The Invisible Church: Belonging Ten Years After the Exclusion Policy: A Conversation with Nathan Kitchen and Makoto Hunter

Ten years after the LDS Church’s 2015 exclusion policy, its effects continue to shape conversations about faith, belonging, and community among LGBTQ Latter-day Saints. In this episode of Dialogue Out Loud, Dialogue art editor Margaret Olsen Hemming speaks with Nathan Kitchen and Makoto Hunter about their essays in Dialogue’s Spring 2026 roundtable reflecting on the policy’s legacy a decade later.

Drawing on personal experience, historical reflection, and theological inquiry, Kitchen and Hunter explore how the policy reshaped their understanding of belonging within the Church and beyond it. Kitchen reflects on experiencing the policy as a gay father and LGBTQ advocate, while Hunter examines how questions of queerness, Mormon history, and plural marriage helped illuminate their own journey of self-understanding as a transgender woman.

Together, they discuss institutional power, memory, community formation, and the “invisible church” that emerges when people create spaces of care and belonging for one another. Their conversation offers a thoughtful meditation on what it means to remain connected to a faith tradition while navigating its exclusions, and where hope can still be found ten years later.