Presented to: Signature Books
For: Peculiar People: Mormons and Same-Sex Orientation
The awards committee gave this award, stating, "In a year of important fine writing by Mormons about the pain Latter-day saints experience when their choices go against institutional prescription (e.g. the entire Exponent II issue on abortion), this book is a landmark. Ron Schow, Wayne Schow, and Marybeth Raynes have performed a major service in collecting these thirty-six essays and three listings of resource materials on the issue of same-sex orientation in and out of the Church.
"Intelligent and up-to-date information fills this volume. Its underlying principle is that same-sex orientation is not chosen and therefore in and of itself does not require repentance, although official Church statements have declared otherwise. Nineteen persona essays by men and women who have had to make difficult choices concerning their lives and lifestyles, and by family members or ecclesiastical counselors of these people, open our eyes to the fundamental truth that each is a suffering, desiring human being, heir to God's love and deserving of compassion. The remaining seventeen essays detail views on same-sex orientation from the biological and social sciences and from a moral standpoint. Guidance for therapists as well as for families and for people of same-sex orientation make this an enlightening, thorough, and highly readable book, one that fills a need no other work has yet acknowledged so candidly and so provocatively. We are indebted to the editors for putting this book together, to instruct and, it is to be hoped, to help begin to heal all of us concerned about this issue in the Church."