This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Hundreds of gay Mormons worshipped together recently in the faith's first temple in Kirtland, Ohio. They prayed, sang, shared stories of their faith and described their spiritual challenges within the Utah-based church.It was the annual meeting of Affirmation, the oldest organization for LGBT Latter-day Saints, with hundreds attending, reported Joanna Brooks at Religion Dispatches. "I did exactly what Mormons so often do when we gather for worship," Brooks wrote. "I cried."And she was not alone."Tears flowed freely when the Affirmation choir of gay and lesbian Mormons sang the stirring Mormon classic 'The Spirit of God Like a Fire Is Burning,' " Brooks reported. It was "the very hymn our ancestors sang to dedicate the Kirtland temple 175 years ago, in 1836, on a day when, as the folklore goes, neighboring villages reported seeing a cloud of fire hovering over Kirtland."Tears also were shed recently for yet another Mormon gay man who took his life after telling his family about being gay, then being excommunicated from the LDS Church.Bryan Michael Egnew, 40, was raised in the LDS Church, completed a two-year mission, married a woman in a Mormon temple, had five children, and served in many church positions, according to a story by Eric Ethington in LGBT Nation.Last month, Egnew of Pittsboro, N.C., told his wife about his attractions and, in response, she "packed up their children and drove them out of state to Tennessee, refusing to let Egnew see them."His parents and family withdrew from him, Ethington reports, "and his church immediately excommunicated him because he refused to denounce his sexual orientation."Egnew committed suicide on Sept 10, the story says, but the obituary made no mention of his orientation or "the horror that his church put him through in the last weeks of his life."Peggy Fletcher Stack