North Star Saints | |
Named after | The North Star |
---|---|
Founded | 2007[1] |
Founders | Jay Jacobsen, [2] John Gadd, [3] Ty Mansfield, [4] [5] Jeff Bennion [6] [3] |
Merger of | Evergreen International [7] |
Type | 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization |
20-5436300 [8] | |
Focus | LGBT Mormon people |
Headquarters | Salt Lake City, Utah, USA [8] |
Area served | Worldwide |
Subsidiaries | Voices of Hope [7] |
Affiliations | Reconciliation and Growth Project, [9] [10] the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints |
Volunteers (2017) | 35 [11] |
Website | northstarsaints |
Formerly called | North Star International |
North Star Saints is an organization for LGBT people in the Latter-day Saint community. [12] North Star is described as a faith-affirming resource for Latter-day Saint people addressing sexual orientation and gender identity who desire to live in line with teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). [13] North Star supports the teaching of the Church of Jesus Christ, including the law of chastity and teachings on homosexuality, which prohibits sexual relationships outside of a legal marriage between one man and one woman, as well as teachings on gender identity and expression. The organization takes "no official position on the origin or mutability of homosexual attractions or gender identity incongruence", [14] and does not "endorse political causes or join political coalitions, including those officially sanctioned by the [LDS] Church." [15]
North Star was founded in 2007. [16] The organization holds an annual conference in Utah, as well as quarterly events, live-streamed firesides, and other smaller events in cities around the United States. [17] [18] It also manages several social media discussion groups for different sexual and gender minority demographics, as well as spouses, parents, and other family members. [19]
The organization does not take a position on political issues, but has spoken out against using the suicide of gay LDS members to promote personal political agendas. [20] Evergreen International, a similar organization that for many years operated parallel to North Star, [21] was absorbed into North Star in early 2014. [22]
Although the organization has never officially endorse any therapy, two co-founders of North Star, [23] Ty Mansfield (Former President) and Jeff Bennion (Former Chair of the Board of Directors), [24] [25] were heavily involved [26] in People Can Change (PCC) and its Journey Into Manhood (JiM) and Journey Beyond (JB) weekends, [27] [28] and have allowed and participated in PCC's promotions in North Star online groups, pages, [29] [30] [31] and its yearly conferences. [32] Many prominent members and leaders of North Star (such as those featured in TLC's "My Husband's Not Gay" [33] ) were involved in conversion therapy, [34] [35] [36] [37] and board members Preston Dahlgreen and Jeff Bennion defended the Jewish conversion therapy organization JONAH in the 2015 court case Ferguson v. JONAH. [38] [39] [40] In September 2015, Mansfield reaffirmed that North Star has never endorsed any therapeutic organization or approach, but instead encourages individuals to share what has been personally helpful to them in finding congruence between their sexuality and their faith. [41]
In 2012, North Star sponsored the launch of the Voices of Hope Project to share the stories of believing LGBTQ members of the LDS Church. [42] The site features essays and over 70 video interviews. [43] A sister project on gender identity and transgender experiences titled "Journeys of Faith" was launched in 2015. [44]
Affirmation: LGBTQ Mormons, Families, & Friends is an international organization for individuals who identify as gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, queer, intersex, or same-sex attracted, and their family members, friends, and church leaders who are members or former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Sexuality has a prominent role within the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In its standards for sexual behavior called the law of chastity, top LDS leaders bar all premarital sex, all homosexual sexual activity, the viewing of pornography, masturbation, and overtly sexual kissing, dancing, and touch outside marriage. LDS Leaders teach that gender is defined in premortal life, and that part of the purpose of mortal life is for men and women to be sealed together in heterosexual marriages, progress eternally after death as gods together, and produce spiritual children in the afterlife. The church states that sexual relations within the framework of monogamous opposite-sex marriage are healthy, necessary, and approved by God. The LDS denomination of Mormonism places great emphasis on the sexual behavior of Mormon adherents, as a commitment to follow the law of chastity is required for baptism, adherence is required to receive a temple recommend, and is part of the temple endowment ceremony covenants devout participants promise by oath to keep.
All homosexual sexual activity is condemned as sinful by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its law of chastity, and the church teaches that God does not approve of same-sex marriage. Adherents who participate in same-sex sexual behavior may face church discipline. Members of the church who experience homosexual attractions, including those who self-identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual remain in good standing in the church if they abstain from same-sex marriage and any homosexual sexual activity or sexual relationships outside an opposite-sex marriage. However, all people, including those in same-sex relationships and marriages, are permitted to attend the weekly Sunday meetings.
Brothers on a Road Less Traveled is an American nonprofit organization supporting men who wish to reduce or eliminate their homosexual desires. Formerly known as People Can Change (PCC), the organization was founded in 2000, and is sometimes called Brothers Road (BR). It runs the Journey Into Manhood program. The organization and program are controversial and have been alleged to be consumer fraud in a 2016 complaint made to the Federal Trade Commission. For decades, Brothers Road co-founder David Matheson was one of the nation's leading conversion therapists, but in 2019 he left the organization to date men.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints releases membership, congregational, and related information on a regular basis. The latest membership information LDS Church releases includes a count of membership, stakes, wards, branches, missions, temples, and family history centers for the worldwide church and for individual countries and territories where the church is recognized. The latest information released was as of December 31, 2022.
"God Loveth His Children" is a pamphlet produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for members with same-sex attraction. It was approved in April 2007 and was announced in July 2007 through a letter to LDS Church bishops and stake presidents, and is available in 27 languages. It represents an official statement from the church, and follows an unofficial interview with apostle Dallin H. Oaks and general authority Lance B. Wickman in April of that year. The pamphlet is not new revelation or doctrinal change, but a continuation of the direction the church has been going in the past several years. However, church leaders say chances are slim it would deviate from its sanctions against active gay relationships.
George Eugene England, Jr., usually credited as Eugene England, was a Latter-day Saint writer, teacher, and scholar. He founded Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the oldest independent journal in Mormon Studies, with G. Wesley Johnson, Paul G. Salisbury, Joseph H. Jeppson, and Frances Menlove in 1966, and cofounded the Association for Mormon Letters in 1976. He is also widely known in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for his many essays about Mormon culture and thought. From 1977–1998, England taught Mormon Literature at Brigham Young University. England described the ideal modern Mormon scholar as "critical and innovative as his gifts from God require but conscious of and loyal to his own unique heritage and nurturing community and thus able to exercise those gifts without harm to others or himself."
Peggy Fletcher Stack is an American journalist, editor, and author. Stack has been the lead religion writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 1991. She and five other journalists at the Salt Lake Tribune won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. She won the Cornell Award for Excellence in Religion Reporting—Mid-sized Newspapers from the Religious News Association in 2004, 2012, 2017, 2018, and 2022.
The Paris France Temple is a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Le Chesnay, a suburb of Paris, France, and is located near Versailles. The Paris France Temple is the first temple built in Metropolitan France, and the second in France, after the Papeete Tahiti Temple.
Mormons Building Bridges is a decentralized grassroots group composed primarily of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who seek to improve the attitudes between members of the LDS Church and the LGBT community.
Mormon feminism is a feminist religious social movement concerned with the role of women within Mormonism. Mormon feminists commonly advocate for a more significant recognition of Heavenly Mother, the ordination of women, gender equality, and social justice grounded in Mormon theology and history. Mormon feminism advocates for more representation and presence of women as well as more leadership roles for women within the hierarchical structure of the church. It also promotes fostering healthy cultural attitudes concerning women and girls.
Students identifying as LGBTQIA+ have a long, documented history at Brigham Young University (BYU), and have experienced a range of treatment by other students and school administrators over the decades. Large surveys of over 7,000 BYU students in 2020 and 2017 found that over 13% had marked their sexual orientation as something other than "strictly heterosexual", while the other survey showed that .2% had reported their gender identity as transgender or something other than cisgender male or female. BYU is the largest religious university in North America and is the flagship institution of the educational system of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints —Mormonism's largest denomination.
In society at large, LGBT individuals, especially youth, are at a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and suicide. Though causes of mental health risk are complex, one oft cited reason for these higher risks is minority stress stemming from societal anti-LGBT biases and stigma, rejection, and internalized homophobia.
Although the historical record is often scarce, evidence points to LGBT individuals having existed in the Mormon community since its beginnings, and estimates of the number of LGBT former and current Mormons range from 4 to 10% of the total membership of the LDS Church. However, it wasn't until the late 1950s that top LDS leaders began regularly discussing LGBT people in public addresses. Since the 1970s a greater number of LGBT individuals with Mormon connections have received media coverage.
Jennifer Finlayson-Fife is an American psychologist, sexuality educator, and clinical professional counselor.
Because of its ban against same-sex sexual activity and same-sex marriage the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a long history of teaching that its adherents who are attracted to the same sex can and should attempt to alter their feelings through righteous striving and sexual orientation change efforts. Reparative therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change an individual's sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual, or their gender identity from transgender to cisgender using psychological, physical, or spiritual interventions. There is no reliable evidence that such practices can alter sexual orientation or gender identity, and many medical institutions warn that conversion therapy is ineffective and potentially harmful.
This is a timeline of LGBT Mormon history in the first decade of the 2000s, part of a series of timelines consisting of events, publications, and speeches about LGBTQ+ individuals, topics around sexual orientation and gender minorities, and the community of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
This is a timeline of LGBT Mormon history in the 2010s, part of a series of timelines consisting of events, publications, and speeches about LGBTQ+ individuals, topics around sexual orientation and gender minorities, and the community of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Homosexuality has been publicly discussed by top leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints —Mormonism's largest denomination—since the late 1800s. The frequency of teachings on same-sex sexual activity increased starting in the late 1950s. Most discussion focuses on male homosexuality and rarely mentions lesbianism or bisexuality. Below is a timeline of notable speeches, publications, and policies in the LDS church on the topic of homosexuality.
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