Mormons, Gays, Fire, Bridges

Matt here.

So, this week. Keeping Mormons after dropping Mormonism.

I have a couple of friends in SLC who are Mormon and who believe in the church, but also strongly support gay rights. One of them even volunteers with the Trevor project. They've each hosted me in their homes and supported my plans for love, family, and atheism; it's pretty much a no-brainer that their Mormonism doesn't bother me. They're good friends, and easy to love because they love me, and I can feel it.

But then, if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye?

I have a few friends in Utah and Arizona, including my roommates from the Cozy House, who are more traditionally Mormon. They voted for Prop 8 and similar and think the recent SCOTUS decisions were the result of activist judges. They "don't agree with homosexuality."

These people are much more difficult to love. Conversation often gets strangled as I try not to bring up the guy I have a crush on or how happy I was when Prop 8 fell and so on. Sometimes one or the other of us will not be circumspect enough and prick the other with a needle about their delusions or my immorality. Keeping a relationship with these people often hurts.

Yet, they've also shared their homes with me. These people have listened when I needed to be heard and held me up during scary-dark times. They're generally good, smart people, focused on their families. I have memories with them, and connections, and in most cases I don't want to let them go.

Keeping up our relationships is a bit of a dilemma. Talking with these Mormons is usually as uncomfortable as it is enlightening, as infuriating as it is good to reminisce. I find myself weighing each one: Is this worth keeping up? Do I want to still know these people?

Mostly the answer has been yes. In large part, this is because I want to be a man who has a wide filter bubble. Partly it's because I don't want one's opinion about homosexuality or religion to be a dealbreaker, and partly it's because I don't want everything to always come back to me and people like me. I don't want other people's narrowness to make me narrow.

Sometimes, it's a dilemma. Egg* and I, for example, were homeschooled and then early college students together. She's essentially my sister from another mister, in that we had our phases of hate and love and we spent far, far too much time together. Egg is very Mormon (the kind that Doesn't Agree With Homosexuality), and it was difficult for her when I came out over the phone while at BYU, but it also made a lot of sense, and she's adapted well. Although she, like my sister, feels the need to remind me that she Doesn't Agree every time we talk about boys, we do talk about boys.

However. While I was in Japan she got married to a Mormon man who also Doesn't Agree With Homosexuality--so much that he literally will not stay in the same room as me. I was at his house visiting with Egg; he said hello, moved to another room, and put in headphones. I took a chair next to him at a recent event; he sat stonily for five minutes and then moved to the other side of the yard, where he remained until I left, an hour or so later. Egg confirms that he is creeped out because I'm gay, and I have to say, that makes me livid. The bridges I've tried to build to him (because he's Egg's husband) are on fire.

. . . but then, if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye?

The bridges may survive, scorched, because he's Egg's husband. There's a point where it's just not worth it, even if it means giving up Egg. There's a point where I'm going to start throwing gas instead of sand.

But we're not there yet.

*My Egg is not at all like this Egg, I just couldn't resist the urge to share.

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Here is a related article.
Here is a second related article.

The Discussion at Home

Matt here.

Picking up from last week, I'd just asked the elders to come over to my house so we could talk. They were in the city proper and I live out on the edge, so they said they'd be by in about an hour.

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I'm a believing person. If you tell me you had a good time on our date, I'll believe you. If you say you're allergic to wheat, I'll believe you. If you say you care about me, I'll believe you.

One thing I've believed in is that the church has its members' best interests at heart. As a teenager, a few of my home teachees were inactive, and when we'd visit them every month I'd get a distinct sense that we were imposing and that they didn't really want us there. I couldn't figure out why. To me, it seemed like a nice thing, to have people who would check up on you and make sure you have help if there's a crisis. Yeah, we'd do a little spiritual thought thing that I guess could (in retrospect, did) get on people's nerves, but in my mind at least that was secondary. The primary purpose was to let them know we were willing to help with whatever they might need.

I haven't been hometaught since my first year at BYU, and that's hurt. I bring this up because in my handful of years as a less active or inactive member, I've also never been visited by the missionaries.The two are linked in my head because I had a different idea of what it meant to be inactive--I thought I would be pursued. I mean, isn't that one of the standard ex-Mormon rants, that they never leave you alone? Just because I didn't want to go to church doesn't mean I didn't want any contact.

But as I've mentioned, I'm trying to take Joan Didion's words to heart: "Character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs." I called the elders because I'm tired of waiting for the church to come to me. I guess part of my goal for the visit was to assert myself. I'm still here, I'm still a member. What are you gonna do about it?

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In the end, I committed to read the scriptures every day until our next meeting, one week later. I expected something like that going in, and I'd've been disappointed if they hadn't asked. There discussion that led there was interesting, though.

First, Elder M (the redhead) was gone; they were doing exchanges. When I answered the door, I found Elder H (with the interesting voice) and Elder T, who was gorgeous.

Damn, I thought. One of the reasons I'd been so comfortable around Elders H&M was that I didn't feel a physical spark with either of them, so it was easy to focus on other things, like religion or whatever. Elder T was just shy of my height, green eyed, and had a beautiful smile. I would find out over the course of our discussion that he was also my age, having left on his mission a few years later than normal. Damn.

I led them onto the back porch, where I'd put out a couple of green plastic chairs in a triangle. They didn't know this, of course, but the back yard at my parents' house is my special place. I've spent more time out there than anyone else in my family, playing around or swimming or laying in the sun or whatever. It added something to my sense of security, being on my turf. I took the chair with my back to the pool, so I could see the house on the off chance that someone came home early. (I was supposed to have the house to myself for a few more hours.)

For a couple of seconds we just sat there. Then I told them a little about me: not sure about religion or God or anything like that, but raised in the church and wanting to take another look at it. Came out at BYU, inactive for a handful of years.

Elder T started with (what seemed to me to be) a curveball: "What's the most important thing to you?" And of course I knew they were expecting me to say family, and I wracked my brain to come up with a different answer, but after a couple of seconds I gave in because my family actually is the most important thing for me. But I followed it up with an similarly important second thing--"my independence." We talked about our families for a bit, Elder H complimenting my parents effusively, as he should, but they didn't press into Plan of Salvation territory, like I'd assumed they would. Elder T said he totally understood having difficulty submitting to authority, since he was an "alpha-male" type, and I privately agreed, fervently, with that.

Elder H asked me if there was some particular event that pushed me away from the church. Later he'd confess that since finding out he'd be coming to California he'd been afraid of Prop 8 coming up, and that explained why his face fell when I told him there were two things: first, Prop 8, and second, the utter lack of spiritual confirmation I've felt. I explained that while I believe it's entirely possible to be a good person and be against gay marriage at the polls (e.g. my parents), I can't excuse the church's role in the awful, dishonest Yes-On-8 campaign.

Both missionaries were touchingly sympathetic. Elder H, I'm pretty sure, is actually in favor of gay marriage and feels very conflicted about it. Elder T distracted me with that damn smile of his, so I don't remember exactly what he said other than affirming his belief that the church is led by inspiration. Neither missionary tried to treat it as inconsequential, which I appreciated.

After a time we moved on to the lack of spiritual confirmation, and I'm not going to tell you most of this part.  The three of us were open about the things we knew and believed and hoped, and we all shared some things that don't see daylight all that often, even for them as missionaries I would guess. Elder H talked about different ways that the spirit might manifest itself, though, and Elder T cautioned both to be sure I'm not expecting some grand miracle and that getting a testimony of God or the church could take years, as it had for him. (Remember that he's twenty-four.)

We wrapped up by setting a place (a nearby park) and time (same time, one week later) for our next meeting. I showed them out, and made a list of study questions for the coming week:

1. Do I believe in God?
2. Do I believe in Jesus?
3. Do I believe in the Mormon church?
4. What would spiritual confirmation be like?

And if you'd like to find out how that went, as well as hear about my second meeting with the Elders, that's what my next post will be about.

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Unrelated: What My Daughter Wore
Unrelated: Do You Hold Hands?
Semi-related: Ben and Matthew

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.