{"id":46927,"date":"2024-04-08T05:41:42","date_gmt":"2024-04-08T11:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=46927"},"modified":"2025-05-28T20:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T02:21:10","slug":"how-many-members-support-same-sex-sealings-insights-from-the-b-h-roberts-foundations-current-and-former-latter-day-saint-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/04\/how-many-members-support-same-sex-sealings-insights-from-the-b-h-roberts-foundations-current-and-former-latter-day-saint-survey\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Members Support Same-Sex Sealings? Insights from the B.H. Roberts Foundation\u2019s Current and Former Latter-day Saint Survey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Cranney and Josh Coates<\/em><\/p>\n

This is one of a series of posts discussing results from a recent survey of current and former Latter-day Saints conducted by the BH Roberts Foundation. The technical details are in the full methodology report <\/i>here<\/i><\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Polling data shows that a majority of Utahns<\/span><\/a> support same-sex marriage (although, and we hope this goes without saying at this point, that does not mean that a majority of members do). Occasionally people grab onto these datum to suggest that a sea change is afoot on LGBTQ issues in the Church; some versions of this narrative imply that young people are less heteronormative, so that cohort replacement will eventually lead to the Church shifting. (Although, anecdotally, we see less of that argument now than, say, 10 years ago).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, support for government recognitions of same-sex marriage is distinct from religious recognition of same-sex marriage. <\/span>As noted in this article from the Deseret News<\/span><\/a>, the number of people who attend non-heteronormative churches is quite small. While some may see LGBTQ issues as a dichotomy between allies and bigots, that neglects a lot of variation on the continuum of heteronormativity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So as part of the 2023 Current and Former Latter-day Saint Survey we asked members what they think about <\/span>religious<\/span><\/i> solemnization of same-sex marriages. Ultimately, the Church being fully non-heternormative would entail same-sex marital sealings in temples. So we asked: \u201cThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) should marry (seal) gay couples in their temples.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Discussions about LGBTQ issues often have a certain \u201cdirection of history\u201d feel to them, so we also wanted to ask about whether, independent about whether they believe the Church <\/span>should<\/span><\/i> perform same-sex sealings, whether they think the Church <\/span>will<\/span><\/i> eventually change and perform same-sex sealings. So we asked \u201cHow likely do you think it is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will eventually marry (seal) gay couples in the temple?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Results from both questions show that, across our different samples, large majorities of the Church 1) disagree with same-sex sealings, and 2) find it unlikely that the Church will ever perform same-sex sealings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We were also interested in the relationship between the two variables: are people who believe that the Church will solemnize same-sex sealings disappointed conservatives? Or are they\u00a0 hopeful liberals? When we do a simple cross-tab with the combined, unweighted data, it appears to be the latter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
However, even among people who strongly agree with same-sex sealings, a little more half think that it is likely to some degree that it will eventually happen. Consequently, people who think there is some likelihood of the Church eventually performing same-sex sealings are in the single digits.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

What about the youth? As noted above, people extrapolate the fact that younger people tend to be more liberal into a belief that the Church will necessarily shift. However, when we subsample only those respondents in their 20s in the combined dataset we find a similar pattern, with 60% of respondents strongly disagreeing with same-sex sealings, and only 13% agreeing to some extent, which probably means that people waiting for a wave of rainbow bannered youth to change the Church from within are going to be disappointed.<\/span><\/p>\n



<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Cranney and Josh Coates This is one of a series of posts discussing results from a recent survey of current and former Latter-day Saints conducted by the BH Roberts Foundation. The technical details are in the full methodology report here.\u00a0 Polling data shows that a majority of Utahns support same-sex marriage (although, and we hope this goes without saying at this point, that does not mean that a majority of members do). Occasionally people grab onto these datum to suggest that a sea change is afoot on LGBTQ issues in the Church; some versions of this narrative imply that young people are less heteronormative, so that cohort replacement will eventually lead to the Church shifting. (Although, anecdotally, we see less of that argument now than, say, 10 years ago).\u00a0 However, support for government recognitions of same-sex marriage is distinct from religious recognition of same-sex marriage. As noted in this article from the Deseret News, the number of people who attend non-heteronormative churches is quite small. While some may see LGBTQ issues as a dichotomy between allies and bigots, that neglects a lot of variation on the continuum of heteronormativity.\u00a0 So as part of the 2023 Current and Former Latter-day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":46929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2976,3022],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-h-roberts-foundation","category-sexuality"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Screenshot-2024-04-04-at-8.31.48-PM.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46927"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50242,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46927\/revisions\/50242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}