From Logan's Herald Journal: Cache Valley residents march in Utah Gay Pride Parade to give 'message of love'
By Kate DuHadway
When Martha Arndt of Logan drove down Sunday to the Utah Gay Pride Parade in Salt Lake City with two other active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she didn’t know what to expect, or how a group of LDS people, dressed in their Sunday best, would be received.
The experience was overwhelmingly positive, Arndt said, and her voice wavered with emotion as she spoke of the people gathered on the sidelines of the parade in downtown Salt Lake, clapping and cheering, saying thank you with tears in their eyes.
“We kind of went into it not really knowing what kind of reception we were going to get, but it was wonderful,” Arndt said. “They were just so thrilled to see that the culture that they had been raised in (was) now turning to start to accept them.”
Arndt attended the parade with a few hundred other active LDS people as part of the newly organized group, Mormons Building Bridges. She said about 100 group members confirmed through Facebook they would attend the parade this week, but on Sunday, she estimated that as many as 400 people showed up to march with the group.
Members of the group, who traveled from all over Utah and parts of Idaho, carried signs with quotes from the Bible, such as “God is love,” from 1 John 4:8, and “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” from Matthew 22:39. They also displayed quotes from LDS church leaders, such as “God loves all his children,” from Dieter F. Uchtdorf, a member of the First Presidency; “We will reach out with love and understanding to all,” from LDS Apostle M. Russell Ballard; and quotes from popular LDS children’s songs, such as “Jesus said love everyone, treat them kindly too,” and “I’ll walk with you, I’ll talk with you, that’s how I’ll show my love for you.”
According to the group’s Facebook page, Mormons Building Bridges is not in any way sponsored or representative of the LDS Church or any political party or candidate, but is simply a group of “faithful Latter-day Saints dedicated to sharing a message of love and acceptance with the LGBT community.”
Arndt stressed that the reason she and other LDS people marched in the parade Sunday “was not, in any way, to tell the church to change policies, or to tell the church that they're wrong, or to tell the church anything whatsoever,” she said. “Our purpose in this whole thing was to go down and to show the people of the LGBT community that there are members of the church, active members of the church, who love them, accept them, exactly the way they are — that they don't need to conform in order for us to love them and accept them.”
Mormons Building Bridges was joined at the parade by three other Cache Valley groups, including the USU groups Allies on Campus and LIFE, which stands for Love Is for Everyone, and another newly formed group — a local chapter of the national group PFLAG, standing for Parent, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays, which was organized in February.
Patsy Marx, president of the Cache Valley PFLAG chapter, said marching in the parade this year with members of the other PFLAG chapters throughout the state was a wonderful experience for her, as the mother of a gay son.
“The reason for me, marching in a parade, is just to show my support, and that I'm a mother who accepts,” Marx said. “I don't turn my son away, I don't feel like he's any different than any of my other children.”
Marx, who is LDS, felt it was wonderful that Mormons Building Bridges showed such a strong turnout at the parade, and she was proud and excited to see their support. However, she also recognized the support of members of other religious groups from throughout Utah who have attended the event for many years.
“Nothing like that has ever happened before at the Pride parade, and I think they're very brave to do that,” Marx said of Mormons Building Bridges. “But I also don't want to discount the many other religions that have already been supportive and marched in the parade.”
Amy Bailey, vice president of the Cache Valley PFLAG chapter, said she felt what Mormons Building Bridges did was “a wonderful testament of faith for people to focus on the message of love.”
She said the majority of PFLAG members in Cache Valley are either LDS or formerly LDS. When she started the chapter in February, she felt Cache Valley needed a place of love, acceptance and support for members of the gay community and their families, she said.
The LDS Church opposes same-sex marriage and was a major sponsor of California’s 2008 Proposition 8, which defined marriage in California as between one man and one woman. That same year, as reported by the Deseret News, the LDS Church released a document titled, "The Divine Institution of Marriage," which outlined that the church supports equal rights for homosexual people regarding hospitalization, housing, health care and employment, "so long as these do not infringe on the integrity of the family or the constitutional rights of churches and their adherents to administer and practice their religion free from government interference.”
PFLAG meets the first Thursday of every month from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Bonneville Room of the Logan Library. Mormons Building Bridges can be found on Facebook. For more information about LIFE and USU’s Allies on Campus, visit usu.edu/accesscenter/lgbtqa.
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