as bishop of a student Ward, the father of a homosexual son, and a friend and confidant to the many LDS homosexuals I have since become acquainted with, would indicate to me that in some few cases, the terrible guilt associated with reparative therapy and the strong desire to remain in good standing with the Church and one's family has brought about an ability to repress one's homosexual desires - for a season. Usually just long enough to get married and ruin a family.  Perhaps this is the 25% you spoke of.  The current publication for ecclesiastical leaders Understanding and Helping Those Who Have Homosexual Problems seems to recognize the realistic lack of curability in its statement: "Marriage should not viewed as a way to resolve homosexual problems.  The lives of others should not be damaged by entering a marriage where such concerns exist.  Encouraging members to cultivate heterosexual feelings as a way to resolve homosexual problems generally leads them to frustration and discouragement." However, the Church's confusion and struggle to make sense of this issue, and its tendency to downplay the lack of any real answers with a summary "and they all lived happily ever after" is apparent in the publication's utterly conflicting closing sentence: "In some cases, heterosexual feelings emerge leading to happy, eternal marriage relationships." Which is a Bishop or Stake President to do?  Discourage cultivation of heterosexual feelings and marriage, or lend encouragement to and sign the Temple marriage recommend for the "cured" homosexual that is entering a happy, eternal marriage relationship?  While I know from experience that much is left to the discretion and inspiration of the ecclesiastical leader, I also know that they are to look to an official publication specifically directed to them such as this for direction and guidance and give it much weight.  But what is the counsel being given in this publication?  Isn't it a bit confusing? At the crux of the issue of homosexuality and the Church are the three great interrelated beliefs: (1) there is an element of choice involved in becoming and remaining homosexual, (2) it can be cured, and (3) our children and youth can be recruited or enticed into homosexuality.  Every time we have sought out help for our son and family on this issue from Priesthood leaders or General Authorities we have been summarily referred to the experts at LDS Social Services. Because the lives and well-being of so many trusting individuals and family members are at stake here, it would seem that much stock is put in the expertise of LDS Social Services in this matter.  Isn't it fairly obvious, though, that the "experts" you rely on at LDS Social Services to professionally corroborate and support the doctrine and policy of the Church would support whatever position you have mandated to be the only correct one?  Such is the level of respect for and faith in the office you hold.  In all honesty, to disagree with a member of the Twelve on a matter of doctrine is tantamount to heresy.  I'm sure you are aware that the American Psychiatric Association has denounced "reparative therapy" for treating homosexuals as both ineffective and damaging.  I find it ironic that when a fundamentalist religious group shuns sound medical intervention as a doctrine we find it appalling and backwards - yet when that same sound medical advice denounces the practice of "reparative therapy" we call it "worldly" false doctrine.  I guess it all depends on just whose ox is being gored.  In To The One you preach that homosexuality is not innate, but is a curable condition. Your fundamental proof: God wouldn't make a mistake like this. By preaching this, you set the impossible goal of "cure" as the standard to which my son must hold himself responsible, as must his family and all other Church members.  Until he chooses to do what he must to be "cured," he hasn't done enough.  He will never have done enough.  He will always come up failing in the most fundamental aspect of his entire existence as a child of his Heavenly Father.  He is a pervert, an aberration, and an abomination.  There is nothing left in this life or the next.  How would you deal with this if you were him? Homosexuality is not a "condition" that can be "cured."   My proof: I have yet to meet even one venerable grandfather with a fine posterity (or anyone else for that matter) who says he was once homosexual but was long ago cured - and my experience as a father observing my son from birth. Perhaps the most hurtful aspect of To The One is your revelation that the fundamental reason why my son has not been "cured" is because of his selfishness.  When I inform other people that this is actually what you preach in To The One, they are incredulous (members included).  They respond "Obviously you have misread or misconstrued what Elder Packer said."  You are well aware that this is precisely what is said.  As one who knows my son and his heart better than you, your doctrine that my son's selfishness is at the core of his ability or inability to be cured of his homosexuality is offensive in the extreme, and evidences the lack of any meaningful inquiry into this issue beyond the application of pure dogma.  In saying this it is not my intent to offend you.  It is, simply, incredible that you could hit upon anything quite so insensitive and ignorant of the facts.  Indeed, my son is the most unselfish and Christ-like person I know.  This holds true for most of the LDS homosexuals I know well.  They have to be to keep trying. Your doctrine of "choice" and "curability" is also at the core of why the Church and its members in reality view my son and those like him as latter-day lepers. If homosexuality (1) is not inborn, (2) has an element of choice, and (3) can be cured - then it must be able to be taught or suggested.  Others must also be susceptible to being enticed or recruited. Our children are capable of being infected by these people and not becoming mothers and fathers.  It is, therefore, a frontal assault on the family. The "hate the sin but love the sinner" platitude cannot disguise the fact that in reality the members of the Church are taught to loathe and fear our son and those like him.  This qualified and synthetic "love" is nothing more than the few alms hurriedly and begrudgingly parted with to salve the Christian conscience, while never once entertaining the idea of actually descending into the leper pit.  We would never expose our children to this for it might infect them.  If sexual orientation is a matter of choice, when exactly did you choose to be heterosexual?  When and how often did you reaffirm your choice to stay that way?  Why aren't my other children, who idolize their brother, even the slightest bit interested in adopting a homosexual "lifestyle" or in homosexual experimentation?  Why would anyone choose to be an abomination and an outcast?  It defies reason. Last week a dear friend (formerly a bishop) reassured us that he still loved our son "even if he has made a choice to be this way."  My son did not choose to be this way.  This type of "love" born of duty and pity for his abominable choice acts like a slow but virulent cancer on our son's  self-esteem.   It is for this reason we have found it necessary to send our son away from the community of the "Saints." As the Church "progresses" on this issue, what we are hearing more and more from Priesthood leaders today is the idea that our son is acceptable so long as he practices life-long chastity.  That is, of course, actually called celibacy, and while it's a convenient idea to advance, in practice it is virtually impossible to live.  The distinction between chastity and celibacy seems always to be overlooked by Church leaders.  You may recall that in his somewhat recent newspaper interview in California, President Hinckley compared the plight of homosexuals to that of the single sisters in the Church.  To paraphrase, he said that the Church doesn't ask homosexuals to do anything it doesn't also ask of its other single adult members - to live chaste lives. But this simply isn't true.  As a former bishop I have firsthand experience.  We openly love and support our single brothers and sisters.  We give them important callings - especially with out youth and children.  We urge them to date, to flirt, to get crushes, to fall in love, to marry.  We sponsor Ward and Stake activities and dances to get them together to accomplish this.  We ask them to be chaste - until they find someone to share their life and intimacy with.  We go out of our way to give them something of immeasurable value in the struggle to keep the law of chastity - hope - hope that no matter how difficult this emotional and physical loneliness is, it is temporary.  For those with the least control over their situation, our single sisters, we give special encouragement and hope that they will find love, emotional intimacy and fulfillment in this life - and if not, certainly in the next. We do not knowingly give homosexuals important callings - especially not with our youth or children who would be at risk of being infected and recruited. We forbid them ever to flirt, to date, to get crushes, to fall in love, to have a legally-recognized monogamous relationship.  The image of a Tri-Stake Gay and Lesbian Gold-and-Green Ball is amusing.  We ask them to be chaste - forever. No hope at all.  The question of sexual intimacy aside - can you imagine having being denied the ability to become attracted to, flirt with, get a crush on, hold hands with, steal a kiss from, or fall in love with you wife?  With all trace of romantic love and emotional intimacy denied you, with what would you fill the void to hold at bay a life of loneliness, emptiness, and despair? We do have at least one historic example to look to.  The Catholic Church has attempted to enforce celibacy on its clergy throughout the ages with success at some level (although we will never know what level).  With what did they replace the emotional void?  They had the love and adulation of the church membership, and authority and power.   They were, in fact, the Bishops, Stake Presidents, and General Authorities.  They were held next to deity - and their record is less than stellar.  Imagine the celibacy success rate of a group defined by a loathsome and abominable "condition." Imagine also, for a moment, if you were to stand up in front of the freshman class at BYU and announce that everyone present was being given a special calling to live a celibate life from then on.  How many do you think would really be able to do it?  How many empty and guilty lives and suicides would result?  The Church has never taught the principle of celibacy.  As a parent, I don't have the slightest idea how to begin teaching it.  There are no manuals, no courses, no "For the Strength of Celibate Youth" cards to carry.  There are no Priesthood, Relief Society, Sunday School, or Primary lessons on celibacy. On the other hand, following the teachings of the Church, we have raised our children in a home filled with open love, intimacy, loyalty and commitment between a couple.  Our children know Carlie and I adore each other, and they want and need the same thing in their lives. I never thought I would say this, but as a father given the choice between (a) my son's suicide, (b) his complete abandonment of the Church and embracing of the extreme gay culture with its emotionally debilitating and physically dangerous practice of anonymous casual sex, or (c) living in a committed, monogamous relationship for the rest of his life practicing the Gospel virtues of love, commitment, and fidelity we have taught in our home, I would have to pick the latter.  The Church, however, is now doing all in its power to prevent that.  Presumably, it has a better alternative - one that works on something other than a dogmatic and theoretical level. Then again, perhaps my son is simply a casualty of war - acceptable "collateral damage" in an eternal plan and struggle in which by the luck of the draw he has no relevance or place.  The Gospel has always been easy to have faith in and follow because it made real sense and worked in our lives. This would make no sense.  And the current doctrine, as set forth in To The One is not working for our family.  I can't tell you how strange and difficult this is.  It's like we woke up one morning on a different planet. In our greatest time of need as a family, the Church has failed us and abandoned us - and through the convenient but hurtful doctrine of parental causation, complicity and guilt it directly promotes (evidence the article in September's Ensign), it kicks us while we are down!  I know this is only one of many issues that the Brethren deal with, and certainly not at the top of their list, but for us it has become our universe. We live in this issue twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and must raise our children through it by our best lights.   And there are many more like us in the Church.  Parents like us are ultimately forced to make a hopeless decision: abandon our homosexual children, or turn from the Church.   "Not so," you say. You would never know unless you walked in our shoes.  My brother, Ralph, asked me at one point "What would you have the General Authorities do about this issue?"  I wish that someone in authority would have the compassion and the courage simply to own up publicly to the fact that this is a difficult issue about which we just don't have many answers. I wish someone in authority would publicly urge the members to withhold their judgment and condemnation, accept those like my son into their midst, and have true compassion and love for those who through no choice of their own will deal with the issue of homosexuality all of their lives.  I wish someone in authority would publicly assure the members that by withholding their judgment and condemnation and showing acceptance and real love, they won't get leprosy, nor will their children be at risk - that the divine concept of Family will not be compromised or weakened, but that real families with real issues will in fact be strengthened.  I wish that someone in authority would recognize that To The One was an effort twenty years ago by a very good man to address a difficult issue in the context of the time in which it was written, and pull it from circulation. Elder Packer, I have never been one to question, demand, or  "kick against the pricks."  I am a follower, a believer, an obeyer.  But I can no longer wait patiently while the Brethren try to figure this issue out at the cost of my son's life, and the lives of others like him.  Respectfully,  David Eccles Hardy Mormon Family Values- The Hardys speak out

7 October 2000 The Salt Lake Tribune Page: D3 Students to Drop  District Lawsuits But state faces stiff fees in Gay club issue BY HEATHER MAY   THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE The long  battle over Gay clubs in Salt Lake City schools is finally over -- almost. Attorneys for students who tried to form two Gay clubs at East High School agreed Friday to drop two federal lawsuits against the Salt Lake City School District. The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, based in New York, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah said they reached the decision after learning the district will sanction two Gay clubs at East High under a revised club policy. "It's a vindication of the principles that now several classes of students have fought for, and that's free speech and full participation in their school community without discrimination," said Stephen Clark, the ACLU's legal counsel. "That certainly is a victory for Gay students and their friends and supporters." Through her spokesman, district Superintendent Darline Robles said: "I'm pleased to hear that the plaintiffs want to resolve this issue and I look forward to having additional discussions  . . . next week." Clark said the groups will petition the federal court to dismiss the two suits "in short order." The state's financial obligation is not over just yet, however. The ACLU has asked the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to require the school district to pay $300,000 in legal fees for the first lawsuit, filed in 1998. Clark said he will also ask the district to pay an undetermined amount of attorney fees for the second case, filed this year. The state's Division of Risk Management has spent about $197,000 on the school district's defense. "The lesson from Salt Lake City is in big block letters on the chalkboard," David Buckel, senior staff attorney for Lambda, said in a prepared statement. "Do not harm your students to block a Gay-supportive club and do not spend hundreds of thousands in education dollars defending that harm." In the most recent lawsuit, two East High students sued last April because the district would not allow them to form a club called PRISM, an acronym for People Respecting Important Social Movements. The club was designed to allow students to discuss homosexuality in the context of history, government and politics. The district denied the application, saying the club wasn't adequately related to the curriculum, as required by a 1996 policy that banned all extracurricular clubs. U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell found PRISM had met district policy for curriculum-related clubs and issued a temporary injunction in April, forcing the district to allow the students to meet, pending the outcome of the suit. The school district appealed that ruling soon after. The suit hasn't gone anywhere since because the two parties hoped they could resolve the issue out of court. Toward that end, the Salt Lake City School Board adopted a new club policy last month that allows students to form academic and extracurricular clubs. This week, East High school students applied to form two extracurricular clubs focused on homosexual issues: a Gay-Straight Alliance and the PRISM club. Though the school district has until Nov. 1 to approve all club applications, it agreed Thursday to sanction both Gay clubs and faxed the clubs' authorization forms to the ACLU that afternoon. "I am proud to be an East High student today," Maggie Hinckley, one of the plaintiffs in the PRISM suit, said in a statement. "We can work for all students to feel safe and supported at school, plus we can participate in clubs that will help us get into college." The district's acceptance of PRISM and the Gay-straight support group will also make moot the 1998 lawsuit. Two East High students, backed by the ACLU and the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, sued over the school district's 1996 ban of extracurricular clubs, saying it was unconstitutional. A U.S. District judged ruled last year the ban was legal. The students appealed, but that action will now be dropped, Clark said. Throughout the legal wranglings, Salt Lake City students have continued to meet at school in Gay-Straight Alliance clubs under the Utah Civic Center Act. The clubs were supported by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, which provided adult advisers and rented rooms for $7 a week at West High School and East High School. Richard Teerlink, the adviser of West High School's Gay-straight alliance, said his students have applied to become a school-sanctioned extracurricular club. If approved, the alliance would be allowed access to the school's newspaper, a photo in the yearbook and to advertise their meetings to fellow students, something they couldn't do before.    "It's wonderful to have it come into being official," said Teerlink, who will step down as the group's adviser when it becomes sanctioned by the school. "It says that this group is just one of the groups that meet at West High. It does provide that validation, that recognition that these are acceptable kids." e-mail: hmay@sltrib.com

7 October 2000 The Salt Lake Tribune Page: D1 Parents of Gay Children Call LDS Pamphlets 'Insensitive' Parents Call Pamphlets 'Insensitive' BY BOB MIMS AND PEGGY FLETCHER STACK THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Mormon parents of Gay children are pleading with church leaders to halt distribution of decades-old pamphlets they say condemn their offspring as "latter-day lepers," contrary to recent conciliatory statements by LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley.    At a Friday news conference, staged on the eve of this weekend's 170th Semiannual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, David Hardy, a former Mormon bishop, said the language of the 20- to 30-year-old pamphlets "engenders fear and loathing" toward Gay LDS youth. At issue were four publications in particular: To Young Men Only, To the One, Letter to a Friend and For the Strength of Youth. Hardy, who was joined Friday by his wife, Carlie, and three other LDS couples, said numerous letters to church officials -- copies of which were provided to reporters -- had been met by "at best, kindly indifference." The pamphlets cause "parents to condemn and turn against their Gay children, destroying real families, and drive our Gay children to self-loathing, despair and suicide," Hardy said. Hardy, a Salt Lake City lawyer, also said it was embarrassing to him as a Mormon that To Young Men Only  -- in which Boyd K. Packer, president of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, recounts how a young man "floored" a presumably Gay missionary companion -- was being distributed about the same time two men were tried for the 1998 beating death of Matthew Shepard, a Gay Wyoming student. "It is difficult for us to understand," Hardy said, saying that pamphlet in particular was "inflammatory, insensitive and troubling." The parents said the pamphlets' tone contrasts sharply with Hinckley's assurances that church leaders "reach out to those who refer to themselves as Gays and lesbians. We love and honor them as sons and daughters of God. They are welcome in the church." It was a theme repeated late Friday in a statement by Harold C. Brown, managing director of LDS Church Welfare Services, who did not deny the pamphlets were still being used.    "These are individuals who are children of God. We love them; we respect them," he said. "This church is a church of inclusion, not exclusion, and we welcome them and want them to be a part of the church." Still, Provo resident Gary Watts, joined by his wife Millie, told reporters such sentiments are incongruent with the church's continued distribution of "these pamphlets which characterize our children and other Gay and lesbian youth as selfish, perverted, abominable and under the control of Lucifer . . . . " Holladay residents Ted Packard, a psychologist, and his wife Kay, a clinical social worker, noted that such attitudes led their Gay son to leave Utah years ago. The young man had concluded that "the climate in our community  . . . was neither understanding, hospitable nor accepting," they said. In To Young Men Only, Packer urges Mormon youths to "vigorously resist" men who try to entice them to join in "immoral acts." As for violent response to such advances, the senior apostle in the quorum wrote, "I am not recommending that course to you, but I am not omitting it. You must protect yourself." Brown said such self-protection fell far short of any support for Gay bashing. "I think you'd have to stretch a long ways to come up with the idea that these pamphlets advocate violence," he insisted. "They do not."  --  In Letter to a Friend, late LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball wrote that "it were better that such a man [homosexual] were never born." For the Strength of Youth, the parents complained, labels homosexuality as a perversion in the same league with rape and incest. -- To the One, another Packer product first printed in 1978, condemns homosexuality as "unnatural," "abnormal" and an "affliction," while insisting same-sex yearnings can be cured.    "If they fail to change it is [allegedly] because they haven't tried hard enough, haven't been to enough therapy, haven't prayed and fasted enough, don't have enough faith -- haven't been good enough," Hardy said. "This works like a cancer on our children's self-esteem and emotional well-being." It also sometimes leads to attempted suicide, said his wife, Carlie Hardy. Some years ago, the Hardys faced that reality when their son, Judd -- unable to reconcile his Mormon faith and his homosexuality -- slashed his wrists. He survived, but the experience propelled his parents to offer unconditional love to their son, despite church teachings. Still, the decision to publicize their concerns at a press conference was not an easy one. "We realize that many will think it is improper or confrontational for us to resort to a public statement on this issue," said David Hardy. "We ask the church leadership to specifically address these pamphlets . . . and either endorse them and everything they say as current, correct and official, or cease their publication and distribution and instruct local church leaders to throw them away," Hardy said. Added Carlie Hardy: "If we get excommunicated for loving our son, then so be it."

Charles Milne

2002 Pride Week Observed to Create Safe Zone for LGBT Shena McFarland Daily Chronicle This week marks National Coming Out Week, and the U is joining the nationwide celebration. University Pride events, held throughout the week, include a film festival, candlelight vigil and keynote speaker, and are intended to make the entirety of campus a safe zone. "Hopefully this will be helpful to students in the closet, even if they're not willing to talk about or let that part of their lives be known yet," said Charles Milne, director of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center. About 20 students have helped coordinate the events and decorate campus. Milne was able to use some of the lampposts previously hung with the athletics department's banners. As of last week, he was uncertain if he would get permission to post the banners he had printed. However, Karen Dace, associate vice president for diversity, guaranteed LGBT would be able to post the rainbow-colored banners. "Right now, it looks like the athletics department has the posts reserved throughout the semester, but it looks like they're going to allow us to use them," she said last week.  Besides the campus decorations, Milne hopes the U will be supportive of the week, and begin to understand the LGBT community. "Hopefully, through the events people will be able to see that the gay and lesbian community is diverse within itself. The community is also involved in all areas of campus, from athletics to engineering to medicine. We are just another part of the bigger community," he said.

2003 TUESDAY Challenge to Utah's anti-sodomy law tossed By Elizabeth Neff The Salt Lake Tribune The nation's highest court struck down laws banning consensual sodomy in June, but a judge has tossed out one man's bid to get Utah's anti-sodomy law -- and another one banning premarital sex -- off the books. Third District Judge L.A. Dever ruled a man identifying himself as D. Berg had no right to challenge the laws in court because he had not been charged with either crime. The ruling apparently now leaves it up to state legislators to repeal both statutes. Dever rejected an exception for "matters of great public interest and societal impact," which he said could have kept Berg's case alive. "The Court concludes that the matter would be more properly addressed by other branches of government, such as the Legislature," Dever wrote, "and therefore the issue is not of such great public importance to grant Berg standing."  Berg claimed he feared future arrest because he has privately violated the sodomy law by having heterosexual oral sex, and the fornication law by having sex with another unmarried person. Utah's consensual sodomy law forbids "any sexual act with a[n] [unmarried] person who is 14 years of age or older involving the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another

Brian Barnard

person, regardless of the sex of either participant." The anti-fornication statute bans premarital sex, saying "any unmarried person who shall voluntarily engage in sexual intercourse with another is guilty of fornication." Both crimes are class B misdemeanors punishable by up to 6 months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Salt Lake civil rights attorney Brian Barnard said his client will appeal Dever's ruling. "Deference to the legislative branch of our state government on this issue is troublesome, to say the least," Barnard said. "Our lawmakers are unwilling to protect the interests, including privacy, of citizens outside the Legislature's conception of the mainstream. Hopefully, the Utah Supreme Court will better understand and apply the law to resolve these issues." Berg had sought a temporary restraining order preventing the laws from being enforced while the lawsuit was pending, $1 in damages, and attorney's fees. In its June ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court held a Texas law banning gay sex unconstitutional. The justices said consensual sodomy laws are unconstitutional attempts to control personal relationships that are "within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals." The decision did not apply to two other portions of Utah's statute that prohibit forcible, or nonconsensual, sodomy and sodomy on a child.

2003 Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Film Festival Tuesday, October 7th : University Union Theater 1 p.m.   Short Shorts , a compilation of lesbian short films,135 minutes 3:30 p.m.  Totally Rosie , 90 minutes 5:30 p.m.  PlanetOut.com shorts, 83 minutes Broadway Centre Cinema. Free, required tickets may be picked up from the box office.7:30 p.m.  Kilometer Zero 135 minutes

2005 Who's Your Daddy? First Unitarian Church 569 South 1300 East

Frank Strona

Salt Lake City at 7:30 pm Frank Strona an HIV prevention specialist will address topics and issues that not often are openly discussed in the homosexual and bisexual community; Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, and Masochism (BDSM)  He will delve into the health issues tied up with these activities in a humorous yet educational manner. Come join us and invite others to explore some of the topics rarely approached in our community.

Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky 

2005 Howl: Allen Ginsberg's Sound and Fury A poem written and read 50 years ago still has haunting relevance today By Christy Karras The Salt Lake Tribune In 1955, America was fighting a war with a seemingly sneaky and nebulous enemy, outsiders were fighting what they saw as mind-numbing conformity at home and consumerism reigned as everyone raced to buy the latest gadget or gas-guzzling automobile. At that time, poets were mainstream and crowd-pleasing or largely ignored outcasts. And it was one of those outcasts whose celebrated poem smashed America's happy facade and painted a world that began with "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness . . ." and continued with extended metaphors and visceral descriptions of how people were destroying each other.

Fifty years ago today, Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" helped launch the Beat generation and changed the way Americans viewed poets and society. The poem's effects are still felt in the way poets write, the way young people see their world and the way art is perceived and performed. "It seems like there's so many parallels between then and now, 50 years later," said Ken Sanders, one of the event's organizers. As with the hunt for modern terrorists, civil liberties were at the forefront of the '50s as Joseph McCarthy hunted for communists among his fellow citizens, Sanders said, and America was getting involved in a war with a faraway nation that appeared to pose a threat to democracy, if not immediate national security. Tonight, as part of the Great Salt Lake Book Festival, performance poet Alex Caldiero will recite "Howl" on a stage organized to look a bit like the cafe/gallery setting in which the poem was first read. It's one of many commemorative events around the world; of course, there will be numerous events in San Francisco, where "Howl" was originally unleashed that fateful Friday night, but even England and other far-flung places are planning them. Ginsberg, a 29-year-old who had spent time in mental hospitals (as had his mother, who finally had a lobotomy and died shortly after the poem's debut) and felt like an outsider because of his Jewish background and homosexuality, found solace in Whitman and Yeats. While in college, he formed friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, who would make up what Sanders calls the "holy trinity of the Beat generation." He dedicated "Howl" to Carl Solomon, a fellow patient at a psychiatric hospital where Ginsberg spent a few months before writing the poem. All poems, Caldiero says, are living things, but the organic qualities of "Howl" make it even more so. And it will live, he says, as long as people continue speaking the words. "This is not so much a commemoration as a celebration," Caldiero said. "For me personally, it's a very alive thing." Caldiero says one of the most important stylistic innovations is the length of the lines: Each can be spoken in one full breath, not more or less. It harks back to oral traditions of early poetry, a deviation from formal constraints put on poetry earlier in the century. "You really need to hear it performed, the way Ginsberg performed it. That's why people went so wild when he first read it," Sanders said. It is also full of harsh language (including the "f word") and strong imagery of sex and violence that led to an obscenity trial when it was deemed unfit for children (even today, radio station KCPW, which will air many of the book festival author talks live, will broadcast the reading sometime after midnight due to its language). The charge led the accused, Ginsberg publisher and City Lights bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti, to retort that "It is not the poet but what he observes which is revealed as obscene. The great obscene wastes of 'Howl' are the sad wastes of the mechanized world, lost among atom bombs and insane nationalisms." A judge determined the book had "redeeming social value" and ordered Ferlinghetti (and the confiscated copies of "Howl") released. The poem has been in continuous publication ever since. It has been parodied many times, glorified many more and serves as inspiration to artists today. "There's a reason it resonates with young people today, the way it always has," Sanders said. "It's a howl of defiance. It's a primal scream." The "Howl" event is part of the annual book festival, organized by the Utah Humanities Council, that each year brings prominent authors to speak about and read from their books. This year's events began Wednesday and Thursday evenings with readings at the library; the festival continues through Saturday with events for adults and children.

Alex Caldiero

• Allen Ginsberg Live reading of 'Howl' by Alex Caldiero Tonight's "Howl" commemoration begins with a "pre-Howl" at 7 with live jazz, art, local poets and an essay by Utah Valley State College professor Scott Abbott on "Why Howl?" Alex Caldiero will read "Howl" starting at 7:30 p.m. On Saturday, events continue from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., with a keynote address by public broadcasting icon Jim Lehrer at 4:30. Other events include talks by authors Mark Spragg, Will Hobbs, Kent Haruf, Rick Bass and Luis Urrea and others; poetry readings; a haiku workshop; children's activities and the annual Rare Book Roadshow.All events will take place in the auditorium at the Salt Lake City Library downtown and are free and open to the public.

2010 Same Sex Attraction Can Be Changes- Peggy Stack Fletcher Salt Lake Tribune

Same-sex attraction can be overcome and any type of union other than marriage between a man and a woman is morally wrong, an LDS apostle told millions of Mormons on Sunday.  "There are those today who not only tolerate but advocate voting to change laws that would legalize immorality, as if a vote would somehow alter the designs of God's laws and nature," Boyd K. Packer, president of the church's Quorum of Twelve Apostles, said in a strongly worded sermon about the dangers of pornography and same-sex marriage. "A law against nature would be impossible to enforce. Do you think a vote to repeal the law of gravity would do any good?" Packer, speaking from his seat because of his frail health, addressed more than 20,000  members gathered in the LDS Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City and millions more watching the faith's 180th Semiannual General Conference via satellite. The senior apostle drew on the church's 1995 declaration, "The Family: A Proclamation to the World," to support his view that the power to create offspring "is not an incidental part of the plan of happiness. It is the key — the very key." Some argue that "they were pre-set and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and unnatural," he said. "Not so! Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone? Remember he is our father." Alluding to the Utah-based church's support of laws such as California's Proposition 8 that would define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman, Packer said, "Regardless of the opposition, we are determined to stay on course." "We cannot change; we will not change," the senior apostle declared. "We quickly lose our way when we disobey the laws of God. If we do not protect and foster the family, civilization and our liberties must needs perish." Laura Compton, who directs Mormons4Marriage, a group of Latter-day Saints who opposed Proposition 8 and support marriage equality in California and elsewhere, was troubled by Packer's sermon. "So many Mormons have worked hard to increase understanding of what homosexuality is and what it means to be faithful," Compton said in a phone interview from her California home. "Now we have this [anti-gay] message coming from the pulpit in General Conference by the president of the Quorum of the Twelve. It seems like hitting a brick wall. Hopefully, this won't make people stop and say, 'It wasn't worth it.'" Then, as members repeat and digest Packer's comments in coming months, Compton worries about its impact on the faithful. "When we are sitting next to the mom of a gay son or daughter whose best friend just came out, or by the bishop who knows 10 people in the ward affected by homosexuality, how will we reach out and help them?" she wonders. "How are we going to make them feel the love of Christ?" To some, Packer's comments seemed like a throwback to earlier LDS statements about same-sex attraction, similar to those made last summer by LDS general authority Bruce Hafen. Hafen, who became an emeritus member of the First Quorum of Seventy on Saturday, was speaking at a conference sponsored by Evergreen International, a nonprofit group that helps Mormons overcome gay behavior and diminish same-sex attraction, according to its website, evergreeninternational.org. Hafen promised attendees at the Evergreen conference, "If you are faithful, on resurrection morning — and maybe even before then — you will rise with normal attractions for the opposite sex." Whenever the devil, whom Hafen referred to as "the adversary," tries to "convince you that you are hopelessly 'that way,' so that acting out your feelings is inevitable, he is lying," Hafen said. "He is the father of lies." In the past decade, the church has moved away from 1970s teachings that emphasized psychosocial causes of same-sex attraction, including parenting, toward a "we don't know" approach, not denying the possibility of biological factors. Dallin H. Oaks, an apostle, said in an interview posted on the church's website, lds.org, that LDS leaders believe some attractions can be overcome, and all can be controlled. But the authorities no longer counsel gays to marry those of the opposite sex, as a remedy for their attractions, or support all therapies meant to alter attractions, Oaks said. Nor does the church promise that all same-sex feelings can be changed into heterosexuality with enough church behavior and prayer. Packer's current comments could lead to more suicides among gay Mormons and to more LDS families rejecting their gay children, warned Duane Jennings, who co-directs the Salt Lake chapter of Affirmation, a support group for gay and lesbian Mormons. "This is evidence that the church hasn't really changed," Jennings said when contacted Sunday, "and that its positive moves [like supporting Salt Lake City's anti-discrimination statutes] have been just an attempt to improve its image in the wake of Proposition 8."

2010 3^rd most read posting on Pride In Utah Letter From the Father Of A Gay Man To Boyd K Packer Absolutely amazing letter written by a former bishop in the Mormon church, and the father of a gay son. His words to Boyd K Packer are heartbreaking, uplifting and inspiring!  Reprint of a letter written by David Eccles Hardy 7 Oct 1999  See above.

2012 Brandon's Big Gay Blog SLC Gay Clubs Thronged With Closeted Conferencegoers Posted By Brandon Burt on October 7, 2012, It's LDS General Conference weekend -- and you know what that means: Salt Lake City's gay clubs will be packed to overflowing. Or will they? --- For years, I've been hearing from various sources that every Conference weekend is a bonanza for Salt Lake City's gay bars. The conventional wisdom holds that, as tens of thousands of LDS faithful descend semiannually upon Temple Square, a certain percentage of curious and/or closeted Mormon men take the opportunity to explore their darkest instincts in the fleshpots of SLC. (It should be noted that these dark fleshpots exist mainly in the feverish imaginations of closeted small-towners; Salt Lake City's gay bars are generally cheerful, modern, well-lit and friendly establishments. Heck, these days, you can't even smoke indoors!) Now, I'm a skeptic. Just because everybody says the bars are packed to overflowing during General Conference doesn't mean it's actually true. Several times over the years, I've tried to verify the Conference Effect. I've been to many gay bars on many weekends, sometimes even during Conference. But, even though I'm a trained observer, in this case, I must disqualify myself* as an accurate source. Since my blind spot prevents me from making an accurate count, in the interest of science, I decided to call up a few experts to find out where all these Conference Mormons are going Saturday night. My findings indicate that the Conference Effect could be a mere urban legend (according to a trustworthy source, radio personality/The Trapp bar owner, Joe Redburn). Still, some fashionable club owners (such as JAM's beefy and attractive Brian Morris) are witty enough to adopt Conference as a fun, special event. And still others (like Club Try-Angles' David Willeitner) report an extra bit of conviviality during this semi-annual occurrence. Note: In the interest of inclusivity, I really did attempt to get the womyn's perspective, but was met only with a baffling voicemail message. I suppose I lack the secret code. Still, I encourage curious out-of-town helpmates to visit the Paper Moon, 3737 S. State, JAM 751 N. 300 West Brandon's Big Gay Blog: Are you expecting an extra-big crowd during Conference weekend? JAM co-owner Brian Morris: We are -- it's one of our biggest nights of the year. Well, actually, it's semiannual, so we get a good crowd twice a year just from the LDS General Conference. BBGB: Do you have any special drinks that you serve on Conference weekend? Morris: No, we serve our regular drinks; nothing special. But all of our bartenders are dressed as Mormon missionaries. We call it the Missionary-Man Party, in honor of the Annie Lennox tune. Some [staff members] have their name badges that they wore on their missions, and we encourage people to do that. In fact, [Sunday evening at 9 p.m.] is Conference Weekend Karaoke -- participants get a free gift card. We encourage people to sing LDS hymns, but nobody ever does. Occasionally, we'll get a primary song like "Give Said the Little Stream" or "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree." THE TRAPP 102 S. 600 West Brandon's Big Gay Blog: Are gay bars really packed on Conference weekend? Trapp owner Joe Redburn: You know, that's an old wives' tale -- I remember hearing it years ago at Radio City. I don't think it's true, but I want it to be. I doubt anybody's sitting there in the Tabernacle thinking, "You know, after this, we should go to the bar!" BBGB: Are you expecting an extra-large crowd tonight? A Trapp shift manager who shall remain nameless: It'll probably be busy later, but the whole thing about bars being busy this weekend is sort of a joke. Who knows with them? They usually hang out in the parks. It used to be they'd go to the bathhouses, but we haven't had any of them for years. BBGB: So you haven't noticed a lot of Mormons hanging around? Manager: They don't come down here -- there's too much drinking, smoking and swearing. CLUB TRY-ANGLES 251 W. 900 South Brandon's Big Gay Blog: Are you expecting an extra-big crowd tonight? Try-Angles assistant manager David Willeitner: I don't know if it's extra-big. We do usually experience higher volume the conference weekend -- and it's an extra-frisky crowd! BBGB: Do you do anything special for Conference weekend? Willeitner: We do very little to promote the event because it's a self-sustaining thing. Our usual crowd just bring their friends from out of town, so it becomes a larger extension of our already busy nights * Unfortunately, asking me to count out-of-town Mormons in a gay bar is like asking a blind man to count black tiles in a 1930s checkerboard linoleum kitchen floor. When it comes to smooth-shaven, shorthaired guys hanging out shamefully in the corners, I'm not such a good observer -- I simply don't see them. They're the ones who bullied me mercilessly in my youth. Maybe it's some weird kind of psychological defense mechanism, but today, I could be surrounded by a whole gaggle of cleancut RMs and never even know it -- I'd think I was alone in the room. Instead, I'm the one happily chatting up some burly, mean-looking, tattooed, bearded biker occupying the center of the barroom -- where I feel safe, where none of those hairless, judgmental, skinny, pious creeps would ever dare venture to shame me again.