Wave of resignations follows release of an ‘instructional letter’ on children of same-sex marriages released by the LDS Church. Ryan Schuessler investigates

For Utah attorney Mark Naugle, helping Mormons leave their church is a cause that hits close to home.

Naugle was just 15 when his parents decided to leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the world’s largest Mormon denomination.

“We started the long process of leaving the church in 1999 or 2000,” Naugle, 30, recalled. “Probably 96% of our neighbors and the kids in my school were LDS. That was a painful process. The Church sent people over, the bishop came over on multiple occasions wanting to speak with us. It was a very painful process.”

When he graduated from law school in 2009, Naugle decided he would help Mormons wishing to formally leave the church by filing their paperwork free of charge – hoping to make their experience easier than his had been. He estimates he filed around 375 resignations between 2009 and October 2015.

But in the past two weeks, he’s filed thousands.

“I’ve just now got four emails in my inbox,” Naugle said approximately 10 minutes into an interview over the phone. “They were coming in about one a minute for the first week or so.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gather to resign their membership. Photograph: Jim Urquhart/Reuters

The wave of resignations follows the release of an “instructional letter” regarding the children of same-sex marriages released by the LDS church. The letter said that children living in same-sex households could not be blessed as babies or baptized as members until they turn 18. They would also have to denounce same-sex cohabitation and leave their parents’ house.

Since that letter was released in early November, Naugle has filed more than 2,600 resignations, representing Mormons from across the US and Europe, as well as from India, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Mexico. He filed paperwork on behalf of the hundreds who attended a mass resignation event over the weekend in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the LDS church is headquartered.

“Most people just say they can’t believe they’re doing this to the children,” Naugle said. “A lawyer doesn’t need to be involved, but they’ll have to deal with local backlash.”

For Lori, who asked that her last name be withheld as many who are resigning from the church fear backlash from their communities, the church’s policy was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“I believed in it. I was raised in it. I’ve given over 45 years of my life to the church,” the 45-year-old resident of Salt Lake City said. “After this latest policy announcement, I can no longer be associated with such a hateful church.”

Lori said the LDS church today is not the same church she was raised in. When she was a kid, she said, all the songs she learned were about Jesus, not the church’s modern prophets who were in the songs her kids were learning. A good friend was excommunicated in the 1970s for being gay, she said, and she almost walked out of worship the day church leaders asked members to send money to support Proposition 8, the 2008 initiative to repeal same-sex marriage in California.

“I think there’s a real misconception on the part of active members that those who are leaving are somehow angry, or weren’t believers anyway,” Lori said. “The opposite is the truth. You have people believe so much in being kind and what the church stood for, for them, and seeing that their leaders are enacting a policy that’s against everything they were ever taught.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sandy Newcomb stands with a flag near the Salt Lake Temple. Photograph: Jim Urquhart/Reuters

“We don’t want to see anyone leave the church,” LDS church spokesperson Eric Hawkins said in an emailed statement. “Especially people who have been struggling with any aspect in their life. The church exists to build people and help them heal, and there isn’t one of us who doesn’t need help at some point in our lives.”

Hawkins wrote that it is important for Mormons to read what their church leaders have said about the issue, referencing a letter and commentary published online. Children of same-sex couples who were already baptized will not have their church membership curtailed, the letter explains. Furthermore, the recent changes reflect existing church doctrine: same-sex attraction is not a sin, but acting on that attraction is.

Proponents of the new policy have said it is in place to protect families and children.

“There’s a mistaken sentiment that the church wants to punish children for the sins of the parents,” said Kylea Knecht, a Mormon from Nevada now living in Oregon. “Anyone who knows anything about church doctrine will tell you that’s not true. We believe people are accountable for their own decisions, never for their parents’.”

Knecht rejects the idea that Mormons are hateful or discriminatory, adding that LGBT Mormons and their children can still participate in “almost all aspects of the church”.

“Can you imagine how difficult it might be for an eight-year-old, or even a 12- or 15-year-old, to choose to join a church that believes their parents are making an immoral choice by being married?” Knecht added. “So instead the leadership of the church asks children to wait. They don’t ask them, or even their parents, not to come and participate. Just to wait to be baptized until they can commit to live the gospel.”



The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a Christian offshoot with roots in the 19th-century United States. Joseph Smith, who is held as a prophet, founded the church in 1830. Mormons follow both the Bible and the Book of Mormon and believe revelations from God are ongoing. The modern church is largely centered in Utah, after the Mormons had been expelled from the United States in the 1800s following a series of small conflicts now called the Mormon Wars.

The Church didn’t have a specific stance on homosexuality until the 1950s, said John Gustav-Wrathal of Affirmation, a global support organization for LGBT Mormons. Until the 1990s, Mormons could be excommunicated from the church for being gay.

“I think that, right now, we are at a point where the general membership is much more empathetic,” Gustav-Wrathal said. “Even now, the conservative position in the church is much more moderate than it was 20 years ago.”

But he added: “It’s a very difficult situation right now for a lot of people in the Church, who are really struggling with this and trying to make sense of it, and trying to reconcile what they know about LGBT friends and family and the church and official policy.”