SALT LAKE CITY — A Mormon man who led a campaign criticizing the church’s practice of allowing closed-door, one-on-one interviews of youth by lay leaders that sometimes included sexual questions has been kicked out of the faith following a disciplinary hearing.
Sam Young read a verdict letter for the first time Sunday that had been delivered to him following last week’s hearing with local church leaders in Houston.
Young and his supporters say the interviews where youth are asked if they’re following the law of chastity led to inappropriate conversations and shaming.
Young called his excommunication “a supreme disappointment” and was emotional at a news conference attended by about 100 of his supporters.
“The whistleblower has been kicked out,” he said. “But they have no power to excommunicate me from the cause of protecting children and protecting the healing of my friends. For our children’s sake, this whistleblower is not going to stop roaring.”
Young, 65, recently finished a 23-day hunger strike in Salt Lake City near church headquarters to bring attention to his cause. In March, he organized a protest march of about 1,000 people who walked to church headquarters.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn’t comment on disciplinary hearings to respect people’s privacy.
While not a lifelong ban, excommunication is a rare move that amounts to the harshest punishment available for a church member.
Young becomes the third high-profile Mormon who led protests about church policy to be excommunicated in recent years.
Kate Kelly, founder of a group pushing for women to be allowed in the religion’s lay clergy, was excommunicated in 2014. John Dehlin, who runs a podcast that allows doubting Mormons to tell their stories, was kicked out in 2015.
