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I recently discovered the Light and Truth Letter. This is an apologist response to the CES letter, Mormon Stories, anti-Mormon tiktok, etc. As an apologetic effort, it does what most apologetics do. However, I am intrigued by what it says about LDS LGBTQ+ suicide rates.
Quote:“In the 2023 report, a large representative sample (n=73,982) of Utah middle schoolers and high schoolers found that LBGTQ-identifying youth in Utah were at a much higher risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors than heterosexual youth. However, Latter-day Saint LGBTQ-identifying youth reported lower rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors than non-latter-day Saint LGBTQ-identifying youth.3
Dyer and Goodman report in a 2022 paper that Latter-day Saint LGBQ teens had lower levels of suicidality and depression than LGBQ teens of other religions or no religion.4
In a 2021 paper, Lefevor, Davis, Paiz, and Smack report on the relationship between religiousness and health among sexual minorities. They found that religiousness/spirituality is consistently and positively associated with better health. When isolating sexual minorities, the positive correlation between religiousness/spirituality and health still exists, though admittedly less so than the overall participants in their study.5″
Quote:Goodman and Dyer, in a 2019 Deseret News article, share the following from their study:
44% of Utah’s Latter-day Saint LGBTQ+-identifying youths had seriously considered suicide compared to 47% of Utah’s LGBTQ+-identifying youths from other religions and 77% of Utah’s Atheist/Agnostic LGBTQ+-identifying youths. The national rate for LBG youth is 47.7%.9
The CDC found that from 2011 through 2015, Latter-day Saint youths had a lower risk of suicide.10
Walter Schumm reports that the “2019 Utah Prevention Needs Assessment Survey” suggests that Latter-day Saint LGBQ youth had lower levels of reported depression and suicidality than non-religious LGBQ youths.11
Schumm shares data from Utah’s Student Health and Risk Prevention (SHARP) Statewide Survey. He states that “Latter-day Saint students generally were less likely to have considered suicide or attempted suicide, be depressed, use drugs, come from a drug-using family, or be bullied for their sexual orientation; they were more likely to come from a home with stable parents, more likely to feel safe at school, and more likely to have been bullied on account of their religion.”12 (emphasis added)
Schumm shares the results of a BYU study and a Bowling Green study and concludes that these studies suggest that “being a Latter-day Saint is protective against depression and suicidality, even for LGBTQ students.”13
https://www.lightandtruthletter.org/letter/lgbtqplus-issues I am reading this to say that the positives of living in LDS families and communities can still provide some benefits even to individuals that are members of marginalized sexual minority groups. I would love for Old Timer or someone that has more experience reading studies to confirm/validate these findings. Unfortunately, I am biased against apologetic sources but I really hope for this to be true.
My admittedly knee-jerk “hot take” to these stats is the fierce love and engagement that the parents and care-givers (usually mothers) have for these children and their faith in God and communities that a way will be made for these children eventually (if they can survive long enough). These parents and other care-givers are providing the love that is insulating these children and giving them enough hope to live on.
There were a bunch of community and security environmental factors mentioned as well that are also protecting the individual.
I see Utah mentioned in the study quite a bit. That’s understandable because Utah has a high concentration of members. The issue is that by limiting the sample to Utah you get a lot of overlap in the groups they’re measuring. Here are the groups that I saw mentioned: LDS LGBTQ identifying
- non-LDS LGBTQ identifying
- other religion LGBTQ identifying
- atheist/agnostic LGBTQ identifying
An individual could have started out as LDS LGBTQ identifying, found the church simply didn’t work for them, and later showed up as atheist LGBTQ identifying in this study. How many people in the non-LDS groups that are mentioned identified as LDS in the past? It is Utah after all.
Hypothetical: a LDS person identifies as LGBTQ and has suicidal thoughts. They can’t figure out a way to make the church work in their lives so they decide to identify as non-LDS. Whose stats does that person count towards? Did their prior identification as LDS contribute in any way towards their ongoing suicidal thoughts after they stopped identifying as LDS? Where do people in that camp show up on the surveys?
Maybe it’s detailed in the study but I think the number of people in each group is also important. Again, a hypothetical:
There are three people in a study that identify as LDS and LGBTQ. One of them reports suicidal thoughts.
There are 10,000 people in that same study that identify as non-LDS LBGTQ. 4,500 report suicidal thoughts.
With those numbers, only 33% of people that identified as LDS LGBTQ reported suicidal thoughts while 45% of the non-LDS folk reported suicidal thoughts. The church “wins,” right? Not necessarily.
I don’t know what the study shows, I’m just saying that numbers matter and my bias leads me to believe it’s plausible that people that identify as LGBTQ would stop identifying as LDS, leading to the LDS group being much smaller than the non-LDS group, even in Utah.
In short, there’s some survivorship bias there. If the church isn’t working for a member that identifies as LGBTQ, then they won’t show up in the identifies as LDS stats and the very nature of feeling crowded out of their religious community (and wider culture, again, Utah) may also contribute to suicidal thoughts.
Like if a study showed that LGBTQ members that leave the church are more suicidal would the assumption be, “You see, you gotta stay in the church.” or would the assumption be, “Maybe they’re even more depressed because not only are they dealing with a world that harasses them for being LBGTQ, they also feel pressure from living in Utah where everyone is Mormon and they have to work within a dominant community that rubs the Family Proclamation in their faces every time Pride Month comes around.”
To really put the button on it, if those kids that once but no longer identified as LDS had stayed in the church, would that have been better or worse for their mental health? They left for a reason. Just sayin’.
Roy wrote:
Unfortunately, I am biased against apologetic sources but I really hope for this to be true.
I feel you. The way it’s presented it feels like this is saying, “You see, the church is a safe place for LGBTQ people.” It’s my firm position that it isn’t. The worst thing the church could do with a study like this is to point at it as an excuse for not making an effort to become a better place for LBGTQ people.
All of that out of the way, it’s been my experience that members at the local level, the people in your ward, are much more accepting and loving than the culture that’s imposed on them from the top down. Local members are more welcoming
in spite ofmessaging and policies from the top. Of course your results may vary. I think wards in cities will generally be more welcoming than more rural wards, but again, that’s my personal bias/observation.
I share Nibbler’s skepticism, not only about this survey, but about surveys in general. These kinds of changes–if indeed they are changes at all–are difficult to map, partly because whether an LDS environment is supportive or not depends to such a large extent on the specific unit, the people in it, and its leaders. When I was growing up, most people assumed that excommunication would be pretty much automatic for any sexual activity outside heterosexual marriage. But there was a kid in my ward who was mostly out of the closet, and was accepted (his father was stake patriarch, and was very protective of him). Now that would not necessarily be the same everywhere. I’ve also been in wards with “hanging bishops,” who would have ex-ed that guy in a heartbeat. Unlike the Catholic church, we don’t have anything like canon law, and local authorities have considerable latitude in dealing with such cases. BTW, the kid in question is now grown up, has moved away, and from what I hear, is no longer associated with the church. Thank you for the perspectives shared so far. Roy wrote:
44% of Utah’s Latter-day Saint LGBTQ+-identifying youths had seriously considered suicide compared to 47% of Utah’s LGBTQ+-identifying youths from other religions and 77% of Utah’s Atheist/Agnostic LGBTQ+-identifying youths. The national rate for LBG youth is 47.7%.9
This part is really interesting and makes me think about what Nibbler was saying. Utah LDS LGBTQ+ rates of seriously considering suicide are pretty close to Utah non-LDS LGBTQ+ rates and national LBG youth rates (within 4 percent or “margin of error” territory).
However, the rate for Utah’s Atheist/Agnostic LGBTQ+ youth has a huge increase of more than 30%
😯 That is “statistically significant.”Does that track with rates for Atheist/Agnostic LGBTQ+ youth nationally or is it unique to Utah?
I would have to dive into the actual survey details, but my initial reaction is that the differences between the groups that do not include identified atheists/agnostics is statistically insignificant – and that the suicide rate for teenagers in any category tends to be higher when there is not a “higher reason / motivation” that allows acceptance of suffering to be “noble” (which tends to fit many youth who identify as atheist or agnostic due to losing a sense of divine purpose or connection). I also believe youth who lack or lose solid parental and communal support in any religious community and, therefore, reject or are rejected by that community and religion understandably can feel hopeless and consider suicide. After all, if they are going to end up in Hell anyway, why prolong their lives?
(That is NOT the Mormon teaching, but it can feel that way.)This, my initial read is that, for youth, the numbers make sense and probably are not significantly different than other areas where one religion or general religious ideology (like the rural Deep South) dominates.
Thank you for adding your perspective OT. I went with my teenage son to a PRIDE event over the weekend. We were reading a pamphlet together about juggling faith and supporting your LGBTQ+ child. There were a list of questions about how your faith allows gay people to participate and feel connected.
My son asked me what happens when the answer to all of the questions is “No” and I responded “well, that makes it harder to do both then, doesn’t it?”
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