I'll BE YOUR BEARD IF YOU'LL BE MY PANTYHOSE

WHY I ALMOST MARRIED MY GAY BEST FRIEND

[AND WHY I'M SO HAPPY I DIDN'T!]

The Mormon expectations for marriage and family are both impossible and unyielding to MoHo's (Mormon Homosexuals). In order to be a member of the church in good standing (with the hierarchy and the community) you've got to:

1. Marry someone of the opposite sex or
2. Be celibate. 

Period. That's it. If you're gay, you're fucked (and NEVER in a way you'd like to be!). Your only option is misery, you just get to choose if you're going to be miserable alone or with a buddy.

The only other option is to be excommunicated or leave the church on your own. To those who didn't grow up Mormon, door #3 seems like the obvious answer. Why stay when your community doesn't give you any viable options? When it's obvious they're not okay with you?  

MoHo's on the other hand understand what's at stake with option #3. This is my own personal list. 

• Your Family
• Your Friends
• Your education or your job (if you go to BYU, they'll kick your ass out). 
• Your sense of self (Mormonism is more a way of life than just a religion)
• Your ticket to heaven (you're taught denying the church is worse than never knowing about it at all)
• Your purpose (all that time and effort spent, all the tithing and temple sessions, the reason you've been doing whatever it is you do every day)

In one moment. With one decision. It could all be gone. You'll be forced to start from scratch.

That's why, as a MoHo, I was hell bent on fulfilling option #1 or #2 for so long. 

I've been there.

I'd been asking myself that miserably complicated question for YEARS!
"How the hell am I gonna marry a man when I'm a GIANT. DYKIE. LESBIAN?!"

By marrying a GAY man, of course!

[No please, don't. Just keep reading]

If we are both going to spend the rest of our lives miserable anyway... why not do it together? At least he understands what I'm dealing with. He likes boys, I like girls. We won't ever have sex [But that's ok, we grew up Mormon and we're used to suppressing that need], maybe we'll adopt some kids.

We'll be obedient, included, self-denying and in that closet forever!... [well at least until we die, because a lot of the Mormon leadership is certain that any gayness is "cured" in the afterlife. Which brings us to a 4th option that I don't actually want to get into right now because it deserves it's own post.]

JOE IS EASY TO LOVE...

He's quirky and kind; intelligent, gentle, adorable, absolutely HILARIOUS! 

AND OH! SO! GAY! 

We met in Provo, UT several years ago. He was dating my best friend (and love interest) at the time. A few years later Joe and I ended up getting engaged, but broke it off soon after. 

Together we journeyed from having a deep seated conviction to conform to our community's expectations... to making the choice to leave the church and be true to ourselves and rebuild our lives as  HAPPY Gay Ex-Mormons. 

These videos are an interview we did a few years ago explaining some of the details of our story in an effort to help others who struggle with similar circumstances. The videos were made in response to several gay suicides, as a type of  "It Gets Better" collection for gay Mormons. It was a 3 hour interview edited into a few ten minute segments. 

Disclaimer: The final segment feels like a cliff hanger... I'll do my best to finish the story below.

I think one of the most important parts in this video was when Joe says 

"losing my testimony of the Church was more healing than anything else." 

I completely agree. I think it was healing because the issue was no longer our morality, but the integrity of the Church and it's leaders. It's so much easier to walk away confident in your own worth and potential when you find out you've been living inside a make believe world of constant contradiction and double standards. 

The more we talked about the issues we had with the church and the more we studied it's history and doctrine, the more we came to realize that we'd been bamboozled. We felt betrayed and lied to. We were devastated. We were angry! 

But we were also relieved that we didn't have any reason to marry each other!

Out of devastation grew the courage we needed to walk away from Mormonism. When you see the man behind the curtain, he can tell you you're going to hell, and suddenly it's easy to flip him off and walk the other way. 

The community I'd been so afraid to lose; the place I was raised and for so long sought refuge and safety in, all at once felt like a vat of poison and misery that was trying to swallow me whole.

The most peaceful moment in my life was the day I told my bishop I was leaving the church. 

I told him "this is so weird. I was told if I ever left the Church I'd feel horrible inside. Instead I'm calm and at peace with myself. It's the most amazing feeling I've ever had in my life."

I came out to my parents in a letter and we've had several conversations over the years since then. We don't agree on everything but they're very supportive of me and very welcoming to my girlfriend. My siblings are totally cool with the gay thing [They were like duh! We know!] They stick up for me at church and with their friends and extended family members.

For Joe and I, losing our community and many of our friends when we left the Church was painful, but not debilitating. We've been able to replace them with others who allow us to be ourselves. 

Rebuilding a spiritual foundation has been a tricky and slow process, but we're not in a hurry and have little interest in any sort of religious experience. We've learned that purpose doesn't come from religious dogma or doctrine, but in our caring relationships and sharing our experience and journey with others. 

We're Gay and ex-mormon [and by the grace of whatever, not married to each other]

And Life is Fabulous.

PRIESTESSHOOD SESSION

http://ordainwomen.org

This Saturday, April 6th, 2013 (the 183rd anniversary of the LDS Church's founding) while faithful Mormon men the world over attended the man-datory Priesthood Session of General Conference, about 100 people (mostly women) gathered on the University of Utah campus in solidarity and support of female Priesthood ordination.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/56117824-78/women-priesthood-mormon-lds.html.csp

The event-organizer for these unorthodox-orthodox Saints is faithful Mormon, Kate Kelly, a human rights attorney, who claims the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, always intended for women to function fully and equally within the holy Priesthood he restored. Kelly notes that the female Relief Society was designed to function in perfect parallel with the male organization, with a President and 2 counselors who served, not for a short few-years term as they do now, but for life, just as the Apostles do. 

Kelly also highlights the fact that women often performed blessings of healing by the laying-on-of-hands in the first decades of the Restoration. 

And as all "endowed" women know, Temple matrons perform Priesthood ordinances daily as part of the Endowment ceremony. During the Washings and Anointings, women lay hands on other women's heads and invoke the Priesthood. The Endowment ceremony is essentially a Priesthood ordination and the "garment" you receive in that ceremony is properly called the Garment of the Holy Priesthood.

A memorable couplet repeated in every Endowment Session is "They are hereafter Kings and Queens, Priests and Priestesses". 

Is there any hope a grassroots campaign might eventually move the Brethren to change policy and afford faithful women a more equal place in the Church?

Surprisingly, yes...maybe.

Only 8 hours before the rally for Female Ordination was held, there was a momentous break with tradition when Sister Jean Stevens offered the first female led prayer in an LDS General Conference, only 4 few months after an online campaign was launched to "Let Women Pray":
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mormons-gather-utah-semi-annual-conference-18896328#.UWHeG6JkybA

The Church insists that the Spring Conference itinerary was selected long before the social-media outcry, but only Sister Stevens can confirm that she was asked to give the invocation before "Let Women Pray" was launched.

Does this historic prayer signal a new day in gender egalitarianism within the Church?

Well...

Shortly before Sister Stevens rose to the pulpit, Elder Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said this to a global Mormon audience:

"Men and women have different but equally valued roles... Just as a woman cannot conceive a child without a man, so a man cannot fully exercise the power of the priesthood to establish an eternal family without a woman."

(Scientific Aside)

What if we were to tell Elder Ballard that many women have conceived children without ever having had sex with a man?
(He'd probably argue that they still used a male donor.)

But what if we showed him that scientists have fertilized a female mouse's ovum with another female's DNA, producing completely healthy female offspring?
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Look-Moms-no-dad-Mice-born-in-Japan-from-2789992.php
(He'd probably insist it required a male scientist!)

And the Virgin Mary?!
(He'd probably say that the virgin birth was a miracle by God and God's a dude.)

There's just no arguing with some people.

Tackling this issue head on in behalf of all progressive Mormons is Joanna Brooks on her blog Ask Mormon Girl:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/joannabrooks/7008/

A post soon to follow this will address the ever strained relations between the Church and LGBT rights.

-Joe

THANKS FOR ASKING

A family friend recently asked me over Facebook what I thought about the new mormons and gays website the Mormon church created a few months ago.

This was my response:

1. I consider it damage control on behalf of the church. If they say they love the sinner and hate the sin enough... maybe people will stop calling them bigots and blaming them for young, gay, Mormon suicides. They probably noticed people google "gay and mormon" a lot and they're attempting to stay at the top of search engines to limit the bad press and PR.

2. I guess I'm grateful they're trying to reach out to gays who've decided to stay in the church... I'm glad the language is softer than in the book the Miracle of Forgiveness where homosexuality is called the "sin against nature"...and the author laments that homosexuality doesn't carry the death penalty... anymore.
 
3. I have no idea if it will do anything to relieve the shame and pity my parents endure from members of their community.

4. In one of the videos on that site ("Our Common Humanity") they talk about how people shouldn't define themselves by their homosexuality because straight people don't define themselves by their heterosexuality... which is just a load of bull shit. 

Everything in this world... movies, books, school, religion, the way we dress, our attitudes, likes, dislikes...all of social life revolves around fitting/shaping people into gender boxes, hetero sex symbols, husbands, wives, ballerina's and firemen. Every aspect of my life is continually at odds with, and affected by the fact that I DO NOT FIT into these socially-assigned categories.

LGBTQ culture exists because we are not allowed to freely or fully exist anywhere else. 

Comments like: "stop flaunting your gayness" or "don't focus on your homosexuality"  are just euphemisms for "get your ass back in that goddamn closet, you're making people uncomfortable!" 

When you're OBVIOUSLY GAY, like I am... you can't just turn it off. 

5. This website seems to be an act of desperation by the Church. They realized it's no longer acceptable to wish a death sentence upon me or tell me I'm going to burn in hell [like those Westboro folks], so instead they're going to try and kill me softly by feigning compassion, disenfranchising my Queerness and slowly suffocating my self-worth and identity until my light goes out.

The good news is, it only works if you buy into it. 

Thanks for asking. No one ever does.
-Gwen