Gentle Dissent in Mormon Church on Gay Marriage

The congregants wore church clothes to the annual gay pride parade here in the heartland of Mormonism. Waving rainbow signs and urging love and acceptance, they marched at the front of the line, vanguards of a new movement of Mormons challenging their church’s staunch opposition to gay people.

Erika Munson of Sandy, Utah, who organized Mormons Building Bridges, says she wants to make “a space for gay people in the church.”
In 2008, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints played a pivotal role in financing and supporting a ballot measure that outlawed same-sex marriage in California. Now, as the legal battle over that ban, Proposition 8, heads toward the Supreme Court, gay and straight Mormons are making increasingly vocal calls for church leaders to reconsider their stance on marriage and welcome openly gay congregants back into the church.