Spring 2026
Our Spring Issue is our first in FULL COLOR! "Heavenly Bodies: Mormon Male Homoerotics in the Sacred Art of Arnold Friberg" by Kate Davis and "History and Theology of Trans and Nonbinary Identity in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" by Taylor Petrey begin the issue dedicated to exploring the queer experience in the Church. This is followed by an important Roundtable: Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of the November 2015 Exclusion Policy. The personal essays, poetry, reviews and sermon are all similarly themed and round out this beautiful issue. And finally, Art Editor Amanda Beardsley considers "From Protest Poster to Meme: The Visual Language of Queer Dissent at BYU" all in full color. Purchase an individual issue here. And click here for an overview of the issue by our knowledgeable subject editors!
A tan, bare-chested man stands in the foreground to the right, half turned away from the viewer. His right foot is perched on a rock, causing his studded leather kilt to hike up, exposing a…
Trans and gender nonbinary Latter-day Saints have become increasingly visible in recent years, sparking public debates about their place within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[1] These debates have emerged as transgender visibility…
For much of my life, I tried to be the man everyone expected me to be—faithful, successful, and called by God to lead—but inside, I struggled with gender dysphoria. My journey toward self-acceptance, detailed in my memoir Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman (Signature Books, 2024), led me to transition while serving as a stake president and working as a church architect.
As someone who is gay and grew up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it has been an interesting journey to witness changes by the Church in how it understands and treats…
You want me to make it less
complicated
want me to smooth the way,
and say, that to me, the path
is easy.
Neighbors
they were, when they broke up your baptisms
Americans
they were, when they scattered your press
Taylor Petrey’s ambitious, rigorous, and enlightening new book, Queering Kinship in the Mormon Cosmos, wields the concept of kinship as a sort of skeleton key to unlock the faith’s teachings about gender difference, sexuality, family…
When I was invited to review Points of Tangency, I had a moment of anxiety. The blurb hit a little too close to home: “Scott Russell Morris, a closeted queer Mormon, tells the story of…
I was hesitant when I was asked to write a review of Nathan Kitchen’s memoir The Boughs of Love: Navigating the Queer Latter-day Saint Experience During an Ongoing Restoration. I consider Nathan to be a…
In Dictates of Conscience, Laurie Lee Hall offers us a searingly honest, spiritually rich, and beautifully written memoir. She allows us deep access to her head, heart, emotions, as well as her testimony of Jesus…
I don’t remember who told me about the POX. I have an idea, but it would be a guess. I do remember looking at a lamp while she did it. There was a water stain on the table. I traced the white edges, foamy and hard at the same time.
I don’t know where I was or what I was doing when news spread about what has become known as the November 2015 exclusion policy. I might not have known about it at all. At the time, I was a high school senior, a member of the debate team, an active Latter-day Saint, a Boy Scout, a priest. Devout, in a way that doesn’t ask too many questions.
The decision by leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to implement a new policy in November 2015 that categorized those who entered into a same-sex marriage as apostates, and restricted salvific…
Having experienced the 2015 exclusion policy as a gay Latter-day Saint father of five and a senior leader in Affirmation: LGBTQ Mormons, Families & Friends, I am experiencing the tenth anniversary of “The Policy” as…
A good friend walked into my office in November 2015 and slumped into the chair opposite mine, utterly distraught. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had just updated its leadership handbook to define…
I have a niece who is deutan colorblind, meaning she has trouble distinguishing between red and green. Even when she and I are looking at the same things, we see them quite differently because of our bodies—specifically our eyes. I don’t see her difference as a deficiency, and in fact, I am fascinated by hearing how she experiences the world. She has a unique perspective, and while I will never experience it, I try to understand it.
The protests of 2019 and 2020 at Brigham Young University (BYU) stand out as a notable period of rupture within an otherwise doctrinally strict and culturally conventional institution. Often pulling up to three hundred student participants, these protests marked a watershed moment for LGBTQ+ discourse at the conservative flagship of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
