Mormons and Gays

[Integrating Editor]

Haleakalā, you may be right that less than 1% of Mormon parents would kick a gay or trans kid out of the house, but that's far from the only response that is highly problematic. My dad is a pillar of the local Mormon community, well-respected both at Church and at work. He would never have thrown me out of the house, and he would probably agree whole-heartedly with your answer.

For all that, he's done a lot to rip me apart since I told him I identified as trans (this has all been about the identification, not any possibility of transitioning). Even though I'm an adult, he's still trying to push me into conversion therapy, and he has told me that I will be destroying our family (even eternally) if I refuse. I've pointed out that due to the increased risk of suicide and limited effectiveness, people have been calling for the banning of conversion therapy for minors. He's responded that since I'm an adult, it's not an issue.

I even have a psychologist pretty worried about an upcoming trip home because my dad has a violent temper and is seriously upset about my announcement. From his perspective, the intensity of my dad's disapproval isn't exactly healthy for someone as prone to suicidality as I am, and the fact that he's gotten pretty violent with his kids in the past is an even more concerning issue. No, he's not kicking me out, but he is making me scared to go home. He's been screaming at me every time we talk, and he took a nice little trip out here to "help" me find a way to not be trans.

It's been difficult feel anything but horrible for daring to tell my parents. If I'd come out to him while I was still living under his roof, I'd either be dead or have more than 2 suicide attempts under my belt. His temper might be worse than average, but my dad is very, very far from the most virulent anti-gay, anti-trans Mormon I've known. I may be allowed to go home, but I'd give a lot to not be afraid of talking to my dad, let alone seeing him in person. But I can't give him what he wants and stop being trans.

The stories of many other LGBT BYU students bear out that forced conversion therapy is not at all uncommon nor are screaming matches in which even orthodox, temple-worthy children are made to feel awful because they're not straight, cisgender people. Are there a lot of Mormons with a seriously problematic view of the issue? Unquestionably. Is that all of them? Definitely not. But please don't dismiss the fact that Mormon LGBT people face some serious problems with their families, regardless of how they choose to move forward. Something has to change, and thus far, softened rhetoric from Church Headquarters hasn't filtered down to ordinary people's opinions enough to keep people safe.

[Integrating Editor]

Also, the question is this one.

[Emiliana]

*hugs*

No words of wisdom, just hugs.

I don't suppose your family is anywhere in Texas, are they?

[Marduk]

Before I get into larger issues, let me first say that I'm sorry for everything you're going through, I.E. Let me offer you as much love as will transmit over the internet. And if you ever want someone to talk to or take you to dinner or just hang out with, just say the word.

I think H.'s categorization of the LDS position, both as a whole and culturally, as moderate, is a blatant miscategorization. While it may be tempting to use the WBC as a data point and extrapolate from there, to do so gives a false reading. The WBC is so far from the rest of Christianity that it skews results to include it. It should be ignored completely in rational assessments of Christian views on any given issue.

Without them, the LDS church is actually quite regressive in terms of LGBTQIA issues, both in terms of the country as a whole and Christianity in specific. A few points, in no particular order: 1) the majority of people in this country support a more inclusive definition of marriage. The LDS church does not, putting it in the minority. 2) BYU, with the knowledge of its own ethics boards which include general authorities, performed electro-shock conversion therapy up until quite recently, and still participates in conversion therapy to this day. Many Christian groups (as well as essentially the whole of the psychological community) have come out against this practice in all its forms. The state of California has even called it child abuse. 3) The church, both as the church and through affiliate groups such as United Families International, has lobbied strongly against not only same sex marriage but against many LGBTQIA initiatives and protections. 4) Although the church has helped spearhead an initiative which successfully passed the Utah legislature to legally ensure some protections based on orientation, those protections SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDED discriminations based on "religious belief." In other words, the initiative was hamstrung, because the people discriminating are doing so because of their religious beliefs. It means the legislation has no teeth. 5) The rhetoric from general authorities has been anything but kind, even compared to most Christian rhetoric. Everything from joking about assaulting people because of their orientation (Packer) to suggesting that adult children be cut out from your life if they are LGBT (Oaks) to telling LGBT individuals that their lives are "counterfeit." (Perry) And those are just a few off the top of my head. There's many, many more.

I know that H. and I strongly disagree about the value of a religious conviction (I say that religious convictions end where civil liberties begin; I see little difference between the exclusionary rhetoric and lobbying taking place today from the Christian right and how they spoke of segregation and interracial marriage a generation ago) that is almost beside the point. The LDS church is very regressive when compared to the U.S. population at large, and is even still regressive when compared to Christianity within the U.S., where many congregations are welcoming gay individuals and couples into their congregations seamlessly.

[Arcaiden]

I'm sorry, but the Mormon church is not an organization known for loving gay people. Yes, there are lots of members who are outstanding and wonderful exceptions, but 200 people marching in a pride parade, and some throwaway legislation with gaping loopholes aren't enough to wipe away the larger actions of an organization. Put the shoe on the other foot for a moment and picture how you would feel if someone did the following to Mormons:

• 1. Spend decades fighting against Mormon rights. Prevent Mormons from obtaining marriages, hospital visitation rights, adoption rights, all by using clandestine spokespeople so it can't be traced to any official organization. After people start to call you out on it, put on a political show allowing meaningless legislation to be passed that promises to protect Mormons from discrimination, but specifically allows for anti-Mormon people to continue to discriminate against them due to their religious beliefs.
  2. Spearhead a massive campaign to ban all Mormon marriages in Utah. Convince followers that it is their eternal duty to contribute and sacrifice their time and money, to the tune of over $40 million dollars to accomplish this feat. Spend months talking about how Mormons want to destroy religious freedom, how they are a threat to the family, and how no child deserves to be raised by Mormon parents.
  3. Every single time a Mormon legal issue crops up in the courts, complain about how Mormons are destroying society, about how we can be kind and loving to Mormons while still recognizing that their way of life is harmful to society, and does not deserve any special protections.
  4. Every six months have an influential leader make negative comments about Mormons. "Mormons have counterfeit families." "God would never let anyone be born as a Mormon." "If you have a friend who feels like he wants to be Mormon, you should just punch him in the face so he doesn't get any funny ideas."
  5. Continue to insist that every child deserves to be raised by non-Mormon parents. Children who are raised by Mormon parents will always be at a disadvantage and will never be able to experience the divine nurturing, care, and love that only non-Mormon parents can provide.

I could go on and on, but that doesn't feel very much like love does it?

Although it's unquestionably true that some members of the Church act in a way that is inconsistent with Church doctrine when it comes to this issue, the number of people that do is, I believe, vastly over stated for political purposes. There are no hard (reliable) statistics to back this up, but my experience leads me to believe that significantly less than 1% of Mormon families would kick out a young person for admitting they were sexually attracted to members the same gender. To be clear, those who do are wrong. But pretending there are more people like this than there really are is detrimental, not helpful.

So we admit that there is no statistical basis for this assumption, but honestly I don't even know where Haleakalā is getting the personal anecdotes necessary for such a claim. Have you been to multiple Northstar gatherings? Any Evergreen conferences? Any Affirmation events? What about some gay family home evenings, firesides, or other supportive events, where you could actually interact with many of these people? Because you know what, as a gay person my experience is completely different from what your anecdote claims. It is VERY common for my Mormon friends to have significant struggles with their families. Schooling funds yanked, restrictions on home visits made, refusing to let them see their nieces or nephews. And I don't even want to talk about how common suicide attempts are. The most comprehensive survey I am aware of that relates to this is here. One of the professors is a retired BYU professor, and they went out of their way to include individuals who are still active and affirming of the church's stance. On a scale of 0-5 on how supportive it was to grow up as LGBTQ+ in their families, 50% of those surveys rated their family with a ZERO. Completely closed and non supportive. 70% rated their families 0-2. That to me indicates a HUGE problem right there.

Finally, I find Haleakalā's entire response is simply more evidence of why a Billboard like this is needed. There should be nothing controversial about saying that God loves Gays. Nothing. Period. And yet here we are twisting the bulletin board around to make it look like it somehow victimizes religious people, which simply isn't true.

[NovemberEast]

Three things.

1. This is coming from a fairly "orthodox" mormon, at least compared to a good chunk of the boardboard. So there is that.

2. I'm completely unqualified to respond to this because I have zero therapy/psychology/other experience. BUT. I'm sorry about what's going on between you and your father.

3. The billboard seems to have a positive message, but the cartoonish nature of it makes me wonder. I guess the problem is their ads that say the posters are "signed by god himself." That sounds like mockery.

[Integrating Editor]

Thanks for the support, guys. No, Emiliana, nowhere near Texas, unfortunately. I had a boyfriend a while ago (it didn't last very long) who told me he had never met a gay person. All I could say was that he had, but that they probably weren't comfortable coming out to him. (I certainly never told him anything about my situation, and I dated him for about two months.) So he was surprised when I talked about the issues Mormon LGBT families face from their families. He argued that the Church preaches that there's nothing wrong with being gay, so the vast majority of Mormons would respond with love and respect, even if they disapproved of certain life choices. Without hearing from the queer people in his life, he had nothing that made him challenge that assumption. By making it dangerous for people to come out, it's easier to pretend that the Church has no such problem. I think many, maybe even most, Mormons would say that they would react a certain way, but when it's their own family members, their actions don't quite match up. And most Mormons don't exactly encourage those confidences that would suggest that reality.

I don't know if Haleakalā even reads this forum since we pretty much only discuss his answers when they really bother someone, but if you do, Haleakalā, I want you to know that this post wasn't meant to be an attack on you. It's just an issue where my personal experience radically fails to jive with what most orthodox Mormons think would happen. I think of you as being in a category with Pa Grape, someone I respect a lot even though I strongly disagree with many of his positions. You tend to present fully developed, carefully thought out opinions, and you're generally very respectful to those who disagree with you. I appreciate that. And you do speak for far more of BYU's population than the more liberal, less orthodox members of the board community do. Your voice is definitely needed on the board.

[TheBlackSheep]

Integrating Editor, I'm so sorry about the situation with your dad. It's wonderful that you are dealing with it as well as you are, and please keep doing what you're doing. Meeting you a couple of years ago was wonderful and you are a person the world needs to keep around. Coming out as gay or bi is still hard (especially within Mormonism), don't get me wrong, but people like me who came out within the past 10 years have it relatively easy compared to earlier gay/bi/queer people. Coming out as trans is a whole different level of bravery in the current climate, and I'm non-patronizingly proud of you for being authentic and courageous. Please don't go home if you are being a martyr in doing so. Be safe. Most parents do eventually come around, this we know, but it isn't your job to be the Perfect Trans Child to make that happen. Also, what are your preferred pronouns these days?

Okay, now to the general soap box.

I came out to my family and non-close friends about six years ago. Nobody in my family was openly hostile toward me, but there were a lot of things like making it clear that if I so much as touched my girlfriend around their kids I would be asked to leave. There was a lot of silence and "I love you but"s. Most everybody has since come around, mostly, and I was very fortunate. However, I'll never forget the moment I realized how excluded and unloved I had felt. About five years ago I first let my family know that I was dating a woman. My very active sister-in-law, with whom I have a limited relationship due their family living first in Oklahoma and then in Florida, "liked" this news on Facebook. That was it. Everybody else in my family either felt the need to let me know how wrong they thought it was or very obviously refused to talk about it. I sent a message to my sister-in-law thanking her for her support, and she said, "People can't say they love you and then not support you in being who you are." And that's true, I think, though I wouldn't have said so at the time. Love-the-sin-hate-the-sinner and all that cognitive dissonance. But here I was, giddily twitterpated, and because my partner had a vagina nobody in my family except this sister-in-law would share that happiness with me even by pretending to be happy that I was happy. Maybe that's not kicking someone out of their house, but kicking someone out of their house is a very extreme example. Other than beating someone to death, what worse thing could you do than deny your own child? Most examples are not that extreme but are still very valid. When I was around my family, I could not call my girlfriend my girlfriend. I had to deny the depth of our relationship even in name. That's a pretty clear message. And how much more clear would it be for the trans kids and adults who are literally being told they should not be who they are? I chose to date my girlfriend, if we're talking about choice, but trans people don't have choices like that, and they are incredibly mistreated in our culture.

Necessary (and true) note about how I don't think my family has to do anything against their religious beliefs or even has to be thrilled about it but letting the truth be the truth and being happy that a family member is happy is not a lot to ask.

[TheBlackSheep]

Also, thanks to yay for his answers and for comments by Marduk, Arcaiden, and other folks. Interesting reads and they helped me.

[Zedability]

I will say that I agree with you guys that Hakelwhatsit's opinions definitely minimize the issues that LGBTQA+ people face in the Church. However, it's also true that people tend to disproportionately remember negative experiences, and also true that support groups are probably disproportionately filled with individuals who weren't able to experience support from their own family, so some of those sources are likely overstating the issue. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but still definitely towards the "there are still negative reactions" side.

For what it's worth, a family member of mine recently came out as gay (to family members, not sure how far he wants the news spread), and from what I've been able to tell, nobody has reacted negatively. He's not sure exactly how he feels about the Church, and the family is basically just treating it as his decision to make. I'm pretty sure that even if he decided to leave the Church and start dating men, he and his boyfriend/husband/partner would be welcome. But this follows a larger trend of the family being pretty chill about Church standards and largely having an attitude of "you can make your own decisions" - they were never very strict on anything, despite being very active and orthodox.

I think a lot of the same parents who react negatively to LGBTQ children are also the parents who would have reacted excessively negatively to dating before 16 years old, having a cis-gendered heterosexual kid get pregnant out of wedlock, learning their kid was drinking alcohol, etc. Obviously there are some who are willing to overlook other non-orthodox behaviors and have a huge hypocritical blind spot here, but in general, I think that "controlling parents" is a large issue. It gets magnified in sensitive topics like this that are so controversial in the Church and so personal for the individuals involved, but I think teaching parents to ACTUALLY let their kids govern themselves would solve a range of issues.

Anyways, my point was that because of my experience with gay family members, it's pretty easy for me to think "oh yeah lots of Church members are supportive," because that's the only experience I've had. And people who had crappy family members are obviously going to think the common experience is for family members to behave crappily.

The survey above is really interesting and definitely shows more work needs to be done. I think part of what was so great for my family is that the immediate family didn't live in a very Mormon-centric area, so they got exposed to a lot more progressive ideas and their reaction kind of set the tone for everyone else.

[Katya]

For what it's worth, a family member of mine recently came out as gay (to family members, not sure how far he wants the news spread), and from what I've been able to tell, nobody has reacted negatively.

Honestly, unless you have specifically asked this family member if anyone has reacted negatively to their coming out, I don't think you're in a position to be able to say with any certainty that nobody has reacted negatively. The most you can say is that no one has reacted negatively around you or no one has reacted negatively in a public enough manner for it to come to your attention. Part of the problem with being in a position of privilege is that our social structures keep us from seeing most of the negative experiences of minorities.

[Zedability]

Obviously I can't say anything with certainty. But given my relationship to this family member, and based on discussions with other immediate family members without him around, unless the other family members are saying hurtful things to him and then completely changing their tone discussing it behind his back, they really do seem to be reacting well. I'm not saying that's the most common experience, but I do feel like I'm close enough to the situation to have a pretty decent idea of the tone of the reaction.

Like, I'm not trying to invalidate anyone else's experiences or say that LDS culture doesn't generally give rise to negative parental reactions. I'm just saying, it's possible for an orthodox LDS family to be tolerant and accepting. I think there's an unfortunate belief in the Church that to be active, you have to somehow impose "restrictions" when your child comes out, when really, you can accept your child is an adult and respect their choices and have their partner over for dinner while acknowledging the actual nature of the relationship and let them be all cute and coupley in front of you, and still be active LDS. And when either side of the debate perpetuates the idea that active LDS parents typically react a certain way, LDS parents keep having that stereotype reinforced, and keep feeling like that's how they're "supposed" to act.

The tricky thing is to not reinforce the stereotype without invalidating the experiences of the many people who have had those negative experiences.

[TheBlackSheep]

Zed, I'm not saying there is no validity to what you're saying, but part of straight/cis privilege (ugh, I used that term) is that people who are straight/cis wouldn't notice all of the examples of less obvious mistreatment of LGBTQ* individuals because they don't have the occasion to experience it themselves. That's another explanation for the situations you describe.

[TheBlackSheep]

I'm not necessarily referring to the situation with your family member, but with the general "I've only seen positive things so that leads me to assume that most people would be pretty accepting" sentiment that comes up sometimes in these discussions.

[Zedability]

Yeah, and I guess what I'm saying is, because I've seen isolated positive experiences, I think it's important to also not create a tone of "it's impossible for people to feel accepted until the Church makes major changes," because that's going to put everyone on the defensive and be counterproductive. Whereas I think, for the LDS population as a whole, presenting positive examples can role model ways to actually behave decently about the situation, and presenting negative examples is important to drive home the fact that there's an actual problem. And sometimes people are so intent on proving there's a problem that they react like any portrayal of positive experiences is a threat to their position, when it's actually what everyone should be working towards.

And yeah, I absolutely have a blind spot about the less obvious mistreatment of LGBTQ people, and I'll probably do something to offend this family member at some point because of it. But I'd hope that he would then feel comfortable saying to me, hey I don't appreciate that because reasons, and that I would then stop doing that thing instead of saying "Ugh you can't expect me to accomodate you in EVERYTHING." Because it's freaking annoying when majorities act all oppressed because minorities want "accomodations" (or basic respect) like being referred to by the right pronouns or having their husband referred to as their "husband" and not their "friend" in public.

[Integrating Editor]

So, preferred pronouns. Right now, since I'm at BYU, I'm still generally using my given name and female pronouns. I do have some people using a masculine name, and some are using male pronouns. That's where I'd like to be, but my bishop is . . . less than comfortable with that. Since none of you know my bishop (at least not as my bishop), using male pronouns is perfectly safe in this group. I should also say that despite my parents' reaction, my siblings, stake president, and roommates have all responded really well. My coming out has brought out the best in some and the worst in others. Unfortunately, it's the bad reactions that affect my life the most.

[NovemberEast]

Never have I heard the term "cis" before.

This is how I know I'm old.

[Portia]

I'm freaking straight and vanilla and my sexuality is still policed constantly by my Mormon family. It'd be funny if it weren't so patronizing.

Progressive my rear.

[Shrinky Dink]

Integrating Editor and TheBlackSheep, I'm really sorry about what's going on. I think it's important to remember that, yes, we are asked to forgive a lot, but we are never asked to put ourselves in a position where we know we are going to be hurt. Just because we have to forgive, doesn't mean that we have to allow someone to continue to harm us.

[Portia]

Tempted to bring a bag of popcorn to F&T July 5th after the SCOTUS decision, but that's gloating.

In all seriousness, I'm pleased my gay friends can now get married/get divorced/go to half a dozen weddings in a couple years and stay up til 3 A.M. because of anxiety over The Future. Gay Writer Persons: marriage won't be a panacea (but it might save you time wasted flirting, and get you health insurance with a normal).

I hope that those who choose not to so participate can abstain from predictions of imminent societal downfall. Save it for the drought.