A few people have asked me what I thought
about Elder Holland’s talk during the October General Conference. Here
are my thoughts on that talk.
I loved it.
The talk, of course, was about the love of mothers and
I was reminded of how my own mother was willing to give her life so I would
have the chance to be born (I wrote more about that here). The reason so
many people asked me about this particular talk is because a large chunk of it
is devoted to how a mother helped her son cope with the burden of same-sex
attraction. I am grateful to Elder Holland for this portion of his talk
because he shared some things that members of the church oftendon't understand
about same-sex attraction.
First, he explained the real pain the young man was
going through. Elder Holland said, “He was still worthy, but his faith
was at crisis level. His emotional burden grew ever heavier. And
his spiritual pain was more and more profound. He was by turn hurt,
confused, angry, and desolate.” Yep, this quote perfectly describes my
experience as well.
Second, he stated that the young man's sexual
orientation didn’t change and that no one assumed it would. I hope every
member took note of that because people still tell me and my gay friends that
being gay is our fault and that if we had more faith we wouldn’t be gay
anymore.
Third, he explicitly stated more than once that the
young man with same-sex attraction was worthy. And not only that, he was
able to work with the youth as a seminary teacher. I hope this eases the
fears of those who are afraid of having a person who experiences same-sex
attraction teach their children. As someone who loves working with the
youth of the church I particularly appreciated that detail.
Overall I loved Elder Holland’s talk and hope that it
helps reshape our perceptions of what it means to experience same-sex
attraction and be an active Latter-day Saint. That said, Elder Holland
mentioned that this young man returned to finish his mission after being home
for five years. That’s awesome and I applaud him. However, the talk
made this out to be a success story that had a nice happy ending. While I
agree that this is a success, the thought I had while listening to this talk
was that this young man’s life is only beginning. He's still got a long,
difficult road ahead of him.
People have pointed to me in the past as a
success story, as a model for living the gospel while also being gay. If
you were to write out the things a good Mormon does like attending church,
going to the temple regularly, reading the scriptures daily, magnifying one’s
calling, not swearing, not drinking, and all the other things that Mormons are
supposed to do, I do all of those things. And yet, I have had a lot of
moments of hurt, confusion, anger, and desolation. At the risk of yet
again being a little too personal, I would like to share just one of those
stories.
I met Allison while I was getting my master’s at
BYU. We were in the same dinner group and became good friends. When
I graduated from BYU and moved away we kept up a long distance friendship
through email and phone calls. One year after graduating from BYU I moved
to Tucson. On a Sunday afternoon in the fall of 2012 I was talking with
Allison on the phone. She got a little bold and asked, “How come we never
dated?” I replied, “Well, I just never felt that way about you. It
just never felt right.” That didn’t seem to satisfy her and I sensed that
I was going to have to tell her I was gay. My house had paper thin doors
so I left the house and got into my car so my roommate Kevin wouldn’t hear me
come out to Allison. A few minutes later Allison again asked why we
hadn’t dated because my answer had been so lame and unsatisfactory. I
told her I was gay and that settled the issue.
After that conversation I feel like we became even
better friends because there was no pressure to date each other. Allison
has relatives in Tucson so when she was in town over winter break we hung
out. Before she visited I wondered if maybe, just maybe, we could
date. Allison was super rad, quite pretty, and really hilarious.
And she seemed to really like me (it’s my salt and pepper hair, for
sure). Who better to marry than her? But when she was here I felt
absolutely no physical connection and I scrapped the idea pretty quickly.
She did, however, meet my roommate Kevin who she later married. She is
way better off being married to him than she ever would have been being married
to me. So not marrying me was kind of Allison’s success story. Even though I was never attracted
to Allison I didn’t give up on dating.
And then LeAnne came along. Just like Allison she
is pretty, talented, spiritual, and just a wonderful person. LeAnne and I
connected quickly on an emotional level and had many great conversations
together. She quickly became one of my closest friends. And I could
tell she liked me. Usually having an awesome girl like you is cause for
celebration and pats on the back, but it just stressed me out. One day
LeAnne got unusually bold and said that it would be okay if I kissed her.
That freaked me out. As soon as I said goodbye to LeAnne I called Allison
and said, “LeAnne wants me to kiss her! But I don’t want to!” She
replied, “Just being a man and do it. It’s not a big deal.” I
whined in reply, “But I can’t!” Allison convinced me that I should kiss LeAnne
the next day.
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| LeAnne has such great hair |
The next afternoon LeAnne and I hung out. I was
nervous the entire morning because I was planning on kissing her later that
day. And I’m not talking normal nervous jitters, I was petrified of
kissing this woman who I knew liked me, who was way too pretty for me, and who
I had a great emotional connection with. To calm myself down I pulled out
my scriptures and read in 1 Nephi 4 when Nephi says that he shrunk because he
didn’t want to do what the Lord had asked him to do. I empathized with
Nephi so much. I thought that God wanted me to date LeAnne and here I was
shrinking from the very simple task of kissing her. I didn’t want to
shrink, I didn’t want to not do something just because I was afraid. I
prayed and prayed for courage to do the right thing and to not shrink, but I just
felt more and more nervous.
The moment I saw LeAnne that afternoon all
my nervousness suddenly vanished. It was pretty remarkable. I had
wanted to not feel afraid and in an instant that’s what happened. As we
sat and talked I felt calm and confident. All my fears were gone. I
had a sudden moment of clarity. God was not asking me to kiss LeAnne, He
was letting me decide what I wanted. He had given me courage to do it if
I wanted to, but the decision to date her or not was my decision to make.
I realized that even though I loved LeAnne, I wasn’t in love with her at
all. She’s very attractive, but I wasn’t attracted to her. And so,
with all my fear gone I decided not to kiss her. I made the conscious
decision, devoid of fear, to just be LeAnne’s friend and all the stress I felt
regarding our relationship was gone.
A week later I was back in Tucson. I moved out of
Kevin’s house and into a new house with someone I barely knew and I moved into
a new ward. There was a guy in the ward who I knew previously who I had a
huge crush on. When I got home from church I was thinking about how much
I liked this guy and then I thought about how hard I had wanted to like Allison
and LeAnne and just couldn't. Liking girls was such stressful effort, but
liking this boy just seemed like so much fun and didn't take any effort at
all. It was one of those moments when I realized that yes, I really am
gay. I'm attracted to men and not women.
In less than a year two women had really liked me
and wanted to date me and I'd had no interest in them even though they were
ridiculously awesome. And now I suddenly had a crush on a guy and the
fact that I could never date him (or any other guy for that matter) was really frustrating and painful. I began
to wonder if maybe I was doing life all wrong. I’d been reading a lot of
stories about gay Mormons online and listening to a lot of podcast interviews
as well. It seemed like almost every gay Mormon man either married a
woman or left the church (and they often ended up doing both things). I'd spent the last eight years trying to marry
a woman and had never really had a serious girlfriend. Perhaps it was
time to date someone I actually wanted to date. Of course, I could stay
single and celibate for the rest of my life, but from the dozens and dozens of
stories I’d read and listened to, not one of them was able to do that
successfully. Do you know any older, never married men who are active in
the church? I didn’t know of any and so it seemed like I had two
choices. I’d been making one choice for eight years with no success so I
figured it was time to try something new.
At this point I hadn't missed church once in 11
years and I thought maybe it was time to end the streak and take a break.
Almost no one at church knew me so I wouldn't be missed if I didn't
attend. And after a year of living in Tucson I had very few close Mormon
friends. My family lived far away and they wouldn't even have to know I
wasn't going to church. It seemed like the perfect time to step away
because no one would miss me. So I decided that I wouldn’t leave for
good, I’d just take a sabbatical.
Six days after making this decision I was up in
Mesa for Kevin and Allison’s wedding. I walked into the temple thinking
that I probably wouldn’t be back for quite a while. And then something
life changing happened to me. It’s hard
to describe very spiritual experiences, but this is more or less what I
experienced. As I watched two of my best friends kneel at an altar and
make covenants with each other and with God I got this powerful feeling that
this was all real. The promises they were making and receiving were
real. The priesthood power that was sealing them was real. The
potential to be together forever was real. The whole restored gospel felt
real and palpable and I didn't want to give that up. The best way to describe the feeling was that
it felt like heaven. I was in a sacred
place with people that I loved it felt like home. I thought to myself, "Whatever happens,
I always want to be able to come to this place with these people."
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| Allison, Kevin, and I with big smiles on their wedding day |
No one at the wedding knew that I'd been
considering taking a break from church.
When the sealing was done I was feeling pretty overwhelmed. Not only was I extremely happy for Kevin and
Allison, but I had just been reminded that the path I should choose was the one
that would allow me to be in the temple.
So filled with love for my friends and new clarity about life I hugged
Kevin and Allison and told them how much I loved them. It took all the manly testosterone I could
muster to keep myself from bursting into weepy mess because I was feeling so
much love and peace. That night I wrote
in my journal, "They are forever friends and I love them so
much."
And that's the long story about how I almost left
the church and didn't. And this wasn't
the only time. Just over a year ago I once
again contemplated leaving the church, but I'm still here. The reason I share this story is because I
don't want people to get caught up in happy endings. For example, we're so happy when someone gets
married, and then a few years later they get divorced. We're so happy when someone has a baby, and
then they feel stressed and overwhelmed and cry because they don't feel like a
good mother. We're so happy when someone
graduates from college, and then they can't find a job. We're so happy when a man with same-sex
attraction serves a faithful mission, and then eight years later he feels
"hurt, confused, angry, and desolate."
We are all far from our happy endings. Am I a success story? Of course not. Because my story is far from over. I still have a long road ahead of me and so
does the young man Elder Holland mentioned.
But what I want everyone to understand is that I try very hard to live
the gospel. I try really hard. And for the most part I have a very happy
life, but that doesn't mean I don't get mad and sad and wish that things were
different. I want all the straight
Mormons to know that we gay members who try hard to live the gospel have tough
times that we often don't talk about.
Sometimes we leave church and wonder if being bored for three hours on
Sunday is worth giving up our sexuality.
Sometimes we wonder where God is and why He has forsaken us. And sometimes we feel like we've found Him.
I'm in a really good place right now. The last year has been exceptional and one of
the happiest of my life. But I'm no
dummy. I'm sure that I'll have moments
in the future where I get mad and frustrated and just want to leave my religion
behind. But I'm one of the lucky
ones. I'm the lucky one who has so many
people who have my back. Just four weeks
ago I had a really tough day and two members of the stake presidency called me
to make sure I was okay and then sent me emails expressing their love for me. I'm one of the lucky ones. When I told people that I wanted to start a
group for gay Mormons in Tucson so that no one with same-sex attraction had to
feel alone everyone was on my side and wanted to help (well, almost
everyone). And I trust that the love
people have for me isn't conditional to my activity in the church.
As I was listening to Elder Holland's talk I
thought, "This young man has a long road ahead of him, but he's got a
mother who loves him no matter what.
That'll make all the difference."
And so, if when you heard the story of this young man completing his
mission you felt like it was a success story, I hope you remember that the
real success what that this man was loved unconditionally. And I hope you remember my story. That even the gay Mormons who want to stay in
the church face extremely trying moments that they likely won't tell you
about. You're job is to love us.
Allow me to end by being overly cheesy. If you want to know how to help a gay Mormon,
just read the words of this Primary song written by Carol Lynn Pearson (who, by
the way, has done more for gay Mormons than almost anyone).
If you don't walk as most people
do,
Some people walk away from you,
But I won't! I won't!
If you don't talk as most people
do,
Some people talk and laugh at
you,
But I won't! I won't!
I'll walk with you. I'll talk
with you.
That's how I'll show my love for
you.
Jesus walked away from none.
He gave his love to ev'ryone.
So I will! I will!
Jesus blessed all he could see,
Then turned and said, "Come,
follow me."
And I will! I will!
I will! I will!
I'll walk with you. I'll talk
with you.
That's how I'll show my love for you