The Mormon Church publicly challenged LGBTQ rights when it sided with traditional marriage proponents in Hawaii in 1993. Since then, the church has used its political influence to pursue a position against those rights in the United States. Gregory A. Prince draws from thousands of pages of public records, private documents, and interview transcripts to uncover the Mormon Church's focus on homosexuality over the past fifty years. Prince shows that although the church initially investigated homosexuality only among its membership, when it entered the Hawaiian political arena in 1993, it signaled an intent to go beyond its ranks to win the marriage-equality battle. The church's public activism against LGBTQ rights reached a peak in 2008 during California's right over Proposition 8, an initiative banning same-sex marriage that many came to call the "Mormon Proposition." The actions the church has taken against LGBTQ rights have often resulted in unforeseeable or unintended consequences, in chiding public backlash, reactive court decisions, and mass resignations of church members. In response, the church somewhat softened its stance against gay marriage.

In 2015, however, when the Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land, the church once again turned its attention inward, declaring same-sex couples "apostates" and denying their children access to essential Mormon rites of passage, including the blessing of infants and the baptism of children. Gay Rights and the Mormon Church is informed by extensive interviews, unusual access to documentary records, and Prince's scientific background. It is a significant contribution to a subject at the forefront of many Mormon lives.