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Show 246 engagement of homosexuality, LDS leaders could no longer claim that Mormons were in the world but not of the world, and gays responded move for move. As church leaders went public with their condemnations, gays publicized their grievances. While the positions aired by gays and their opponents typically fell short of dialogue, history reveals how the issue had evolved in three decades: what was once a monologue had become a debate engaging multiple points of view. However, publicity also revealed strategic differences among gays, upsetting the notion of a monolithic "voice of the community." Although many gays embraced the ideal of sexual revolution behind the national gay liberation movement, others were mindful of local political realities, promoting respectable overcome images of gays as a means to prejudice and the psychological obstacles keeping LDS men in the closet. Divisions within the gay community over the appropriate stance toward the dominant culture, assimilation versus difference, corresponded to the LDS Church's mixed message of love and condemnation. Despite the pitfalls attending strategies of respectability, innate sexuality, and privacy, however, the LDS Church's intransigence continued to supply opportunities for local gay solidarity in years to come. Beset by fragmentation, AIDS, and demoralization from resisting a formidable adversary, Salt Lake's gay community adapted as Spencer W. Kimball's successors moderated the tone, but not the substance, of his anti gay policies. Just as Anita Bryant's campaign boosted gay solidarity nationally, the LDS Church's antigay initiatives prompted disparate elements of the local gay community to unite. Ironically, the standardized culture and policies of the church supplied the diaspora of Mormon and ex-Mormon gays a common bond that facilitated |
