As I wrote about semi-extensively in A Short-Term Solution to a Long-Term Problem*, six years ago I married into a historically Mormon family, which continues to get less and less Mormon, thanks to reprehensible LDS actions that have driven over half the family from the church.

The Mormon Church's role in passing California's anti-gay Proposition 8 was the final straw for a number of my in-laws. Besides my husband Jake, the family has a second gay son, my brother-in-law Tom, and Prop 8's direct attack on a major faction of the family was enough to push a few family members out of the church for good. Those family members who remain in the church do so out of deep love and commitment, and the hope that, through this love and commitment, they might help their beloved church improve.

It's a noble quest, but one that's hard to view as anything but fantasy after this week's excommunication of Kate Kelly, the Mormon woman who founded the LDS feminist group Ordain Women, and was booted from the church for apostasy. Along with showcasing the Mormon Church's cultiest tendencies, the excommunication of Kelly sent a clear message to my relatives hoping to change the church from within: Try it and you're out.

I know numerous people who left the Mormon church once they realized that raising a gay child in the church is straight-up abuse. I know of at least one Mormon father who left the church after he realized he could not, in good conscience, raise a daughter in the church. And now I know one or two devout Mormons considering defection to Unitarianism, because this shit's just getting gross.

To paraphrase what I wrote in last week's Last Days, I appreciate believers' attempts to instigate change from within. But there comes a time to stop negotiating with your abusive boyfriend and get the hell out.

*—I'll be doing a one-night-only remount of this show with Intiman this August. Full info here.