Gay family members

[NerdGirl]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/68087/

Okay, let me preface what I am going to say with the disclosure that one of my less-than-orthodox beliefs is that homosexuality, including homosexual behavior, is not sinful (assuming it involves consenting adults, is not abusive, all of those other disclaimers that I would also apply to heterosexual behaviors). So maybe that is why I have a bit of a hard time with some of these hypotheticals. But let me just float this idea out there. Why would you need to make sure your kids know that you believe that it's wrong to be in a same-sex relationship? Could this kind of situation be addressed without focusing on that at all? Because here's the thing - being gay is not like smoking or drinking or texting and driving and all of those other things that you need to make sure you teach your kids not to do, because not everyone is going to be "tempted" to have relationships with members of the same sex. Pretty much all kids are going to go to a party where someone tries to hand them a beer. But only gay kids are going to want to have gay relationships. And unlike with the beer at the party, the gayness does not go away if you just say no enough times. So do you really need to emphasize how wrong you believe it is while telling them to love the family member anyway? They will get the message that the church believes it's wrong without you going out of your way to emphasize it. If they end up being straight, then it doesn't really matter what you teach them about it. Their own sexual behavior won't involve homosexuality. If they end up being gay, they're going to be gay whether or not you made a point of emphasizing how wrong you believe it is - but won't it be a little easier for them to deal with telling you about their sexuality if you haven't gone out of your way to point out how wrong it is to be gay since they were little kids? I'm honestly not trying to start a debate, I'm really just throwing these things out as questions. I just don't see that it's necessary to make a big deal out of teaching your kids that it's wrong to have same-sex relationships. I think you can emphasize the love everyone aspect and probably leave it at that.

[Zedability]

I think parents have a responsibility to teach their kids the teachings of the Church. I don't think parents should assume that kids are going to hear about any topic from other sources - they are the primary educators and nurterers of their children. Currently, the Church's official stance is that homosexual relations are wrong, and as a parent, I'd feel remiss if I didn't address that when it came up in such a relevant context. If one of my children were gay, I would hope that my message would emphasize the "love and respect" portion of the discussion enough for them to feel comfortable to tell me. However, the Church teaches it would be wrong for them to act on those feelings, and it also teaches that parents are partly responsible if their child does something wrong without being taught *by the parents* that it's wrong (ie Lehi's blessing to the children of Lamanites and Lemuel, the priests with the rebellious sons in the Old Testament, the teachings of King Benjamin, etc).

I do believe it's possible to love and respect someone and still say "And I disagree with your decision in this one issue." To say that I don't truly love and respect someone because I disagree with their same-gender relationship (NOT their orientation, but their decision to act on it) is to imply that my entire view of them as a person is comprised only of their relationship status. I believe that there is more to a person than whether they're gay or straight. I don't automatically love every straight person, so it's a fallacy to say I automatically can't love a gay person. Just like I love and respect my friends who had premarital sex, drink coffee, drop f-bombs, watch R-rated movies, or make any of the other decisions I personally disagree with, I can love and respect a gay friend, and still disagree with them.

[Portia]

I was excited to see The Black Sheep's follow-up question and that a thread had already been started!

My mom has a gay uncle. Of the siblings in that family, one is an orthodox Mormon with seven kids, one is a practicing Mormon divorcee with one kid, one is an ex-Mo with two kids, and then there's the (ex-Mormon) gay brother. I LOVE this great-uncle of mine, and everyone does: he's extremely smart, talented artistically, kind, been with his husband-in-all-but-name for decades now (he's awesome, never have I been able to talk on and on about the NYT Book Review and Alice Waters, etc. as I did with him). I went to visit the Bay Area in the fall, and as much as I wish I could just be there all the time, I can't. I'm a little annoyed with my mom's uncle, because he has decided that we're "too Mormon" or something, or conservative, or judgmental, and has pretty much cut us all off. We are a very close family, and man, it hurts! He has pretty much dropped off the map in terms of contacting us since their mother (my great-grandma) died nearly a decade ago. >.<

So, gay and/or ex-religious readers of this board, is this a generational thing? How can you maintain a good relationship when the other party seems to be pushing you away? My (straight) great-aunt has not cared two whits for the Church from her teen years, but didn't feel the need to shut us (her parents, her siblings, her nieces and nephews) out of her life!

We aren't trying to "convert" anyone. I understand that Mormon families, even mine, can be a pain, but hey, they're your fam at the end of the day.

ETA: In a Conference talk in 2009, Dallin Oaks talked at length about how we can't cross the line of condoning our adult children's shacking up. The tone of um, I'll go with rudeness to keep it mild here, only heightened an already insane amount of psychological stress. The Church makes it hard enough to navigate family life as an imperfect straight adult child. I think, personally, that it is way off-base with its attitudes to gay family members, although I concede I've seen some change in the past 4 years or so.

[Marduk]

I would agree that parents have a responsibility to teach their kids the teachings of the church. However, I think most people go about this in an entirely backwards way. Our first and foremost responsibility is to teach our children how TO act, not how NOT to act. I think we focus way too much on trying to teach what is wrong, we forget to teach what is right. We can teach our children much better about not swearing by teaching them what correct language ought to look like. We can teach them much better about the word of wisdom by teaching them how to respect their bodies. That goes for sex too. And in this specific instance, we can teach them much better about relationships by teaching them what real relationships ought to look like. And then perhaps they'll focus less on the fact that someone has a different sexual orientation than they do (and they will understand, in the context of teaching correct relationships, that that is not what the church teaches) and focus more on the fact that (hopefully) that relationship has so many of the other components we DO believe in, such as equal partnership, treating each other with kindness and love, being concerned with the other's happiness, etc.

I think if we try to teach that others' lifestyle is wrong directly, the message that comes in far more loudly and clearly is that we don't love them. And on those two hang all the law and the prophets. Think about it: who is more Christlike, the person who loves and acts charitably to everyone, regardless of orientation, and happens to be gay, or the person who acts with malice and spite towards people who have a different orientation than they do, but happens to be straight?

By far, the most important lesson I would teach my kids in this situation is the most important lesson I could teach them in any situation: Jesus said love everyone.

[Sparklebreeze]

Marduk, your response reminds me of those shirts that say "I can't. I'm Mormon." I've always had somewhat of a problem with those shirts, and your response basically sums up the reason. I agree that we tend to focus too much on what we shouldn't do, as opposed to what we should do.

On the other hand, I don't think it is effective to completely ignore what we don't believe/how we don't act/what we don't say/etc., either. Telling my kids that they should eat vegetables, exercise, and go to bed early won't teach them that they should abstain from alcohol and tobacco. Teaching them to speak kindly to their classmates won't prevent them from dropping f-bombs. Loving everyone is indeed something to strive for, but the other commandments are there for a reason as well.

[Portia]

+1 to Marduk's thoughts

[krebscout]

I don't know how many here read Ask Mormon Girl, but she did a great post recently on a mom whose twelve-year-old daughter just came out to her. (I would include a link, but AMG's site is frustratingly unlinkable). She talks about how the Church culture carries on this Abraham-and-Isaac mentality, where we think we need to sacrifice our children for the sake of principle, but she has a different interpretation of the Abraham and Isaac story. Abraham's time and culture commonly practiced child-sacrifice, and he was about to follow through with it until God said, "Nope." I appreciate the insight that we are not asked to sacrifice our children; we're just taught to love them.

[krebscout]

Also, on an unrelated note, I highly, highly recommend Ask Mormon Girl's post on historical racism in the church. Super good.

[Katya]

I don't know how many here read Ask Mormon Girl, but she did a great post recently on a mom whose twelve-year-old daughter just came out to her. (I would include a link, but AMG's site is frustratingly unlinkable).

Here you go.

(She's got something funky going on with her Wordpress settings, but I was able to hover over a the link, right click, and then choose "copy link location.")

[Arcaiden]

My perspective, being an out 30 year old gay man who still tries to maintain a healthy relationship with my family.

The thought of my siblings teaching my nephews and nieces how to love me even though my life is "wrong" is not a fun thought for me. All it makes me want to do is disengage. Richard Dutcher has said that he does not appreciate his life being turned into a Sunday School lesson, and I have to say I feel the same way.

One of the other things I struggle with is that at family gatherings, or when I visit my parents, the only thing people can talk about is church. I never noticed this before, but now that I have become an outsider to this world, healthy social interaction is a challenge when everything you talk about reminds me that you believe I'll end up in Hell. I don't have a good solution for this problem either, I understand that when 80% of your life revolves around the church, that is what you are going to talk about. And I understand that just like it's not fair to expect me to censure conversations about my life, it's also unfair for me to expect the same of my family. Still, I just wish that our interactions could be on a more equal level, where everything isn't completely dominated by the church. Wishful thinking, I know.

The other struggle I have is created by the fact that I now have family members serving in leadership positions in the church. How do I feel about the fact that family member X may have excommunicated someone just like me last week, or that they might be encouraging someone just like me to marry a woman next week, or which way will they cast their vote the next time church leaders ask members to stake a stand on my ability to get married. All of these concerns just tend to build up in my head until I look at spending an evening with family whose love and support I constantly question, or spending an evening with my gay Family that I know will love and support me in my journey to start a family of my own... and so distance is created not by any one event, but slowly over time.

[NerdGirl]

Thanks for sharing that, Arcadien. That sounds really hard. And thanks everyone else for your thoughts. Krebscout, I love AMG.

A couple of personal anecdotes:

1. There is no one who is gay in my immediate family (which is small), but there are a few in my extended family. My parents are both converts to the church, and neither is super TBM-ish (they are both very faithful people, but my dad is at least as unorthodox as I am and my mom is pretty close). So I realize the family dynamic is a bit different than what we're talking about here. And I'm pretty sure that neither of my parents believe that homosexuality is wrong (my dad certainly doesn't, and I haven't actually talked to my mom about it all that much). When I first encountered a gay person (this was in the mid-80s), it was my mom's cousin who was coming to visit from halfway around the world (we were all visiting my grandma at the time, who was a Unitarian and was a supporter of gay rights and gay marriage long before it was even remotely mainstream). The way my mom introduced the concept was simply, "Cousin A and Cousin B are coming to visit. Cousin A doesn't have any kids. Cousin B (female) is a lesbian. That means she's married to a woman instead of a man. They have a little girl who's a few years younger than you and I bet she would love to play dolls with you (I always wanted to know if people had kids, because grown-ups were boring!)." Very nonchalant sort of introduction. And even though my parents never told us that they or the church believed that it was wrong to be in a same-sex relationship, I still fully got the message that the church did not approve of such things. I'm a little reluctant to share this next part because I'm not anonymous on here, but I think it's relevant so I will. And it's not a secret, it's just really personal. But when I was a teenager, I went through a period of time where I thought I might be bisexual or maybe even a lesbian. I don't identify that way now as an adult, but I am not a zero on the kinsey scale (my attraction to women showed up before my attraction to men did, although now my attraction to men is much stronger and I'm not interested in pursing relationships or anything else with women - but female sexuality is just complicated sometimes), and while I'm not saying that I understand at all what it's like to be a gay Mormon, I do know what it's like to realize that your sexuality isn't quite the Mormon ideal, and as a teenager with fairly literal faith in everything the church teaches, that's a terrifying realization. And it was terrifying even though I knew my parents would be okay with it if I did end up being bisexual or a lesbian - because I knew the church wouldn't be okay with it. I can't imagine how much harder that would have been if I had also grown up hearing from my parents that they believed that homosexuality was a sin. I still managed to internalize the message that it was sinful without my parents needing to ever say so.

2. Not quite the same thing, but the closest analogy I can probably come up with. My brother moved in with his girlfriend when he was about 19 and they had a baby a year before they got married (they've been together about 6 years and married for about 3 now). My parents did teach us that sex before marriage was against both the church's teachings and their own values. My sister-in-law is not Mormon, but she was raised in a similarly morally conservative Christian religion. When they decided to move in together, my parents didn't make a big deal out of it at all. They had taught him as a child what their values and beliefs were, but he had made his choice and the important thing now was to love him and support him. He hadn't gone to church in years and making their displeasure about his life choices known wasn't going to make him start coming back to church. Again, I realize that my family dynamic is a little different, and the fact the both of my parents went through the experience of converting to Mormonism and changing their own religious beliefs might have made it a bit easier for them to accept one of their children changing his beliefs. But there was never any sort of pronouncement of their disapproval when he decided to live with his girlfriend. My SIL's mom, on the other hand, was much more vocal about her disapproval. And guess which side of the family they are much closer to now. I realize that this isn't quite the same thing as what we're talking about, because having sex in an un-married heterosexual relationship is something that's pretty easy to "fix" to make it Mormon kosher - you just get married. But I think the observations about how the family dynamic worked out are relevant.

So I guess my point with story #1 is that gay kids are going to be gay no matter what you tell them about your beliefs and values - it's not something you can cause and it's not something you can change. And if they are Mormon, they will understand that the church thinks it's wrong no matter what you say about it. And my point with story #2 is that the more you voice your disapproval of your children's life choices, the harder it is to maintain your relationship with them.

And in all of this I realize that I'm kind of referring to homosexual feelings and homosexual behavior interchangeably, and I do realize that the church only has a problem with the later and not the former. But hopefully you still see what I'm trying to say!

[Portia]

He hadn't gone to church in years and making their displeasure about his life choices known wasn't going to make him start coming back to church.

AAAAMEN, sister.

[TheBlackSheep]

I've appreciated everyone's thoughts and all of the writers' answers, and I hope that someday soon I'll be able to reply to all of that in more detail.

Here's the deal: I'm currently re-confronting a lot of the issues I wrote about in the Well-Meaning Friends thread a bajillion years ago. My inactivity back then had nothing to do with my queer-ness, and I suppose it still doesn't have that much to do with it, but I'm again wondering how much to take from people in order to be polite, understanding, and open-minded and to preserve relationships. Obviously this is new to everyone in my family and I know how difficult it is for them. However, I shouldn't have to accept anything they say or do to me and brush it off just because of their religious or moral convictions, should I?

Example 1: My sister whose kids are 1, 5, and 7 has told me that she will allow my girlfriend to attend family events at her home, but she will never tell her kids that my girlfriend is my girlfriend, even if they ask. She plans to use the word "friend." I don't think anybody needs to announce to very young kids that Aunt Black Sheep has a GIRLFRIEND and talk about all of those ramifications, but this makes me uneasy.

Example 2: My brother whose kids are 2, 5, 8, and 10 cornered me a few weeks ago while I was in Vegas and had a two-hour chat with me, which was, naturally, completely his doing. He told me that "everyone probably thinks I'm being selfish because this is our eternal family." He also said that his wife and he go back and forth on the issue of whether my girlfriend and I would be allowed to enter their home. "Sometimes," he said, "the answer is, 'No way!' But other times it's like, 'Well, as long as they're not making out on our couch.'" He also outed me to his wife's entire super-churchy family shortly before their family and ours had a combined family gathering, which resulted in them treating me super weird. He also discussed this issue with my stake patriarch grandfather while they were staying in my parent's house which resulted in him not talking to me at all.

Anyway, this is why I asked the question. Everyone's given me some good food for thought.

[Zedability]

Personally, I disagree with your sister because while she's possibly trying to avoid what she views as an awkward conversation with her kids, creating this aura of secrecy and deception isn't going to help her kids. They'll figure it out anyways, and all it will teach them is that if they ever do something "wrong" according to their parents, they can't tell anyone abou it. That's part of why I think it's important to include the "we disagree" part of what parents teach their kids, because it makes it very clear that even though they disagree, they can still love and respect someone and the people they love can tell them the truth about things like this. Every kid is going to do something their parents disagree with at some point, and I think it's valuable fir them to know that.

[Unit of Energy]

I think that it's important for parents to teach their children their beliefs. Their personal beliefs. Kids will get the prevailing culture surrounding them whether parents want them to or not, but won't know what their parent's think unless they tell them and show them.
Just as much showing kids how parents handle disagreements with each other is important, showing kids how to treat those that make decisions you don't agree with is important.
I personally think that it's important to treat people the way you want to be treated. I had a seminary teacher once that told us that if we had more interaction than to say hello politely with someone we knew was homosexual. I think that that teaching is completely wrong. I don't agree with the lifestyle, and fully plan on teaching my children that it is a wrong choice, but if someone I was close to came out to me I would still be there friend. I would still let them be a part of my life and the lives of those that I'm responsible for. I may ask that they refrain from physical displays of affection in my home.

[Imogen]

1) I hate PDA no matter if you're gay, straight, bi, queer, whatever. They all make me uncomfortable (keep your tongue in your mouth!!).

2) *Hi, still not Mormon disclaimer here* Black Sheep, you know I <3 you. I think your siblings are being...well, I can't use the word I'm thinking of here, but it's a slang term for the male sex organ. I don't think it's anyone's job to out someone to people they are not comfortable being out to, and I also think that pretending that person's partner is not their ROMANTIC partner is demeaning to them as a person and to their relationship. I don't believe in the whole "eternal family" so that argument just sounds like your brother being a brat to me.

ALSO, God doesn't see any one sin as better or worse than another. They are all the same in his eyes. SO just because what you're doing is a "sin" (and I don't think it is), doesn't mean they wouldn't face the same judgment for their own sins because ALL SINS ARE EQUAL IN THE EYES OF GOD. Are they going to shelter their kids from EVERY SIN ON EARTH?!

[Katya]

I may ask that they refrain from physical displays of affection in my home.

Couple questions:

1. How would you define PDA, in this case? A kiss on the lips? On the cheek? Hand-holding?

2. Wherever it is that you would draw the line for gay couples, do your heterosexual friends often cross that line in your home? (I.e., do your straight couple friends often make out in front of you in your home?) If not, do you assume that your gay couple friends might be more inclined to do so, for some reason?

[Unit of Energy]

I really wouldn't approve of pda by anyone in my home. I can't stand watching people make out anyway.
As for my definition of pda it would be making out. I don't really have a problem with hand holding. I admit I would be more uncomfortable with a homosexual couple pecking each other on the lips than a heterosexual couple, but I have seen plenty of non-sexual lip kisses in my life that I probably wouldn't say anything about it, to my friend or my kids unless I was directly asked about it.
Kisses on the cheek are something I grew up with, and I get plenty of when I visit my Canadian side and I have no problem with, straight or not.

[Unit of Energy]

Also I have definitely said things to straight couples when I find them being excessively affectionate in my home. The problem being that they have been roommates, and didn't bother listening to me.

[Katya]

Also I have definitely said things to straight couples when I find them being excessively affectionate in my home. The problem being that they have been roommates, and didn't bother listening to me.

Heh. Fair enough. Roommates are in a category of their own.