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CASE STUDIES - GROUPS AND ORGANIZATIONS- HONEYVILLE, UT WARD INTERDICTION INCIDENT
"[In 1893] the town of Honeyville [Utah] was rocked by a same-sex scandal that divided families and pitted local LDS leaders against each other. In October 1893, Box Elder Stake president Rudger Clawson rendered his decision concerning what he described as "one of the most extraordinary cases that ever arose in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints." Two young men (then twenty-three and nineteen) accused their thirty-fours-year-old, married half-brother Lorenzo Hunsaker of sexually fondling them and performing oral sex on the since "four year ago this fall," and as frequently as every two weeks. Twenty-three-year-old Peter Hunsaker said he woke up while his half-brother Lorenzo was "in the fact of fingering me." He said his older brother also attempted to "ride him" (perform anal sex), and complained: "I did not want him to monkey with me." Peter added: "I do not think he would have intercourse with other women, but [he] is not virtuous with men." A married twenty-five-year-old neighbor also testified that he awoke one night and discovered Lorenzo masturbating him while they slept together during a visit.
"The stake president decided that all charges against the respected high priest were lies and therefore reversed the previous decision of the bishop's court to disfellowship Lorenzo Hunsaker. Instead, Clawson excommunicated the two accusing brothers for the "gross wrong" of making "such a monstrous charge" against their married brother. A twenty-one-year-old half-brother escaped that fate by denying his previous statements that Lorenzo had repeatedly fondled him and attempted oral sex on him while they slept together. Apostle Lorenzo Snow was present and approved the decision to exonerate Lorenzo Hunsaker and to punish his brothers for claiming he sexually molested them
"Stake President Clawson also released the ward bishop for encouraging dissent against this decision. Because most of the ward membership also protested these decisions, the stake president refused to allow the sacrament (communion) to be administered in that congregation's meetings for seven months. Apostle John Henry Smith restored that privilege in June 1984. However, Honeyville's residents refused to sustain their newly appointed bishop until November 1985. This is the only instance in Mormon history when a specific community suffered the LDS equivalent of "the interdict" - a Roman Catholic practice of punishing a congregation or community by prohibiting the administration of the holy Sacraments. Homoeroticism was the background for this only known example of a Mormon congregation suffering such an interdict."
- from Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans, D. Michael Quinn, University of Illinois Press, 1996, pp. 286-287.