
This is the place:
![]()
POLICY - FIRST PRESIDENCY MORALLY RESPONSIBLE
FOR MURDERS OF GAY PEOPLE
[A]lthough the Utah press reported hundreds of "hate" attacks annually against gays and lesbians, the First Presidency in 1992 orchestrated the defeat of proposals to include "sexual orientation" as a protected category in Utah's law against hate crimes. While President Hinckley has recently condemned hatred and violence against "those who profess homosexual tendencies," the First Presidency from 1976 onward has also repeatedly published Apostle Boyd K. Packer's talk praising a Mormon missionary for beating up his homosexual companion. This official church pamphlet, titled To Young Men Only, encourages teenage boys to assault any males "who entice young men to join them in these immoral acts." Yet President Hinckley (who was a senior apostle in 1976) expresses bewilderment regarding the literally thousands of violent attacks against gay males in Utah during the decades since the First Presidency began publishing Apostle Packer's talk. This endorsement of gay bashing continues to be printed in pamphlet form and is currently distributed by LDS headquarters. From 1976 to the present, local LDS leaders have been encouraged to give this pamphlet to young males in their teens and twenties, those most likely to commit hate crimes against gays and lesbians.
LDS headquarters has never promoted a similar distribution of statements opposing violence towards homosexuals. Recent public statements by LDS leaders against gay bashing have the appearance of a smoke-screen to conceal the ongoing private endorsement of gay bashing in Apostle Packer's pamphlet. In fact, because it has officially promoted this endorsement of violence against homosexuals for twenty-five years, I believe the First Presidency has been morally responsible whenever LDS young men have attacked or killed homosexuals from 1976 to the present. This includes the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming in 1998.
Moreover, by repeatedly issuing this pamphlet and other homophobic statements since the beginning of the anti-ERA campaign in 1975, the Mormon church has encouraged a climate of revulsion which fills most LDS families. Therefore, I believe the First Presidency has also been morally responsible whenever Mormon parents have rejected their children for being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Even when the LDS church's Ensign magazine published a statement in 1997 advising parents not "to disown" their homosexual children, the general authority merely noted that such tactics "do not help." Public-relations statements of such timidity have little hope of undoing the spiritual damage to families caused by decades of stridently homophobic indoctrination by LDS headquarters."
- from Prelude to the National "Defense of Marriage" by D. Michael Quinn, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Volume 33, No. 3, Fall 2000.