The Safe Space Coalition

The Safe Space Coalition is an initiative that works to ensure safety and respect for gay and lesbian Latter-day Saints.

In the fall of 2004, a group of mostly heterosexual Latter-day Saints who were participants on a Mormon-oriented e-mail discussion group expressed concern that the increasingly strident rhetoric blaming gays and lesbians for the state of American families would isolate and scapegoat gays and lesbians within the Mormon community.

We knew of several cases where the ecclesiastical condemnation of homosexuality had already driven Mormon children and adults to suicide. Therefore, we called on Latter-day Saints to form a Safe Space Coalition, which continues to provide a spiritual and social refuge for Mormon gays, lesbians, and their families and appeals to LDS leaders to conduct themselves in a way that our children may be safe at Church. In its first public campaign, the Safe Space Coalition delivered the Declaration and over nine hundred flowers to LDS Church headquarters in Salt Lake City on October 1, 2004. (See "Respect for Pink" for the news story.)

Read more about the background in "Safe Space Campaign" a 2004 statement by Safe Space Declaration author Brecken Swartz (writing as Bridget Foster because her husband was a bishop at the time).

 

 <Top>