The Queering of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

The Standards Are Gone

Recent events within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints lead to the inexorable conclusion that the Church is being queered from within. That is, Church leadership continues to incrementally advance towards the full acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism in wards and stakes, as well as the overall Church. The Scriptures are clear with regards to homosexuality and transgenderism:

• Deuteronomy 22:5 says that a “woman shall not wear that which pertaineth to a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are an abomination unto the LORD thy God.”

• Leviticus 18:22 makes it abundantly clear that homosexuality is an abomination before God, and the chapter as a whole links homosexuality, bestiality, child sacrifice, adultery, and incest with the prior inhabitants of the land given to the Jewish people. Those inhabitants defiled their nations and the land, and they were judged and condemned by God. Anyone who commits these abominations will have their souls cut off from their people.

• The Lord condemns those who prostitute their daughters (Lev. 19:29) because it will cause the land to fall to whoredom and be full of wickedness, and consulting with familiar spirits or wizards, using enchantments and astrology, are all forbidden in Leviticus 19 as well.

• Leviticus 20 once again states that adultery, homosexual activities, bestiality, and incest are all prohibited. Adultery, homosexuality, and bestiality are punishable by death. The Lord once again tells the Israelites that they shall not walk in the manner of those nations that were cast out of the land before their arrival, for the Lord abhorred those nations for engaging in these practices. The Lord has separated the Israelites from other nations. In Leviticus 19:27, those who have familiar spirits, or who are wizards, shall be stoned to death.

• Romans Chapter 1 identifies homosexuality as a byproduct of exchanging the worship of God with the worship of a created being or item. Lesbianism and homosexuality were the byproducts of idolatry, of rejecting the true God for a false God in the context of mystery religions.

• 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 makes it clear that fornicators, heterosexual or homosexual, will not inherit the Kingdom of God. The effeminate are explicitly listed among those barred from the inheritance.

• 1 Timothy 1:8-11 states that the law is good, and made for the lawless and disobedient, among which are whoremongers and for those that defile themselves with mankind.

• There are quibbling over the use of malakia (effeminate or soft) in Corinthians relative to arsenokoitai (literally a compound word for male and bed). The reality is that the meaning is only unclear to those who wish to avoid the obvious: God does not permit His followers to engage in fornication of any type, or homosexuality. Men are to be masculine in appearance and mannerism, and women are to be feminine in appearance and mannerism.

There is not a single instance within the Old or New Testament that is complimentary or accepting of homosexual identity or behavior.

In the context of the Hamblin case, the members of the Church of Satan are bisexual adults. David Lee Hamblin engaged in anal sex with his brother in law Craig Christensen, just as his sisters engaged in lesbian sex with their nieces. David Lee Hamblin also engaged in homosexual acts with Joseph Wood Bennion, Randall Lake, his brother Steven Hamblin, while discussing his sexual attraction to Gordon Bowen with his daughters. The abominations listed in Leviticus are found in the Hamblin Victims Statements: the Church of Satan engaged in homosexuality, incest, bestiality, adultery, child sacrifice, child prostitution, and nearly every other form of depravity one can imagine. The members forced their children to engage in such acts as well.

Within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the General Handbook acknowledges the scriptural prohibitions that forbid all unchaste behavior, either heterosexual or same-sex. The General Handbook acknowledges the biblical and doctrinal prohibitions against same sex marriage in 38.6.16. In 38.6.23 of the Handbook, the Church states that “Gender is an essential characteristic in Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness” and cites Genesis 1:27, as well as defining gender as “biological sex at birth.”

Through the Handbook, transgender Saints are counseled against “surgical, medical, or social transition[ing] away from one’s biological sex at birth.” That is, changing dress, grooming, names and pronouns are discouraged, but not prohibited, even though the Bible defines such behavior as an abomination. Membership will be restricted, but not rescinded. The Church says that transgender and homosexual Saints deserve to be treated with “sensitivity, kindness, compassion, and Christlike love.”

There is nothing Christlike about failing to tell a homosexual or transgender Saint or church attendee the truth: God rejects their choice. Sin is not an identity. The compulsion to sin is universal to all human beings in a fallen world, but it is not an identity for the purposes of lessening the culpability of those who choose to sin, or for restricting those who would tell the truth in order to rebuke sin, so that an individual might be restored or brought to righteousness. Heterosexual attraction is not so overwhelming as to mandate a less forceful opposition to adultery and fornication. Church leaders and members are not admonished to proceed with “sensitivity, kindness, compassion, and Christlike love” for those heterosexual individuals who would construct an entire identity around their sinful behavior that traces back to their attraction.

God rejects heterosexual and homosexual immorality. That is the most loving, compassionate, and Christ-like statement one can make to those who would try to carve out an exception for their sinful conduct, or who would try to erode the Church from within by making incremental inroads to the acceptance of sin as righteousness. The effort to normalize scripturally identified and condemned sinful conduct as righteousness is satanic. The effort to lessen the stigma, to restrict the forceful rebuke and rejection of sin in our wards and stakes, to impose artificial bifurcations between attraction and action, is a satanic enterprise.

Those responsible for the semantic contortions within the existing Handbook, and within recent updates to that Handbook, invite the judgment of God upon all Saints. We, like the Israelites, were set apart. We are obligated to follow His commandments and to avoid walking in the manner of those other peoples who engage in sexual immorality, idolatry, and witchcraft. We have been blessed with unquantifiable amounts of God’s providence, and we are a covenant people, and with that covenant comes the concomitant obligation to uphold our end of the covenant: strict obedience to God.

Recent updates to the General Handbook propose that transgender people be allowed to use the restroom that corresponds to their “inner sense of gender, with a trusted person ensuring that others are not using the restroom at the same time.” Local leaders “should not determine or prescribe how members address an individual” with regards to pronouns and preferred names. The leadership of the Church have effectively barred bishops and priesthood holders from contending for the Scripture by rebuking a satanic movement within our Church, by opposing the nonsense of preferred pronouns and names.

Transgender people are mentally and spiritually ill. It is not loving or Christlike to abstain from that. It is not consistent with Scripture-God’s explicit commandments-to abstain from rebuking and rejecting what is clearly identified as an abomination. The rebuke is a clear call to repentance and to restoration, but that is not possible if local leaders cannot engage in the rebuke in the first place, and members are instructed that rebuking biblically identified abominations is not loving or Christlike.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household” (Matthew 10:34-36)

The message appears to be one of “Sit down and shut up” when it comes to standing against homosexuality and transgenderism. We are called to war with sin. Suffering is part of this call, as 1 Peter 4 and 5 makes clear. We should no longer live the rest of our time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.

For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.

We are no longer Gentiles, walking in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, reveling, banquetings, and abominable idolatries, all of which lead to sexual sin. We are not called to accommodate sin in our own lives or in the lives others who profess to be of Christ, but to reject sin utterly and completely. The Lord chastens those whom He loves, as Hebrews 12:5-8 makes clear. If an individual Saint who professes to believe in Christ walks among the congregations without chastisement for sin, they are not sons of God, but bastards who are not beholden t or subject to Heavenly Father, as Hebrews 12:8 states.

The goal of Satan is to characterize loving rebuke or chastisement as hatred and bigotry. Christians are called to rebuke, and if they do not it is a form of hatred.

Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. -Leviticus 19:7

We are only advised to abstain from rebuking a scorner, but a wise man will love us if we rebuke him for sin, as Proverbs 9:8 states. 1 Timothy 5:20 explicitly says to rebuke those that sin, so that others may fear. 2 Timothy 4:2 says to preach the word, reproving and rebuking and exhorting with doctrine, while Titus 1:13 says to rebuke sharply so that others may be sound in the faith. James 5:20 says that if we bring back a sinner from his wandering we will save his soul from death.

Those who refuse to respond to rebuke are to be as Gentiles and tax collectors to us:

"But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector." -Matthew 18:16-17.

Allowing a transgender individual to openly attend Sacrament meetings is not love. Endorsing that same individual using a bathroom that conforms to the delusion of their sin is not love. It is not compassionate, and it does not restore them to the reality of their gender at birth.

The same is true of homosexuals, who are being led to believe that their lives are not sinful and not an abomination before God by current local leaders. Charlie Bird and his husband Ryan Clifford are permitted to hold callings in their ward, and to take the sacrament as well. Aaron Sheridan, who is a former stake president and bishop, is currently working for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in their communications department. He has openly supported gay marriage, and he attends Pride parades. There are gay Saints who have been excommunicated for same-sex marriage, while Charlie Bird and Ryan Clifford remain ensconced in a ward where the leadership is clearly pursuing the erosion of Church doctrine founded in Scripture.

Mitch Mayne, an openly gay man who was formerly married to another man, was sustained as the executive secretary in his bishopric in the San Francisco Stake of the Church. His appointment was not met with opposition from Church leadership:

Leadership at the church’s world headquarters in Salt Lake City declined to comment on the matter, calling it a “local issue.”

This is not a local issue. This is a biblical issue that is universal to the entire Church. We are either biblically based or we aren’t. We either follow God’s commandments or we don’t. We either reject those behaviors identified by God as an abomination or we accept them as normal in the name of “tolerance.” There is no in between.

The queering of the Church continues unabated as Church leadership incrementally allows for the inexorable result of such efforts: full blown acceptance of transgenderism, homosexual relationships, same sex marriages, and other relationships rejected by God in Scripture.

The fact that alleged members of the Church of Satan were allowed to remain in the Church for decades while actively working to achieve these ends has born fruit. Ritual abuse groups that I have examined are inevitably defined by their embrace of queer identity and practice, whereby same sex contact is ritualistically practiced among adults and imposed on children. Within those families identified as members of the Church of Satan, I have found significant numbers of children who now identify as LGBTQIA+. That is not accidental; it is by design.

There is a significant population within the Church membership that has never truly believed what the Church teaches with regards to sexual morality or any other topic, and they have been permitted to erode the Church from within. This has been going on for decades. Orthodox Saints who witness it often throw their hands up and point to prophecies in the Book of Mormon, thereby ensuring that the abominable outcome will be inevitable rather than fought out in close quarters combat.

My recent clash with Joseph Wood Bennion of Horseshoe Mountain Pottery is emblematic of this: it is undisputed that Bennion self-designates as a communist, and publicly endorses abortion, gay rights, and same sex marriage. He holds a calling within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and from each of his callings over the years, he has been permitted to damage the Church from within with his unscriptural, apostate beliefs and practices.

The queering of the Church is not inevitable if only Saints would fight. It remains to be seen if they will. The Church leadership should understand that it is incumbent upon them to enforce their own doctrines and the commandments of Heavenly Father in Scripture if they are to retain any credibility as the Lord’s anointed. There is no room for interpretation: merely professing homosexuality as your identity, or any other identity beyond that of a Saint seeking to uphold Christ in one’s life, is unacceptable and grounds for charges of apostasy.

We are not our sins, our lusts, and we are not empowered to excuse ourselves from culpability from sinful urges or behaviors by constructing an identity within the spectrum of other non-existent identities contained within an acronym designation. This absurdity has to end. It is time to rise up and reject it in a stentorian chorus: we are sons and daughters of God obligated to live as sons and daughters of God and to reject apostasy. Intolerance of depravity is the responsibility of everyone who professes Christ. It is not enough to simply love God; one must hate the Adversary and sin.