According to most renderings of Mormon history in the 1980s, the LDS community entered a period of retrenchment and conservatism. Since the production of Tony Kushner’s award-winning play, Angels in America, a show that casts Mormons as the last holdout of intolerance—this narrative has spilled over into how the media thinks of and portrays the Mormons’ views of not only homosexuality but also the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic. But Kushner’s depiction does not represent the complex reality of the Mormon views on AIDS. Unlike most conservative religious figures, LDS church leaders pursued a course of moderation and even compassion towards those suffering from the AIDS epidemic.

Not long after AIDS was discovered in 1979, Church leaders began to assess its significance for American society. Periodicals began to carry stories concerning AIDS sufferers, the most famous of them being the Ben Oyler story, the young man who contracted AIDS from a bad blood transfusion. This story—originally printed in Church News—was developed into a popular made-for-television movie entitled Go Towards the Light. The film received wide acclaim for its honest portrayal not only of suffering AIDS patients but also of ordinary Mormon life. His mother, Chris, observed how “with AIDS, people are really paranoid” (“His Light Shines in Death,” Church News, October 15, 1988).

The crisis prompted church leaders to begin to speak about homosexuality in a different way. Cast as a disease belonging to gay men, many members of the conservative religious right considered the disease to be a just reward for homosexual depravity. Church leaders refrained from using the disease as a way of attacking the community. Then-first-counselor Gordon B. Hinckley hoped “that discoveries will make possible both prevention and healing from this dread affliction.” Though he insisted that only “chastity before marriage and total fidelity [in] marriage” could prevent its spread, members should nevertheless “reach out with kindness and comfort to the afflicted, ministering to their needs and assisting them with their problems” (https://www.lds.org/ensign/1988/07/news-of-the-church/first-presidency-statement-on-aids?lang=eng).

This is not to say that church leaders did not condemn the alleged immorality of those afflicted. “An epidemic has been forecast,” Mormon apostle and famed medical doctor, Russell M. Nelson intoned, “a plague fueled by a vocal few who exhibit greater concern for civil rights than for public health.” They “live in lust as though God’s commandment to be chaste was written with an asterisk, exempting them from obeying.” But even still, Nelson acknowledged that the plague would affect “many innocent victims” (“Where is Wisdom,” Ensign, November 1992). Mormon author Hoyt Brewster suggested that the disease was the fulfillment of a prophecy by Charles W. Penrose that “the passions of human nature will be put to the vilest uses [and] new diseases will silently eat their ghastly way through the ranks of the wicked” (Brewster, Behold, I Come Quickly, 43, 1994). The urbane and public-health-minded Elder Alexander Morrison viewed the disease in more practical terms, pointing out the need for better blood analysis and governance. But even more, Morrison ultimately concludes that the Mormon emphasis on abstinence can do more for the stop of the AIDS virus than any social program.

On the local level, some church leaders took measures to provide care and compassionate service to sufferers of AIDS victims. Bishop Stanley Roberts of the Berkeley Young Single Adult established the San Francisco Singles Ward LDS AIDS Project, a program that mobilized young single adults for “taking people to the doctor, picking up dry cleaning, going to the grocery store, etc.” They also provided emotional support “to pick people up, to listen, to help them cope with some hard times.” Roberts’ wife volunteered for one-to-four shifts each week, a job that left her drained. Roberts attributed the compassion to the single status of his ward members: “They know what heartache is, they know what loneliness is.” They didn’t “want somebody…to be alone because they don’t like to be alone while living” (Roberts interview, Sunstone, February 1990). In 1991, the Fort Pierce, Florida Relief Society erected a statue honoring Kimberly Bergalis, a non-member AIDS victim whose “excellent values” and “strong family beliefs” mirrored the Mormon ethic (LDS Church News, November 30, 1991).

Other Christian leaders exhibited a wide array of attitudes, ranging from the humanitarian efforts of the Roman Catholics to the outright contempt of evangelical Christians. Reverend Jerry Falwell called AIDS “the wrath of a just God against homosexuals.” Opposing it, Falwell quipped, “would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah’s charioteers” (Welch, Understanding American Government, 105). Not only was AIDS a punishment for homosexuals; it was punishment “for the society that tolerates homosexuals.” Yet while Falwell was chastising America for its allegedly pro-gay posture, Roman Catholics were actively providing humanitarian services to AIDS sufferers, even if they adopted a sexual code akin to the Saints’ in its restrictions (Epstein, “God and the Fight Against AIDS”). The AIDS epidemic forced the LDS community to grapple with their now well-established animosity towards the homosexual community.

Though a few attempted to associate the disease with the end times, most Saints recognized AIDS as a human problem that called for a humane response. Committed as they were to premarital chastity and fidelity, Mormon leadership and lay nevertheless made a serious effort to reach out to the suffering even as they continued to preach a gospel of conservative sexuality and discipline. In 2011, the LDS Church organized a fundraisers for the Utah AIDS Foundation, devoted to honoring leading figures in AIDS care in Utah (“Utah AIDS Foundation to honor pioneers”). Faced with a crisis they did not wholly understand, the Saints opted for mercy over justice.

For more on the AIDS epidemic in America, see Randy Shilts, And The Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987).