DiscussMormonism.com

Laurie Lee Hall was excommunicated from the Mormon church for being a woman.

At least, that's how Hall sees it.

The former LDS stake president, who oversaw a group of Mormon congregations in Tooele for eight years and worked as an architect on her faith's most sacred spaces, faced, in her mind, an impossible choice: Either return to living as a man or resign her membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Giving up her female identity would cause grave damage to her physical and mental health, Hall says. "And it was not in my heart to resign my membership."

http://www.sltrib.com/home/5522210-155/ ... -designing

Living her truth • When Hall's LDS leaders learned of her gender-identity issues in 2012, she was quietly released as stake president. She had served for eight years so it didn't raise any suspicions.

But she had felt herself evolving during her years of in the all-male Mormon priesthood leadership.

Hall had assigned herself to work with the all-women Relief Society officers, she notes, and "they were quite delighted with the attention they got from a senior leader in the stake."

As she got in touch with her feminine side, she says, "I was changing my attitude and heart, and the way I treated people and problems. [I discovered] aspects of my male persona that I just really didn't like."

Four years after being released from that post, Hall no longer could endure the dissonance. She came out to her LDS bishop in the same ward she had once led. The new bishop was open and accepting. Together, Hall says, they hatched a plan to tell the ward.

In July 2016 — on the first Sunday during a service Mormons usually dedicate to impromptu speeches by fellow members — the bishop arose and addressed the crowd. He spoke about support and affirmation for those who are different, including transgender believers.

Next up came Hall, dressed as the man her ward members thought she was. She strode confidently to the podium and told her story, she says, echoing the bishop's call for compassion and understanding.

"I enjoyed the long walk back to the sixth row," she says with some sarcasm. She wondered how many of her listeners would come to the adult Sunday school class she was teaching.

"Some did, some didn't, and some came who had not come before," Hall reports. "Some told me it was the most spiritual meeting they had ever attended."

I applaud that Bishop.

All was well until last month, when she was stripped of her Mormon membership.

LDS Church spokesman Eric Hawkins declined to comment on the case, noting that disciplinary actions are local decisions and confidential.

What happened last month?

So, on June 4, many of the same men who had served in Tooele's lay leadership with her convened a disciplinary council and deemed her no longer a member of the religion she still loves.

For what reason?

About two months ago Laurie Lee was excommunicated stemming from her decision to transition gender presentation while living in her home ward/stake.

http://www.mormonstories.org/laurie-lee-hall/

First off, this is not a woman/female.

This is a cross dressing man/male who wants to

1. Take female hormones to add to his man boobs and raise his voice
2. Cut off his male parts and create a hole in his crouch and call it a vagina.

He is, and never will be, a she. Call me whatever you want. In nature there are females, males, and a few hermaphidites. If you were born with a penis and testicles with which you impregnated a female, guess what?? You are a man, a male.

Wanna dress like a woman, inject estrogen, cut off your penis and testicles and surgically carve out a hole in your crotch so be it! You are still a man.
You are man who dresses like a female, who injects estrogen and who chose to cut off your penis and testicles to make room for a hole in your crotch for another man to ejactulate into.

If he has sexual relations with a man, that makes him a homosexual. If he continues to have sexual relations with his wife or other women, that makes him heterosexual.

He is an adult convert. He chose this life. Boo fuggin hoo, the LDS Inc boys club won't let you dress like a woman.

Now his grandkids will get mind screwed even more.

IMHO he doesn't look good in drag.


Flame me all you want. IMHO this "gender identity crisis" is BS.

Polygamy-Porter wrote:He is an adult convert. He chose this life. Boo fuggin hoo, the LDS Inc boys club won't let you dress like a woman.

Good point. He was violating his vow of conservative heterosexual averagality.

moksha wrote:

Polygamy-Porter wrote:He is an adult convert. He chose this life. Boo fuggin hoo, the LDS Inc boys club won't let you dress like a woman.

Good point. He was violating his vow of conservative heterosexual averagality.

LOL.

Three years ago, my daughter went off to her liberal arts college which was kicked off with a small group activity lead by a professor. When the professor asked the students to introduce themselves to the group, she requested that they tell the group what gender of personal pronouns they preferred to be referred to with. At first my daughter thought it was a joke. It wasn't.

It's a brave new world.

Whilst understanding where PP and Water Dog are coming from, and not wishing to disparage their points of view, I need to admit that I am woefully uneducated on the mental and physiological complexities a person with a gender identity crisis/challenge has to process.

I don't believe it's a simple as sitting back and labelling someone a perverted cross-dresser. I'm sure they exist, but I don't think this person is in that category.

I simply don't understand this gender identity process. But I recognise that making a hasty and uneducated judgement is exactly what this persons disciplinary court did . In fairness it's what PP and WD just did (and what a previous iteration of me would have done). The local leaders (with advice?) didn't understand so they sought to protect themselves by casting out.

It really is a complex issue, it's not simply a guy who just wants to wear ladies panties.
https://www.genderspectrum.org/quick-li ... ng-gender/

Allow me to make some uneducated observations.
1. Local leaders (and I dare say General Authorities) are woefully inadequate people to be deciding that a person with a gender identity challenge is transgressing and therefore should be excommunicated.
2. I'm not aware that going through a gender identity challenge, or even changing ones gender identity, is classed as a serious transgression by the Church (It may be in a handbook somewhere, but I doubt it).
3. If the local leadership didn't seek advice from the grown ups, then they are morons for thinking themselves able to rule on such a complex and sensitive matter.
4. If the grown ups did give advice, then Eric Hawkins needs to stop with the "no comment, local matter" routine and the grown ups should own their advice.
5. Regardless of any of that, I cannot see Jesus Christ (if a real person) ruling that a person going through a gender challenge needs excommunicating.

The most Christlike person in all of this is the Bishop, and somebody overruled him.

Mormonism has strict rules on interpretation of gender. They have made violation of the rules an excommunicable offense. That says a lot about them. Some people find that kind of authoritarian structure appealing. It seems like there are a lot of folks who would like to be the submissive one in a S & M scenario. I'm not sure which is more aberrant, the one on the bottom or the one on the top.

At BYU I had a branch president rail at me because I was dating a girl across campus and not the girls in the branch. I was outraged that he thought he got to have a say about that. I was a fairly new convert and didn't realize yet that I was just another brick in the wall, that I was not permitted boundaries. Never did manage that. I'm glad.

My advice is to keep religion and government out of sexuality. There's too much we don't understand. Leave the kids and the animals alone and don't scare the horses.

Excellent observations, IHAQ. I obviously don't agree with the church's decision to ex her over this but it definitely doesn't come as a surprise. Although I'm not sure it is written down, I'm fairly certain that LDS believe that Heavenly Father does not make mistakes in our creation. When you couple this with the importance of standard gender roles that are laid out in The Family: Proclamation the result isn't all that shocking.

You are talking about an organization that still struggles to understand and operate in a world where SSM is no longer illegal. Is it really any wonder why they ruled the way they did here (locally decided or not)?

Maksutov wrote:Mormonism has strict rules on interpretation of gender. They have made violation of the rules an excommunicable offense.

I love you Mak, but I'm not sure you are 100% accurate here.

Since switching genders, they say they have found psychological and spiritual peace, even divine approval, along with a surprising welcome from their LDS leaders and congregations.

They are among a growing but little understood minority in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Transgender Mormons in Utah have formed a support group. They march in pride parades. They talk openly about their experiences. A monthly "family home evening" group draws up to 30 participants along the Wasatch Front.

Still, the faith has policies in place and warns that elective sex-reassignment surgery "may be cause for formal church discipline," according to its guidelines for lay leaders.

http://www.sltrib.com/home/5275727-155/ ... ay-for-two

This person hasn't had "elective sex-reassignment surgery" as far as I can see.

Xenophon wrote:Although I'm not sure it is written down, I'm fairly certain that LDS believe that Heavenly Father does not make mistakes in our creation.

Kind of makes it hard for them to explain people born with both genders...
(I found it's always the exceptions that refute Mormonism's beliefs)

I have a question wrote:

Xenophon wrote:Although I'm not sure it is written down, I'm fairly certain that LDS believe that Heavenly Father does not make mistakes in our creation.

Kind of makes it hard for them to explain people born with borth genders...

Hey, they saw what would happen in the pre-existence and they still accepted it, blames on them

Eta: To your added parenthetical - the devil is in the details, as they say.