Posted by:
elderolddog
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Date: October 26, 2016 02:14PM
Here's an brief overview on this issue, prepared by Connell O'Donovan, with the help of D. Michael Quinn:
http://www.connellodonovan.com/smith.htmlHere's O'Donovan's more wordy explanation of the matter:
The "Illness" of Homosexuality: Patriarch Joseph Fielding Smith
During the early part of the twentieth century, as Mormonism slowly but steadily grew, problematic issues surrounding isolationism versus universalism arose. Confrontation with homosexuality (which was itself becoming more and more publicized) and what to do with "out" homosexuals was inevitable. For example, in 1945, as reported by D. Michael Quinn, church leaders realized that there were quite a number of Mormon homosexuals who were meeting for sex at the Deseret Gym in downtown Salt Lake. ("Cruising for sex" had been going on there since at least 1930, as personally reported to me in the late 1980s by Spencer Kimball's Gay first cousin twice removed, Jack Pembroke [1913-2000], who began cruising there that year. Homosexual activities were constantly occuring in the showers and steam room at the Deseret Gymnasium in Salt Lake throughout the 1970s and 1980s, when I had a membership there. Several members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, one Tabernacle organist, and at least two General Authorities were participants in the sexual activies there, as personally witnessed by me or by a Gay employee I knew who worked there.) Quinn claims that First Presidency member, J. Reuben Clark, asked former Bishop Gordon Burt Affleck "to organize a surveillance for possible homosexuals in the steam room of the church-owned Deseret Gymnasium." [75A]
The church's first major challenge on this issue came from a man whose position had historically rivaled that of the church president himself. When Joseph Fielding Smith was ordained Patriarch to the Church on October 8, 1942, many Mormons were stunned because it was well known that the Drama professor at the University of Utah was a practicing homosexual, and it was even rumored in his own family that he had an arrest record for sexual vice. One of his favorite Drama pupils, Cynthia Blood, told me in a 1989 interview that "everybody on campus knew" that Prof. Smith was "queer" and that he often "flitted amongst the boys". Evidence indicates that he had sexual relations with Norval Service and with another young man named Wallace (which could be a first or last name). However, should any of the Mormon faithful question whether a married, homosexual Drama teacher with a police record for having sex with his students was "called of God" to be Patriarch to the Church, Pres. David O. McKay affirmed earlier that week during October General Conference that, "Elder Smith's right to his office...is not only by [patriarchal] lineage but by direct inspiration to the President who holds the keys of the Priesthood". With this full assurance from a member of the First Presidency, the Mormon faithful are only left with two options: either God in fact did not care that Joseph Fielding Smith was an adulterous homosexual, or the presiding prophet at that time, George Albert Smith, was in fact not receiving "direct inspiration" from God in the governance of the Church, despite what McKay said.
In April 1946, President George Albert Smith (a distant cousin of the Patriarch) was informed that Joseph had had an intimate relationship (whether it was overtly sexual is not known) with yet another young man named Byram Browning, some time prior to March 1943 (which is when Browning entered the Navy during World War II). On April 13, Byram's maternal uncle, LeGrand Chandler, met with the church president to discuss this relationship. Various journals and office diaries from that time mention that the Patriarch was "ill", and in fact, Smith's own diary entry for June 29, 1946 referred to the "problems" he was having at that time as only "a recurrence of his old trouble in his back." While it is true that he did have recurring physical problems with his back, no doubt these were extremely exacerbated by and psychosomatically related to the public revelation of his homosexual activities to his ecclesiastical peers and superiors.
The church president, after private conferences with those involved, their families, and the Twelve Apostles, decided to quietly release Smith from his duties. [76] That October, Smith's name was simply omitted from the roll of General Authorities sustained in General Conference. When questioned about the omission, the LDS First Presidency responded by having David O. McKay read a letter allegedly written by Patriarch Smith himself, indicating that he was suffering from the so-called "extended illness". [77] Interestingly the former patriarch was neither excommunicated nor disfellowshipped, although he was not allowed to perform any church duties. [78] Instead, he was exiled from Utah by church order to anywhere else in the world of his choosing. Since Joseph had been a missionary in Hawai'i, that is where he chose as his place of exile; the church paid for his family to move there. Eleven years later, Smith was reinstated into full participation in the church after he had "confessed to his wife and wrote a full confession to the First Presidency." [79] Despite his "repentance", it is known that Smith continued to acknowledge his homosexuality to other Gay Mormons who lived in Hawai'i in the late 1950s, including Dr. John Reeves, who was interviewed in 1988 for this essay.
http://www.connellodonovan.com/abom.html