Queering Mormonism and Mormonizing Sexuality: The Intersectionality and Hybridity of Contradictory Identities

• In Event: 421 - Section on Sociology of Sexualities Paper Session. Social Movements and their Sexual Tensions

Abstract

Contemporary social life requires the complicated negotiation of various identities, but some, like sexuality and religion, seem so incompatible to be reconciled. In the past 5-10 years, there have been increasing tensions between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and LGBTQ movements, raising questions as to the possibility of their reconciliation. While the Marriage Equality movement won a victory in the US Supreme Court, the LDS Church later included same-sex married couples under their definition of apostasy. The tensions of these two cultures and ideologies are reproduced on an individual scale as members of the Mormon church who are attracted to members of the same sex are having to negotiate between conflicting meanings of sexuality and spirituality. Relying on data collected from 56 interviews with lesbian, gay and bisexual Mormons and 25 hours of ethnographic research at LGBTQ Mormon conferences and firesides, this paper revisits identity research done on religion and sexuality using intersectionality and hybridity to view how both Mormonism and LGBTQ movements’ conceptions of sexuality become mutually shaped. This paper outlines how the negotiation of religion and sexuality for LGB Mormons queers Mormonism as well as Mormonizes homosexuality. This project will add to current theories of intersectionality and identity as well as scholars interested in the interplay between religion and sexuality.

Author

• Erik Stephen Lovell, Northwestern University