Technically I was born a third generation Mormon since it was my grandparents who were baptized which incidentally led to both my mother and I to eventually be born into the Church. I say "technically" because for a long time my mother and I were the only ones in our family to actually be active members. I was baptized by my Bishop at 8 years old, received the Priesthood at 12 and served in virtually every Presidency available to young men my age. I graduated Seminary (Mormon youth scripture study program during the high school years) with all the extra awards for full attendance and scripture memorization etc. I served a Full Time 2 year Mission for the Church, Spanish speaking, received a 4 year Diploma in graduating Institute (the college version of Seminary), and served in various leadership and teaching positions. I studied the scriptures so much, and thankfully had a good memory, that whenever others had gospel related questions they usually came to me for the answers.
I'm not trying to brag in any way mind you, instead I want you to understand that there is a myth about Inactive or Former Mormons, that they were less valiant in their efforts to be in the Church and so "fell away". While that may very well be the case for some, it is not true for me and many others. Instead I was often referred to as an example of what an Active Member should be like. I did things pretty much right, and was loved and respected for it. All of that changed almost over night once people started realizing that I was gay (despite my desperate attempts to hide it and pretend it wasn't real).
Going back though, my childhood in the Church started off rough. My mother raised me single handedly (after her divorce she remained single) and being a single mother we received some negative feedback from the local Church members in both their words and actions. Yet we continued unabated in our activity at Church. But when I was about 4 years old the bullying started. Another kid my age took a liking to taunting, making fun of and even physically beating me up at Church, both during regular church hours and during Scouts on week days. This continued roughly till High School when that boy moved away but it had continued despite multiple and repeated attempts to appeal to Church leaders for help to stop the bullying. Despite their professed love for me and my mother they did nothing and though they might not have fully understood what was going on (even though we repeatedly tried to explain) they dismissed the entire problem as "boys being boys". I was scared to go to Primary (little kids' Sunday school) and Scouts, but at Church I had been taught that not going to Church wasn't an option so I suffered through it and the multiple emotional issues that I've endured over the years since.
I would count myself fortunate if bullying by some kids (however harsh) was all I had to endure. Instead I also found myself abused sexually by a man in our congregation who I looked up to dearly and who I thought was "pretty". I was only about 5 years old at the time and I don't remember much of what happened but what I do remember is graphic and of course it has changed my entire emotional well-being for the rest of my life, and it would not be the last time such abuse would find me in my life, despite my mother's heroic attempts to prevent that danger. I didn't speak about what happened for years and even managed to make myself forget (mostly). I want to be clear that I did not "become gay" because of what happened, instead it happened because my abuser recognized that I was gay (like he was, though secretly). I was horrified after that experience and began to think I was evil and dirty because of what had happened (both that something sexual had happened and that it was in fact between two males). Of course I should not have felt ashamed for what happened to me and the doctrines on the Law of Chastity do not apply to the victims of rape or abuse but I didn't understand that yet. Now, I cannot and do not blame the Church for what happened or for most of my emotional distress after. The only blame they share is that I made myself feel worse because of how harsh their teachings are against homosexuality.
As I grew older I kept my Peter Priesthood expectations high and didn't disappoint in many ways, of course I made mistakes, some of which were very particularly "lashing out" due to the bullying and sexual abuse I had endured. In High School I did things that warranted some intervention from my Bishop which in turn led to my seeing an LDS Psychologist (he actually worked for the Church) who spoke at length about my sexual feelings and how if I had enough faith and prayed hard enough and wanted to change those feelings bad enough, God would take them away. I was 15 years old by this time and was reeling from the confusing process of understanding the after affects of puberty, my sexual orientation, self-esteem issues from bullying, abandonment (in this case referring to members who knew about the bullying) and sexual abuse among other issues. Add to this the fact that I had been taught so repeatedly how dirty and corrupt homosexuality was and how offensive it was to God and to other people that I felt hopelessly lost and dirty; I had already begun planning and starting suicide attempts by age 11. I went to the Temple, to Church and I prayed, fasted, studied and then prayed, fasted and studied more begging God to take away the feelings I had for other guys, crying frequently; all with no effect, other than that I sometimes felt a measure of soothing comfort for a short while as a response to my fervent prayers. But my sexuality didn't change, despite the promises of my leaders. When I protested about this I was told that I was simply holding on to my "favorite sins" because I wanted to feel that way. I was also told that if openly acknowledged my feelings and said that "I was gay" I would be denying my Testimony of God and the Prophets and that I would be telling God he wasn't allowed to work that so deeply longed for miracle of change in my heart (to make me straight). To cap things off some of the leaders who discovered my sexual "tendencies", as they were then called, began to be mean to my mother, blaming her for not raising me correctly enough.
Still I trudged on, hoping and desperately looking for that promised change, I even pretended I changed many times trying desperately to make everyone, especially myself, believe it. I went on a mission where I was bullied even more by my fellow missionaries, who spread rumors and berated me with "gay jokes" and insults. I wasn't "out of the closet" and I viciously denied I was gay but that didn't stop the insults. After a while I was moved to a much more isolated area away from most of the other missionaries and stayed on mission outskirts for the rest of my mission; working my heart out for the Church and keeping in touch with only a handful of other missionaries regularly. I did my best to just dive into my work and forget about the hot guy I was teaching, or how formfitting the wet baptismal clothes were, or how how hot my companion was. I had managed to avoid ever having a real girlfriend and ever kissing anyone before my mission which meant I had to get very clever at deflecting questions about who was waiting for me back home or how long till I thought I would be married after finishing my mission. The real problem, I later found out, was that however hard my childhood had been in the Church, my life was about to get much more difficult once I got home.
After my mission I slowly started coming out to my closest friends and eventually others. The responses I got were pretty mixed, both from leaders and friends alike. I'll be totally honest, I did have good experiences with people who were supportive and kind, coming out wasn't a total disaster but it was definitely painful. Many friends who were still kind kept telling me that they knew that "what I felt wasn't real" and that if I "tried hard enough the feelings would go away". I was even encouraged to attend a church sponsored addiction recovery class on multiple occasions. But once I stopped trying change, all hell broke loose. Friends stopped talking to me and pushed me out of their lives completely. After a while I moved to Washington DC where I finally started getting the courage to come out to everyone. My Bishop there was extremely helpful and supportive and walked me through a conversation about what my goals were and how I could say things that could help me reach those goals and still feel safe. He welcomed me completely and I thought that things were really starting to change at Church, I wasn't the only homosexual in my congregation anymore and some had been out of the closet for years. For the first time I started to see a glimmer of hope, but that hope was quickly dashed by people I had thought were my friends. Again, my Church going friends would refuse to speak with me and condemned me saying the same rhetoric that I had faced as a child: that I was going against God, His Prophet and my testimony. I also had mixed results from the friends who stayed by my side. Some of them were kind but wouldn't hardly let me talk about what I was going through or feeling, the whole subject was taboo to them and I felt so pressured and afraid that I said the wrong thing I might not be able to keep them as friends. Others constantly wanted to argue with me over the finer points of who was right or wrong and I was placed in the position of always having to defend myself and explain why I was gay and how it affected my relationship with God and the Church. Even though those friends were mostly well-meaning I was always living on the edge of my seat wondering if they were going to abandon me too if I didn't say or think the right thing.
In addition to what my "friends" were saying, the Church itself and most specifically the Apostles made various statements that hurt extremely. My suicidal tendencies more than tripled from my youth and teenage years and I was so dangerously close to actually committing suicide that I had to fight with every breath just to stop myself from walking out in front of the incoming subway train, among other options. That is definitely a difficult time to talk about, but also it's a hard time to remember since so much has now become a blur. I did seek emergency medical treatment for my suicidal tendencies and acute depression but I also started to slow down in my Church attendance, which actually has helped. You see there was more going on than just people refusing to speak with me and complaining about me not being a good person (as if that wasn't bad enough). My Church leaders frequently spoke (and quotes were frequently passed around) about how gays were enemies of God and were trying to destroy the family. I'll use a different post to go in detail about those quotes so that I don't make this already super long post into a book.... But those comments and statements did a real number on me emotionally. Thanks to my depression I eventually needed to move back home to Florida, where things actually got worse with the Church and it's members.
Back in Florida I started attending the new student or "YSA" (young single adult) congregation because there were so many bad memories in my old congregation that I felt highly uncomfortable and even unwanted. At first things went alright but the more I talked about my sexuality the more unfriendly things got. I found out about a guy who had been baptized about a year earlier, and was gay, but had since stopped coming to Church because several of the members had been openly discussing how they wanted all gays to be rounded up, dumped on some random far away island so they could eventually die and take homosexuality to the grave with them. Another girl at Church tried to force me to date this girl who I was friends with at the time despite already knowing that I was gay. When I protested to dating any girl she became very visibly angry at me and complained that I was "Mormon" and knew better than to give in and not marry a girl anyways. I've also been called a "drug addict" and compared to a "sociopath" and "psychopath" among other insults by very active and even prestigious Church members. I was openly attacked on Facebook and in person by people who I thought cared about me, telling me how dirty I was, claiming that I didn't have a testimony and was actively fighting against God. Some of these people had been individuals and leaders I had looked to as father figures or role models, some of whom I had been quite close to in the past. Others began publicly commenting that no gay was capable of being a good parent because we would do irreparable harm to our children.
I also found out about certain Church policies that directly hurt me emotionally and spiritually. For example the Church often compares gays to child molesters in various policies. From the pulpit of General Conference I was also told that I'm a direct counterfeit to everything coming from God. I witnessed gay-friendly organizations like Affirmation (who function primarily as support groups) being harshly labelled as "apostate groups" by various levels of Church leadership ("apostasy" is basically the Mormon word for the old Catholic sin of "heresy"). I used to be a leader in one of these organizations myself and was only spared from worthiness interviews, due to my involvement, because one of my Church leaders was familiar with the organization Mormon's Building Bridges and had a series of educational and touching experiences with gay friends in the past. Despite that saving grace Church members were barred from participating in my organization's efforts in any organized or congregational way because the Church did not approve of the organization as a whole and disagreed with the organization on certain points. Yet I watched as the LDS Church hosted the World Congress of Families with an Apostle keynote speaker, a performance by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and a series of prominent LDS bloggers and popular musicians forming the entire program for the organization that openly declares one of its primary goals to be the criminalization of homosexuality worldwide and who has also refused to sanction (and even has openly protested) anti-harassment and anti-violence laws designed to protect gays in other nations, which is something I'll get into in another post.
I listened as another Apostle said it was ok to publicly disassociate with your gay children if they are in a relationship or refusing to change. I listened as yet another Apostle state that hitting a gay person for "making a pass" was acceptable and even necessary at times (granted it is an old statement but it is one that is still widely circulated and applauded). I watched as Apostles celebrated the recent allowance of civil rights for LGBT people in Utah were protected in matters of housing and employment, only to have my happiness crushed by statements by those same Apostles claiming the desire to discriminate in medicine and business customers. I've grown up being shown that I am hated and that other Church members are disgusted with the very idea that people like me exist. I've grown up dreading going to Church. I've grown up seeing so very little of the "love" that is sometimes referred to from the pulpits of General Conference and in some Church publications.
I've often been told that the Church and it's members hold no ill-will towards gays, and I desperately wish that to be true, but it is not what I have found or experienced in my life. I have felt love and acceptance from some individuals but each time they too had to fight against the norm in order to show me the same courteous friendship they gave to everyone else. But by and large, most of my interactions have been negative and hurtful. The truth of the matter is that Love is like Faith; it cannot be just spoken and not demonstrated.
There are a large number of other insults and negative experiences I've had over the years and I've only barely scratched the surface of what has happened to me inside the Church. There have been other major issues that have directly affected my view of the "perfectness" of the Church and how it is run though I'm not at liberty to discuss those experiences.
I do believe in the First Vision and in the Book of Mormon. And I firmly believe that the Book of Mormon was written for our day, thanks to that belief I have to point out that the most frequent warning in that book is of the wickedness found inside the Church and even among its leaders, wickedness that puts "stumblingblocks" in the paths of others. I'm not the kind of person to just listen to hearsay, every single one of my complaints and hurts have come directly from the words of the Apostles and from personal experiences with other members (as well as some personal experiences from my friends). I don't go looking to other sources outside of the Church for information so you cannot say that I am simply being influenced by outside individuals or thoughts that pervert the teachings of the leadership of the Church. I am listening to these leaders directly and to their words and comparing them to the Gospel I was originally taught through them. I'm not being pulled away from the Church because of outside pressures, I am being pushed away from the inside; despite how hard I've tried to remain active and good.
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