Tech billionaire quits Mormon church and gives $600k to LGBTQ group
An advertising-technology billionaire has resigned his membership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and rebuked the faith over social issues and LGBTQ rights in an unusual public move.
Jeff T Green has pledged to donate 90% of his estimated $5bn (£3.77bn) fortune, starting with a $600,000 donation to the LGBTQ-rights group Equality Utah, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Green said in a Monday resignation letter to the church’s president, Russell M Nelson, that he had not been active in the Mormon faith for more than a decade but wanted to make his departure official and remove his name from membership records.
“While most members are good people trying to do right, I believe the church is actively and currently doing harm in the world,” he wrote. “I believe the Mormon church has hindered global progress in women’s rights, civil rights and racial equality, and LGBTQ+ rights.”
Eleven family members and a friend formally resigned along with him.
The church did not immediately return a request from the Associated Press seeking comment on Tuesday, but in recent years has shown a willingness to engage on LGBTQ rights that is unusual for a conservative faith. It maintains its doctrinal opposition to same-sex marriage and intimacy, but did not block a 2019 ban on so-called conversion therapy in Utah, and in November its leader, Dallin H Oaks, called for a recognition of both religious rights and LGBTQ rights.
However, the church has taken positions over the years that have been deeply painful for many in the LGBTQ community. Green, for his part, said
most members “are good people trying to do right”, but he also worries about the faith’s transparency around its history and finances.
Green, 44, who lives in southern California, is the CEO and chairman of the Trade Desk, an advertising-technology firm he founded in 2009.
He also expressed concerns about a $100bn investment portfolio held by the church. It was the subject of an Internal Revenue Service whistleblower complaint in 2019 from a former employee who said the church had improperly built it up using member donations that are supposed to go to charitable causes.
Leaders have defended how the church uses and invests member donations, saying most is used for operational and humanitarian needs, but a portion is safeguarded to build a reserve for the future. The faith annually spends about $1bn on humanitarian and welfare aid, leaders have said.
The church has also come under criticism for its conservative social positions. Women do not hold the priesthood in the faith, and black men could not become priests until the 1970s.
In recent years, though, the faith has worked with the NAACP and donated nearly $10m for initiatives to help black Americans. It has also worked with Equality Utah to pass a state LGBTQ nondiscrimination law, with religious exemptions.
Another prominent onetime Latterday Saint sued the church earlier this year, accusing it of fraud and seeking to recover millions of dollars in contributions. James Huntsman is a member of one of Utah’s most well-known families and brother of a former governor. The lawsuit was later thrown out.