What is the point of trying to reform an institution that hates your guts? I should think the answer to that question would be self evident. To reduce the amount of hate in the world, especially hate directed at LGBTQ people. The queer people who attend affirming mainline Protestant churches didn’t get there by just sitting back. A lot of work went into making that affirmation possible. The Episcopal church is full of queer priests and bishops, for example, and marries queer people in church, because of decades of reform efforts by people who insisted anti-LGBTQ doctrines had to change.

Like Episcopalians, LGBTQ Mormons don’t want to be cut off from their religious communities. And they shouldn’t have to face that choice. BYU places a central role in the lives of many Mormons. Not to attend can have disastrous social and community consequences.

And even though things look bad for acceptance or affirmation if you look up at the top of the leadership pyramid, they really aren’t so bad more broadly in the LDS world. Young Mormons especially believe real change is possible. In living memory, after all, the LDS Church radically reformed its teaching and practices about Black people. They can do the same about LGBTQ people, and lots of Mormons are pressuring them hard to do just that.

When Holland delivered that horrible speech last summer, lots of Mormons, and not just LGBTQ Mormons and firm allies, gasped in shock. That’s not what they want their Church to be. That kind of hatred is not how they view their faith.

They say real change is possible, especially if pressure to reform remains strong both inside and outside the Church.