Mormon apostle tells me I'm not gay

When Church Leaders Diagnose Sexuality: What the Mormon Stories Account Reveals About LDS Institutional Response to Gay Members

A young man sits across from an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has come forward with a personal confession: he believes he might be gay. The apostle's response is immediate and declarative. "You're not gay," the church leader tells him. The conversation that follows, documented in detail on the Mormon Stories Podcast, exposes a fundamental tension at the heart of how the LDS Church has historically approached LGBTQ identity among its members. For decades, church leadership has operated from an assumption that sexual orientation is not fixed, immutable, or beyond correction. This account suggests that assumption remains embedded in pastoral practice, even as the broader culture and scientific consensus have moved decisively away from such positions.

The question is not whether this conversation happened. It did. The question is what it tells us about institutional messaging, the burden placed on vulnerable members, and the gap between official policy statements and what actually occurs in confidential ecclesiastical settings.

The Historical Context: LDS Teaching on Sexual Identity

The Church's official relationship with homosexuality has shifted noticeably since the 1970s and 1980s, when church leaders regularly taught that same-sex attraction resulted from parental failure, childhood trauma, or moral weakness. By the 2010s, the messaging had softened. The Church began distinguishing between same-sex attraction (SSA, in church terminology) and homosexual behavior, suggesting that experiencing attraction was not sinful, but acting on it was.

What the Church did not do, however, was fully reckon with the implications of that distinction. If attraction itself is morally neutral, then telling someone they are not gay because they have not acted on their attractions creates a logical and pastoral problem. It requires the leader to make a judgment call about another person's identity based on incomplete information, personal bias, or institutional doctrine rather than the lived experience of the person in question.