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.

EATON: You had your eyes opened when you were a bishop several years ago. You launched a podcast called ‘Listen, Learn, and Love.’ I imagine the floodgates have opened as far as LGBTQ members contacting you. What are they asking you or do they just want an ear to hear them?

OSTLER: I meet with LGBTQ people, their parents and local leaders that want to talk about this maybe 20-30 hours a week. I’m a small business owner and that gives me the flexibility to be in this space. LGBTQ people just want to be heard. They want someone safe to be able to share their story with and we’re developing better skills to do this as a faith community. That’s one of the purposes of the book – so people feel safe talking to parents and bishops about this part of them and not be told things that are hurtful or harmful. They’re guarded and they need safe people. I’ve obviously become a safe person.

EATON: What is your response to people who say they don’t know anybody who’s gay or transgender so there’s no need to read your book?

OSTLER: That’s a great question. About 4.5% of the US population identifies as LGBTQ, according to Gallup. If you assumed that was true of the LDS Church with 16 million members, that means there are over 700,000 of our own people that are LGBTQ. If you put all those people in the BYU football stadium, it would fill that stadium nearly 12 times. I share that to create a feeling that these people sit in our own congregations. The math of 4.5% in a congregation of 300 members means there are several LBGTQ people sitting there in our seminary and Sunday School classes and they’re hearing everything people are saying about people like them. They’re often closeted and guarded and if they are only hearing negative messages about people like them, they conclude somebody like them is not welcome here. They leave even though they fundamentally have a testimony of the gospel.

We need to start talking about this in the context that there are people in our families and our church communities that are LGBTQ.

When I started to talk about LGBTQ issues on social media as a bishop, I had straight YSAs that came to me and said, ‘Ok, I can talk to you. I’m not gay but I know I can go where I need to go because you’re a safe person.’ That’s what Christ did in his ministry. He said kind things about everybody so people knew he was safe.

Part of being a good minister or a good parent or a good local leader is saying kind things about marginalized groups of people. People then know it’s safe for them to open up to you about what’s really going on in their life.

EATON: In your book, you quote a talk President M. Russell Ballard gave at BYU in 2017. What do you say to people who think the leaders of the church don’t care about these issues and there isn’t a place in the church for LGBTQ members?

OSTLER: I think if you feel that way, it’s ok. I think some active Latter-day Saints wish we were talking about this more and wish we developed better skills to really minister to LBGTQ Saints. I think there’s work to do. The quote you referenced is a great one from President Ballard. He said, “We need to listen to and understand what our LGBTQ brothers and sisters are feeling and experiencing. Certainly, we must do better than we have in the past so all members feel they have a spiritual home where their brothers and sisters love them and where they have a place to worship and serve God.”

That’s a powerful statement to the whole body of the church that we need to do better. The whole premise of this book is President Ballard’s charge to the church. It’s sort of like taking that charge and saying, ‘How to do I implement that in reality to my circle of influence?’ That’s really the purpose of the book.

I look at the church’s relationship with its LGBTQ members as a 40 chapter book. We have more work to do before we meet the needs of LGBTQ members.

‘Listen, Learn, and Love: Embracing LGBTQ Latter-day Saints’ is available at Amazon, Walmart, Deseret Book and Seagull. You can learn more about Richard Ostler on his website and find information on his podcast here.