CW: There is brief mention of LGBTQ+ Mormon death by suicide at the end of this post. If you or someone you know is at risk of self-harm, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides 24-hour support at 1-800-273-8255. The Trevor Project also has a 24-hour suicide hotline for the LGBTQ+ community at 1-866-488-7386.
Many years ago, when I was a student at Brigham Young University at the height of the Proposition 8 debate, I wrote a blog that I now look back on and cringe. Election day 2008 was certainly an election to remember. And I had just turned 19 two days beforehand. I was debating a mission. And I wasn’t ready to be out to myself.
Barack Obama had electrified the country into a frenzy of excitement and oddly racist polarization over a simple promise: hope and change. We all wanted a new era of possibility and promise after eight years of George W. Bush. We were left with a crippling financial crisis, quagmires in the Middle East, and a bad taste in our mouth for Evangelical Christianity. I remember sitting in my tiny BYU apartment in Young Hall, named after Susa Young Gates, a woman who was devastated that her oldest sister converted from Mormonism to Catholicism, and writing a short blog about how Proposition 8 was like the Ancient Israelites painting blood over their door posts to be passed over by the destroying angel. Porter Rockwell was called the “destroying angel” of Mormonism, and he certainly had shed more than a little blood in early Utah.
Maybe Proposition 8 was to protect Latter-day Saints from oncoming calamity, I told myself. The prophets had said that the last days would get pretty grim. And the way that Latter-day Saints were talking about gay people in 2008 was out of step with society. Many were deeply upset about the LDS Church, who had practiced polygamy in some form well into the 20th century, meddling in same-sex marriage. Dr. Cristina Rosetti in her 2021 Journal of Mormon History article “Hysteria Excommunications”: Loyalty Oaths, Excommunication, and the Forging of a Mormon Identity” mentions how the ghost of polygamy haunted Latter-day Saints well into the 1930s with post-manifesto polygamy. It was an odd role reversal: the persecuted became the persecutors.
Eight was enough for many Americans. The level of dishonesty from the LDS Church and from individual Mormons, as well as the organizations that the LDS Church had climbed into bed with, was stunning. Ads were fact-checked in real time, and people still thought Proposition 8 was about gay people really wanting to get married in the temple, as a missionary on my mission once erroneously told me. He was the same one who also drank the tap water for the first few weeks of his mission. He also mocked Thai culture relentlessly. He’s still an active, practicing Latter-day Saint.
The Pro-Prop 8 Ads were also bizarre. They bordered on campy horror. Some of these ideas were so erroneous and fundamentally homophobic that these should terrify the modern viewer. People out there in our country today are still this homophobic. The LDS Church was on the wrong side of history, as the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which was ultimately, and ironically, propelled by the Mormon investment in Proposition 8.
Mormons went apocalyptic in summer 2015 on Facebook, with one of my former seminary teachers quoted the prophetic warning lines in the Family Proclamation, a queerphobic weapon forged to fight against same-sex marriage.
Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.
My former seminary teacher wanted to see the destroying angels that would come at the last day for the people who supported same-sex marriage. She wanted the last days to come quickly so she could watch the wicked be destroyed. After all, the White Horse prophesy might be true. Ezra Taft Benson had said that the Latter-day Saints would save the Constitution at the last day, and he called it a “heavenly banner.” In the end, what could a heavenly banner hide? Racism. Homophobia. Violence. Intergenerational trauma. The banner of heaven had preserved the Latter-day Saints for many years. But the time has come to burn that banner.
That seminary teacher wanted to live her life under the banner of heaven and excuse such violence, homophobia, and rage. But Mormons ate up that Benson speech about a “heavenly banner” and printed it as a paperback book that is wildly loved in Latter-day Saint circles, even though he advocates for the stripping of the welfare state:
“[Government] cannot claim the power to redistribute money or property nor to force reluctant citizens to perform acts of charity against their will. Government is created by the people. No individual possesses the power to take another’s wealth or to force others to do good, so no government has the right to do such things either. The creature cannot exceed the creator.”
This same seminary teacher asked us read from a journal of a former student who died a tragic death about how this student thought gay people were “not right.” It was supposed to be a faith-promoting lesson. It was most certainly not. Would the destroying angel pass over my house? Had I shown my faith enough? I had defended the LDS Church on Proposition 8 in 2008, and I was barely hanging on in the LDS Church in 2015 when my old seminary teacher posted that. Maybe I just needed to find the right Mormons who would get me. They would help things get better for queer people in the LDS Church.
And then Randy Bott had us clap in his missionary preparation class at BYU. It was the day after the election and. two days after our group prayer in Elder’s Quorum on my birthday that Proposition 8 would pass. He shouted about how we had won the battle and that it wasn’t even close. People were downright celebratory that the same teacher who had taught us earlier in the semester that gay people
All those years ago, back when I wrote that original blog, I had an idea about what Proposition 8 was. But I didn’t know what it really was for me. It certainly was about a destroying angel. It was definitely about a doorpost. There was definitely some blood. It was almost certainly about preventing calamities. But my seminary teacher who wanted the calamities to come faster didn’t realize she would be referring to her own community. Proposition 8 had a lot of parallels with the destroying angel story in the Bible, but it wasn’t the interpretation that I had in 2008.
Some of us in 2008 were still Latter-day Saints and we had troubles with Proposition 8. But we stayed in the Church. We thought this was some grand test of our faith to the institution or the heavens. Some of us hoped we would be healed from our trauma because of our unconditional trust in the dealings of our church. Some of us didn’t know we had another option, like coming out as gay or leaving the LDS Church. Many of us had to press forward out of Mormonism into the wilderness, like our pioneer forebearers. We were going on a journey, but we didn’t know exactly what the destination would look like. So we remained Latter-day Saints. We just knew we wanted to paint our doorposts at night on our journey and get passed over by the Destroying Angel. But some of us decided to not listen to Moses.
Over the years the metaphor has become more clear. In Mormonism, homophobia is a destroying angel that can visit Mormon families. And it takes on many forms to attack the fabric and erode the fabric of Mormon culture. From Natalie Cline (the woman who claims LGBTQ+ people are indoctrinating youth into their “lifestyle” like Anita Bryant did in the 1970s in Florida) to higher rates of LGBTQ+ depression, anxiety, and suicidality in Utah, Mormonism has been subject to the effects of this destroying angel.
In some families, wards, and even stakes, however, Christian discipleship has been placed ahead of obedience to authority. These mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters chose loved ones rather than Elder Oaks or Elder Packer. They knew in their bodies that someone was hurting their loved ones and said, “I refuse.”
They decided to paint their doorposts with colors of pride. They made it so their home was a safer place for people to come out. They affirmed their LGBTQ+ loved ones by realizing how damaged they may be from Mormonism. And in some cases, they ultimately made their corner of Mormonism a little safer for LGBTQ+ people in their sphere of influence. Were they perfect? No. Did they leave or stay in the LDS Church? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
In the end, some families were perhaps not passed over by the Destroying Angel but not totally devastated by this Angel. They painted their doors too late in some cases. But when they did paint them, they started to look around and ask themselves,
“Why didn’t we paint the doorpost earlier?”
But this Destroying Angel dwells among Latter-day Saints. Many children are not spared. Many people die in Mormonism because of men like President Oaks. And yet, every six months we see the same outrage and shock at what these men say in General Conference. I’m never shocked anymore. Perhaps the cruelty is the point.
The Destroying Angel will continue to visit our families until we accept the Christian responsibility and the call of Moses: paint your doorposts with the colors of Pride and the destroying angel will pass over your house. Refuse and you may lose someone you love.
Christian and Jacob when Christian was the parade marshal for the Episcopal Diocese of Utah in 2018 in the Salt Lake City Pride Parade.