“Why Would Our Heavenly Father Do that to Anyone”: Oppressive Othering through Sexual Classification Schemes in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐Day Saints

Abstract

In this article, we examine how leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or LDS Church) responded to the emergence of homosexuality as a prominent social issue by engaging in "oppressive othering" (Schwalbe et al. 2000), which refers to the process whereby elites classify members of other groups as morally inferior. On the basis of LDS archival materials, we analyze how LDS elites accomplished "oppressive othering" by constructing sexual classification schemes defining homosexuality as the result of (1) familial, (2) gendered, and (3) sexual dysfunctions. In conclusion, we draw out implications for understanding (1) how elites, religious, or otherwise, construct sexual classification schemes that facilitate the ongoing subordination of sexual minorities, (2) the importance of taking an intersectional approach to oppressive othering, and (3) the ways elites revise institutional doctrines in response to shifting societal issues and concerns.The establishment and maintenance of mutually exclusive classifications are central to organized religion (see e.g., Berger 1967; Weber 1922). Religious institutions have rich histories of establishing and enforcing divinely inspired distinctions between, for example, acceptable and unacceptable practices, sacred and secular worlds, earthly and eternal desires, and moral and immoral people. Religious leaders seem to understand the importance of categorizing all aspects of social life for their followers. Since people act toward things based on the meanings those things have for them (see

“They Just Don’t Stand for Nothing”: LGBT Christians’ Definitions of Non-Religious Others

“…Whereas investigations typically focus on the use of racial, classed, gendered, or sexual beliefs to accomplish othering, my findings suggest that religious identities may also be used to differentiate privileged social locations from unwanted ones (see also McQueeney 2009;Sumerau, 2014;Wilkins 2008 for the use of religion to "other" groups). Similar to African-American men who claimed masculine privileges by denigrating the efforts of women during the Civil Rights movement (Collins 2005 for a review of this American history), or heterosexual women rugby players who claimed respectable feminine identities by denigrating lesbian women (Ezzell 2009 for such examples), the LGBT Christians I studied claimed religious privilege by denigrating non-religious people.…”

“…You need to realize that God still loves you, and so we'll talk about it." In order to manage these interactions, I accepted them as -especially after witnessing similar interactions with visitors to the church -part of the process whereby church members responded to nonreligion in their presence (see also Sumerau 2014), and took detailed notes about each experience.…”

“…Examining decades of (mostly American-based) research for patterns of inequality reproduction, for example, Schwalbe and associates (2000) found that one of the primary ways people -both dominants and subordinates -claimed creditable selves was by defining members of disadvantaged groups as deficient "others" (see also Sumerau and Cragun 2014). Whereas researchers have thus far left the ways religious people may "other" non-religious people unexplored, countless studies have shown that people in a wide variety of contexts claim positive selves by denigrating the "morality" of other social groups (see, e.g., Deeb-Sossa 2007;Holden 1997;Kleinman 1996).…”

“Avoid that pornographic playground”

“…In fact, their incorporation of ''treatment'' into their continued calls for pornographic abstinence since the early 1990s also mirrors shifts in conservative Christian sexual education movements and programs (Fields, 2008) as well as their own responses to homosexuality during this time (Sumerau and Cragun, 2014a). In the former case, abstinence-only movements have increasingly recognized the tendency for abstinence-only lessons to fail, and in so doing offered ways people may reclaim their moral standing (and in some cases their symbolic virginity or purity).…”

“…Considering that researchers have noted widespread expansion of pornography throughout American society in recent years (Attwood, 2011) as well as increased rates of religious exiting (i.e., apostasy) from the Mormon Church since 1989 (see Phillips and Cragun, 2013), LDS leaders could be responding to potential failings of their other lessons regarding sexual morals. Even if this were the case, however, increased religious exiting among Mormons is likely due to multiple social factors including but not limited to other sexual (see Sumerau and Cragun, 2014a) and gender (see Sumerau and Cragun, 2014b) conflicts taking place within the church over the last decade. On the other hand, research has shown that overall religious affiliation in the USA has also been declining in recent years (Funk and Smith, 2012) and that pornographic expansion has occurred throughout the world over the last 40 years (Ezzell, 2008), which means they could simply be responding to broader religious and sexual patterns taking place throughout the entirety of the years captured in our data.…”