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Letter: Dear Elder Holland: Who is now left to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community?

I’m a queer member of the LDS Church and currently in a same-sex relationship.

You recently asked professors that they “stand unquestionably committed to [BYU’s] unique academic mission and to the church that sponsors it,” “specifically … the doctrine of the family and defending marriage as the union of a man and a woman.”

You say that you and the other leaders of the church have “spent more time and shed more tears on this subject” than you can express. You say that members should show love for the LGBTQ+ community.

But can you see that love is never going to be enough for us? Love will never be enough.

Love won’t be enough when this doctrine teaches queer members of the church cannot participate in the most important doctrines. We cannot marry those we love. We cannot be sealed to them or to our children for eternity.

Love won’t be enough when if we choose to pursue an intimate relationship with a same-sex partner -- a relatioship that nearly every human being longs for -- we can be excommunicated. Ripped away from the church and the culture that we grew up in and that, in all honesty, shaped many of us into who we are.

I graduated from BYU. I paid my own tuition there. I loved most of my time spent on campus and learning from professors who absolutely changed my life and who I know would support my current one. And you are telling them to not do that for so many other students on campus.

The most devastating words I read from you were these: you say that you “love … those who live with this same-sex challenge” but people “have to be careful that love and empathy do not get interpreted as condoning and advocacy.”

You asked that BYU professors and other members not advocate for queer members.

If you aren’t advocating for these queer students, and many of their parents are not advocating for them, and now you are asking that their professors not advocate for them, who will support their cause? Who will help to be their voice?

I sure as hell will.

Taylor Payne, Boise, Idaho

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