You cannot make up this stuff. While competing factions inside any organization can create confusion, a master class in confusion is playing out inside my church and my faith — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — over the strange bedfellows of homosexuality, peacemaking and the U.S. Constitution.

At the center of this current confusion is the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University. Taking its cue from a decade of accommodation policies promoted by a powerful faction inside the church celebrating homosexuality, Wheatley has been handed the mantle to continue the promotion of gay rights under the guise of family, religion and constitutional government.

Evidently, homosexuality is the key to a civilized America, at least according to Jonathan Rauch, a self-described gay atheist Jew, and joined by the Wheatley Institute. Over the past couple of weeks, the institute has paraded Rauch as the new spokesperson for the LDS Church when it comes to civilized citizenship.

Rauch believes the LDS Church is the leading edge of a new civic theology modeled upon compromise and accommodation. According to Rauch, this new model was best expressed by the LDS Church’s 2015 “Utah Compromise” placing the terms sexual orientation and gender identity in state law in exchange for the institutional church’s right to legally discriminate against homosexuals in employment and housing — the new cause of religious freedom the church has referred to as “accommodation.”

Latter-day Saints have been reminded over the past decade that religious freedom, as every constitutional right, is not an absolute right. Evidently, my church is willing to give a little to take a little. It’s what Rauch refers to as “Madisonian pluralism.” Here’s what his pluralism sounds like: Compromise means Latter-day Saint leaders agree to help people “commit sin outside (the) church because we want to share the country.”

As a proxy for the LDS Church, the Wheatley Institute’s promotion of Rauch’s imaginary “civic theology” is just weird. It’s confusing. We haven’t heard about any of this new civic theology from LDS Church President Russell M. Nelson. He teaches us not to take counsel from nonbelievers. He tells us to think celestial. He doesn’t talk politics. I, for one, cannot believe he’s even heard of Rauch in this context.

Wheatley pushing Rauch down the throats of Latter-day Saints is doubly confusing in light of Jeffrey R. Holland’s “musket” address to BYU and the stern and appropriate lecturing from LDS Church Education Commissioner Clark Gilbert to BYU professors and employees about facing the right way regarding the church’s family proclamation.

The confusion over homosexuality inside the LDS church began with Proposition 8 in California when it opposed same-sex marriage but supported gay civil rights — seemingly not understanding that the latter is the legal justification for the former. The confusion continued. The church moved from “contending” in the political space to “accommodation” in 2014. By 2015, the church had successfully orchestrated and celebrated the “Utah Compromise” so lauded by Rauch.

The church then doubled down on its political posturing by drafting the “Fairness for All” congressional legislation in 2021. It went nowhere. But then came another opportunity to triple-down with the Respect for (same-sex) Marriage Act (RFMA) in 2022. Sen. Mitt Romney saluted the church’s flag of accommodation politics and it became law, single-handedly driven by the LDS Church’s obsession with religious freedoms not even under attack.

You see the confusion. RFMA is the first time the LDS Church has endorsed same-sex marriage against its own doctrine. Enter the Wheatley Institute and Rauch celebrating its passage with LDS elites and allies supporting homosexual rights. After all, we are told by a few church leaders that same-sex marriage is the law of the land and that we support the law of the land. Interestingly, lots of laws contrary to church doctrines are the law of the land and yet treated differently. For instance, the church doesn’t celebrate abortion.

Orthodox saints are left to wonder. What’s the game being played and not so well? Does the LDS church encourage homosexuality or discourage it? Does the Wheatley Institute at BYU celebrate a weird cult of compromise and call it constitutionalism or does it celebrate the actual U.S. Constitution? Does “Madisonian pluralism” conflict with the right to live according to the dictates of religious conscience or is compromising those rights just being a good citizen? Who do faithful saints listen to? President Nelson or people who contradict his counsel? Do we listen to Holland and Gilbert or a gay atheist Jew and the Wheatley Institute at BYU? It is so confusing.

Paul Mero is the author of “Defeated: A Latter-day Saints Witness and Warning from 40 Years Deep Inside the Modern American Culture War.”