Southern Baptist Leader: Mormons 'Naive' for Supporting LGBT Anti-Discrimination Laws

After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints announced that it would be open to anti-discrimination laws for gays and lesbians as long as religious people were also protected, a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention called the Mormon church's attempt "well-intentioned but naïve."

In a rare press conference earlier this week, elders for the Mormon Church convened in Salt Lake City, Utah to announce that they were willing to support some housing and job-related anti-discrimination laws for the LGBT community if in turn religious people were protected against discrimination for their beliefs.

"When religious people are publicly intimidated, retaliated against, forced from employment or made to suffer personal loss because they have raised their voice in the public square, donated to a cause or participated in an election, our democracy is the loser," Elder Dallin Oaks, a member of the church's Quorum of Twelve Apostles, said during the press conference.

Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has now called the effort of the Mormon church "well-intentioned but naive."

"I think the Latter-day Saints are well-intentioned but naive on where the reality stands today," Moore recently said, according to The Christian Post.

"I do not think, in most instances, sexual orientation ought to matter in housing or employment," Moore added, saying "but of course the proposals to address these concerns inevitably lead to targeted assaults on religious liberty."

"Nonetheless," Moore continued, "I look forward to working with Mormons and others on protecting religious liberty for everyone in the years ahead."