LGBTQ Mormon topics |
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This is a timeline of LGBT Mormon history in the first half of the 20th century, 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 (LDS Church). Although the historical record is often scarce, evidence points to queer individuals having existed in the Mormon community since its beginnings. However, top LDS leaders only started regularly addressing queer topics in public in the late 1950s. [1] : 375, 377 [2] : v, 3 [3] : 170 Since 1970, the LDS Church has had at least one official publication or speech from a high-ranking leader referencing LGBT topics every year, and a greater number of LGBT Mormon and former Mormon individuals have received media coverage.
5 Apr., 'Clyde Felt has confessed to cutting the throat of old man Collins, at his request. The old man was a moral degenerate. The boy is a son of David P. Felt.' Grandson of former general authority, Clyde Felt is fourteen. Despite this blood atonement murder, LDS leaders allow [the] young man to be endowed and married in temple eight years later.
A Scarlet West. / An East merged into eventide, / A bare, brown plain; and by my side / The one, the one in all the world / I love the best! / Last night's gay mask— / The outward wildness and the inward ache— / I cast forever. From her lips I take / Joy never-ceasing. Brown plain and her kiss, / Are all I ask.
Funeral services for Sarah [Lundstedt] will be held in the Twenty-third ward chapel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Mormon, at Layton Sunday afternoon.
On January 1, 1925, Ruth Drake came to Salt Lake to attend L.D.S. business college and lived with the Lundstedt family.First part of the article archived here, second part here.
Tone of the letters ... show that an intimacy began with a schoolgirl friendship and developed to the point where their correspondence was filled with burning admissions of love.Page 2 of the article archived here.
For four years a strange affection had existed between the girl, and it is the opinion of the authorities that they chose death together rather than separation ....
The dead young women are: Miss Ruth Drake, 19 ... Miss Sarah Lundstedt, 22Page 2 of the article archived here.
And then in 1937, there was a student named Grant Rasmussen working on his master's thesis at the U in sociology—he later taught there briefly—but his master's thesis is incredibly groundbreaking and it was called 'The Invert Personality'. The word 'invert' back then referred to both homosexuality and transgenderism and intersex issues. It's a 250-page master's thesis, and I would say a quarter to a third of it is actually his autobiography. Now he uses the pseudonym of 'Claude', but he goes into incredible depth about his own journey coming out and exploring gender issues and sexual orientation and everything. It's just fascinating.
Salt Lake City's Radio City Lounge was known as the oldest gay bar west of the Mississippi. ... 'I was raised a very staunch Mormon. ... I prayed a lot to change because I knew this was not acceptable and the church was not going to accept me,' he says. He [Bob Sorensen] met his future husband, Jim Swensen, at Radio City in 1966. They now live in Arizona. ... [Rose] Carrier played the traditional role of bartender-slash-psychiatrist for her customers, many of whom were married Mormon men with children at home.