Mormon News

Carolyn Ball, a lesbian Latter-day Saint, describes her experience of loving the church—its community, doctrine, and the life she built inside it—while discovering an identity she did not choose and that did not go away, in a Mormon Stories Podcast interview that has drawn more than 19,000 views in its first day. Ball begins by naming what she valued about her faith before describing the collision between her sexual orientation and church teachings.

The interview joins a growing body of first-person accounts from LGBTQ members and former members navigating the church's position that same-sex attraction is not sinful but acting on it is. The 2011 and 2013 faith-crisis surveys found 63% of women cited LGBTQ issues as significant in their faith transitions, with women's issues and LGBTQ treatment together forming the most commonly cited factors after historical concerns.