Story highlights A lawyer says he will deliver about 1,500 resignation letters to the Church of Latter-Day Saints 
 
 New guidelines bar the children of parents in same-sex relationships from being baptized 
 
 (CNN) About 1,500 Mormons are resigning from the Church of Latter-day Saints to protest a new policy that labels same-sex couples apostate and bans children of same-sex relationships from being baptized, a lawyer said Saturday. 
 
 Attorney Mark Naugle said church members who want to resign brought the letters to his office on Saturday. 
 
 "We had an incredible turnout," he said. "I was slammed for three hours. Some people stood in line for an hour and a half." 
 
 Naugle said he plans to deliver the letters on Monday. 
 
 A call for mass resignations call started about a week ago , when the LDS church released new guidelines for lay leaders known as "Handbook 1." 
 
 Read More ||||| Ms. Matson said she started the process in July with a letter to the church’s records unit at its headquarters. She said she had gotten a brochure asking her to reconsider. A few weeks later, the local bishop visited her home to ask whether she really wanted out. She did, and last month, she said, she got a letter from the church saying she had been removed from its roster. 
 
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 “That was the end of it,” Ms. Matson said. 
 
 Before the gathering in the park on Saturday afternoon, the church’s president, Thomas S. Monson, sent out a Twitter message that seemed directed at any wavering faithful: “I plead with you to avoid anything that will deprive you of your happiness here in mortality and eternal life in the world to come.” 
 
 Eric Hawkins, a church spokesman, said: “We don’t want to see anyone leave the church, especially people who have been struggling with any aspect of their life. The church exists to build people and help them heal, and there isn’t one of us who doesn’t need help at some point in our lives.” 
 
 For those leaving, removing their names from the records was weighted with symbolism. The Mormon Church vests deep spiritual importance in family-history research and tracing ancestral lines. It has a Family History Library in downtown Salt Lake and runs a genealogy website, FamilySearch. 
 
 On Saturday, organizers of the mass resignation brought forms and envelopes and talked people through the process. Notaries were there to stamp the letters. Mark Naugle, a lawyer and former Mormon who often helps people leave the church, took form letters from people and mailed them to the church’s records office. He said he received 1,500 resignations on Saturday. 
 
 Some people included heartfelt letters explaining their decision and describing how they loved their gay children or had struggled for years to reconcile being gay and being Mormon. Others just signed a form letter. 
 
 Some said they no longer felt any ties to the church, but others said resigning their faith had never been their first choice. They still had a brother who was a bishop, a father who goes to church every Sunday. One woman who refused to give her name, saying she did not want to antagonize her family, said she had waited until after her mother died to resign. 
 
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 “I’ve shed some tears,” said Kathy Franson, who said she had drifted from the church in large part because her son was gay. “It felt like a death of someone close to me. I compare it to a death, going through that mourning.” 
 
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 Like Ms. Franson, the vast majority of those leaving now, based on responses at the protest group’s Facebook page, said they had already stopped going to services or participating in the faith. The church says it has 6.5 million members in the United States. 
 
 For many who gathered on Saturday, news of the church’s new policies toward same-sex couples and their children had propelled them to leave. 
 
 “We perceive it as tearing families apart and making children choose a religion over their parents,” said Brenner Zeller, 24. 
 
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 Mr. Zeller and his husband, Daniel, grew up in the church, and after years away, they had been mulling whether to attend services again. Although the Mormon Church has long opposed same-sex marriage, it had endorsed an anti-discrimination law in Utah and criticized a Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. But Mr. Zeller said the new policies were the end. 
 
 “I feel like if your name’s in the church, if you keep your name in the church, you’re supporting their decisions and the choices they’re making and their doctrine,” he said. “We don’t want to support them because they don’t support us.” 
 
 In explaining the policy changes, which appeared in a handbook sent out to congregation lay leaders, church officials said they needed to draw a line between civil laws that allow same-sex marriage and church doctrine, which does not. 
 
 It has been two years since Lydia Ojuka, 33, stopped attending services, and on Saturday, she found herself at the end of what she called a cascade of dominoes. While she still has two brothers who are active in the church, she, her boyfriend and her two children resigned on Saturday. 
 
 “I hoped that I could live harmoniously with the church even though I wasn’t a believer anymore,” she said. “But the stance and the retrenchment and the harm that is being done to people in this community is beyond what I can live with. I do feel like the church forced my hand.” ||||| "We've talked to at least 800 people," Naugle said. "It's absolutely more than I expected." 
 
 At its peak, the line to drop off resignation papers snaked through the park along State Street, turned east along 2nd Avenue, then curved slightly north along Canyon Road. 
 
 Organizers were overwhelmed by the turnout. 
 
 Lauren McNamara created the event's Facebook page, which is where many attendees found out about the rally. She initially expected a crowd of about 700 and was "amazed" by the larger-than-expected count. 
 
 "The energy has been really positive and supportive," McNamara said. "We may have even reached 2,000." 
 
 McNamara said she converted to Mormonism five years ago in Chicago and moved to Utah partly to learn more about the faith. She stopped being a practicing member eight months ago. 
 
 "I've read a lot of history on the church since I got here, and there isn't much I've been impressed with," McNamara said. "I decided to resign a few weeks ago, but wasn't ready to submit paperwork. Then, when this last announcement dropped, that was it." 
 
 Top LDS authorities have a new policy in place that states Mormons in same-sex marriages or similar relationships must face disciplinary councils — and possible excommunication — and that their children generally must wait until they turn 18 to be baptized into the faith. 
 
 After hearing a round of speeches, Saturday's ralliers loosely marched down State Street past Brigham Young Historic Park to a mailbox on the corner of South Temple and deposited their resignation letters. The box quickly filled. 
 
 "The church's decision about families was the final straw for me," said Connie Walker, who carried a bright pink sign that read "I'm Resigning Today Because Jesus Says Love Everyone." 
 
 Walker said she stopped participating in the faith about a decade ago "after living outside Utah and realizing that people are good regardless of where they are on Sunday and what they believe." 
 
 An informal poll of people who had joined the event's Facebook page revealed that the vast majority who were resigning Saturday or planned to mail in their letters later either marked "I haven't believed [in church theology] for years" or were "Inactive." Few were active Mormons. 
 
 "Resigning is a really big step for people, because the church has filled so much of their life," said Steve Holbrook of Post-Mormons and Friends. "This is not a statement necessarily against the church. We just disagree with some of the directions the church has been going in." 
 
 Church spokesman Eric Hawkins said Friday that the faith doesn't like to "see anyone leave the church, especially people who have been struggling with any aspect of their life." 
 
 Aaron Linford, who was a practicing Mormon until a year ago, was one of many to drop off resignation documents.
– At least 1,500 Mormons have resigned from the Church of Latter-day Saints over a new policy targeting same-sex couples and their kids. New guidelines state Mormons in same-sex relationships must face disciplinary councils and possible excommunication, while their "natural or adopted" children can't be baptized until they turn 18, disavow same-sex relationships, and no longer live with their parents, report CNN and the Salt Lake Tribune. "The fact that it affects children really upset people," says a lawyer who helped hundreds sign resignation papers at an event in Salt Lake City on Saturday. "Most people are disaffected from the church already, and this was the final straw." Indeed, the Tribune reports an informal poll of those who joined the event's Facebook page showed most were "inactive" or didn't believe in church theology. "I stopped going just because of the attitudes toward minorities, homosexuals, and women," which are "not Christ-like," said one attendee. Another in a same-sex marriage said he and his husband had grown up in the Mormon church and recently considered returning to services after the church vowed it was against discrimination. But "if you keep your name in the church, you're supporting their decisions and the choices they're making and their doctrine," he said, per the New York Times. "We don't want to support them because they don't support us." A rep for the church says that "while it respects the law of the land, and acknowledges the right of others to think and act differently, it does not perform or accept same-sex marriage within its membership."