Covenants, Queerness, and Exaltation 

By Lincoln Fullmer 

Talk given at the inaugural Reform Mormon General Conference, April 5-6, 2025

“As man now is, God once was. As God now is, man may become.” - Lorenzo Snow 

            So goes the famous summary of one of the most unique and expansive teachings of Mormonism–that Humanity and Divinity, rather than being ontologically at odds with one another, are merely different rungs on an eternal ladder of upwards progression. Growing up as a mainstream Brighamite Mormon, this teaching, affirming the divine core of all humans and promising the eventual inheritance of all things, was among my most cherished; and yet, this theology that has brought so much joy to me has also wrought heartache and anguish for so many of God’s children–and why is this? Because traditionally, this theology has been inextricably tied to notions of racialized heteronormative patriarchy and authoritarian control; only available to properly married heterosexual partners–often polygamous and white, always patriarchal, and ideally with many children–who accept the unbending authority of a central church body. Unfortunately, this rigid, unyielding structure has denied many thousands of Saints access to the Godhood that they were taught is their birthright. While there are many issues at play that need to be addressed to fully welcome all those who have been excluded from exaltation, I would like to specifically offer ideas to free this theology from its heteronormatively patriarchal cage and boldly offer space for Queer people, no matter if they are members of an institutional church or not, and hopefully create a viable framework for others to fully address the other issues mentioned. 

            It has long been the conventional wisdom both within and outside of the Latter Day Saint Movement that Mormonism–and especially the Brighamite variety–is fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed to Queerness and anything deviating from the cis-heteropatriarchal norm, and that any project attempting to make room for Queerness in a Mormon context is foolhardy and misguided. But as I’ve learned from the books Tabernacles of Clay and Queering Kinship in the Mormon Cosmos, both about gender and sexuality within the LDS church, by the chair of Kalamazoo College’s department of Religion, Dr. Taylor G. Petrey, the contemporary views of the same that seem so rigid, eternal, and stable are really anything but. For example, rather than gender being an eternal characteristic as is currently taught, Dr. Petrey demonstrates in Tabernacles that some earlier LDS leaders taught that spirits both chose their gender of their own accord (1) and can lose it in the future as a consequence of wickedness (2); in Kinship, rather than homosexuality being firmly counter to LDS thinking, he proposes that the belief in a Godhead consisting of three men perfectly united to one another in love and mind can be interpreted as a same-sex union–and the most holy in all of Mormonism (3). Because of these demonstrations and many others throughout his work, for which I highly recommend reading his books, I feel no reservations whatsoever in trying to develop new ideas of Mormon theology to fit Queer people. 

            Now that we know that Mormon theology indeed has a Queer potential, how can we create a consistent conception thereof that’s both proudly Queer and uniquely Mormon? This can doubtless be done in several ways, but for my purposes here, I propose now to follow the traditional Plan of Salvation, as taught within the Brighamite church, stopping at each point of Queer exclusion to examine how they might be resolved. 

            The first step of this plan is the organization by our Heavenly Parents of eternal and uncreated intelligences into fully formed spirit children. At this stage, the main issue touching on Queerness is the assignment of gender to these spirit beings. As mentioned earlier, most current LDS leaders teach that this gender was assigned from God, is unchangeable, and is always identical to birth sex, but others have taught that intelligences proper are in fact genderless, only becoming gendered when an organized spirit child chose it for themself–however, they still taught that deviation from that chosen gender was sinful. By taking this earlier teaching as inspiration, we can affirm genderqueer people with the understanding that gender or the lack thereof is a fundamental characteristic of spirit beings who constantly re-choose and reexamine their gender experience, casting aside the normative teachings that God chose this experience for them, or that, even if self-chosen, the choice was permanent. 

            After the organization of spirits, the next step is to send them down to Earth to be tested and taught to progress into Godhood. According to the teachings of the LDS church, this is done by entering into and remaining faithful to a series of covenants within the context of LDS priesthood authority, often nicknamed “the covenant path” in recent years by LDS leaders–namely, baptism, confirmation, priesthood ordination for men, the temple endowment, and sealing–and within this traditional view, each covenant or saving ordinance is absolutely necessary to enter into the exalted glory of God precisely because they were instituted for that purpose before the creation of the world. Making and keeping these covenants is thus, by definition, the only way to truly experience God’s presence. Furthermore, the last three of these rungs are all tightly bound to gender norms–only men who are either celibate or in a sexual relationship only with their wife can receive the priesthood; the current text of the Endowment narrative continues to place women on a plane firmly beneath the authority of men (the seating is even gender segregated!), although there have been some significant improvements recently, and also commands a version of sexual purity that unequivocally excludes Queer relationships; and the eternal marriage bond through sealing is restricted to heterosexual couples. And just as appalling, since the LDS conception of covenants requires the institutional authority of a specific church, Queer people trying to seek their own connection to God outside of an organization that denies their full participation are viewed as horribly misguided apostates who have completely rejected all that is good. Thus, to open wide the door to exaltation to all people, two things must be done: reimagining each of these covenants with Queer inclusion baked in, and a brand new covenant framework that is not so strict, exclusive, and authoritarian. 

            While the issue with “worthy” male-only priesthood can be comparatively easily rectified by simply allowing all people who live ethically, by which I mean living in such a way so as to engender respect for the wellbeing of all people, to equally receive priesthood ordination and the full exercise thereof, the anti-Queerness in the ordinances specific to the temple is deeply rooted enough that serious changes to the theology must be made. With regards to the endowment ceremony, my solution was to closely go through the entirety of the text to reform it to support my own ritual needs, such as, among many other things, gender equality and true ethical living–a major endeavor considering how fundamental the opposite is within the traditional ceremony–as well as designing more modified ceremonies, but even so, a fully inclusive and theologically consistent view of sealings is yet more challenging, and requires the new covenant framework alluded to earlier. Namely, I propose that covenants, as opposed to the traditional view described earlier, are better conceived as formalized ways to bind an individual to their own conception of Deity and practice Godhood, engage in ethical and Zionic community with the world, and form deeper connections with one’s people. Since Humanity and Divinity are ontologically identical within Brighamitism, with Humanity being merely less refined while Divinity more, any deep and healthy connection with another human–irrespective of religious tradition, institutional organization, or perceived normativity–can serve to refine one’s soul into divinity. With this in place, the theological significance of the sealing ceremony can be revitalized: as opposed to the traditional idea that the sealing of a man and a woman creates the possibility for exaltation because it sanctifies with God’s authority the biological power of reproduction, which is then sacralized into the method behind the organization of spirit children–obviously a theology highly dependent upon heterosexuality–we can rather proclaim that the selfless union of a marriage sealing imbued with the blessing of Deity leads to the exaltation of a family unit through their continual striving to gradually realize the divinity present within themselves, thereby rejecting and replacing the biological essentialism contingent in earlier theologies. 

            Furthermore, this new covenant framework of working in Zionic community to reveal the ontological Divinity already present in Humanity, notwithstanding its already profound utility in rejecting Queer exclusion and institutional uniqueness, has yet more applications–chiefly, the idea of covenant creativity, meaning both continual reworkings of current covenants (for example, the several modifications of the endowment ceremony that people such as Evan Sharley, Rob Lauer, myself, and others have written and planned to suit our own needs) and the freedom to create more. Given that the goal of covenants in this view is to provide divinely centered relationships, any formal recognition of a true healthy relationship could be formalized into a covenant if a person or a community so chooses to do so, thus opening up the possibility for more theological innovation in the future from anyone wishing to participate–perhaps some people, for whom close friends have become just as or even more dear than family, could find value in performing a covenant of friendship to express their deep and abiding commitments to each other. As such, taken as a whole, this new covenant framework affirms the birthright of all human beings to define their own spirituality and allows the participation of historically marginalized people in the revelatory process of theology, and I hope that more people will be able to make effective use of this framework to create further exciting reimaginations of Mormonism. 

            The goal I hope to accomplish from this talk is not to provide the authoritative framework for Queerness or covenants within Mormonism–plenty of people smarter than I am have already been working through this, and I’m not so presumptuous as to assign myself such great importance–but I do hope that my own, unapologetic, personal exploration and redefinition of Mormon thought to better serve the needs of myself and my community inspires more people to realize that not only does Mormonism have so much more potential than what it is currently being used for by the institutional Brighamites in Salt Lake City, but also that every Mormon, every Latter Day Saint, every believer within this rich movement founded in Palmyra, New York in 1830, has their own God-given mandate to boldly pursue their own conceptions of the world and self to spread forth human flourishing abroad. This I offer in the name of my dear Heavenly Parents, whose love I feel in my life constantly. Amen. 

1. Petrey, Taylor G. Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism. University of North Carolina Press, 2020: 40-41. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469656243_petrey. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025. 

2. Petrey, Taylor G. Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism. University of North Carolina Press, 2020: 43-45. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469656243_petrey. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025. 

3. Petrey, Taylor G. Queering Kinship in the Mormon Cosmos. University of North Carolina Press, 2024: 30-34. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469682730_petrey. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.