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After a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology: A Ten-Year Retrospective

Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 111–137
Ten years ago, my article “Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology” was published in Dialogue. I did not know what to expect when it made its way into the world, but it ended up being a widely discussed piece and has been accessed tens of thousands of times. The public discussion about my ideas was both critical and appreciative. In the wake of the article, my own research and thinking have also developed.

Queer Bodies, Queer Technologies, and Queer Policies

Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 99–109
Reproductive gender essentialism claims exclude trans persons for their gender identity. However, these same arguments, when taken seriously, also exclude infertile and intersex women too. Such a strict definition of “man” or “woman” does not simply exclude trans folks but also any body not fulfilling its biological utility. After all, biological potential and utility is the basis of a biological sex assignment

Hug a Queer Latter-day Saint

Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 33–44
“Queer Polygamy,” is an innovating mashup that looks beyond monogamy as the only authorizing type of same-sex relationships—it really pushes the boundaries of what queer scholarship had done. Drawing on contemporary polyamory to critique the limitations of heterosexual monogamy, and putting that into conversation with the LDS tradition of plural marriage, Ostler imagines a new type of polygamy, queer polygamy, that sheds the patriarchal baggage of the 19th century version and its continuation in fundamentalist Mormonism, as well as thinking beyond its presumed heterosexulity.

Review: A Private Revelation William Victor Smith. Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation

Review: Revealing the Holy in Deja Earley’s To the Mormon Newlyweds Who Thought the Bellybutton was Somehow Involved.

“The Perfect Union of Man and Woman”: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making

Dialogue 49.1 (Spring 2016): 1–26
Central to Joseph’s creative energies was a profound commitment to an ideal of cosmic as well as human collaboration. His personal mode of leadership increasingly shifted from autocratic to collaborative—and that mode infused both his most radical theologizing and his hopes for Church comity itself.

This-Worldly and Other-Worldly Sex: A Response

Carl Broderick’s essay treats many aspects of sex in an objective, discreet, and interesting way which should be helpful to Latter-day Saints, both in personal and family living and also in their responsibilities in the…

Three Philosophies of Sex, Plus One

The question of human sexuality and how it shall be interpreted and incorporated into life is one that every comprehensive philosophy of life must cope with. My strong conviction of this grows partly out of…

Sacred or Secret? | Ernest Eberhard, Jr., Sacred or Secret? A Parent’s Handbook for Sexuality Guidance of Their Children

Sacred or Secret is one of the first books, written specifically for the L.D.S. audience, to tackle the problem of sex education in the home. It is, according to the author, “an attempt to give…

On Sexuality

Dear sirs: 

In the Letters to the Editor exchange between Owen Clark and Victor Cline (Spring, 1972), an important issue was raised but not confronted. Mr. Clark was responding to Dr. Cline’s warning (Spring, 1971) about the dangers of transference and countertransference leading to infidelity both with professional and Church counselors.

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After a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology: A Ten-Year Retrospective

Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 111–137
Ten years ago, my article “Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology” was published in Dialogue. I did not know what to expect when it made its way into the world, but it ended up being a widely discussed piece and has been accessed tens of thousands of times. The public discussion about my ideas was both critical and appreciative. In the wake of the article, my own research and thinking have also developed.

Queer Bodies, Queer Technologies, and Queer Policies

Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 99–109
Reproductive gender essentialism claims exclude trans persons for their gender identity. However, these same arguments, when taken seriously, also exclude infertile and intersex women too. Such a strict definition of “man” or “woman” does not simply exclude trans folks but also any body not fulfilling its biological utility. After all, biological potential and utility is the basis of a biological sex assignment

Hug a Queer Latter-day Saint

Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 33–44
“Queer Polygamy,” is an innovating mashup that looks beyond monogamy as the only authorizing type of same-sex relationships—it really pushes the boundaries of what queer scholarship had done. Drawing on contemporary polyamory to critique the limitations of heterosexual monogamy, and putting that into conversation with the LDS tradition of plural marriage, Ostler imagines a new type of polygamy, queer polygamy, that sheds the patriarchal baggage of the 19th century version and its continuation in fundamentalist Mormonism, as well as thinking beyond its presumed heterosexulity.

Review: A Private Revelation William Victor Smith. Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation

Review: Revealing the Holy in Deja Earley’s To the Mormon Newlyweds Who Thought the Bellybutton was Somehow Involved.

“The Perfect Union of Man and Woman”: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making

Dialogue 49.1 (Spring 2016): 1–26
Central to Joseph’s creative energies was a profound commitment to an ideal of cosmic as well as human collaboration. His personal mode of leadership increasingly shifted from autocratic to collaborative—and that mode infused both his most radical theologizing and his hopes for Church comity itself.

This-Worldly and Other-Worldly Sex: A Response

Carl Broderick’s essay treats many aspects of sex in an objective, discreet, and interesting way which should be helpful to Latter-day Saints, both in personal and family living and also in their responsibilities in the…

Three Philosophies of Sex, Plus One

The question of human sexuality and how it shall be interpreted and incorporated into life is one that every comprehensive philosophy of life must cope with. My strong conviction of this grows partly out of…

Sacred or Secret? | Ernest Eberhard, Jr., Sacred or Secret? A Parent’s Handbook for Sexuality Guidance of Their Children

Sacred or Secret is one of the first books, written specifically for the L.D.S. audience, to tackle the problem of sex education in the home. It is, according to the author, “an attempt to give…

On Sexuality

Dear sirs: 

In the Letters to the Editor exchange between Owen Clark and Victor Cline (Spring, 1972), an important issue was raised but not confronted. Mr. Clark was responding to Dr. Cline’s warning (Spring, 1971) about the dangers of transference and countertransference leading to infidelity both with professional and Church counselors.

Sex Education Materials for Latter-day Saints

One of the responsibilities facing Latter-day Saint parents today is that of teaching children about reproduction and sexual relationships. Most Mormon parents feel as Dr. Benjamin Spock does—”that sex should be taught in a frame…

Mormon Elders’ Wafers: Images on Mormon Virility in Patent Medicine Ads

Some may be surprised to learn that the stereotypical image of the hyper-virile nineteenth century Mormon male had a special appeal to the “lost manhood” sector of a thriving American patent medicine industry. There was…

Shall the Youth of Zion Falter? Mormon Youth and Sex: A Two-City Comparison

This brief note summarizes findings from two surveys taken among Mormons during 1967-1969, one in Salt Lake City and one in “Coastal City,” northern California.[1] Among the questions asked was the following:  Most of us…

Mormon Sex Standards on College Campuses, or Deal Us Out of the Sexual Revolution!

To test the assumption that sexual behavior is socially rather than biologically controlled, and to see if Mormon emphasis on avoiding sexual activity out of wedlock has been effective, I have, on three occasions over…

Mormon Sexuality in Cross-cultural Perspective

This paper summarizes some of the major findings from an on-going, cross cultural study of premarital sex among college students begun in the late 1930s. Previous publications have developed theoretical propositions of interest to sociologists…

Needed: An LDS Philosophy of Sex

Parley P. Pratt once defined “union of the sexes” as “mutual comfort and assistance in this world of toil and sorrow.” In our day President Spencer W. Kimball has affirmed that an important function of…

Mormon Sexuality and American Culture

In a recent essay on the Mormons, David Brion Davis observed that “their history, in relation to American history, is much like Hamlet’s play-within-the play.”[1] Although analogies have their limitations, this one may prove useful…

Birth Control Among the Mormons: Introduction to an Insistent Question

Dialogue 10.2 (Summer 1977): 12–46
The extensive national attention had a demonstrable impact in Utah. In 1876 the territory’s first anti-abortion law was enacted, carrying a penalty of two to ten years for performing an abortion; a woman convicted of having an abortion received one to five years “unless the same is necessary to preserve her life.” It was also during this period that one finds the first real discussion of fertility control by leading Mormons.

Polygamous Eyes: A Note on Mormon Physiognomy

Ruth Benedict perceptively observed: “The first lesson of history . . . is that when any group in power wishes to persecute or expropriate another group, it uses as justification, reasons which are familiar and…

Intersexes in Humans: An Unexplored Issue in LDS Traditional Beliefs

Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 107–113

In the Fall 1979 issue, an LDS evolutionary biologist wrote a really important piece, ahead of its time in some ways, challenging the idea of binary gender in his article, “Intersexes in Humans: An Introductory Exploration.” Duane laid out the problem clearly—we can’t say that sex is binary by divine design when it is not binary in nature.

Mormon Medical Ethical Guidelines

Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 97–107
Of all medical ethical guidelines published by the Church, those relating to abortion are the most emphatically stated. Offenders, be they doctor, patient, or abettor, are subject to excommunication.

Three Communities — Two Views | Louis J. Kern, An Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias — the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community

This study seeks to look analytically at the reorganization of sex roles and sexual expression in three of the most controversial religious movements of nineteenth-century America—the Shakers, who practiced celibacy; the Mormons, who introduced a…

Three Communities — Two Views | Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: Three American Communal Experiments of the Nineteenth Century

In his History of American Socialisms (1870) John Humphrey Noyes emphasized the equal importance of revivalism and socialism to the communitarian movement. “The Revivalists,” he wrote,  had for their great idea the regeneration of the…

Sin and Sexuality: Psychobiology and the Development of Homosexuality

Dialogue 20.2 (Summer 1987): 31–43
Stout’s article is a reminder just how important psychology and psychologists were for mediating these early debates. It really was groundbreaking in LDS print media. He talks about how he believed and presented publicly theories on the cause and cure of homoseuxaity, following Freudian psychology in 1970. “16 years later, “he states, “I can state that what I presented was wrong and simplistic. The evolving change in my views came by examining new research, gaining more clinical experience, and looking for alternative explanations to clarify some of the mystery surrounding the development of human sexuality and specifically homosexuality.” Stout’s overview provides a guide to the updated psychological research from the 1970s and 80s that overturned earlier consensus on the pathologization of homosexuality and on whether it can be cured. He tackles the ethical and moral issues with forced celibacy, but leaves the question as a mystery of paradox of how to proceed on the topic, warning against “extremes” on all sides.

Bearing Out Crosses Gracefully: Sex and the Single Mormon

In the more than five years I have served as bishop of a singles’ ward, sexual transgression has been the most pervasive, persistent, and painful problem I have had to deal with. Scarcely a week…

“And They Shall Be One Flesh”: Sexuality and Contemporary Mormonism

Several years ago, I presented a series of guest lectures on sexuality to undergraduate nursing classes at Brigham Young University’s Salt Lake Center. My presentations were aimed at preparing students for their work with patients…

Sexual Hegemony and Mormon Women: Seeing Ourselves in the Bambara Mirror

At first glance, people from a middle-class, educated, medically, technically, and industrially sophisticated country may be tempted to see the culture of a developing country as not merely different but as a polar opposite. We…

Finding Our Voices | April Daniels and Carol Scott, Paperdolls: Healing from Sexual Abuse in Mormon Neighborhoods

Media accounts of sexual abuse of children regularly remind us that children continue to be sexually assaulted by adults and juveniles in their communities. Almost always, the perpetrator is someone known and trusted by the child,…

A New Kind of Abuse | David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse: Recognizing and Escaping Spiritual Manipulation and False Spiritual Authority Within the Church, and Ronald M. Enroth, Churches That Abuse

Considering the level of popular attention recently focused on physical, sexual, even ritual abuse, the discovery of “spiritual abuse” should come as no surprise. And yet it does.  The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse is…

You Are Not Alone: A Plea for Understanding the Homosexual Condition

Dialogue 26.3 (Fall 1993): 119–140
In fall 1993, TJ O’Brian wrote, “You are Not Alone: A Please for Understanding the Homosexual Condition.” O’Brian was a gay man and this esay addresses how church members should treat LGBT members. He points to Jan Stout’s article among other influential pieces that were beginning to soften LDS attitudes and change practices in the early 90s. But he also notes several examples of terrible things that LDS members were still saying and doing, not including an imfamous homophobic rant from Orson Scott Card in Sunstone magazine in 1990.

The Burden of Proof | Ron Schow, Wayne Schow, and Marybeth Raynes, eds., Peculiar People: Mormons and Same-sex Orientation, and AMCAP Journal, Volume 19

Having sold out its two cloth printings, Peculiar People: Mormons and Same-sex Orientation is now available in paperback. First published in 1991 by Signature Books and edited by Ron Schow, Wayne Schow, and Marybeth Raynes, it…

Can You Change? | Erin Eldridge, Born That Way? A True Story of Overcoming Same-Sex Attraction

Born That Way? asks a question about the origins of homosexuality, readily answers it in the affirmative, then turns to the author’s, and the church’s, real thesis: You can change your same-sex attraction and “life…

Near-Sex Experiences (Confessions of a Mormon Girl)

Youth, Sex, and Coercion: The Neglect of Sexual Abuse Factors in LDS Data and Policy on Premarital Sex

LDS church standards require that sexual relations be confined to marriage. While the world in general seems to have grown more tolerant of premarital sex, church standards have remained stringent. Sermons, articles, and auxiliary lessons…

The Logical Next Step: Affirming Same-Sex Relationships

Dialogue 31.3 (Fall 1998): 49–57

In Fall 1998 just a few years after The Family Proclamation, Gary Watts wrote, “The Logical Next Step: Affirming Same-Sex Relationships.” He notes the inner conflict that gay LDS members faced, having to choose between their desires to have a relaitonship and their desires to be in the church.  It draws a lot of personal experiences and conversation to assess the issues. And he proposes that affirming committed, monogamous same-sex relationships would not change doctrines about reserving sexual initimacy for marriage, but proposed that these relationhips would not be eligible for sealings.

Northing by Musket and Sextant

Steven whistled Neil Young songs to himself as the pickup sped north towards Saltillo. From the truck’s open bed, he commanded an obstructionless and enviable view of this Mexican wilderness’s enormous sterility. For some, it…

Sex and Prophetic Power: A Comparison of John Humphrey Noyes, Founder of the Oneida Community, with Joseph Smith, Jr., the Mormon Prophet

The extraordinarily yet often highly conflicted connection between religious and sexual impulses and expression has long been noted by scholars.[1] Dynamically expansive new religious movements, in particular, often experience sharp polarities between efforts to control,…

“One Flesh”: A Historical Overview of Latter-day Saint Sexuality and Psychology

The issue of sexuality, its expression or non-expression, even questions about its very nature, torments American culture. Various philosophies and systems of morality abound which advocate chastity, promiscuity, sex solely for procreation, sex for recreation,…

Gay and Lesbian Mormons: Interviews with James Kent, Former Executive Director of Affirmation, and with Aaron Cloward, Founder and Coordinator of Gay LDS Youth

Dialogue 33.3 (Fall 2000): 123–136
Hugo Oliaz intervews two important figures in LDS LGBTQ organzing, a former diretor of Affirmation and the founder of Gay LDS Youth, a group that briefly flourished in the early 2000s. A great resource for learning more about LDS LGBTQ organizing in this period. 

Preaching the Gospel of Church and Sex: Mormon Women’s Fiction in the Young Woman’s Journal, 1889-1910

In 1889, Utah newspapers and periodicals informed their audiences about the start of a new monthly magazine, the Young Woman’s Journal (YWJ). Initiated and first edited by Susa Young Gates, the daughter of Mormonism’s second…

Sexual Morality Revisited

It’s a boggy acre, surely. Is there any greater conundrum than human sexuality? Is there any aspect of our lives about which it is more difficult to generalize? Is there anything in our experience so…

“Who Shall Sing If Not the Children?” Primary Songbooks, 1880-1989

In 1989, the Primary Association released a new songbook for Mormondom’s children, its first since 1969. Evaluating it for a professional hymnody publication, one reviewer commented: “This handsome volume’s 8V2 x 11″ pages exude a special kind of coziness…. The plentiful decorative illustrations use pastel colors exclusively—and so, in their way, do most of the songs…. [F]or every song about a specifically Mormon doc trine or practice, at least four would fit into practically any Christian, in deed any civilized context.”

Ecclesiastical Polity and the Challenge of Homosexuality: Two Cases of Divergence within the Mormon Tradition

The respective websites of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and the Community of Christ,[1] provide explicit access to the public images both churches wish to project. Upon these websites, each denomination…

Embodied Mormonism: Performance, Vodou, and the LDS Faith in Haiti

In Haiti religions are rarely understood to be autonomous from one another. It is not unusual for seemingly disparate mythological systems to coexist not only across the Haitian landscape, but also within individual Haitian practice.…

Getting Out/Staying In: One Mormon/Gay Marriage: Staying In

I wrote “Getting Out” as a somewhat naive twenty-four-year-old. Now I return, in theory a wise and mature twenty-five-year-old. Inevitably, I’ll find whatever I write here equally naive a year from now. I don’t know…

Getting Out/Staying In: One Mormon/Gay Marriage: Thoughts of a Therapist

I frequently see Mormons who are gay or gays who are Mormon. Which comes first matters immensely to many. I consult with individuals, lesbian and gay couples, and couples in which one partner is gay, bisexual,…

Getting Out/Staying In: One Mormon/Gay Marriage: Homosexual Attraction and LDS Marriage Decisions

Dialogue 38.3 (Fall 2005): 133–145
In Fall 2005, there is a roundtable on mix-orientation marriages from some who were in them and from therapist Marybeth Raynes and long-time activist Ron Schow.

Getting Out/Staying In: One Mormon/Gay Marriage: Getting Out

Dialogue 38.3 (Fall 2005): 121–133
In Fall 2005, there is a roundtable on mix-orientation marriages from some who were in them and from therapist Marybeth Raynes and long-time activist Ron Schow.

Between Suicide and Celibacy | Fred and Marilyn Matis and Ty Mansfield, In Quiet Desperation: Understanding the Challenge of Same-Gender Attraction

It is difficult to know how to review this book, which is really two books loosely connected, although both deal with homosexuality and both share similar points of view. The first and shorter part is…

A Case for Same-Sex Marriage: Reply to Randolph Muhlestein

Dialogue 40.3 (Fall 2007): 50–60

These articles were about legal arguments. The case against argued that marriage was already tenuous and allowing same-sex marriage would doom it, suggesting that people would become homosexuals if same-sex marriage were an option.

The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage

Dialogue 40.3 (Fall 2007): 11–41

These articles were about legal arguments. The case against argued that marriage was already tenuous and allowing same-sex marriage would doom it, suggesting that people would become homosexuals if same-sex marriage were an option.

Wives and Other Women: Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Lives of John Q. Cannon, Frank J. Cannon, and Abraham H. Cannon

Review: Encouraging Heterosexuality: Helping Children Develop a Traditional Sexual Orientation

Sex Talk Sunday

Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology

Dialogue 44.4 (Winter 2011): 106–141
From Editor Taylor Petrey: “Toward a Post-heterosexual Mormon Theology”  was actually the first major article I ever published. I did not know what to expect, but it ended up being a widely discussed piece, accessed tens of thousands of times.⁠ To this day I still receive notes of appreciation for this article. 

Same-Sex Attraction

“As Our Two Faiths Have Worked Together”—Catholicism and Mormonism on Human Life Ethics and Same-Sex Marriage

Dialogue 46.3 (Fall 2013): 106–141

Wilfred Decoo writes in 2013 ““As Our Two Faiths Have Worked Together”— Catholicism and Mormonism on Human Life Ethics and Same-Sex Marriage.” He expains, “I analyze a number of factors that could ease the way for the Mormon Church to withdraw its opposition to same-sex marriage, at least as it concerns civil society, while the Catholic Church is unlikely to budge.”

After a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology: A Ten-Year Retrospective

Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 111–137
Ten years ago, my article “Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology” was published in Dialogue. I did not know what to expect when it made its way into the world, but it ended up being a widely discussed piece and has been accessed tens of thousands of times. The public discussion about my ideas was both critical and appreciative. In the wake of the article, my own research and thinking have also developed.

Queer Bodies, Queer Technologies, and Queer Policies

Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 99–109
Reproductive gender essentialism claims exclude trans persons for their gender identity. However, these same arguments, when taken seriously, also exclude infertile and intersex women too. Such a strict definition of “man” or “woman” does not simply exclude trans folks but also any body not fulfilling its biological utility. After all, biological potential and utility is the basis of a biological sex assignment

Hug a Queer Latter-day Saint

Dialogue 53.2 (Summer 2020): 33–44
“Queer Polygamy,” is an innovating mashup that looks beyond monogamy as the only authorizing type of same-sex relationships—it really pushes the boundaries of what queer scholarship had done. Drawing on contemporary polyamory to critique the limitations of heterosexual monogamy, and putting that into conversation with the LDS tradition of plural marriage, Ostler imagines a new type of polygamy, queer polygamy, that sheds the patriarchal baggage of the 19th century version and its continuation in fundamentalist Mormonism, as well as thinking beyond its presumed heterosexulity.

Review: A Private Revelation William Victor Smith. Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation

Review: Revealing the Holy in Deja Earley’s To the Mormon Newlyweds Who Thought the Bellybutton was Somehow Involved.

“The Perfect Union of Man and Woman”: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making

Dialogue 49.1 (Spring 2016): 1–26
Central to Joseph’s creative energies was a profound commitment to an ideal of cosmic as well as human collaboration. His personal mode of leadership increasingly shifted from autocratic to collaborative—and that mode infused both his most radical theologizing and his hopes for Church comity itself.

This-Worldly and Other-Worldly Sex: A Response

Carl Broderick’s essay treats many aspects of sex in an objective, discreet, and interesting way which should be helpful to Latter-day Saints, both in personal and family living and also in their responsibilities in the…

Three Philosophies of Sex, Plus One

The question of human sexuality and how it shall be interpreted and incorporated into life is one that every comprehensive philosophy of life must cope with. My strong conviction of this grows partly out of…

Sacred or Secret? | Ernest Eberhard, Jr., Sacred or Secret? A Parent’s Handbook for Sexuality Guidance of Their Children

Sacred or Secret is one of the first books, written specifically for the L.D.S. audience, to tackle the problem of sex education in the home. It is, according to the author, “an attempt to give…

On Sexuality

Dear sirs: 

In the Letters to the Editor exchange between Owen Clark and Victor Cline (Spring, 1972), an important issue was raised but not confronted. Mr. Clark was responding to Dr. Cline’s warning (Spring, 1971) about the dangers of transference and countertransference leading to infidelity both with professional and Church counselors.

Sex Education Materials for Latter-day Saints

One of the responsibilities facing Latter-day Saint parents today is that of teaching children about reproduction and sexual relationships. Most Mormon parents feel as Dr. Benjamin Spock does—”that sex should be taught in a frame…

Mormon Elders’ Wafers: Images on Mormon Virility in Patent Medicine Ads

Some may be surprised to learn that the stereotypical image of the hyper-virile nineteenth century Mormon male had a special appeal to the “lost manhood” sector of a thriving American patent medicine industry. There was…

Shall the Youth of Zion Falter? Mormon Youth and Sex: A Two-City Comparison

This brief note summarizes findings from two surveys taken among Mormons during 1967-1969, one in Salt Lake City and one in “Coastal City,” northern California.[1] Among the questions asked was the following:  Most of us…

Mormon Sex Standards on College Campuses, or Deal Us Out of the Sexual Revolution!

To test the assumption that sexual behavior is socially rather than biologically controlled, and to see if Mormon emphasis on avoiding sexual activity out of wedlock has been effective, I have, on three occasions over…

Mormon Sexuality in Cross-cultural Perspective

This paper summarizes some of the major findings from an on-going, cross cultural study of premarital sex among college students begun in the late 1930s. Previous publications have developed theoretical propositions of interest to sociologists…

Needed: An LDS Philosophy of Sex

Parley P. Pratt once defined “union of the sexes” as “mutual comfort and assistance in this world of toil and sorrow.” In our day President Spencer W. Kimball has affirmed that an important function of…

Mormon Sexuality and American Culture

In a recent essay on the Mormons, David Brion Davis observed that “their history, in relation to American history, is much like Hamlet’s play-within-the play.”[1] Although analogies have their limitations, this one may prove useful…

Birth Control Among the Mormons: Introduction to an Insistent Question

Dialogue 10.2 (Summer 1977): 12–46
The extensive national attention had a demonstrable impact in Utah. In 1876 the territory’s first anti-abortion law was enacted, carrying a penalty of two to ten years for performing an abortion; a woman convicted of having an abortion received one to five years “unless the same is necessary to preserve her life.” It was also during this period that one finds the first real discussion of fertility control by leading Mormons.

Polygamous Eyes: A Note on Mormon Physiognomy

Ruth Benedict perceptively observed: “The first lesson of history . . . is that when any group in power wishes to persecute or expropriate another group, it uses as justification, reasons which are familiar and…

Intersexes in Humans: An Unexplored Issue in LDS Traditional Beliefs

Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 107–113

In the Fall 1979 issue, an LDS evolutionary biologist wrote a really important piece, ahead of its time in some ways, challenging the idea of binary gender in his article, “Intersexes in Humans: An Introductory Exploration.” Duane laid out the problem clearly—we can’t say that sex is binary by divine design when it is not binary in nature.

Mormon Medical Ethical Guidelines

Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 97–107
Of all medical ethical guidelines published by the Church, those relating to abortion are the most emphatically stated. Offenders, be they doctor, patient, or abettor, are subject to excommunication.

Three Communities — Two Views | Louis J. Kern, An Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias — the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community

This study seeks to look analytically at the reorganization of sex roles and sexual expression in three of the most controversial religious movements of nineteenth-century America—the Shakers, who practiced celibacy; the Mormons, who introduced a…

Three Communities — Two Views | Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: Three American Communal Experiments of the Nineteenth Century

In his History of American Socialisms (1870) John Humphrey Noyes emphasized the equal importance of revivalism and socialism to the communitarian movement. “The Revivalists,” he wrote,  had for their great idea the regeneration of the…

Sin and Sexuality: Psychobiology and the Development of Homosexuality

Dialogue 20.2 (Summer 1987): 31–43
Stout’s article is a reminder just how important psychology and psychologists were for mediating these early debates. It really was groundbreaking in LDS print media. He talks about how he believed and presented publicly theories on the cause and cure of homoseuxaity, following Freudian psychology in 1970. “16 years later, “he states, “I can state that what I presented was wrong and simplistic. The evolving change in my views came by examining new research, gaining more clinical experience, and looking for alternative explanations to clarify some of the mystery surrounding the development of human sexuality and specifically homosexuality.” Stout’s overview provides a guide to the updated psychological research from the 1970s and 80s that overturned earlier consensus on the pathologization of homosexuality and on whether it can be cured. He tackles the ethical and moral issues with forced celibacy, but leaves the question as a mystery of paradox of how to proceed on the topic, warning against “extremes” on all sides.

Bearing Out Crosses Gracefully: Sex and the Single Mormon

In the more than five years I have served as bishop of a singles’ ward, sexual transgression has been the most pervasive, persistent, and painful problem I have had to deal with. Scarcely a week…

“And They Shall Be One Flesh”: Sexuality and Contemporary Mormonism

Several years ago, I presented a series of guest lectures on sexuality to undergraduate nursing classes at Brigham Young University’s Salt Lake Center. My presentations were aimed at preparing students for their work with patients…

Sexual Hegemony and Mormon Women: Seeing Ourselves in the Bambara Mirror

At first glance, people from a middle-class, educated, medically, technically, and industrially sophisticated country may be tempted to see the culture of a developing country as not merely different but as a polar opposite. We…

Finding Our Voices | April Daniels and Carol Scott, Paperdolls: Healing from Sexual Abuse in Mormon Neighborhoods

Media accounts of sexual abuse of children regularly remind us that children continue to be sexually assaulted by adults and juveniles in their communities. Almost always, the perpetrator is someone known and trusted by the child,…

A New Kind of Abuse | David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse: Recognizing and Escaping Spiritual Manipulation and False Spiritual Authority Within the Church, and Ronald M. Enroth, Churches That Abuse

Considering the level of popular attention recently focused on physical, sexual, even ritual abuse, the discovery of “spiritual abuse” should come as no surprise. And yet it does.  The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse is…

You Are Not Alone: A Plea for Understanding the Homosexual Condition

Dialogue 26.3 (Fall 1993): 119–140
In fall 1993, TJ O’Brian wrote, “You are Not Alone: A Please for Understanding the Homosexual Condition.” O’Brian was a gay man and this esay addresses how church members should treat LGBT members. He points to Jan Stout’s article among other influential pieces that were beginning to soften LDS attitudes and change practices in the early 90s. But he also notes several examples of terrible things that LDS members were still saying and doing, not including an imfamous homophobic rant from Orson Scott Card in Sunstone magazine in 1990.

The Burden of Proof | Ron Schow, Wayne Schow, and Marybeth Raynes, eds., Peculiar People: Mormons and Same-sex Orientation, and AMCAP Journal, Volume 19

Having sold out its two cloth printings, Peculiar People: Mormons and Same-sex Orientation is now available in paperback. First published in 1991 by Signature Books and edited by Ron Schow, Wayne Schow, and Marybeth Raynes, it…

Can You Change? | Erin Eldridge, Born That Way? A True Story of Overcoming Same-Sex Attraction

Born That Way? asks a question about the origins of homosexuality, readily answers it in the affirmative, then turns to the author’s, and the church’s, real thesis: You can change your same-sex attraction and “life…

Near-Sex Experiences (Confessions of a Mormon Girl)

Youth, Sex, and Coercion: The Neglect of Sexual Abuse Factors in LDS Data and Policy on Premarital Sex

LDS church standards require that sexual relations be confined to marriage. While the world in general seems to have grown more tolerant of premarital sex, church standards have remained stringent. Sermons, articles, and auxiliary lessons…

The Logical Next Step: Affirming Same-Sex Relationships

Dialogue 31.3 (Fall 1998): 49–57

In Fall 1998 just a few years after The Family Proclamation, Gary Watts wrote, “The Logical Next Step: Affirming Same-Sex Relationships.” He notes the inner conflict that gay LDS members faced, having to choose between their desires to have a relaitonship and their desires to be in the church.  It draws a lot of personal experiences and conversation to assess the issues. And he proposes that affirming committed, monogamous same-sex relationships would not change doctrines about reserving sexual initimacy for marriage, but proposed that these relationhips would not be eligible for sealings.

Northing by Musket and Sextant

Steven whistled Neil Young songs to himself as the pickup sped north towards Saltillo. From the truck’s open bed, he commanded an obstructionless and enviable view of this Mexican wilderness’s enormous sterility. For some, it…

Sex and Prophetic Power: A Comparison of John Humphrey Noyes, Founder of the Oneida Community, with Joseph Smith, Jr., the Mormon Prophet

The extraordinarily yet often highly conflicted connection between religious and sexual impulses and expression has long been noted by scholars.[1] Dynamically expansive new religious movements, in particular, often experience sharp polarities between efforts to control,…

“One Flesh”: A Historical Overview of Latter-day Saint Sexuality and Psychology

The issue of sexuality, its expression or non-expression, even questions about its very nature, torments American culture. Various philosophies and systems of morality abound which advocate chastity, promiscuity, sex solely for procreation, sex for recreation,…

Gay and Lesbian Mormons: Interviews with James Kent, Former Executive Director of Affirmation, and with Aaron Cloward, Founder and Coordinator of Gay LDS Youth

Dialogue 33.3 (Fall 2000): 123–136
Hugo Oliaz intervews two important figures in LDS LGBTQ organzing, a former diretor of Affirmation and the founder of Gay LDS Youth, a group that briefly flourished in the early 2000s. A great resource for learning more about LDS LGBTQ organizing in this period. 

Preaching the Gospel of Church and Sex: Mormon Women’s Fiction in the Young Woman’s Journal, 1889-1910

In 1889, Utah newspapers and periodicals informed their audiences about the start of a new monthly magazine, the Young Woman’s Journal (YWJ). Initiated and first edited by Susa Young Gates, the daughter of Mormonism’s second…

Sexual Morality Revisited

It’s a boggy acre, surely. Is there any greater conundrum than human sexuality? Is there any aspect of our lives about which it is more difficult to generalize? Is there anything in our experience so…

“Who Shall Sing If Not the Children?” Primary Songbooks, 1880-1989

In 1989, the Primary Association released a new songbook for Mormondom’s children, its first since 1969. Evaluating it for a professional hymnody publication, one reviewer commented: “This handsome volume’s 8V2 x 11″ pages exude a special kind of coziness…. The plentiful decorative illustrations use pastel colors exclusively—and so, in their way, do most of the songs…. [F]or every song about a specifically Mormon doc trine or practice, at least four would fit into practically any Christian, in deed any civilized context.”

Ecclesiastical Polity and the Challenge of Homosexuality: Two Cases of Divergence within the Mormon Tradition

The respective websites of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and the Community of Christ,[1] provide explicit access to the public images both churches wish to project. Upon these websites, each denomination…

Embodied Mormonism: Performance, Vodou, and the LDS Faith in Haiti

In Haiti religions are rarely understood to be autonomous from one another. It is not unusual for seemingly disparate mythological systems to coexist not only across the Haitian landscape, but also within individual Haitian practice.…

Getting Out/Staying In: One Mormon/Gay Marriage: Staying In

I wrote “Getting Out” as a somewhat naive twenty-four-year-old. Now I return, in theory a wise and mature twenty-five-year-old. Inevitably, I’ll find whatever I write here equally naive a year from now. I don’t know…

Getting Out/Staying In: One Mormon/Gay Marriage: Thoughts of a Therapist

I frequently see Mormons who are gay or gays who are Mormon. Which comes first matters immensely to many. I consult with individuals, lesbian and gay couples, and couples in which one partner is gay, bisexual,…

Getting Out/Staying In: One Mormon/Gay Marriage: Homosexual Attraction and LDS Marriage Decisions

Dialogue 38.3 (Fall 2005): 133–145
In Fall 2005, there is a roundtable on mix-orientation marriages from some who were in them and from therapist Marybeth Raynes and long-time activist Ron Schow.

Getting Out/Staying In: One Mormon/Gay Marriage: Getting Out

Dialogue 38.3 (Fall 2005): 121–133
In Fall 2005, there is a roundtable on mix-orientation marriages from some who were in them and from therapist Marybeth Raynes and long-time activist Ron Schow.

Between Suicide and Celibacy | Fred and Marilyn Matis and Ty Mansfield, In Quiet Desperation: Understanding the Challenge of Same-Gender Attraction

It is difficult to know how to review this book, which is really two books loosely connected, although both deal with homosexuality and both share similar points of view. The first and shorter part is…

A Case for Same-Sex Marriage: Reply to Randolph Muhlestein

Dialogue 40.3 (Fall 2007): 50–60

These articles were about legal arguments. The case against argued that marriage was already tenuous and allowing same-sex marriage would doom it, suggesting that people would become homosexuals if same-sex marriage were an option.

The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage

Dialogue 40.3 (Fall 2007): 11–41

These articles were about legal arguments. The case against argued that marriage was already tenuous and allowing same-sex marriage would doom it, suggesting that people would become homosexuals if same-sex marriage were an option.

Wives and Other Women: Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Lives of John Q. Cannon, Frank J. Cannon, and Abraham H. Cannon

Review: Encouraging Heterosexuality: Helping Children Develop a Traditional Sexual Orientation

Sex Talk Sunday

Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology

Dialogue 44.4 (Winter 2011): 106–141
From Editor Taylor Petrey: “Toward a Post-heterosexual Mormon Theology”  was actually the first major article I ever published. I did not know what to expect, but it ended up being a widely discussed piece, accessed tens of thousands of times.⁠ To this day I still receive notes of appreciation for this article. 

Same-Sex Attraction

“As Our Two Faiths Have Worked Together”—Catholicism and Mormonism on Human Life Ethics and Same-Sex Marriage

Dialogue 46.3 (Fall 2013): 106–141

Wilfred Decoo writes in 2013 ““As Our Two Faiths Have Worked Together”— Catholicism and Mormonism on Human Life Ethics and Same-Sex Marriage.” He expains, “I analyze a number of factors that could ease the way for the Mormon Church to withdraw its opposition to same-sex marriage, at least as it concerns civil society, while the Catholic Church is unlikely to budge.”