Elders announced Tuesday their provisional support of certain LGBT legal protections—with some conditions.

Here’s a simple algebra equation to describe what it’s like to grow up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Take the year, subtract 20, and that’s the year it really is inside the Mormon gerontocracy.

When I was a child, I was told that black people couldn’t hold leadership positions until 1978 because it “just wasn’t their time yet.” To explain their opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, my parents cited some paranoid logic about unisex bathrooms. I had left my family’s faith by the time church members were supporting California’s Proposition 8 to the tune of $20 million, but I still remember some ominous rumblings about the specter of legally mandated same-sex weddings being held in Mormon chapels. The horror.
So when I learned yesterday that the Mormon Church is now provisionally supporting some LGBT legal protections, I closed my eyes, counted backward to 1995 and watched the press conference. Read More