Affirmation: Gay & Lesbian Mormons

2001 Affirmation Vigil in Salt Lake City

May 8, 2001

Memory Grove in Salt Lake City

Under the slogan "No more deaths! No more silence!" 60 Affirmation members, relatives, friends, and community leaders gathered in Memory Grove in remembrance of people who struggled to reconcile their religious beliefs with their homosexuality and took their lives. Similar services were held on the same week in Mexico City, Phoenix, Portland, Reno, Seattle, and San Francisco.

"Our purpose here tonight is not to attack the Mormon Church or any other," said vigil organizer Duane Jennings, "but to draw attention to the damaging--and sometimes fatally damaging--power of anti-gay religious teachings and the immense personal toll that such teachings take on our friends and families."

"We want to communicate a message of hope and solace," said Jennings. "We make this effort a plea for education and understanding. We call for people of faith to hold intelligence closer to their hearts than ignorance, prejudice, and intolerance."

The service was attended by representatives of P-FLAG, Family Fellowship, and religious and civic leaders. Among the speakers were former P-FLAG Director Frank Mensel and Rev. Frank Evans of the Methodist Church. Mata Finau, the Minority Affairs Director of Salt Lake City, attended on behalf of Mayor Rocky Anderson.

Two of the speakers were David and Carlie Hardy, the parents of a young gay Mormon who attempted suicide after attending a seminary class on Sodom and Gomorrah. David Hardy was then an LDS bishop.

"We would ask that our community simply look beyond the myth that our son is a predator [who] can and must be cured," said Bishop Hardy. "These are the myths that bring our children to the point of despair. It is easy to demonize a group as a whole. It is far harder to demonize a wonderful fine individual that you know. It is on that level, the level of the individual, that dogma and reality must come face to face."

Affirmation has set out to gather and preserve information on gay Mormon suicides. Their current suicide memorial includes biographical sketches, pictures, and information on more than 20 gay Mormons, many of them native Utahns, who took their lives between 1965 and 2000. One of them, Stuart Matis, committed suicide at the time when the LDS Church was heavily involved with the Limitation on Marriage Initiative in California (also known as the Knight Initiative), and his case has received wide attention from both local and national media.