Source: Associated Press via Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake City -- Associated Press reports that LDS Church officials have agreed to meet with members of Affirmation, a gay Mormon support group that has sought to forge understanding between the faith's leaders and its gay members.

In a letter received last week, leaders of Affirmation were invited to meet with Fred M. Riley, commissioner of Family Services for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Harold C. Brown, the agency's past commissioner.

Riley's letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, says he and Brown were asked by President Monson to meet with Affirmation on his behalf.

"We believe that it is always important to have the opportunity to be given better understanding of your points of view so that the church can appropriately understand your organization and how best to be helpful," Riley wrote.

Dave Melson, Affirmation's assistant executive director, told the Associated Press that he spoke with Riley by phone on Friday. He reportedly asked if the meeting would result in any change or was simply an effort to placate Affirmation.

"They said that there won't be immediate changes, but they are definitely interested in helping ... that they are sincere," Melson said. "We would like to start to a dialogue, even if it isn't immediately fruitful."

For Affirmation, which has about 2,000 gay, lesbian and transgender members worldwide, an official meeting with anyone from the church organization is unprecedented.

In February, just three days after 80-year-old Thomas S. Monson was named president of the 13 million-member church, Affirmation petitioned the new leader to meet and begin an unprecedented conversation about gays in the church.

Affirmation has repeatedly invited church leaders to meet or attend the group's annual conference, but the only prior response was a letter last year declining the conference invitation, Melson said.

"We're pleased the church is opening up the possibility for dialogue," Melson told the Associated Press. "Affirmation has tried five or six times over the past 31 years to meet with church leaders. This is their second response."

The meeting is scheduled for August, Riley confirmed Sunday in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Valerie Larabee, executive director of the Utah Pride Center in Salt Lake City, is hopeful.

"Any time that two groups come together there's a possibility, and I hope the possibility can lead to more understanding, more acceptance and less isolation," said Larabee.

Many gay, lesbian and transgender church members seek support from the center after failing to find the help they need at LDS Family Services, she said.

"Part of the reason Affirmation does their work is to build bridges," Larabee told the Associated Press. "This is definitely the building of a bridge ... sometimes that process is long and arduous."

News of the meeting comes on the same weekend that Monson, the new church leader, gave his first address to the church's Annual General Conference, held in a giant Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City and beamed via satellite to Mormon chapels across the globe.

Although he was speaking mostly about people of different faiths and said nothing about gay people, Monson encouraged Mormons to show kindness and respect "for all people everywhere. The world in which we live is filled with diversity. We can and should demonstrate respect toward those whose beliefs differ from ours."

The new "prophet, seer and revelator" used his inaugural address at the conference to urge those who have fallen away from the church to return, inviting "the less-active, the offended, the critical, the transgressor" to come back and "feast at the table of the Lord and taste again the sweet and satisfying fruits of fellowship with the Saints."

Deseret Morning News, a Salt Lake City newspaper owned by the LDS church, printed the Associated Press report of the meeting invitation but had not printed its own story early Monday morning.

Full article: LDS officials to meet with gay group | Deseret Morning News
LDS prophet urges "the less active, the offended" to return | Salt Lake Tribune

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