The conversations in my head

Some friends of mine recently visited Temple Square and struck up a conversation with a sister missionary.  She asked my male friend where he served, and he responded that he hadn't.  She was shocked and kept insistently asking him why he didn't serve a mission.  He kept politely evading her questions, and she wasn't picking up that he didn't feel comfortable answering.  The reason he didn't want to answer was that the answer was that he was gay and wasn't allowed to.  

I imagine that his guess was that if he answered her truthfully, then she would be dismissive and not give proper respect to his situation.  She might tell him that with enough faith/study/prayer/fasting he could someday go on a mission, or that even his "same-sex attraction" was a temptation that the Lord would help him with.

If he had answered her, and she had responded like that, I think it would have been absolutely acceptable to call her out.  

Most often I stay silent when I could be assertive, and I usually let other people dominate conversations.  Many times I just assume that if I and someone else have different opinions, then the other person's must be the right ones.  But I'm realizing more and more how many times it would be completely appropriate to be more assertive.  The freedom of saying what I really think, politely yet firmly, makes me almost giddy.  This is the way the conversation would go in my head:

-But why didn't you go on a mission?!

-I'm gay and I wasn't allowed to.

-[Noticeable pause] Well, I know that Heavenly Father will help you with this trial.  Just stay close to Him, study his words, and pray sincerely.

-Actually, it's not a trial.  It's part of my identity, and it's not going away—no amount of prayer and scripture reading is going to make it go away.  That's a false idea that's perpetuated by well-meaning members, but it's not true.

I think it's alright to be direct.  It's one thing if you're being unnecessarily harsh, but if you are being passively/backhandedly criticized, then you deserve to defend yourself.

By the way, I don't disagree with my friend's choice to not answer—I support him in his decision.  I'm just saying that had he decided to answer a different way, he would have been justified.

There is but one with whom she has heart to be gay

(Title is an excerpt from Tennyson's Come Into the Garden, Maud.)

Facebook debates usually drain me at least partially and exasperate me at least a little.  I used to not speak up, but I realized that I have an opinion and just as much right to express it as anyone else.  Mind you, I don't comment on everything that I could—I pick my battles.

This past week, I was involved with a rather one-sided debate that actually left me a little...gleeful.  Maybe it was because I was on the side that had the upper hand?  It was actually around five to ten people against one, which seems a little unfair.  But that one kept fighting (and he had every right to).  It was at once exasperating and actually humorous—the arguments the guy kept spitting out were, in my opinion, so absurd and textbook fundamentalist religious.

You might have guessed from the title that the debate was about gay marriage.  What started it off was one guy's incredulity that Mormons could actually be in support of gay marriage.  He seemed completely taken aback by the possibility because, he said, wasn't supporting gay marriage also supporting the actions that follow gay marriage (i.e. gay sex)?  To him, it seemed, what he thought was wrong and what should be illegal were the same: if you didn't approve of gay marriage, then it obviously should not be legal for anyone.

If you would like to read the conversation, I have saved it for posterity here (the commenter to be on the lookout for is in dark blue; I am in light pink).

After I took those screen shots, the conversation continued; but before I could record the following comments, the guy went through and deleted all of his comments.  I hope it was because he took back what he said, or at least because he realized what he said could be interpreted as offensive.  Before he deleted his words, he had apparently compared gay marriage to public nudity, which, predictably, caused a negative reaction.

The main reasons I found this debate so intriguing was that the guy couldn't have come up with better stereotypical, narrow-minded religious arguments.  Please take care to note that I am not saying that all religious people automatically have narrow-minded and stereotypical arguments—not in the least.  This particular guy was just like a stock character, and I kept thinking that you just couldn't make up better examples of silly points.  

When people provided him with evidence that contradicted his claims, he said that they were obviously misinterpreting their sources or taking things out of context (...).  He even bore his testimony of the blessings that couples could receive from a temple marriage (not really the most appropriate or effective thing to do on a thread about legalizing gay marriage).  He also had his facts about the church wrong: He insisted that a man could not be sealed to two women simultaneously unless he was doing so without church approval, and he held that the church's stance on homosexuality had never changed.  He posed the question, Who are we to change God's law?  Again, he seemed to think that the laws of the land and the laws of God were one in the same.  

I do feel a bit bad saying that I was gleeful about the affair.  I think a big reason is that he provided me with proof of someone who ignored logic and reason in favor of (false) long-standing beliefs.  See, I told the hypothetical doubters in my mind, these people actually exist!  These aren't just caricatures!

Please again take care to note that I am not putting all religious people/all gay marriage dissenters into one group, i.e. a group with this guy in it.  He is an example of an extreme that unfortunately exists.  He is not an accurate (or positive) example of the LDS church, though he definitely represents some views that a lot of members probably likewise hold.  If you oppose gay marriage, I don't hate you.  I just hope you don't use the same arguments that this guy does.

Extra credit: Read a friend's post about the same conversation (the thread was actually on her wall).

Edit: I forgot to mention that the guy left a nice, charitable parting comment: "For something nice to say: God bless all the Gays and Lesbians of the world. May the country's laws be changed in their favor."  Hooray for him!

Second Only to Murder

I have puzzled over the question of sin: Is an action inherently sinful, or is it ascribed that meaning by God?  It seems to be the latter, because the same action can be either laudable or a sin depending on the circumstance (e.g. Nephi was justified in killing Laban because God told him to, yet God told Moses that killing is a sin; sex outside of marriage is wicked and filthy but in marriage is beautiful; polygamy was once a commandment but now you can be excommunicated for it).  If that is the case, why does God ascribe that meaning to it?  It seems that the consequences (either feeling happy or sad) of either abstaining from or committing the sin only come because of the value God ascribes to the action (e.g., Nephi didn't feel enormous guilt and spiritual darkness after killing Laban).  So why ascribe negative values to these actions in the first place?  Are they just arbitrary and used as a test?  Is sex not inherently bad outside of marriage but God created the confines of marriage to create separate circumstances to test us?  This larger issue is a topic for another day; right now I want to focus on the Law of Chastity in all of its glory.

fame

If you'd like to, please check out this news article about a peaceful protest in Salt Lake City.  I'm the subject of one of the pictures!  Hip hooray.  If I had to be in the newspaper, I'm glad I'm in it for something like this.

I wore my BYU sweatshirt to show that you can be a BYU student and still feel this way.

It was the first protest I've participated in, and it was a pro-gay one in Utah.  And afterward, my friends and I, all BYU students, went to a pub to eat dinner and none of us drank a drop of alcohol (Roy Rogerses are delicious).  It was a night full of contradictions.

We were all wearing black and sitting on the ground during the protest; a woman who was wearing a black sweat suit walked past, asked what we were protesting, then said grumpily, "I chose the wrong day to wear black."

A gay man who was protesting had a huge bolt of fabric that was tucked into the back of his pants and cascaded down like a train.  A woman with a stroller came very near to running over it, and he said quite dramatically, "Don't you dare put your baby on my chiffon!"  (He was joking).

"If I won't be gay in the next life, maybe I'll just kill myself."

Let me summarize what the problems with President Packer's remarks were.

1. The logic that God wouldn't pre-set someone a certain way and not allow them to change it is faulty.  Every day children are born with mental and physical handicaps which they can't overcome.  You can't pray away Down Syndrome or AIDS.  I don't at all mean to cast being gay in a negative light by comparing it with disorders.  Also, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think God sends down temptations and challenges like Jove sends down lightening bolts.  He doesn't hurl one at a baby in the womb and say, "You shall be born with a missing toe!  Muahahaha!"  There are so many steps that are included in forming a child.
2. "Remember, He is our father."  So if God doesn't "pre-set" people that way, then that means it must be purely a temptation from Satan.  That really isn't a cheery thought, and that's not reassuring.  "It's not God's doing!  It's just Satan!  So you can overcome the temptation!"  Except when you can't and you can't change the way you feel.
3. Gay people already have a hard life cut out for them by being different from the accepted norm.  Add to that the pressure of being a teenager, and perhaps being misunderstood and not accepted by parents and friends ("You don't have to live with this problem!  You can change!  All the problems associated with it will go away."), and you can see why so many gay teens are depressed and suicidal.  Saying that homosexuality does not exist in the next life gives gay teens quite the reason to commit suicide.  If they try and try and can't change and "fail," then maybe death seems like a better option, especially if it is supposed to bring relief from same-sex attraction.  "If I won't be gay in the next life, maybe I'll just kill myself."
4. What you call "impure" and "unnatural," they call love.  Please show some tact and compassion.

Overhaul on sex ed, please

The way morality and chastity is taught in the church is damaging and out of whack.  I think this mainly comes from leaders not putting themselves in the shoes of their audience members and trying to treat a symptom, not a disease (that's only a metaphor, and I don't mean that sex is in any way like a disease).  Instead of lecturing kids how going too far brings guilt and remorse and that you won't be pure, leaders need to think about the reasons kids choose to have sex.  They need to recognize that that desire isn't bad, and not all kids are just bundles of hormones who decide to have sex just because everyone else is doing it.  They try to claim that "those feelings" are "normal" and "natural," but in the same breath say that they need to be squashed.

Regardless of whether some church leaders' stances on homosexuality is even correct, it needs to be taught and discussed a different way.  If you are gay, it is not helpful to hear that your desires are perverted and that you need to change again and again.  In a church where marriage and family is so often stressed, kids who are gay who do want these same things but just aren't attracted to the opposite sex will feel like there is no path for them.  Sure, they want to get married, but it's impossible because they won't marry someone of the opposite gender; so they're trapped.

Elder Boyd K. Packer made some disastrous assertions during a General Conference talk, which are no doubt results of his age and sexual orientation.

Some suppose that they were preset and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and the unnatural.  Not so.  Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone?  Remember, He is our father.  Paul promised, 'God will not suffer you to be tempted above what ye are able.  But will with the temptation also make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it.'  You can if you will break the habits and conquer the addiction and come away from that which is not worthy of any member of the church.

I am trying to prove that this statement is wrong even under the paradigm that homosexuality is immoral.  Bear that in mind.

By saying that someone is not "preset" and that God would not do that, what exactly is he saying is the alternative?  That it's your fault?  You're giving into the temptation to think that way?  He tries to be comforting by saying that God wouldn't do that, but the implication that you weren't born that way and that you can totally stop it is even worse.  I believe everyone has a predisposition toward things which are considered "immoral" that have to do with his/her personality and struggles.  To some, doing drugs is a huge temptation; to others, it's not but being dishonest is.  It's ridiculous to tell those people that God didn't make them predisposed to want to do drugs and that it's their fault for being tempted.

I don't know if God "tempts" us like some people say anyway.  That scripture from Corinthians that Elder Packer quoted  makes it sound like God sends us temptations, which doesn't seem right.  Plus, it's an overgeneralization that you will always be overcome temptation.  Mainly because people label too many things as "temptation," like being depressed.  I don't think we can always overcome our circumstances—what about all those pioneers that died en route to Utah??  They would have made it if they had had more faith?

Elder Packer makes being predisposed to liking the same gender sound like a stupid excuse.  God wouldn't do that?  So what's the alternative?  Now telling someone that being gay is an "addiction" and that their feelings are completely "impure and unnatural"—that's something Heavenly Father would never do.  Remember, He is our father.

Do you know why, as someone with clinical depression, I identify with those who are Mormon and gay?  Because a similar misunderstanding exists and similar excuses are made.  Depressed people don't deal with nearly as much stuff as gay people do, but I do see similarities, such as:

Both groups are living contrary to God's law.

Depressed people are obviously still living with some sin they haven't repented of, or they wouldn't be so sad!  They are probably not reading their scriptures, praying, going to church, paying tithing, fulfilling their callings, etc. enough!  Being happy all the time means you're being righteous all the time!

Gay people are just plain wrong.  They should stop liking the same gender and switch to liking the other one.  Duh.

They could be cured if they just have enough faith.

If you still have depression, you must have not had enough faith so far to be healed.  It's all up to you.  This is not an actual "medical" disease that needs to run its course at all!  You're just sad!  Really sad, that is, but still–it's just an emotional problem.  See above for why you are so sad.

Homosexuality is a temptation nigh unto a disease.  Have faith and you will be cured.  If you haven't been cured already, you must not want to be badly enough.  Even though it is a temptation, just ignore Paul's bit about having a thorn in his side that was never taken away even though he prayed for it.  Paul obviously wasn't faithful enough!  Yes he was an apostle, but. . . .let's change the subject.

Proposition Eight

I do not support Proposition 8. Let me clarify: I do not support bashing gay people or looking down on them or calling them the f-- word or making fun of them or lumping them all into one category and calling them all intolerant hateful and morally loose. Some people apparently think that this is what supporting Prop 8 means, which gives the rest of us a very bad name. 8 doesn't have to be h8.

What it comes down to is this:

The anti-Prop 8ers say that Prop 8 is intolerant.  The pro-Prop 8ers say that tolerance can't only go one way and that you need to respect dissenting opinions and not just label them as "intolerant."  But the thing is, the anti-P8 [I'm tired of typing it out already!] are saying that the pro-P8 are intolerant of gay people, not necessarily of themselves.  They're not saying, "You don't agree with me (that gay marriage should be legal), and therefore you are intolerant."  They're saying, "You are denying others rights because you don't agree with their identity and their lifestyle, and that makes you intolerant."

Now I'm embarassed and sad to say this now, but I did originally support Prop 8, and I am very sorry about it.  I know that sounds kind of lame, but please believe me.  During a special Prop 8 fireside, that principle about tolerance not going just one way was mentioned.  Yes, that's true many times–e.g. Jimmy says, "I like blue," but Jane says, "I don't like blue." If Jimmy then calls Jane intolerant, then yes, Jimmy does not understand that he is being intolerant of her opinion by calling her intolerant.  But if Jane beats Jimmy up and threatens to do soevery time he wears blue, then she is truly being intolerant.  This is what I see Prop 8 doing: it's not just disagreeing with someone, it's working to prevent them making a decision you don't agree with.

Really, this whole "You're intolerant!"  "Well, then that means you're intolerant!"  "No, you're intolerant for calling me intolerant!" mess is ridiculous.  Please look up Freud's theory of projecting, because this is a classic example of it.  Really, it just becomes a war of semantics and what it means to be "intolerant" (does it automatically make you intolerant yourself if you call someone else intolerant?), and as much as I like linguistics, it's just dumb.  Intolerance gives me a headache.

It also comes down to this:

Gays and those who support them are either in the right or are sinners living in denial that what they're doing is wrong.  I mean, I have thought about it from that perspective: what if being "tolerant" of others is really just excusing sin?  But then I try to think of another example, and everything else seems so extreme: Would you be tolerant of bank robbers and not make robbery illegal because they have the right to steal?  Should homicide be legal because we're being intolerant of murderers' choices?  Of course not!  But I'm not about to compare being gay to being a murderer–that's just ridiculous.  It doesn't work.  

And most importantly:  Wanting to get married to the person you love is motivated by. . .love, of course!  I don't understand it; do people think homosexuals want to get married to spite straight people?  Or spread evil?  Or just make a statement and be unorthodox?  I don't think so.  [Sure, whatever, some could; but so could straight couples.]  Those who want the right to marry love each other.  

A compromise?

Domestic partnerships/civil unions should at least have the same legal rights as a marriage.  For starters, at least.  

Misconceptions 

I think people's misconceptions about the gay community stem from not actally knowing any gay people.  If you are one of these people, at least read some blogs to try to understand others.  I would recommend "MoHo" blogs (written by gay Mormons).    I think being gay and Mormon carries the stigma that you "just don't have enough faith" or something, and that's why you haven't been "cured."  Views like this are harmful, hurtful, and truly intolerant.  

MoHos

I really feel inadequate trying to describe the situation gay Mormons are in (since I'm not in it), but I really want to express it well and continually learn and understand more about this predicament.  Gay Mormons are in a weird situation: to keep the Law of Chastity, they can't have any physical relations with members of the same sex.  But that's who they're attracted to!  If you are straight, just imagine not being allowed to get married or have a physical relationship with the person you love dearly.  I can't even image it.  It sounds confusing and like an agonizing decision to make.  It sounds like you would feel as if you're living in a whole different paradigm, a whole different world with a different set of rules, but others are trying to force their own rules on you.  

Conclusion

Think.  It makes sense.

Don't judge me

You know what I wish?  I wish people weren't so quick to label someone as doing something or thinking something that's "wrong."  It's not necessarily wrong; it just may be different.  People seem to just automatically denounce someone without learning his/her (werf's) whole story.

People who do this peeve me so much, and a large part of the reason is I used to totally be like that and have since seen how wrong I was.  

Don't denounce people who are emo/suicidal/depressed.  They're not just some selfish, overly dramatic person.

Don't denounce gay people.  They're looking for love too, and you have no idea how they feel.  I think it would be cool to make a version of West Side Story/ Romeo and Juliet where instead of the two leads being from different families, they were both the same gender and from bigoted families.  That would get people thinking.

Don't denounce feminists.  It's not that we don't want to be mothers, it's that we don't want that to be a choice made for us by society.  And whoever says she doesn't need an education because she's just going to be a stay-at-home mom is an idiot (and will stay that way.  Ha ha.)  If you know me well, you know that I want to be a mom so much.  I really do dream about being a mom and having kids.  But that doesn't mean I don't have other dreams, too (like being a teacher and doing humanitarian work and getting an education).  To me, being a mom is more important than these other goals I have, but I still have other goals and don't want to be told by some pinhead that I'm listening to Satan when I say that (OK, this was inspired by today's Daily Universe letters "What Is Most Important" and "Refresher Course."  I really need to write a separate post on this.)

Don't denounce people of other religions.  They aren't necessarily hard-hearted (though I will admit that some are; but there are hard-hearted Mormons too, folks), and they're not backwards, sinful, or ignorant.  Instead of saying that other religions have "slivers of truth" that are just little pieces of what we believe, we need to see what doctrines other religions talk about that we have forgotten about or ignore.  There are good people searching for truth in every religion.  And there are stupid, narrow-minded, hypocrites and every religion too, probably.  Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.

That's about it for now.  Basically every point I need to expand into a separate post (and I will, I promise).  I have already addressed the emo/suicidal/depressed issue in the post "Happy Happy Joy Joy."

Peace and love.