sep 4, 1882 - Group of Teenage Males Excommunicated for Homosexual Activities [Part 20]

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September 4, 1882, Joseph F. Smith, then a member of the First Presidency was made aware of a group of teenage males in the Richfield, Utah Stake that were “actively” engaged in homosexual activities.

President Smith’s response to the stake presidency was pointed: “Get the names of all of them & cut them off the church for obscene, filthy & horrible practices.” To the group of young men, Joseph F. Smith referred to the activity as a “monstrous iniquity, for which Sodom & Gomorrah were burned with fire sent down from heaven.”

In this statement, Joseph F. Smith made a complete reversal of his prophet-uncle’s non-sexual interpretation of Sodom’s destruction. Parley P. Pratt and George Q. Cannon also pushed this familiar narrative, deviating from Joseph Smith’s teachings on the subject.

-Joseph F. Smith
2nd Counselor in the First Presidency
Joseph F. Smith Family Papers 1860-1944
September 1882

Cited by D. Michael Quinn
Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans:
A Mormon Example

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