WHEN A 22-YEAR-OLD MAN OPENED FIRE IN A Colorado Springs nightclub during a drag performance on November 19, leaving five people dead, he put new light on a long-simmering debate within the Mormon Church about its stance on gay, lesbian and transgender people. The alleged shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich was brought up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In the days following the shootings, Aldrich's father, a former adult film star and mixed martial arts fighter with a history of substance abuse, appeared in a television news interview admitting that he condoned his son's violent behavior as a child while alluding to the values of their Mormon heritage, saying "You know Mormons don't do gay.
We don't do gay." "We don't get to pick and choose," Rosemary Card, a Mormon influencer and author of the 2018 book Model Mormon: Fighting for Self-Worth on the Runway and as an Independent Woman (Cedar Fort Publishing) tweeted after the shooting. "We have to face it. Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric from the church influences members."
The church has condemned the shooting and called the public reflex to condemn an entire religion based on the shooter's actions problematic. But LGBTQ advocates were quick to highlight their own experiences within the church as well as Mormon leaders' reluctance to take tangible action to address the barriers they've built between the LGBTQ community and their faith. The church declined a Newsweek request for further comment.
While members of the LGBTQ community are permitted to remain a part of the Mormon community, the LDS church does not allow same-sex couples to marry or maintain a physical relationship nor are they permitted to receive church K OLDS ordinances, among them baptism, confirmation and joining the priesthood.
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