Conviction

Matt here.

I went back to Sacramento over the weekend to visit my family, and I had a great time. If I were to give colors to the things that happened, they were mostly yellow and blue and white, with one purple exception.

My parents and I were having a little picnic, and it was gorgeous. I was telling them about life and my recent dates and then we got to talking about my younger brother. When my dad got up to throw some stuff away, Mom talked about a conversation she'd had with the little one. (The little one is 20, but I'll persist in calling him the little one until . . . well, probably always.) The little one seems to be spinning his wheels and not being too concerned about it, or anything. A while back Mom had a sitdown with him and said that she felt his life wouldn't turn around until he started getting back into the church for himself instead of going as a condition of living at home.

Predictably, he brought up the "But Matthew" defense: Matthew doesn't have anything to do with the church anymore and look at him! He's doing great.

Mom's counterattack surprised me. She pointed out that although I'm a-Mormon now, I was quite into the church until I was, I dunno, eighteen or so. She said she'd never seen someone with such a strong testimony, and if I weren't into dudes, I'd still have that testimony now.

When she told me this, I responded with a "hm," and moved the conversation along. (Because how awkward, right?) It made me think of my youth in the church, though, like I haven't in a long time.

Coming from a wholly Mormon family and being homeschooled through junior high and high school, I didn't know anything but Mormonism. By nature and nurture I was quiet, thoughtful, good natured, and--above all--earnest. In fact, while I don't know if I had "a testimony," when I was a younger man I was full to bursting with faith and trust and self loathing. I can see how that might come across as a testimony if you call the last bit "humility." Being as well in touch with the loathing as I was, my first instinct was to judge my mom and to be hurt that she misunderstood my childhood so thoroughly.

My second thought was, what if she's right? What if the loathing is just my current interpretation of what actually was humility or . . . something. Or what if the loathing was incidental to the earnest faith and trust, which are the actual components of testimony? I guess you could see it that way and not be horribly mistaken and out of touch. In that sense, sure, I had a phenomenal testimony.

What I worry about with that interpretation (or whatever variant of it that my mom has) is that it could easily be twisted into a way to discredit me, my thinking, and the person I am now. It could be quite the tool for patronizing: "Well, you _would_ think that (you're into dudes!) but that's okay, it's not your fault, you knew what was right before your struggle corrupted you. Run along now and let the straight people talk."

I don't know if this is a widely held attitude or not, but it frightens me. I feel strong and confident most of the time, but then things like this happen and I realize that there really are a lot of ways to see the world, and not all of them play nice.

I feel warm and bubbly, like a hot tub.

Matt here.

After a two week whirlwind of applications and travel, I'm installed in a house in Berkeley, California. I love it here. I fell in love with the city while I was here doing my first publishing internship, and coming back is delightful. There are flowers everywhere, like I remembered, and it's cool in June. The buildings are all old and, well, crappy, but in the right frame of mind "crappy" becomes "filled with character," and I have the right frame of mind these days.

My parents came to help me drop off my couple-few boxes of stuff and take a look around, and they happened to meet one of my roommates. There are two of them, friends I met shortly after graduating, gay guys who got together soon after I met them. One has LDS history, the other doesn't. My mom is very pleased with the arrangement because apparently the missionaries stop by for dinner every few weeks and give a little lesson, and she hopes I'll come back to church someday. Long odds on that, but I'm happy that she's happy with my friends and what I'm doing.

I'm certainly happy with it all. I love that I'm at a point in my life where I have solid relationships with people who've known me post-BYU. My history is slowly flaking away like dried mud. Or . . . dandruff. Or something. It feels inexpressibly good to know these people who didn't know me when I was in denial or depression. It makes all that negativity seem further in the past. It makes my current happiness seem more effulgent.

The next few months will be interesting. I set up a Grindr account the other day, and my roommates and I had fun going through and deciding who to block right off the bat. From that interesting service, I already have a couple of coffee dates. And in the past few days I walked down to the university and found an armful of places I want to go, including a gay and lesbian center; I went to an old movie night at a local theater, and after that to another gay couple's apartment for wine and witty, innuendo-laden conversation; and I had the first of an unknown number of dinners with the missionaries. I had my first day of nonprofit interning, and submitted the last papers for my Navy officer application. (Forgot about that, didn't you. So did my recruiter.)

My life right now is full of movement and laughter and introspection and light. Hope. I hope yours is similarly outfitted.

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

Loving Yourself

Late night post again. I really should just write these the night before and then schedule them to be published in the morning, but how much forethought does that require? A lot. Too much for me. And so here is your 11 pm post again.

I was in a group therapy session for anxiety on Friday and at the end of our two hours we were doing relaxation exercises. We were supposed to visualize a relaxing place, and then visualize ourselves into it, but I couldn't think of anything. Every pretty place I could conjure had some memory of my family associated with it, so visualizing them was just making me more and more panicky. Obviously, the anxiety therapy wasn't working.

Then I remembered a beach where I spent a lot of time with my family when I was little, and visualized myself on the beach as a little kid. I was this small, stringy girl with hair so blonde it looked bleached. I had a perpetual smile and was covered in bruises and scrapes from running around and crashing into things and falling down, like most kids. I could be loud and extroverted with my family, but was quiet and shy at school, and felt responsible for absolutely everything (kind of like the little girl and the butterfly effect in Beasts of the Southern Wild) (and wait, I still feel that way) (even though she learned the valuable lesson that she doesn't directly cause every bad thing in the world, and is a lovely, good person even though bad things have happened to her) (end parenthesis). Back to the therapy session--we were then supposed to cover ourselves with something symbolizing peace. I thought of blue paint. I pictured adult me sitting down in the sand and covering smiley, hyper, white blonde-haired, sunburned young me with deep blue paint. And then I smiled and ran all over the beach getting drops of blue paint on everything.

I've learned that sometimes it helps to picture yourself as a little kid. As adults, we tend to blame ourselves for things. We feel okay criticizing and hating ourselves. But it's hard to hate a little kid. Or, at least, it should be. And I've found that seeing myself as a kid made me want to be less hard on myself.

Part of this is because my parents keep telling me how much I've changed. A favorite expression of theirs for a while was that I'd become a robot who had replaced their daughter. I tried to talk to my dad about this over Christmas break. I only stayed at home for three days, and when he was driving me around in a blizzard so I could run errands, I tried to tell him how uncomfortable I'd been feeling at his house, that I'd cried myself to sleep every night, that I was feeling highly suicidal, that I'd had to leave the house on Christmas night and go to my boyfriend's, where I spent several hours crying because Christmas was so miserable. I told him that I felt incredibly anxious whenever I went home, even though everyone was very nice to my face, and his response was, "Why do you feel that way? We've been so nice to you and aren't trying to make you feel uncomfortable. We want you to be comfortable at home." And I said I was grateful that they'd been nice to me and that it wasn't necessarily the things they did that made me anxious. It was more the way I am. I tried to remind him of how I'd been as a kid--I would wake him up crying because I was so scared our house was going to catch on fire and he'd have to come tell me that our house had smoke detectors, that we'd call the fire department, and that everything would be okay. In the home videos we watched on Christmas, I was the awkward older sister lingering in the background cleaning up wrapping paper from my brother's birthday party and following the baby around to make sure she was happy. I was telling him that nothing had changed in my personality-wise, and that I just wanted everyone to be comfortable and happy. He said, "Well, those were good things that you did in those home videos," implying a contrast between how I acted then and how I act now.

My parents tell me that they've seen a shift in my behavior when I started taking anti-depressants. This is probably true, as this is what should happen when you start taking anti-depressants. I became a lot more vocal about my opinions. I let myself get annoyed about the dumb things people would say in classes, and I complained about them to other people and tried to make responses in class. I became more empowered and vocal. I said more things that I wanted to say. Of course, there were some weird side effects too, and I don't remember a lot of what was going on in that weird adjustment period where I was taking these new medications. For some reason, my parents interpreted this change in my behavior as me becoming a robot. What they fail to understand is that I'm still the same little kid who was scared to talk about things and who wanted to be happy and make sure that everyone else was happy. I'm tired of being seen as someone completely disconnected from my past--sure, I've changed, but so has everyone, and some parts of us just stay the same, no matter what.

I think my parents think that I told them I was bisexual just to shock them. That's what my bishop thinks. And I can see how that looks true--it's not like I needed to tell them. I'm in a committed relationship with a man, and bisexuals are known as the invisible sexuality--we can blend in with whichever sexual orientation depending on who we're dating at the time. But I'm a confessional person (...as you may have gathered from my lengthy posts) (sorry), and a huge part of me wants my parents' approval. I wanted to tell them what I knew they thought was the worst possible thing in the world to them and still be able to feel like they loved me. And I didn't feel that at all. I got cut off entirely, I got yelled at, I got told I was on a speeding train to self-destruction and that my parents were moving out of the way before I took them down to hell with me. I got told I was the Laman and Lemuel of the family (a reference you'll understand if you are or were raised Mormon) and, in that same earlier discussion, my told told me that both suicidality and bisexuality are mentalities of the world and I need to "get over them." Because I can definitely control both of them. Obviously.

I guess I'm learning what not to do to your depressed, suicidal child. I guess I'm learning that it's important to see the adults around you for the vulnerable children they once were and that some part of them will always be. I'm learning to have more compassion for people and to be less judgmental (though I very much doubt that I'm succeeding on that particular front). And I'm trying to learn to stand up for myself and do what I think is right for me, regardless of what others, even my parents, think. And that's empowering.

Sorry for the lateness and the rambling. These are just the things I've been thinking about this weekend. I hope you all have a lovely day off tomorrow! Enjoy those dead presidents, or whatever. I'm sure I've posted this poem before, but it's one of my favorites, and everyone should print it out and hang it up on their wall for all those times when you feel lonely and shitty and down.

Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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

---

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.

Let's Call It Honesty

I’m going to go back to a topic that I brought up three weeks ago. How much about myself do I tell my roommates about myself? However, this time, I’m not only going to fully answer the question but I’m going to expand it to “How much should I tell people I know about myself?”

One of the first things I tell new roommates is that I’m gay. I don’t want to keep it a secret. It is their right to know, even if, in the end, it doesn’t affect them. I don’t just tell them when they walk in the door. THAT would be silly (and probably wouldn’t make a good first impression) (not that I make good first impressions). I usually wait a few weeks. Yet, last semester, I had a roommate who let it slip how much he hates gay people ON THE FIRST NIGHT! So, I never told him I was gay.

Originally, when I brought up this story, I was going to be living with him next semester. This is no longer the case. I will be living with three completely new guys. However, after my previous roommate, I don’t know if I want to tell three strangers, even if it is after three weeks. Or months. The pictured welcome mat may not end up giving very welcoming roommates.

So, how honest should I be? I think it depends on the people thus I no longer think there is a universal answers for telling my roommates. Let alone my mother.

So, for those wondering, my parents do know I’m gay and have for two years. My dad chooses to largely ignore it and my mother has been very accepting, even if I didn’t think so at first. But, now that I know that my mother is accepting and I now know she will always love me, how much should I tell her?

She knows I’m gay but I’ve kept pretty much everything else hidden. If I were to follow Dupree’s example, I would tell her everything. If I were to follow my mother's own advice, I would be completely honest. But… something still holds me back. Should I tell that I’m kind of searching for a relationship right now? Should I tell her of my semi-regular visits to nudist colonies in high school? Should I tell her I’ve had sex with Brian? With my fourth cousin whom she adored? Should I tell her about my sexual exploits of last night?

Damn it. She’s my mother. This should be easy to determine. I’ve told other people, why not her? She is visiting soon, so we shall see.

When a Church is More Important than Your Child

Photo by BingBing

I'm writing a book about growing up Mormon and gay.  Some of you may know this, many of you do not.  Below is the first draft of one of the chapters; it charts the first conversation I've had with my mother since coming out to her in a letter two weeks ago.

More than anything, this experience illustrates to me how much the LDS Church (and religion in general) holds families and their relationships hostage.  I cannot understand why so many members of the Church believe they have a monopoly on God's love. Furthermore, if you don't fit the Church's mold, you are unworthy of His affection and grace. I don't understand it and I refuse to believe it.

This post is not a plea for your affection or an attempt to fish for your compassion. It's not an attempt to condemn or vilify my mother, either.  It is simply a recollection of my personal experience and an attempted illustration of the damage that can happen when religious dogma supersedes a faith's foundation of love and charity.

Anyway, thank you for joining me in my journey - it is my goal to help ease others' burdens by sharing some of my pain and experiences.

--

 On Deaf Ears

“Where do you want to sit; we can talk at the table or here in the living room?”

“I don’t care, mom,” I replied. “Wherever you want is fine.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s just sit in here on the couches then.”

As we sat down we never broke eye contact.  We looked at each other, carefully sizing the other up, not knowing where to start. 

 

Several moments of the most awkward silence of my life followed.

Over the last two weeks I thought I had prepared myself for whatever argument my mother would throw at me.  In my mind, I had endured my trials with the patience of Job and I felt as though nothing she could say to me, no hurtful insult she could scream at me, would change how I felt or affect me or my resolve moving forward.

I was wrong.

The electric silence came to a halting stop as flood gates opened simultaneously for both of us.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she demanded through clenched teeth and tear-stained eyes.

“Because nobody in this family is bashful about how much they hate gay people,” I similarly responded.

“Yeah, that’s because I believe in the scriptures, Michael,” she replied. “I know how evil this path is and I know people, firsthand, who have chosen to live the homosexual lifestyle and it has destroyed them. If you choose this path, it will chew you up and spit you out.

“How could you do this to me?” she continued. “The first three days I couldn’t eat.  I couldn’t sleep.  I couldn’t even breathe.  I wake up every hour on the hour panicked that I’m going to lose you to this sinful path.  I’ve started having evil, satanic dreams.  I know the devil has a hold of you.  And in my dreams he is pulling you away from me. But I’ve got you and I am not going to let you do this.  You are a part of this celestial family and I will not let you do this to yourself or this family.”

I wished she had screamed at me.  I wished she’d hurled every British and American insult she could come up with.  I wish she’d said anything but what she did. I couldn’t respond; I didn’t know how to.

My lack of response seemed to fuel her momentum so she continued.

“How long have you been ‘dealing’ with this?”

“I don’t have an exact idea but at least since I was 11 or 12 and started going through puberty,” I meekly replied.

“Did anyone ever touch you?  Were you ever molested or sexually abused by anyone?” she demanded.

“No.”

“Did someone ever expose themselves to you or to anything else?”

“No, mom, not that I can remember,” I responded with an irritated edge to my voice.

“I think this happened when you were a sophomore in high school and saw those naked images of men on the Internet,” she replied.

(I had convinced my parents that an image search of “muscle men” that I neglected to delete off our computer’s Internet history was part of an assignment for my health and team sports class.  For better or worse, I guess, I’m a pretty good liar – especially when it comes to covering my butt and keeping myself out of trouble.)

Actively rolling my eyes and trying to share my dissatisfaction with the direction of the conversation, I said, “Please mom, give me a break.  That wasn’t the first time I’d seen a naked man or woman and it sure wasn’t the last time.  Beyond that, our society and culture is filled with sexuality and sexual imagery. Everywhere! And there’re way more heterosexual messages and images in the world around us than any type of gay propaganda.”

“Why didn’t you come to us sooner, so we could help you overcome this; get you the help you need” she pushed forward, undeterred.

“Mom, did you read my letter?” I shot back. “I have spent thousands on counseling and prescription medications to try and 'get help.'  I am who I am and I can’t be fixed or changed.  I’ve tried.”

“Well, was this at BYU?” she countered. “I read an article just last week in the Deseret News that those methods don’t work.  You said you were suicidal? That was why, I’m sure!”

“I was suicidal in high school.  I told you, I’ve been dealing with this since I was in seventh grade! Counseling at BYU was my final effort because nothing else worked up to that point.  I have done everything to try and change, mom.  Everything.”

“Well, we need to get you better help.  Someone who knows how to deal with this; we need to get you over to LDS Family Services.  I'll help pay for it,” she announced.  “Are you on antidepressants right now?  You need to be.  They will help you beat this.”

“No, they make things worse,” was all I could muster.

And then she went in for the kill.

“If I could take this from you, I would,” she said through choked sobs. “I would take away all of your pain, and sorrow, and temptation.  I would take whatever lies you’ve been told and I would take every unrighteous desire you had away, too.  I have prayed to Heavenly Father and asked Him for this.  When I go in for my operation next month, I begged Him to let me die on the operating table if it meant you could be whole and our eternal family could be kept together forever and you could keep your covenants.”

I was dumbstruck.  My mother had just told me she had prayed to die on my behalf; to literally become my own personal savior. I just stared into her tear-streaked face as my own 15 years of raw, religious emotion came boiling to the brim.  I couldn’t respond, I told myself I needed to calm down before moving forward because I didn't know what would come out.

So, without my response, she continued.

“I didn’t get married until I was 27 but I can promise you that there were times I wondered if I was ever going to get married,” she said, believing she was making headroom with me. “If I hadn’t gotten married, I would NEVER have gone out and done ‘anything’ just because I was lonely.  The gospel is that important to me.”

Finally she said something that sparked me out of my silent stupor.

“That’s completely different, you can’t compare the two, mom,” I countered. “You would go through this life with the hope that maybe, someday, you would get married. You could hold onto the hope that you COULD get married.  You aren’t told by the church to live alone, single, and celibate for the rest of your life with no hope of companionship and love.”

“It is too the same thing, covenants are covenants,” she countered. “I have a friend who I’ve known for 30 years who deals with this issue. You don’t need to know who it is (I wonder who the hell that is, you only have one single, male, gay friend and he ran away to New York in the ‘90s and then a few years later to San Francisco to get away from his family and the church.  If he’s active in the church now, you can be sure as shit he sowed his ‘wild oats’ before settling back down in to his churchly routine [no, his name isn’t Mitch Mayne] I thought to myself.) but he’s found meaningful service in the church by doing genealogy and serving in the temple.  He’s accepted his cross and lives within the bounds of his covenants.

“If you never marry and just become the favorite uncle to your sisters’ kids, so be it.  At least I would know that you have stayed true to the gospel and the promises you have made in the House of the Lord. Now, I know you think members of the church can be mean…”

“No, mom, stop,” I demanded! “The members of the church are bad enough but you don’t understand the hell I’ve been through. I did everything the church demanded.  Every prayer I’ve uttered over the last 15 years was a desperate plea with God to fix me and take away this burden.  Every time I fasted, I held true to the hope that I would be cured of my unrighteous desires. Growing up, when these feelings didn’t go away but only got stronger, I researched everything and received promises from church leaders that if I only gave more of myself I would be strengthened and that this curse would be broken."

Tears freely flowing down my face; great, heaving sobs rocking my entire body I continued.

“I was president of every quorum.  I did sports and joined nearly every club and group in high school to prove I was worth something. I graduated at the top of my seminary class with a 4.0 and spoke at seminary graduation. I went on a mission and served faithfully.  I graduated from BYU and dated girls and even got engaged.  But for what? I would wake up in cold sweats, terrified that I was going to ruin everyone’s lives.  That if I did get married, I would destroy her hopes and dreams for happiness because I wasn’t worthy; it wouldn’t be fair to her.  I have lived my life terrified that I was going to destroy our family and disappoint you; that I would never be good enough for anyone.

“And then you add apostles who say horrid, hateful things.  Do you know what it’s like being told you are unnatural, that you should be cast out, that you are an ‘enemy to the family’ and that a loving heavenly father would never make one of his children, in his image, with these feelings.  No, you don’t, you don’t know what it’s like to give your life to a church and have it spit in your face and cast you out. To hear that they prefer child rapists and sex offenders in their fold over you, that somehow these monsters are better than you – more worthy. You don’t, you don’t know what it’s like to feel so abandoned.”

And that was it.  Every particle of strength and resolve I had was expended. I sat, hunched over, silent tears streaming down my face, literally bathing my hands in their warmth.

My mother finally came over to my couch and sat down next to me, placing her arm around me and continued her crusade for my soul.

“Oh baby, my sweet baby boy,” she cooed. “It’s okay, together we’ll beat this. We all have our trials in this life.  I don’t know what the rest of my life holds but I can promise you that we all have things we struggle with; we all have burdens to bear.  I have things, your dad has things he struggles with, which is why we’re not going to tell him.  It’s just how he was raised.  He couldn’t handle it.”

I sat silently staring at my hands unable to respond.  Everything I had said in my letter, everything I had said in this wretched conversation had fallen on deaf ears. Every word.

Perceiving my silence as a form of agreement, she continued with a hint of a smile in her voice.

“Everything makes sense, now, at least.  Your anger and frustration over the years, the acne and bad skin; and if that wasn’t bad enough, all the many other trials you’ve been given.  Of all my kids, you had to have the worst teeth, the bad eyesight, the blemishes and be the worst l… well, I mean, you’ve always had a hard time losing weight.  All these things add up, you know? They really drag down on your soul.”

Really, mom, on top of being the gay child, I was apparently the ugly one, too.  If the conversation wasn’t enough of an open wound, hearing your mother call you the “worst looking” of her kids while pointing out your many physical faults definitely was the proverbial “salt.”

Her final sting was the necessary nudge I needed to jump ship and abandon the situation.

I stood up to break my mother’s partial embrace as the doorbell rang.  Fortunately, for my sake, this was the interruption I needed to leave. I gathered my wits, straightened the pillows, and cordially acknowledged our visitor before taking my leave as graciously as possible.

Empty, broken, and lost, I got in my car and drove away.

--

In light of this week's events, I think it’s time to leave.  Maybe I'm running away.  Maybe it’s just a new adventure. Either way, if I am going to live my life authentically and for myself, I need to leave. At least for now, I  cannot do that in Utah.  It’s time to move on – hopefully this time next week I’ll have a definitive answer to where that will be - here's hoping, anyway. Wish me luck!



PS - If you haven't read enough, I have another post today at http://mcwilleyfactor.com that further illustrates my two worlds colliding and slowly merging into one.  It's all about one tiny step out of the closet at a time, right?

Family

Everyone has a family of some kind. Some people were raised by a single mom or a single dad. Some grew up with step parents or half siblings. Some were even raised by grandparents or adopted parents. There are all kinds of combinations when it comes to families, and there is no single type of family that is better than any others.

"Zach Wahls, a 19-year-old University of Iowa student spoke about the strength of his family during a public forum on House Joint Resolution 6 in the Iowa House of Representatives. Wahls has two mothers, and came to oppose House Joint Resolution 6 which would end civil unions in Iowa."