Posts
We care about you, and we understand the pressure cooker of the LGBTQ/Latter-day Saint intersection because we stand there and have stood there. We know the true power of your story and receive it in the spirit in which you delivered it. Not as a weapon or a currency, but as a celebration of the power of the queer soul.
Assume the best intentions of others in our community, find the empathy needed to be compassionate toward others and their circumstances, and allow for the hearing or reading of experiences and beliefs that counter our own without feeling the need to defend our place on our individual journeys.
Affirmation is pleased to announce the appointment of the Affirmation Pacific Region leadership team. We thank these leaders for volunteering their time and talents to create communities of safety, love, and hope for LGBTQIA+ Latter-day Saints and their families and friends.
We’re pleased to announce the theme for our 2021 Affirmation International Conference: Lighting the World Together. Graphic designers are invited to participate in a conference logo design contest.
Today is the International Transgender Day of Visibility. For several years now, I have found a great amount of purpose in figuratively sailing into open waters, trying to help the world understand what it means to be transgender.
I carried around these ideas for a long time, constantly feeling guilty and ashamed of what I could not feel or desire. I was afraid of embracing my feelings because I didn’t want more church members looking down on me as a waste of space or failure. I never thought anyone would want to marry me. But most of all, I feared that God was angry at me for not being able to “get over it” and just be straight. I constantly read and taught stories of God healing other people – so why wasn’t He fixing me?
Blaire Ostler is a philosopher who is specialized in queer studies, and is a leading voice at the intersection of queer, Mormon, and transhumanist thought. She is an author publishing her first book, “Queer Mormon Theology: An Introduction.”
Unlike the Equality Act, the Fairness for All Act is a disingenuous attempt to manage LGBTQ people without having to respect them as a protected class under existing civil rights laws. This harmful work-around is supported by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and would protect its continued ability to discriminate against LGBTQ people in civil matters under the banner of religious freedom.
Affirmation offers its enthusiastic congratulations to Encircle on the announcement of eight new Encircle houses coming to various cities in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah. The success of its first house in Provo, Utah helped uncover unmet needs in the local community, especially the need for a physical place of safety for LGBTQ+ youth to gather and make connections.