Liz and Ryan Giles were in love — with each other, and with their beliefs.
When the two returned to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after making their decisions, leaving the church and getting married, residing and getting married, or remaining and leading a chaste life, they decided against any of them. They were returned sexual missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Rather, they picked what they’ve come to refer to as the “fourth opportunity”. On Aug. 7, 2021, they married and sped off for a two-year wedding. The following Sunday, they took their seats in their Houston Latter-day Saint clinic, or community.
The Gileses, who have since moved to Yakima, Washington, have been attending services ever since, a choice they are quick to recognize makes them exceptions.
Ryan and Liz Giles, who were married in 2021, have continued to be active Latter-day Saints, but they made a decision that they felt might not appeal to everyone in the transgender community.
Many people “feel the need to embrace their gay or spiritual identity totally,” Liz said, “and reject the other.”
They weren’t surprised, therefore, when they learned that a fresh PRRI investigation of more than 22,000 Americans, including 400 Latter-day Saints, found that members of the Utah-based beliefs were the least likely to identify as gay when compared to other spiritual groups.
Probable causes
With a general margin of error of less than 1 percentage point (the report did not specify a margin for its data on the Latter-day Saint population specifically), 3% of Latter-day Saints identify as LGBTQ, which is slightly lower than white evangelical Protestants and Jehovah’s Witnesses (4%).
In contrast, more than a quarter of Unitarian Universalists (29%) and nearly 1 in 5 of the religiously unaffiliated (19%), sometimes known as “nones”, identify as LGBTQ.
The Gileses have thought a bit about how this might be. When one paused to regard her second term, they soon began outlining theories and filling in for the other. Their responses were based on conversations they had with LGBTQ Latter-day Saints and past church members as well as their personal experiences.
Theory No. 1: Some Latter-day Saints, and especially women, just don’t know they’re gay.
“With the rules of modesty and purity lifestyle, you’re discouraged from exploring or thinking about sexuality,” Liz said, “whether homosexual or heterosexual”.
The two said that many couples are 20 years into a relationship before realizing how sexually diverse their beliefs are.
Theory No. 2 has to do with what many people perceive as the religion’s less-than-affirming plans and lessons, which they claim result in a number of people leaving the faith after coming out, whenever that may be.
For the first time, church leaders have labeled those who marry someone of the same gender as “apostates” and decry trans users’ cultural or medical transitions. They have repeatedly confirmed the idea that marriage is between a man and a woman.
As a result, Ryan explained, once people identify as LGBTQ, they no longer see remaining in the temple as an alternative.
“So, it’s less that LDS people don’t identify as queer,” she said, “and more that queer people don’t identify as LDS”.
Finally, experience has shown the women that countless Latter-day Saints who choose to remain closeted are unaware of the social costs associated with coming out.
“I’ve got a lot of friends who have told me in the past that they don’t think it’s worth it because they realize it doesn’t make their lives easier,” Ryan said.
Shifting views
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
The couple wasn’t surprised when they discovered that two observable, if not significant, shifts in attitudes toward LGBTQ rights among their fellow church members were tucked into the study’s findings.
In 2015, 38% of U.S. Latter-day Saints opposed spiritual-based refusals (for example, the cake maker who turns away a same-sex couple planning a wedding). By 2023, that number had grown to 41%.
Support for nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ communities increased from 72% to 78% at the same time.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
The increase in support for same-sex couples’ unions was much more notable, rising from 27% to 50% in 2022 before falling 3 percentage points the year after.
The Gileses believe that a large portion of this is due to a type of agreement structure that church leaders have developed in recent years, especially regarding the issue of marriage and protections, through their vociferous support for nondiscrimination and marriage laws when combined with some restrictions on religious organizations.
For example, the church backed the federal law that codified relationships between same-sex people while preventing religious organizations from solemnizing unions themselves in 2022.
Even so, the cathedral stated in a news release at the time that its theory “regarding union between a man and a woman is well known and will be constant.”
‘Backsliding’
An openly gay 21-year-old Latter-day Saint student at the University of Utah, Nate McLaughlin, gave a less rosy assessment of the attitudes and practices of his fellow religionists toward LGBTQ church members and the queer community in general.
“My perception,” he said, “is we’re backsliding a tad.”
Queerphobia and particularly transphobia have become “a main talking point for a lot of people,” he said, both online and off for the past five or so years.
“But,” he added, “I think that’s a lot of the country, frankly.”
(Nick McLaughlin) A student at the University of Utah, Nick McLaughlin is an openly gay Latter-day Saint who says he’s in it “for the long haul.”
According to the new PRRI study, McLaughlin might be onto something.
In contrast to Latter-day Saints, many religious organizations saw modest drops in support for nondiscrimination protections in the last year. And while majorities of most religious traditions surveyed favor allowing same-sex couples to marry legally, some showed a dip in support, including among Hispanic Catholics, whose support declined from 75% in 2022 to 68% in 2023.
According to McLaughlin, the Latter-day Saint faith represents “a very volatile and unsafe space for a lot of LGBT people,” noting that much depends on local lay leadership and the people who sit in the pews.
“I’m in a singles ward, so it’s full of people my age,” he said. In general, what I’ve noticed is that younger members are much more aware of and much more Christlike in their interactions with LGBT people and are much more likely to care and want to make the church a safer place.
A Latter-day Saint’s ability to identify as LGBTQ might also be affected by generational differences.
According to a 2023 survey, more than 1 in 5 Latter-day Saint college students (22%) say they are something other than heterosexual. Published by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the report included 39,000 respondents between ages 18 to 25. Of those, a little more than 700 identified as Latter-day Saints.
Regardless of trends, McLaughlin said his mind is made up.
“I’m in it for the long haul,” he said, citing his belief that “our Heavenly Parents love all their LGBT kids” and that his attachment rests “in the theology and the community.”
The Gileses, meanwhile, are less sure.
“We don’t know if it will be a healthy place for us to be in forever,” Liz said. “We take that day by day.”
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