Church Leaders Encouraged Members To Extend Love And Encouragement To The LGBT Members

What is Mormon Building Bridges?
Mormons Building Bridges is a decentralized grassroots group based in Utah that are composed primarily of active and faithful members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) who seek to improve the attitudes between members of the LDS Church and the LGBT community.

​Keys for helping
Regardless, teenagers need support, even absent sexuality issues, and families and church congregations can be critically valuable environments, experts said.Research shows religious affiliation generally lowers suicide risks, though it also is normal for believing LGBT youth to struggle to square their realization of same-sex attraction with their religious beliefs. Supportive messages are crucial. The possibility of self-harming behavior more than doubles each time an LGBT youth is hurt physically or verbally.Parents and families can provide healthy, constructive relationships and environments by expressing affection when they learn a child is gay or transgender, by supporting the child even if the news is uncomfortable and by being willing to talk about it.

Parents, families and friends also should expect a good adult future for the child, a specialist said, and continue to include LGBT youth in family activities. They also should be the child’s advocate if he or she is mistreated, require other family members to show respect and help their faith community welcome and include LGBT teens.
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The suicide prevention lifeline 1-800-273-TALK is available 24/7 as a resource for those in crisis and for those who may be worried about someone else.

Church response
Senior LDS leaders reiterated through a spokesman on Thursday that they expect church members to actively reach out to and care for young Mormon lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.

Each of the 32 suicides documented by Montgomery took place after Nov. 5, when LDS Church leaders released new policies in an online update to Handbook 1, a private document of instructions to local priesthood leaders who run Mormon congregations. The update clarified that the church, because of its fundamental doctrine on marriage, considers entering a same-sex marriage to be apostasy and grounds for excommunication. A new section in the handbook instructed local leaders that children living with parents who are in a same-sex relationship cannot receive baby blessings or baptism before age 18.

John Gustav-Wrathall, a gay man who regularly attends an LDS ward in Minnesota and is on the board of Affirmation, an LGBT support group for Mormons, said he takes church leaders at their word when they say the policies were meant to clarify church doctrine, not harm anyone. Gustav-Wrathall said he has observed trauma within the LGBT Mormon community in recent months.

The church has a website,mormonsandgays.org, designed to encourage parents and families to embrace their LGBT children, brothers and sisters. The site isscheduled to be updated early this year. The faith’s official website, lds.org, also has a resource page devoted to the issue, and the church released an anti-bullying video.Also, church leaders spent 2015 supporting laws that protect gays from discrimination in housing and employment.

Family support
Family acceptance of a youth — regardless of whether the parents and other relatives embrace the individual’s sexual identity — lowers risk, while rejection increases it, said Rachel Peterson, Utah Pride Center director of programs.

Peterson said research shows that a family’s reaction to their child’s sexual identity can impact risk. LGB young people from highly rejecting families are more than 8.5 times as likely to attempt suicide. Parents can help reduce risk — ”not by changing beliefs, but by changing behaviors in even small ways. You can accept and love your child without supporting LGBT rights,” she said.
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As health officials began analyzing youth suicide data, they thought friends or school atmosphere would be important. Neither proved very influential. What was protective and helpful, said Jenny Johnson, Utah Department of Health spokesperson, was religious affiliation of some kind, proving the interplay of faith is complex. It didn’t matter which religion, just that one was involved. Parents were very influential, too, especially if they included their children in decisionmaking. Having meals with the family regularly improved family interactions and greatly reduced risk of suicide ideology or action, too. Family and the activities they share make a difference.

Love anyway
Some LDS people are still reacting to the LDS Church statement and trying to figure out what it means for their families, said Caitlin Ryan, director of the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University, who is a frequent public speaker, quite often at churches. “More care and more support is needed than ever. You have to start by knowing that already LGBT individuals are vulnerable in religious worlds where people believe being LGBT is wrong.”

She said it is not a question of whether parents love their children. Rather, it’s a matter of behavior and how parents respond to a child whose sexual orientation does not fit the family’s values or ideals. Parents can contribute to increased risk of suicidal ideation and attempts — and they can reduce it, as well.

Examples include standing up for the child when he or she is mistreated because of LGBT identity, having candid discussions about sexual identity with the child and others, expressing unconditional love and “believing your LGBT child can have a happy future.”
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Ryan said parents should also treat an LGBT child the same as their other children. That’s something that churches, families and different types of communities do every day, she said. “When you do that, you are giving them a really strong message that I love you, I will be there for you, even if I disagree.”