FAIR

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Come, Follow Me Resources

Gender Issues

FAIR Voice Podcast #28: Valerie Hudson on Women and the Priesthood

by 2 Comments

Podcast: Download (31.0MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Valerie M. Hudson is a University Distinguished Professor and holds the George H.W. Bush Chair at The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, where she directs the Program on Women, Peace, and Security. She has previously taught at Brigham Young, Northwestern, and Rutgers universities. Her research foci include foreign policy analysis, security studies, gender and international relations, and methodology. Hudson’s articles have appeared in such journals as International Security, Journal of Peace Research, American Political Science Review, and Foreign Policy Analysis. She is the author or editor of several books, including (with Andrea Den Boer) Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population (MIT Press, 2004), which won the American Association of Publishers Award for the Best Book in Political Science, and the Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Best Book in Social Demography, resulting in feature stories in the New York Times, The Economist, 60 Minutes, and other news publications. Hudson was named to the list of Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2009. Winner of numerous teaching awards and recipient of a National Science Foundation research grant and a Minerva Initiative grant from the US Department of Defense, she served as the director of graduate studies for the David M. Kennedy Center for International and Area Studies at BYU for eight years, and served as Vice President of the International Studies Association for 2011-2012. Hudson is one of the Principal Investigators of the WomanStats Project, which includes the largest compilation of data on the status of women in the world today. She is also a founding editor of SquareTwo, a founding editorial board member of Foreign Policy Analysis, and serves on the editorial boards of several other journals. She has testified before Congress on three occasions, is president of the Utah Valley Institute of Cystic Fibrosis, and co-founded the LDS National Security Society. Her recent books include Sex and World Peace, co-authored with Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Mary Caprioli and Chad Emmett, The Hillary Doctrine, co-authored with Patricia Leidl, and The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide,co-authored with Donna Lee Bowen and Perpetua Lynne Nielsen, all three published by Columbia University Press. She and her husband David, an artist and landscape architect, are the parents of eight children.

Hanna Seariac is a MA student in Greek and Latin at Brigham Young University. She has interests in the interaction that the Greek New Testament has with the Septuagint as well as sacrifice in ancient Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Rome. She works as a research assistant on a biblical commentary and as a research assistant on early Latter-day Saint history. She values Jesus Christ, family, friends, hiking, baking, and good ice cream.

FairMormon Questions: How should we respond when we feel men and women are unequal at church?

by

FairMormon has a service where questions can be submitted and they are answered by volunteers. If you have a question, you can submit it at http://www.fairmormon.org/contact. We will occasionally publish answers here for questions that are commonly asked, or are on topics that are receiving a lot of attention. (The names used in the answer have been changed.)

QUESTION:

We were recently asked to address “Male Privilege” in the church to help a teenage girl looking for answers to questions such as:  How should we respond when we feel men and women are unequal at church? What should we do if we have a nagging feeling that perhaps our culture doesn’t live up to our doctrine? What do we do when we perceive sexism or implicit biases at church? [Read more…] about FairMormon Questions: How should we respond when we feel men and women are unequal at church?

FairMormon Conference Podcast #45 – Wendy Ulrich, “Women, Men, and Priesthood Power”

by

Podcast: Download (97.3MB)

Subscribe: RSS

This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference held in August. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Wendy Ulrich, Women, Men, and Priesthood Power

Transcript available here.

Wendy Ulrich, Ph.D., M.B.A., has been a psychologist in private practice, president of the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists, and a visiting professor at Brigham Young University-Provo. She founded Sixteen Stones Center for Growth, which offers seminar-retreats for Latter-day Saint women and their loved ones (see sixteenstones.net). Her books include Let God Love You; Weakness Is Not Sin; Habits of Happiness; The Temple Experience; Forgiving Ourselves; and national best-seller The Why of Work, coauthored with her husband, Dave Ulrich. Wendy’s newest book is Live Up to our Privileges: Women, Power, and Priesthood, published by Deseret Book.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Women as Witnesses

by

Editor’s Note: The transcript of Daniel Peterson’s 2019 FairMormon Conference presentation is now available.

by Jeffrey Thayne

At the 2019 FAIR Mormon conference, Dr. Daniel Peterson gave an illuminating presentation that — among other things — summarized the history of women serving as formal witnesses. He explored how female witnesses were considered less reliable than male witnesses in many ancient and modern legal systems, including within the United States. In U.S. jurisprudence, the testimony of women was routinely dismissed over the testimony of men. In fact, women were ineligible to serve on juries in most jurisdictions, and it was not until 1973 that women could serve on juries anywhere in the U.S. These were facts that I did not know.

Last week, President Russel M. Nelson announced that women could now serve as formal witnesses to all live and proxy ordinances within the Church. This exciting development can be seen as an extension of this broader historical movement of increasing female participation in formal legal and ecclesiastical contexts. At the direction of the Lord’s servants, it is thrilling to see that participation grow as we find new and better ways for sisters within the Church to wield righteous influence within our institution.

Furthermore, we are seeing an increase in women serving as witnesses in other areas, as more sisters serve missions and participate in Church councils. We are also doing a better job of documenting the witnesses of women across time who have been historically underrepresented in the literature. In the rest of Dr. Peterson’s presentation, it relates the stories and witnesses of the women who felt, handled, or saw the plates — and there are more than you would expect. These voices and accounts serve as additional witnesses of the Restoration of the Gospel, and add to the credibility of the men who signed their witness (included at the beginning of that sacred book). [Read more…] about Women as Witnesses

FairMormon Conference Podcast #32 – Lynne Hilton Wilson, “Peter and Paul’s Paradoxical Passages on Women”

by

Podcast: Download (51.3MB)

Subscribe: RSS

This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. Please join us for the 2019 FairMormon Conference coming up August 7-9! You can attend in person or purchase the video streaming.

Lynne Hilton Wilson, Peter and Paul’s Paradoxical Passages on Women

Transcript available here.

Dr. Lynne Hilton Wilson lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband Dow R. Wilson. She is mother to seven children—all with red hair. During her under-graduate years at BYU in 1982 she studied nursing and the cello. She received an MA in Religious Studies from Cardinal Stritch University. Her thesis explored Christ’s birth narratives in the New Testament. She received a PhD in Theology and American History at Marquette University where she focused her dissertation on Joseph Smith’s doctrine of the Spirit compared to his contemporaries. She has been an adjunct professor at BYU and iis now the Stake institute director and teacher in the Menlo Park, California Stake for the Stanford single wards. She has written three books and published several papers. She is a popular speaker at BYU Women’s Conference, Education week, the Society of Biblical Literature, the Mormon History Association, Sperry Symposiums, and many others.

Audio Copyright © 2018 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Book Review: The Melchizedek Priesthood: Understanding the Doctrine, Living the Principles

by

Available from the FairMormon Bookstore at 10% off

There have been some General Conference talks in recent years about the priesthood that have really stuck out for me, such as “Healing the Sick” by Dallin H. Oaks in April 2010, and “The Price of Priesthood Power” by Russell M. Nelson in April 2016. As an elder in the Melchizedek Priesthood, they have been very instructional but have also left me wanting to know more about the priesthood and how to better exercise priesthood power. This book, by apostle Dale G. Renlund and his wife, Ruth Lybbert Renlund, goes a long way towards doing that.

It consists of two parts, titled “Foundations of the Priesthood” and “Doctrine of the Priesthood.” In the first part, it explains what priesthood is, its purpose, the offices and keys, and the oaths and covenants associated with it. The second part talks about putting the priesthood into action and becoming better priesthood holders. At the end of the book there is also a small section of “Chapter Summaries” that can serve as a review of the material contained in the book.

It begins by talking about what the priesthood is. “The offices of the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthood do not constitute all of God’s priesthood, His total power and authority. Brigham Young taught that there are many aspects of God’s total priesthood power and authority that are not delegated to men on earth… the authority and power to produce bodies and spirits, create kingdoms, and organize matter.” (pages 12-13) It talks about God’s priesthood power and authority being used on the earth even between New Testament times and the restoration of the priesthood through Joseph Smith. It also addresses the issues of people of African descent being denied priesthood blessings for a time, and priesthood offices only being open to males. “Women in the Church frequently exercise priesthood power and authority, though they are not ordained to priesthood offices.” (page 18) [Read more…] about Book Review: The Melchizedek Priesthood: Understanding the Doctrine, Living the Principles

Book Review: A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine & Church History

by

Available from the FairMormon bookstore at 20% off
Available from the FairMormon bookstore at 20% off

In the prologue of A Reason for Faith, the editor, Laura Hales, lays out the purpose of the book. Members of the church sometimes come across new information in an unfriendly setting that damages their faith. This book is a compilation of articles about many of the topics that are not often discussed in a church or family setting, and can be difficult to understand. They are laid out by scholars in an honest but faithful manner, and while they can’t possibly cover the topics completely in the amount of space given, they are meant to be a springboard for further study where necessary.

The first chapter is by Richard Bushman, on “Joseph Smith and Money Digging.” He recounts the history of scholarship in this area, where it was originally denied by those inside the church due to being based on accounts thought to be unreliable published by critics of the church. As he began his own research, he found evidence that convinced him that Joseph was indeed involved with folk magic and seer stones, and that these things were too common in the 19th century to invalidate Joseph’s prophetic claims or be scandalous. [Read more…] about Book Review: A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine & Church History

Book Review: The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History

by

Available from the FairMormon Bookstore at 15% off
Available from the FairMormon Bookstore at 15% off

This is the first publication from The Church Historian’s Press other than the Joseph Smith Papers. It is a collection of documents brought together for the first time that cover the first fifty years of the Relief Society, starting in Nauvoo, restarting in Utah, and then spreading throughout LDS settlements as far away as Canada. The book format and production procedures (transcription, verification, etc.) are very similar to how the Joseph Smith Papers are being done, and at least some of the staff (including editor Matthew J. Grow) are involved in both. And as with the JSP project, much of the book is available for free online. It is accessible at https://www.churchhistorianspress.org/the-first-fifty-years-of-relief-society

The book contains a general table of contents, then a Detailed Contents listing each document, followed by a list of illustrations, a general introduction, and a description of the editorial method. The main section is split into four parts, covering the time periods of 1830 and 1942 to 1845, then 1854 to 1866, 1867 to 1879, and finally 1880 to 1892. The end matter contains reference material including lists of the different Relief Society, Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association, and Primary Association presidencies from 1842 to 1892, a biographical directory, works cited, acknowledgments, and then a pretty thorough index spanning 50 pages.

The main feature of this book is the Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, which was kept by Eliza R. Snow and then brought to Utah by her, where it was used in getting the Relief Society going again. This is the first time it has appeared in print, although it was included in the Selected Collections DVD set published in 2002, and more recently has been included in the online documents for the JSP project. Among other things, it has the only sermons given by Joseph Smith to the women of the church.

In one of these sermons, on April 28, 1842, Joseph Smith addressed speaking in tongues and administering to the sick: [Read more…] about Book Review: The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History

RiseUp Podcast: Dealing with gender dysphoria – Finding inner peace through Christ

by

Podcast: Download (80.2MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Dealing with gender dysphoria: Finding inner peace through Christ – An interview with Kyle and Amy Merkley. To read Kyle’s story and be introduced to the Journey’s of Faith Project from NorthStarLDS, click here.

Kyle and Amy MerkleyKyle is the oldest of five children. He grew up in an amazing family and he’s grateful for the strength his family gives him. Kyle is currently attending graduate school at Brigham Young University studying Classical Languages and Literature. He loves literature and loves sharing this love of literature with others. Music has always been a huge part of his life and he plays trumpet, piano, and organ. Kyle has been married for almost five years to Amy who is one of the most amazing women in the world. She helps him to be a better person every day. Kyle loves reading, watching chick flicks, shopping with his wife, and all things nerdy.

Kyle is here with his wife Amy to talk about their very unique circumstances. For the sake of our conversation today, those unique circumstances will likely focus on the topic of Kyle identifying as being transgender or experiencing gender dysphoria. Kyle has contributed to a new project of the group NorthStar LDS entitled Journeys of Faith – The Journeys of Faith Project is a growing repository of personal essays by Latter-day Saint individuals and families wrestling with issues related to gender identity (e.g., gender dysphoria and/or transgenderism) and are striving to find congruence and peace within the context of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

RiseUp is a podcast designed to offer answers and frameworks for youth, or young adults who are seeking answers to difficult or critical questions about LDS Culture and doctrine.

Questions addressed in this episode:

There is so much to learn and absorb with the topic of being transgender or experiencing gender dysphoria, but let’s first set some foundational items for the basis of our getting to know you and some of the challenges that you face starting with the terms, the lexicon of words that are most welcome to be used when dealing with this subject. What does it mean to be transgender, and what does it mean to experience gender dysphoria in perhaps a more clinical or text book sense?

In your essay on the Journeys of Faith project, entitled: Jesus Wins: Finding Faith in Ambiguity” you express some concepts that may sound familiar to some teenagers in some respects, but maybe not in others. If you could talk about your experience with mirrors growing up.

With your specific life scenario, you were born a genetic male. When did you feel that just didn’t fit your mind’s eye of yourself?

How did your parents respond to this scenario?

It’s important to make the distinction, that in your experience, the thoughts you had were not related to sexual urges or attraction, per se, but just how you saw yourself.

Being a teenager is typically defined in some part with the experience of self-discovery, and the challenges that arise when your body goes through certain biological changes, as well as social independence. But here you are, with another layer to that, something very uncharted in the Mormon experience. In your essay you state that the atonement of Jesus Christ gave you hope, particularly Moroni 10:32 “Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ…”

Music also became a part of your life a coping mechanism. We are both trumpet players as I understand it.

So, even with all that was going on with your life you decided to attend BYU as opposed to perhaps some other university where being transgender would be more either present, accepted, if not encouraged to a certain extent.

BYU led you to a mission call to the California Anaheim Mission. Opening that letter, Dear Elder Kyle Merkley. How did that feel to read that, given your trials and circumstances up to this point? Did you see this as a point of success, of achievement to even feel ready to put in your papers?

In your essay you state: “While serving a mission was really hard in some ways (I had to deal with constant depression, and living with all guys triggered my gender dysphoria), I found serving a mission also clearly defined a role for me. I didn’t have to struggle with the question of who I was. I was told exactly who I was and how I was supposed to act every day. It was that sense of purpose which kept me going.”

It was on your mission that you actually first learned the name for what you were experiencing, or at least a term that has been assigned to those experiencing similar emotions, transgender.

At some point you describe studying for hours, days, weeks, what have you, to find some guidance on what it means to be Transgender and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and you kind of snap under the cognitive dissonance, or maybe it would be vacuum of space where questions remained unanswered.

In all this there were some coping mechanisms that you installed, some self-medication that served as a sort of pressure release for all that you were feeling. What were some of those things?

This is when Amy your now wife enters the picture. I have hears some very dear things about Amy, I can’t wait to hear her side of things. How did you two meet?

Kyle has some incredibly tender words to describe what you meant to him, “She asked me out when I didn’t have the self-confidence to ask anyone out. She liked me when I couldn’t find the strength to like myself. And eventually, she loved me when all I felt inside was self-loathing. When we started dating she brought happiness back into my life. Every time I was around her, I felt so right—a rightness I’d been searching for my whole life. She made the pain of gender dysphoria recede into the background. She brought light and color back into a world which was colorless and bleak. She gave me hope. She loves life so much and finds joy in so many little things. Every time I was with her I found little joyful reasons to love life as well. As we dated, she began the process of healing my broken spirit.”

Amy, when did you know this is what you meant to Kyle? When were you opened up to what Kyle was feeling?

You wrote a letter to Amy explaining what was going on, what was in that letter? Is that something public or too personal to be public?

That reprieve from the gender dysphoria came back three months after you were married. What happened? How did you choose to respond?

Here you are today, still together, and now putting your story out there in an effort to help others, to strengthen others to stay true, to know that there is an answer in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the atonement is stronger than some of the most discouraging trials one can face.

Now that we know your story, and what an amazing story it is and will continue to be, the next little bit I would love to get some insights or suggestions both for those who may be experiencing gender dysphoria themselves, as well as for their family, friends, and even ecclesiastical leaders in order to help all understand this issue more fully, but also to find a path of faith, a journey of faith that includes gender dysphoria.

Starting with those who are experiencing gender dysphoria, if you haven’t already said it in the telling of your story, what would you say to the person listening that may be in that place? Kyle I would like you to answer first, and then Amy, if you could also have a response for that same person.

You go on to say in this essay, “I don’t always know how to deal with the pain of having gender dysphoria, and I constantly wonder how my identity as transgender fits with my identity as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” I think members of the Church are in the same place, we don’t always know what to think or how to respond. I can think of the bishop sitting in his office and having someone come to them and say, Bishop, I think I am transgender, and that Bishop going, hmm… what does the handbook say about this? I have looked, and it’s currently blank on this issue. There are issues relating to chastity in which one may make some educated and hopefully inspired decisions, but it is one of those points where we will believe what God will reveal with respect to this issue, but until then, perhaps you could give your advice to a bishop or stake president that is approached with this issue and wants to do so with love, but also inspired guidance.

Perhaps you would be willing to provide some answers and insight you have received as you have fasted and prayed, in an effort to reconcile the lack of information in church manuals and scriptural sources on gender dysphoria specifically, with things like the Family: A Proclamation to the World which clearly asserts the teachings on gender.

Moving forward on the right path, or the choice you have made to remain faithful to your covenants; how does one live by faith when approaching gender dysphoria or being transgender?

Kyle and Amy Merkley are defining what it means to be on a journey of faith. We will post a link to Kyle’s essay as part of the Journeys of Faith project from NorthStarLDS, we encourage all to read it and come to feel the spirit of Kyle’s testimony. Please feel free to share this message with others as part of an effort to show forth love and support, to do as Elder Christofferson encouraged in the April 2015 general conference, to march with those who are experiencing gender dysphoria, and to extend a hand of fellowship as a way of building a zion people.

For Additional Resources on Gender Dysphoria or related issues, please visit NorthStarLDS’s resources by clicking here.

FairMormon-Rise-Up-iTunes-logo

Re-examining gay Mormon youth and suicide: What does the data say?

by

salt-lake-city-downtown-21[This post originally appeared at Virtuous Society and is reposted here with the author’s permission.]

Written by Tom Stringham

Do young Latter-day Saints, and especially gay youth, commit suicide at a higher rate than other youth in the US? The short answer: with the data we have, we don’t know. So what do we know for sure? The Mormon teen suicide problem Some readers may have read a recent interview in the Huffington Post with Wendy Williams Montgomery, a Californian mom and LGBT advocate. In the interview, Montgomery refers to a widely recognized problem within Mormon culture: the high rate of suicides among gay youth. “Mormons,” Montgomery asserts, “have the highest rate of gay teen suicides in the country.”

Over the last few years, the idea that Mormons have a problem with teen suicide, especially among gay youth, has become common wisdom. In 2012, a Reuters article highlighted the issue of gay teen suicide in Utah. The Huffington Post has featured the issue multiple times, as in a 2012 post. High-profile Mormon critic John Dehlin frequently discusses gay teen suicide among Mormons, and recently referred to the phenomenon as epidemic. His characterization seems to fit the general impression: Mormons have a special problem with suicide among gay teens.

Missing data

There is no question that gay teen suicide is a reality among Mormon youth. In many cases, we have heard their stories, either through media or personal experience. Fortunately, we are more aware of this reality than we were in the past. Unfortunately, however, these stories seem to be accompanied, more and more frequently, by statistical claims that are not supported by data. Ms. Montgomery’s assertion that Mormons have the highest gay teen suicide rate in the country is unsourced in the original interview, and other blogs and outlets making similar claims are also missing sources. I surveyed all the government and health data I could find on youth suicide in the United States, and was unable to find any agency that collects public data by religion or sexual orientation (data so specific would be very difficult to collect). In fact, the American Association of Suicidology’s LGBT Resource Sheet notes, “to date, there is no empirical data regarding the number of completed suicides within the LGBT community.” The claim appears to be fabricated.

Other claims to the effect that Mormons, or Utahns, have a unique or unusually acute problem with gay teen suicide, or even teen suicide, cannot be supported by any data I can find.

The data we do have

Much of the interest in Mormons and teen suicide seems to originate from a 2006 article in the Deseret News, a newspaper owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The article pointed out a few statistics about suicide that would have been surprising to most readers at the time. First, that Utah had the highest rate of suicide among males age 15-24. Second, that Utah had the 11th highest overall suicide rate in the United States. And third, that the youth suicide rate in Utah had tripled over the preceding half-century (in fact, this is true across the United States). The newspaper didn’t cite its sources, but all of the categories of statistics they refer to are available through the CDC and other federal sources and appear to be genuine.

What else do we know? The data in that report is now nine years old, so it’s worth taking stock of the current reality. I’ve collected a set of more recent figures below, from public data and representative surveys:

A collection of more recent statistics is below:

  • Utah’s suicide rate among people age 15-24 is 9th highest in the United States, among 47 states with reliable data (CDC, 2013)
  • Utah’s suicide rate among males age 15-24 is 7th highest, among 46 states with reliable data (CDC, 2013)
  • Utah’s suicide rate among females age 15-24 cannot be reported as the number of cases is smaller than 20 (CDC, 2013)
  • Utah’s overall suicide rate is 5th highest in the United States (CDC, 2013)
  • Utah is 29th out of 40 states with available data for the rate of high school students who have attempted suicide (not completed suicide) (CDC, 2013)
  • Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Utahns age 10-17. (Utah Department of Health, 2012)
  • Across 9 sites surveyed (all in the Midwestern or Eastern US and California), lesbian and gay high school students had a rate of attempted suicide that was approximately 4 times higher than for straight students (CDC, 2011)
  • A representative survey of students in Grades 7-12 across the US using the Add-Health database found that Mormon gay teens reported significantly less depression and fewer suicidal thoughts than their nonreligious peers. (Add-Health, 2010)
  • The same survey found that religious gay teens had a lower attempted suicide rate than nonreligious gay teens (the number of cases did not allow for statistical significance, however).

To the best of my knowledge, these statistics are the closest we can come to answering the statistical questions surrounding gay teen suicide among Mormons, or within Utah. Specifically targeted data on completed or attempted suicide among gay Mormon teens simply isn’t available. The data speak well enough for themselves, but it’s worth pointing out that none of the relevant data points appear to justify an unusual suspicion about Utah (or, by extension, Mormons). This is especially true since the surprisingly strong link between high altitude and suicide rates has become well established. Among high-altitude states in the Rocky Mountain West, Utah appears to have overall rates within the average range, and youth rates slightly lower than the average. We have no empirical data specific to Utah for gay and lesbian youth, but we can assume that like other states, the rate of attempted suicide, and presumably completed suicide, is considerably higher than for straight youth.

It’s also worth noting that Utah’s overall suicide rate has increased relative to other states since 2006, while its youth suicide rate has fallen in comparison to other states. Furthermore, the Add- Health dataset mentioned above suggests that Mormon gay youth are relatively less at risk for suicide than nonreligious gay youth.

Conclusions

While only systematic recordkeeping and representative surveys can answer the questions we’re most interested in, we shouldn’t ignore anecdotal evidence about suicide. The sense among many concerned observers in Utah and elsewhere that the situation is bad and getting worse probably reflects an important reality. Youth suicide in the US has quickly gotten worse over the decades, and a disproportionate number of these suicides across the US, including within Utah, are among gay youth. Combined, these two trends might be giving an alarming impression to those concerned about the well-being of gay teens; an impression made locally that could be transformed into misplaced claims, such as Ms. Montgomery’s. So her hypothesis–that Mormons in particular have an unusually severe problem with gay teen suicide—could possibly be an observer’s local interpretation of nationwide trends, but it cannot be supported or rejected by the data itself, as far as I can tell.

The hypothesis cannot be confirmed or rejected by theory, either. Many advocates who highlight the issue of suicide among Mormons do so within the framework of a particular narrative, at the center of which is the idea that Latter-day Saint sexual values are harmful. Since there is no data to support the assertion of abnormal suicide rates, the theory seems to be doing all the work. But there are other theories that could be put forth—Latter-day Saints could just as well hypothesize that robust Mormon families and supportive faith communities lead to lower rates of suicide among gay youth. But this would also be unjustified; it would be best for everyone to refrain from attempting to explain phenomena for which there isn’t evidence in the first place.

Those who believe in Latter-day Saint sexual values and those who do not should be able to agree: one youth suicide is too many, including among gay youth. Even if the Mormon problem is not unique, it is still a problem. We don’t need statistics, and certainly not unsourced statistics, to tell us this.

[For further reading on this topic, please visit this link.]