Dissection

Matt here.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a post about the weakness inherent in using "God wouldn't . . . " as justification; it seems there's rather little that God wouldn't. Today I want to explore a thing that Ditto brought up in a post of his own: Would God send some percentage of his children to Earth pre-damned? He says no. I say no too! It seems we've found a thing that God actually wouldn't, unless I'm seriously misunderstanding things, do. The conclusions we draw from that base are wildly different, though, and of course I think mine make more sense, so rather than unload in the poor man's comment section, I wrote a post.

Ditto starts out with a lovely scripture, Moses 1:39. I'm not convinced that the LDS cannon as a whole is inspired (large swaths of the D&C come to mind), but this particular scripture has worked its way into my personal theology. "This is my work and my glory," God says, "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." I love that. A vision of eternity where God is on our side, where what's best for us—what helps us become eternally alive—is what he's all about. Love it. So when Ditto concludes that God "does nothing to keep us from progressing to eternal life," I agree with that. God's whole point is to bring as many of us up to his level as possible. We've found a thing God would not do. (Unless it were necessary to damn one to bring up more than one? After all, the scripture talks about the immortality and eternal life of man as a group, not of each individual man . . . But that's a thought for another day.)

Soon after that, though, Ditto's argument makes a few assumptions that I don't think are reasonable. He says "The Lord created every one of us. He created every aspect of our very being. And thus he created me and all his LGBT children with homosexual 'tendencies.'" Coming at this from a Mormon perspective (because let's face it, somewhere not so deep inside that's what I still mostly am), that doesn't hold water. Mormonism says clearly that God did not create our spirits, or "intelligences"; those have always existed (Abraham 3:18). They will always exist. If homosexuality is part of one's spirit, as many people (but not the Church) believe, then it's not something God makes, and if you claim that God made you gay, then you can't be referring to your spirit.

Given the uncreated nature of the spirit, we would need to refine Ditto's statement to something like this: "The Lord created our bodies. He created every aspect of our bodies. And thus he created me and all his LGBT children with homosexual 'tendencies.'"

That is a bit more solid, but it still needs clarification. Science in general holds that homosexuality is the result of a combination of environment and genetic factors. (The Church has no opinion on that.) I think twin studies are the most interesting and bluntly informative ones—the high correlation between gay twins shows that there's certainly some genetic component, but the fact that the incidence is far below 100 percent shows that there are other factors involved too. If we accept science's working conclusion, it's entirely possible for God to create a body with the genetic portions of same-sex attraction without actually creating a 'gay body.' The body doesn't become gay until after the environmental factors jump in there, which are the result of human agency, not God. Or, I suppose you could blame those on God too, but if you do that, why not blame everything on God?

Now, an omniscient God like the God of Mormonism would know that the body would eventually become gay, but providing the circumstances in which a thing can happen and making a thing happen aren't the same. The fact that people are gay is not proof that God created them that way.

Ditto continues: "Heavenly Father creates perfection. He did not accidentally create me gay or forget to turn on my 'I like girls' switch. No, he created me perfectly the way he intended, one of his male children who will one day love another perfectly created male child of his." There are more problems here. First, God does not create perfection. The purpose of life (according to Mormons) is to become perfect, a task which wouldn't be necessary were we created that way. Utter ignorance is perfect? Cleft palates? Deafness? No. God doesn't create perfection. However, he also doesn't create people who are unperfectable.

Second, I don't think anyone in Mormondom is saying that homosexuality is an accident, or due to divine forgetfulness. Those things are impossible with an omniscient God.

Third, it doesn't follow that just because God created us or allowed us to become attracted to our own sex he intended us to love (in the sexytimes sense) another man or another person, and every single person should know that. Why? Take the argument apart. "Because X is the way things are, X is the way God wants it to be."

Yes, that's right—it's the same argument used by the South for keeping slavery and by the Christians for keeping gays from marrying each other and by men for keeping women from voting. Or working. Or owning property.

This is a logically bankrupt argument that always fails, and it is not worthy of us.

Moving on. "Because he created me [gay] and wants nothing more than for me to be happy and obtain salvation and eternal life, how could he then tell me, 'if you choose [sexytimes], you will not be able to obtain eternal life.'" Does the Church say God says "if you choose [sexytimes], you will not be able to obtain eternal life"?

No, the Church doesn't say that, and if you know of a place where it does, please share. It does say some pretty harsh things, but it doesn't say sexual sin disqualifies you from eternal life. To quote the missionary I asked on mormon.org, "Repentance is available to all. That shouldn't be taken cavalierly; repentance is never easy and can take years of consistent effort before forgiveness is given. But sexual sins, as far as I am aware, if repented of fully, will not keep one out of the celestial kingdom." We also have Mosiah 26:30, which plainly says "As often as my people repent will I forgive them their trespasses against me," and also the whole lovely chapter of Alma 42, which talks about how justice is balanced with mercy. Mormon doctrine is pretty clear about everything except murder itself--not its next door neighbor—being repentable, if you choose to repent of it.

So when Ditto continues to say "No, Heavenly Father would not do anything of the sort," I agree insofar as he means God would not do anything that would impede his work and his glory. However, I'm not convinced that making or allowing people to be gay and commanding them not to have gay sexytimes would be an impediment. I see no reason why God might not do exactly that, especially since, as Mormons believe,  the laws of right and wrong are not malleable. If gay sex is inherently wrong and gettin' it on is inherently an impediment to God's work, how could he not command us to avoid it?

***
Good to review: Bill Bradshaw on nature/nurture and Bill Bradshaw on Mormon Stories
Funny, but crude, webcomic. (This one I linked to isn't particularly crude, though, and I relate.)

Show and Tell

Matt here.

I'm back in the United States, safe, sound, and unemployed. We'll see how long I stay that way.

For today's post, I offer you a perspective and discussion outside our normal ken, brought to my attention by  Gay BYU Student Blogger, who really needs to come up with a shorter handle.

Here is the first post, which is about supporting gay marriage and answering the temple interview questions. GBYUSB comments a couple of times.

Here is the second post, in which the author clarifies many things. (I know the feeling.) Also in this post, GBYUSB exchanges a few more comments with the author and I pop in toward the end with comments that are quite long and may be the kernels of several future posts. Fun times.

If you join the conversation over there, please be nice. Please don't be whiny or illogical or rude. I think I kinda like this guy, although I disagree with him about stuff.

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For your viewing pleasure: Animals About to Become Dinner.

The Point of It All

Matt here.

Some time ago I wrote a post about the phrase “I love you, but . . . ” and then a post about the hypocrisy of gay people denying other people’s feelings, and then a post about the importance of making people feel loved. It’s time to finish the series with today’s post, the fourth and last, about why I think all this is worth so many words.

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This is my dad:

Actually, he's clean shaven now. And not Japanese.

Dad's a retired military officer and an active member of his local ward. Yesterday, he and I spent the day in Kyoto with Adam, the last man I dated before moving out here. Dad knows Adam was my boyfriend.

I wouldn’t have believed that this could be a good thing when I first came out and Dad was talking to me about hormone therapy to ‘fix my problem,’ but we had a blast.

This is my mom:

Not really. My mom would be smiling.

She married Dad at nineteen, raised five excellent children (I’m number four), and is now one of the masterminds behind her ward’s Relief Society.

When I was in college she consistently spoke about me finding the right girl someday; last year she blew my mind by casually mentioning that I should “get a man who sings.” She was not referring to party entertainment.

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The point of this series is that when I first came out, my parents loved me but believed homosexuality was chosen sin. I had a choice in how to react to that. I could have insisted that their beliefs meant they didn’t really love me, or that if they really loved me they would change their beliefs. I could have bawled that it was the LDS church or me. I could have started dating right away and rubbed my orientation in their faces, ignoring how it would hurt them.

I did not do these things. I can’t say for sure how my life would be different if I had, but I seriously doubt I would have the quality relationship with my parents that I have now. Instead, I trusted that they did, indeed, love me. I respected that they had lived three-plus times as long as me and might know something I didn’t, and I came out slowly, in stages, as gently as I could.

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Let me be clear: I am not saying that people should be given a green light for ass-hattery when they say “I love you, but . . .” I am not saying that there are no circumstances in which delicacy and respect for others’ feelings should be dropped.

I am saying that the “but” in “I love you, but [thing]” does not automatically negate the love. I am saying that when someone says they love you, there is no valid way to disprove them. I am saying that loving someone is often meaningless if you don’t make them feel loved.

I’m saying that it is best to not give people me-or-your-beliefs ultimatums.

I’m saying that eventually, after panicky gay adolescence, we can afford to be generous toward people who believe differently. Even when our rights are being voted on.

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Maybe especially when our rights are being voted on: This article from The Atlantic tells the fascinating story of last year’s four marriage equality wins. The secret is pretty simple. We gave up on pointing out the factual inaccuracies of anti-gay rhetoric and focused on making people feel our love for each other.

There are many ways to stand up for ourselves, and some are more effective than others.

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In the coming years, I hope to see gay marriage legalized in all fifty states. I hope to see fewer gay kids on the streets, fewer suicides, less bullying. At the same time, I feel the need to offer a counterpoint to the chorus of voices like Clyde’s, which seem to me to be saying that we have no power; that there’s nothing we can do; that we are victims. That our behavior, our attitudes, our beliefs are beyond reproach, and it’s up to Them to fix this mess.

I firmly believe that insisting They clean up the mess alone is a strategy intoxicated with righteous indignation, and it is a strategy that will keep the mess worse and leave it longer than it would be if we stopped thinking of ourselves as victims and did what we could.

I will not insist that "negotiations" consist solely of me getting my way, now--that is what children do.

I will not be controlled by indignation that is so there, even when stupid arguments are invoked.

The reason is simple: People who "love us, but . . ." are not enemies, and I am not a victim.

Feeling Love Is Where It's At

Some people have a problem with the phrase “I love you, but [any non-gay-affirming thing].” Not me! This is the third in a series of (probably) four posts that examines why I think that and what I think we should be talking about instead.

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Matt here. In the second post, I established that you can’t prove or disprove what a person says they feel. A person’s feelings exist in their self, and there is no guaranteed behavior that correlates either with love or lack of love--and if there were, it would not be saying “I love you, but.”

Now, I’m not particularly Christian these days, but since Clyde thought the words of Christ were pertinent, I’ll point out that in all the words of Christ, he never made a statement about making people feel loved. He never said “Thou shalt make thy neighbor feel loved as thyself,” he simply said “Thou shalt love thy neighbor.” He never said “Make your enemies feel loved,” he just said “Love your enemies.” Things that make us feel loved tend to be associated with people who claim to love us--but the association isn’t intrinsic.“Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”; whether they know about it or not, the love is there. Or, dying for your friend might be a sign that you loved them, but it might also be a sign that you felt reeeeeeally guilty for cheating on him with his husband.

Even though Jesus didn’t talk about it, making people feel loved is also important because it’s the measure we use (rightly or wrongly) to assess how much we are loved, and we use that information to make decisions in our day-to-day life. Whether we feel loved influences who we spend our time with, what advice we listen to, and the quality of our life, among other things. Most importantly, feeling loved opens us up and makes it possible to love others and make other people feel loved. In the end, taking people to task for not loving is something only God can do--but imagine a parable of the talents, where the talents are love. I really doubt that God will be happy with a servant who loves, but doesn’t make that love felt and multiplied.

The idea that love and feeling loved are the same can also be problematic because many people, like Misty, put the burden of feeling loved on the feeler. “If you don’t feel loved,” they say, “that’s your fault. The love is there.” That this is a common perspective in Christian populations shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, since that’s the way their worldview accounts for the concept of a perfectly loving God and a population that doesn’t feel perfectly loved. Don’t feel loved? You must be doing something wrong. Read your scriptures more. As John Bytheway put it in one of the many, many cassette tape talks I listened to over and over on the annual family roadtrip from California to Utah, “If you don’t feel as close to God today as you did yesterday, who moved?” But this idea can’t function once we acknowledge that the act of loving is itself unfeelable. “I feel loved = I am loved” can be a useful shorthand, but it’s not necessarily true.

In reality, when we feel loved, it’s because for whatever reason (and sometimes no reason at all) we believe, really believe, heart and mind, that someone loves us. It might be enough for them to say “I love you.” It might be enough for them to take us out to dinner, or play videogames with us, or hold us when we need to be held. There are a million modes of making people feel loved, but none of them work if we don’t believe they’re sincere. We can’t believe they’re sincere unless we trust them.

Partly, that’s on us; if we are self-centered, uncharitable, or generally slow to trust, we’ll probably miss or disregard sincere efforts to make us feel loved. Partly, though, that’s on the lover. Words and actions can easily undermine our willingness to trust and thus our ability to feel loved. It takes a massively unrealistic amount of openness, vulnerability, and depending on the circumstances naivete to feel loved while at dinner with the guy who slept with your husband last week (though it’s still possible). If you betray my trust, you can’t very well fault me for not trusting you.

There’s a third aspect, too:  Feeling loved by someone who has no idea who we are doesn’t mean much compared to the love of someone who knows us well. In other words, we have to trust that the lover is qualified to honestly love us before we can really feel loved by them. If they don’t know us, don’t know what’s important to us or why, what we think about or how, how can we believe they know who we are? If they don’t know who we are, how can we feel loved by them?

In my comment on her post, I allowed that perhaps Misty did, in fact, love me, but I also pointed out that I didn’t feel that love. I was open to feeling love, and I could even see how, from her perspective, her perspective was the best, most love-packed response possible. What I couldn’t see was how she was qualified to say she loved me. She obviously doesn’t know me (though I was disheartened to see a lady from my parents' ward among her commenters), her knowledge about homosexuality and AIDS is tiny and selective, and her post in general was hugely, hubristically patronizing. She said she loved gay people, but is it any wonder that that wasn’t enough, in the face of everything else, to make me feel loved?

So, to wrap up: Loving still doesn’t equal feeling loved; according to the New Testament, the important thing is loving; even so, making people feel loved is important too because that’s how love spreads; we don’t feel loved unless we are open to feeling love, we experience words or actions that we interpret as signs of love, and we trust that the lover is qualified to love us.

Next week, I want to talk about why any of this matters.

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Tangential and wonderful: Mouthwatering phrases of Neruda + cats.

Tangential and Star Trek: Picard gets sassy.

Righteous Indignation Doesn't Excuse Hypocrisy.

Some people have a problem with the phrase “I love you, but [any non-gay-affirming thing].” Not only do I not have a problem with that sort of phrase, I think that having a problem with it shows a lack of empathy. My next few posts will examine why I think that.

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I established last week that “but” does not generally negate what comes before. When people say they love LGBT people and then say “but,” they are in fact saying (1) that they love us, and also (2) some other thing that contrasts with that love. However, even though no one has shown any hole in the reasoning from my last post, it seems pretty evident from the responses to Clive (and those who’ve preceded him) that, reasoning aside, quite a few people think it’s impossible to say “I love you” and “I don’t accept your lifestyle” and mean both.

I thought about why this might be, and I think I know. And as we leap into the meat of things, a question: is it really a question of being loved, or is it a question of feeling loved?

Because “but” can, certainly, be used to make one clause negate the other. It’s raining, but it’s clear. It’s 110 degrees, but it’s cool. I love you, but I don’t love you. The thing about these sentences is, they’re nonsense statements. It can’t be both raining and clear, and it can’t be both 110 degrees and cool, and a person can’t both love and not love you, because the meaning of the two clauses are opposites on the same scale, whether weather conditions, temperature, or degree of love, and (outside quantum things, I guess?) we can’t have a condition from one end of the scale and another from the opposite end of the same scale at the same time.

This is why so many gay people find “I love you, but I don’t support your lifestyle” -type statements so frustrating: they are clumping “support for lifestyle” onto the continuum of love. As a result, “I don’t support your lifestyle” is synonymous with “I don’t love you,” and obviously “I love you, but I don’t love you” is crazy making. In their minds, loving someone without supporting their lifestyle is as nonsensical as claiming it’s both raining and clear. The problem with this is that accepting someone’s lifestyle is on a completely separate scale from loving that person. You can love a son away at college without loving his lifestyle, which burns through your money. You can love a friend who cheats on her husband again and again, even though he’s your friend too. You can also support a lifestyle without loving the liver, as we all do for (almost) every elected official. “I don’t support your lifestyle” is not synonymous with “I don’t love you.”

But the homeless kids!

I’m not a heartless bastard.

However, Clive said this: “Rather than try to understand, support, and accept these young men for the sons of God that they are, their fathers and mothers demanded conformity as a pre-requisite for granting parental love.” This as an unjustifiable claim. Of course parents are wrong to put their children on the streets. Some of the demands Clive attributed to them were stupid ("I love you and want you to stay, but you can't keep thinking you have same sex attraction"), and some were reasonable ("I love you and feel your pain, but you better not bring your gay friends into our home"), but not a single one is a sign that those parents don’t love their children.

This was impressed on me by Misty, the same Misty Clive mentioned. In fact, my comment on her post and her response come just after Clive’s comment. If you read her post, brace yourself. It’s awful. It’s offensive. It’s infuriating. Yet in it, Misty is adamant about the fact that she loves gay people. I wracked my brain over how I could prove her wrong, and I came up with . . . nothing. I can’t prove that her mother heart isn’t full to bursting with love for the gays, just as you can’t prove that those parents who kick their children out don’t also love them, because it’s impossible to prove that a person doesn’t feel what they say they feel.

This should be a very familiar concept to gay Mormons, because so many of us have been in this situation with the roles reversed. How many times have you heard that gay love isn’t real love? “I love my wife, but what you have with yours? That’s just lust.” Though this happens less as the years go on, it still happens all the time: people try to tell us what we feel, and we dismiss them as ignorant patronizing hicks who literally don’t know what they’re talking about. How can we possibly justify using the same (failed, faulty, stupid) tactic on people who say I-love-you-but?

We can’t. Every time we do, we leave ourselves open to charges of hypocrisy.

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Tangential: "The underlying issue is that these parents do not or cannot accept the fact that their sons are homosexual males, no more afflicted than any of their heterosexual children. They believe that in the end, their SSA-behaving sons have a choice."--Clyde, same post I linked to in the middle

I shake my head in wonder. We don't have a choice? You sure 'bout that?

Now, whether it's ever, ever, ethical to pressure or guilt someone into "choosing" a life they don't want, that's a different question.

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Related:

“If language is not correct then what is said is not what is meant. If what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done remains undone. If this remains undone, then morals and acts deteriorate. If morals and acts deteriorate, justice will go astray. If justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence, there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything."--Confucius in The Power of Words

"Aristotle is only warming up to his main theme, which is the study of sentences that assert or deny something . . . He says that one statement is contradictory of another if it is an exact negation of it, and, as he points out, it's a matter of some subtlety to determine this. For instance, the contradictory of 'all humans are white' is not 'all humans are not white,' but rather 'some human is not white.'"--Peter Adamson in The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Episode 35

“Offence-takers win by society’s choice of appeasement as its response to their unreasonable demands and incessant agitation. The agitators will generally present themselves as people of peace. They have no desire to start a culture war. All that society has to do is to accede to their – perfectly reasonable! – demands and peace will prevail. . . . Offence-takers consistently lament the belligerence and intractability of their opponents.” --Alastair Roberts in On Triggering and the Triggered, Part 4

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There’s no call for butchering innocent conjunctions and denying the feelings of our straight family. Leave the hypocrisy, the faulty logic, and the victim cards to the small-minded Christians. We don't need those things to win, and in fact, they're only bogging us down.

Next week I’ll explore the concept and consequences of feeling love without making that love felt.

Contrast Isn't Negation.

Dear readers, this is a post I’ve wanted to write for a while. At first I wanted to write it because I’m Right And He’s Wrong, and for a while after that I wanted to write it because He’s Giving Us Gays A Bad Reputation, and then I forgot about it. And then I remembered, and I found that I didn’t really care like I did before. I still think I’m right and I still think what I’ll take issue with today gives us gays a bad name, but that doesn’t seem like the big deal it did when it was fresh. I hope that means I can keep from stepping on toes, but if I can’t, well, if you care enough to comment, I hope you can comment with something substantive.

Without further ado:

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“I love you, but . . . "

Some gays hate to hear this phrase. Hate it. When they hear it they go blind with rage. They are offended, often loudly, and they lecture the person who said it. If they don’t lecture in the moment, there’s a good chance they will lecture later, in writing, through Facebook or email or a blog. If they don’t do that, they’ll just let the rage boil in their spleen.

Today I want to talk about Clive’s discussion about this phrase. Clive, and many others in this community, have a problem with the phrase “I love you, but [any non-gay-affirming thing].” Not only do I not have a problem with that phrase, I think that having a problem with it shows a lack of empathy. My next few posts will examine why I think that by looking at at Clive’s words.

First: “But” is as foul as “any of the four letter words that I try sometimes unsuccessfully to avoid.” Points off right out the gate for outrageous hyperbole. You think “but” is as foul as “shit,” “fuck,” or “cunt”? Maybe you avoid different words than I do.

Second: “When I was young, I learned something that has stayed with me my entire life ... a little insight into English grammar. I learned that when we use ‘but’ in a sentence, we in fact generally negate most of what we have said before the ‘but’.”

***

Let’s test this!

“He would have protested but he was afraid”

Negation? No. Exception.

“There is no doubt but he won”

Negation? No. It’s a synonym for “that.”

“It never rains but it pours”

Negation? No. Requirement.

“No sooner started but it stopped”

Negation? No. It’s a synonym for “than.”

“he was called but he did not answer”

Negation? No. Contrast.

“not peace but a sword”

Contrast.

“poor but proud”

Contrast.

***

"But" does many things, but to say that it generally negates is just not true. Back when Clive’s post was fresh, I mentioned this in a comment, and though three people responded to that comment, no one disputed the point—they just considered it inconsequential. I got very frustrated then, because how can the fact that the underlying assumption of the series is obviously faulty be inconsequential?

Clive responded by telling me that “The point of this series is to help those who are Mormon and really want to build bridges to the gay community understand that communication for communication’s sake is worse than meaningless. If Mormons want to build bridges, they have to be willing to actually open their hearts, reach out, and show a little understanding on OUR terms, not theirs. That’s what reaching out is all about . . . Moving from a safe space to the place where you feel a little discomfort.”

I have all sorts of problems with that (next week we’ll explore them!) but for now I just want to say that if you get to your conclusion via faulty reasoning, then you leave your conclusion wide open to claims that it is faulty as well.

Suppose that some Mormons who really want to build bridges to the gay community read this. Perhaps they, like me, will notice right from the start that something is amiss and so will be skeptical of everything else in the post, right up to not believing the series’ conclusion, not necessarily because it’s a bad conclusion, but because they don’t trust the source. Or perhaps they’ll agree with the argument right up until the conclusion, which challenges them in uncomfortable ways—then they back up until they find this flaw and say “Ah ha! I knew it. The foundation is wrong, so the conclusion is wrong, so I don’t have to change.”

In the end, the people who will agree with Clive after reading the “I love you, but . . . “ are the same people who agreed with him before, but worse: all of those people are now more strongly confirmed in their belief. In their minds they’ve just experienced a well-thought out argument supporting their beliefs, despite the fact that the argument really supported nothing at all, because it was based on faulty assumption. Whatever the intended point of the series is, the result is that no hearts or minds are won and everyone is just convinced more strongly that they are right.

Now. Next week I’ll talk about the circumstance in which “but” statements actually are negation markers and what that means to this argument (hint: It includes the word “hypocrisy”).

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In case you’re not yet convinced that that thing Clive learned in grammar school has been corrupted to suit the speech he wanted to give, here is the definition M-W gives for ESL learners (all examples in this post are taken from m-w.com, the editors’ preferred dictionary!): 

1 — used to introduce a statement that adds something to a previous statement and usually contrasts with it in some way 

• I don't know her, but my husband does. 
• He wants to go to the movies, but I want to go to the museum. 
• He plans to visit Boston and Chicago, but not New York. 
• The book is not a biography at all but (instead is) a fictional account. 
• It's not the music I don't like but (rather) the band themselves. 
• She got the promotion not by luck but by hard work. 
• The fighting has been going on for years. But to really understand the current situation, you have to look at the history of the region. 
• She called his name, but he did not answer. 
• He fell but (he) wasn't hurt/injured. 
• I told him to stay, but he refused to. 
• It might have been raining, but it was still a nice wedding. 
• I'd love to come to the party, but [=however] I'll be away that weekend. 
• I'm sorry, but I won't be able to help you. 
• The dress is quite plain but (it's) pretty. 
• They were polite, but not really friendly. 
• Not only was it quite cold on our trip, but it rained the whole time too. 
• I can't do it—but neither can you.

Look at all that contrast.