When news broke that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints had amended its stance on sexuality to declare married same-sex couples apostates and their children barred from participating in certain church practices, I wrote that the only thing that would lead them to reconsider would be for their policy to directly result in Mormons leaving their ranks:

If there’s one thing we know about the Mormon Church, it’s that their primary concern is presiding over a steady increase in the number of Mormons — in this life and the next. Until their anti-LGBT doctrines come with a cost, which is to say until they lead to a net decline in Church membership, they won’t see any reason to change.

It looks like that’s what’s happening.

First, Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, announced in a Washington Post op-ed that she was leaving the church in light of their “gratuitously cruel and stigmatizing treatment of children.” As Kendell wrote, while she had spiritually and emotionally left the Church long ago — before it played an integral role in passing Proposition 8 in California — this latest action had spurred her to actively and officially remove her name from their registry. She’s turning in her card, so to speak.

But now many more Mormons are saying they plan to join her at a mass resignation event at the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City on Saturday — with the help of a Utah attorney. Apparently, leaving the Mormon Church isn’t quite so simple as raising your hand and saying “I quit.” There are actual forms and even notaries public involved.

But for them, it’s worth the trouble in the face of a religious organization they see as increasingly hostile toward its own members. As one testimonial on the event page for the mass resignation reads:

About 40 years ago I joined the LDS church, much against my family’s wishes. In fact since I was underage and my mom had to sign a permission form. My family was and still is very liberal. My mom was despondent that I would join a church that discriminated against people of color. She also was not able to see me get married. It broke her heart. She befriended a gay couple back in the 80’s when few straight people would. She died before my gay daughter came out. Lately I have come to regret I didn’t follow or appreciate the values she taught me. I have given up so much for this church and this is my reward. Increasing prejudice and discrimination for my child who never chose her orientation and only wants the same plan of salvation that everyone else gets. Another kick in the stomach. For the sake of my active children I have just been content to be inactive. But now I feel I must make a statement. I absolutely cannot remain silent any longer. I’m sorry to offend any believers. I really am. But I must speak out, let the chips fall where they may.

The event has already gathered nearly 1,000 RSVPs, with 1,400 additional people reportedly mailing in their resignation forms separately. And while 2,400 resignations out of an overall population of 6.4 million Mormon Americans and 15.3 million Mormons worldwide isn’t exactly going to put a huge dent in total church membership, it will nonetheless send a message that bigotry comes with at least some cost.

And there’s at least some evidence that the Church feels some gravity with this situation. Earlier this week, the LDS Church published an interview with Elder D. Todd Christofferson — a high-ranking official in the Church — who attempted to explain the reasoning behind the decision in terms that he hoped the LGBT community would understand. Here’s his answer when asked why children of same-sex couples are barred from baptism and other Mormon rites:

Michael Otterson: Why are the children of these same-sex partners an issue here? Elder Christofferson: Well, in answering or responding to your question, let me say I speak not only as an apostle in the Church, but as a husband, as a father and as a grandfather. And like others in those more enduring callings, I have a sense of compassion and sympathy and tender feelings that they do. So this policy originates out of that compassion. It originates from a desire to protect children in their innocence and in their minority years. When, for example, there is the formal blessing and naming of a child in the Church, which happens when a child has parents who are members of the Church, it triggers a lot of things. First, a membership record for them. It triggers the assignment of visiting and home teachers. It triggers an expectation that they will be in Primary and the other Church organizations. And that is likely not going to be an appropriate thing in the home setting, in the family setting where they’re living as children where their parents are a same-sex couple. We don’t want there to be the conflicts that that would engender. We don’t want the child to have to deal with issues that might arise where the parents feel one way and the expectations of the Church are very different. And so with the other ordinances on through baptism and so on, there’s time for that if, when a child reaches majority, he or she feels like that’s what they want and they can make an informed and conscious decision about that. Nothing is lost to them in the end if that’s the direction they want to go. In the meantime, they’re not placed in a position where there will be difficulties, challenges, conflicts that can injure their development in very tender years. The situation with polygamist families, for example, and same-sex marriage couples and families really has a parallel. For generations we’ve had these same kinds of policies that relate to children in polygamist families that we wouldn’t go forward with these ordinances while they’re in that circumstance and before they reach their majority. That’s the same sort of situation we’re dealing with here, so it’s something we have had a history with. It’s a practice that really is analogous that’s been the case over many generations.

There’s a lot going on here. For starters, the words “protect children” and parallels to polygamous relationships have never exactly been a friendly way to describe one’s reservations about same-sex couples — particularly gay couples. But granting for the moment that Christofferson is genuinely trying to explain why he doesn’t hate gay people — just why his religion hates their marriages — his logic still doesn’t make any sense.

Christofferson is saying that a child raised by same-sex parents will get mixed signals if they actively participate in a religion that considers their parents to be living in sin, which certainly isn’t wrong. But unless he’s suggesting that these families and their children leave the church entirely, his logic doesn’t make any sense. After all, how does it send any less of a mixed signal to not only say to the child that their parents are living in sin, but that they deserve to be punished for it? If you’re concerned about “protecting” the child from emotional trauma, how is going out of your way to not welcome that child any less traumatic?

All this is to say that the Mormon Church is digging in its heels here over an issue that, over time, they’re sure to lose. Saturday’s mass resignation is just the beginning.

(h/t The New Civil Rights Movement)