The resignations come in the wake of sweeping changes made to the Church of Latter Day Saints’s guidebook lay leaders, Handbook 1 (a name so banal that it’s sinister). According to the new guidelines, same-sex couples will not only be labeled “apostates,” but their children will not be allowed to be baptized—unless they’re over 18, live alone, and have rejected all same-sex relationships, including their parents’. Mormons who have married members of the same sex also face excommunication.
On Saturday, 1,500 Mormons resigned from the Church at the Salt Lake Temple, the largest LDS temple in the world. “I feel like if your name’s in the church, if you keep your name in the church, you’re supporting their decisions and the choices they’re making and their doctrine,” Brennan Zeller, a married gay man who grew up in the Church told the New York Times. “We don’t want to support them because they don’t support us.”