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| Subject: Homo-impositionists: A billionaire and the tech industry are trying to shape LGBTQ rights in deeply Mormon Utah Tue Dec 21, 2021 10:53 pm | |
| SALT LAKE CITY — Troy Williams, the head of Equality Utah and once dubbed the unofficial “gay mayor of Salt Lake City,” was still absorbing the news as he made his way downtown to the opulent Grand America hotel. His phone had been blowing up all morning with messages about a speech apostle Dallin H. Oaks had given the night before.
Oaks is next in line to lead the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the world’s 16.8 million believers commonly known as Mormons. In his remarks at the University of Virginia, he hailed the virtues of religious freedom and the importance of LGBTQ nondiscrimination laws like the trailblazing one LDS leaders, lawmakers and LGBTQ activists worked to pass in 2015. Known as the “Utah compromise,” it bans discrimination against LGBTQ people in housing and employment while carving out exceptions for religious reasons.
“I deeply regret that these two groups have been drawn into conflict with one another,” Oaks said of advocates for religious liberty and LGBTQ rights.
To Williams’s amazement, Oaks then went on to quote Williams — a longtime activist who in 2009 led kiss-in rallies at the major temple in Salt Lake City and in 2014 was jailed after a sit-in at the state capitol — in a positive way. Despite both having worked on the compromise, the two have never met. (An LDS spokesperson said Oaks was not available for comment.)
.https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/12/21/utah-compromise-religious-lgbtq-rights/
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