New book aims to help Latter-day Saints embrace LGBTQ members

IDAHO FALLS — A former Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bishop has written a book with the goal of bringing to life the experiences of LGBTQ members.

Richard Ostler is an active Latter-day Saint who supports the Church, its leaders, and doctrine. He served as the bishop of a Young Single Adult congregation and says he recently felt inspired to write ‘Listen, Learn, and Love: Embracing LGBTQ Latter-day Saints.’ The book brings together hundreds of stories in a comprehensive review of the many topics surrounding being LGBTQ and a Latter-day Saint.

While the church encourages the love and support of its LGBTQ membership, it regards sexual relations between members of the same sex to be a sin.

Ostler spoke with EastIdahoNews.com reporter Nate Eaton about the book. Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation. You can watch the entire interview in the video player above.

NATE EATON, EASTIDAHONEWS.COM: Richard, we spoke almost two years ago when you visited eastern Idaho about your mission to help LGBTQ Latter-day Saints. Why did you decide to write a book?

RICHARD OSTLER:I’m an active Latter-Day Saint and a former YSA bishop. I had a couple of gay men in my ward and felt impressed to listen to them so I could develop better empathy and ministering skills. Over time, that led me to talk about how to to be a great Latter-day Saint and support our LGBTQ members, which led to writing this book.

It’s really meant to bring us together as the same human family. A lot of the stories in here are from LGBTQ Latter-day Saints and parents that have LGBTQ children. Those two groups know this space well. My goal is to amplify their stories so more can understand the road they walk and develop better skills to lift their burdens – not add to their burdens with uninformed opinions. I certainly added to the burden of LGBTQ Latter-day Saints and that’s partially why I’m doing this book. It’s sort of penance for the mistakes I’ve made and the things I didn’t understand.

RELATED | How Richard Ostler became an LGBTQ ally while serving as an LDS bishop

EATON:What is one of the major things you didn’t understand about these issues?

OSTLER:I’m 59 so I’ve been aware of these issues for a long time. The first misunderstanding is this is a choice – that somebody chooses to be gay or transgender or that Satan has deceived them into being this way. After meeting with hundreds of LGBTQ people and giving priesthood blessings, I think everybody is created the way they’re meant to be created and nobody chose to be gay. That’s a brutal path and why would anybody choose that. The LDS Church does not teach that this is a choice or something that can be taken away.

That’s probably the second thing – the idea that somehow somebody has done something to become LGBTQ and then can undo that and become straight. I’ve never met with anybody that’s been able to, through the atonement of Jesus Christ, lift this from them and be able to become straight. Just like I have blue eyes, I can’t use the atonement to (change that). It’s just the way God created me.

I always thought of LGBTQ people as a different group of people but it wasn’t until I had a priesthood responsibility for an LGBTQ person that I saw them as our own people – not this outside group that poses a threat. We need to learn to talk about them in the context of our family, our faith and our community because when we don’t look at it that way, we add to their burdens.

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