Writing about what finally led me out of the Mormon church has been a challenge. It is a complicated story, that gets more complicated over time.
The long and short of it, is that a course of events broke through the thought stopping I had been doing. I let myself actually think about what the church taught and how that compared to my own moral compass and sense of God. And I realized that it did not match up. There were many issues that had been a heavy weight on my proverbial shelf for a long time before it broke, and the church’s teachings about LGBTQ people was just one.
I never let myself consider the implications for even the most generous views on LGBTQ people. The church’s doctrine on whether or not being gay was a choice and what it meant about the person has evolved over time. (Here is a great rundown of that evolution: https://lattergaystories.org/record/) It is no longer considered a choice to be a gay, or a crime against nature (good old Miracle of Forgiveness), but is recognized as something you are born as. Something that will be “fixed” in the resurrection.
While this seems better, the underlying truth is that means the doctrine is that being gay means you are broken in a way that can only be fixed by dying.
And that is the kindest the church gets on this issue.
However, like most things in Mormonism, you can find multiple takes on the doctrine at the highest levels. From Elder Bednar saying there are no gay Mormons, to leaders calling for love and compassion for our gay brother’s and sister’s to the Church News publishing an article putting “love and compassion” as the reason people support gay marriage in quotes and as a tool of the devil. You have Elder Oaks advising people to tell their LGBTQ loved one not to expect to stay with them or be introduced to their friends and then stories of Tom Christofferson’s family and their beautiful example of pure love.
I have family members that I love deeply who are LGBTQ. They have a beautiful family that we have a fantastic relationship with. I felt like I was living the true version of the gospel by loving them and accepting them for who they were. I believed we didn’t yet understand God’s love and will completely, but love was always God’s way and anything short of that was just man’s failings.
When you say that the leaders are just fallible men, you get to think stuff like that.
Except you don’t get to think stuff like that because you are not supposed to question or criticize your priesthood leaders. Except you did get to think stuff like that because during Prop 8 the church said they didn’t control their members beliefs about gay marriage. Except they also said they did. Except you get to get your own revelations from God through the gift of the Holy Ghost. Except those can never contradict the leaders. Except if it does because the leaders were acting as men and were wrong, but if so, follow them anyway because you will be blessed for obedience….
But I digress. The point is, through thought stopping and major mental gymnastics I believed I had made it work, my moral compass, my love for my family, the love I understood God to have, and the teachings of the church.
The thought stopping that I did that shocks me the most is choosing to ignore the actual torture that I knew happened at BYU in the form of conversion therapy. I knew. I knew about the porn and the shocking and chemicals. I just blocked my brain and my heart from feeling and thinking about it because there was no way to make that be okay. I told myself they thought they were helping, doing the best they could with what they knew at the time. I told myself, while this was surely not revelation, I could still trust these apostles of God to lead the church, to lead me, because everyone makes mistakes.
I hate that I even told myself that. I hate that I could ever justify torture, and try to make it okay. I hate that knowing about that wasn’t enough for me to say, this crosses my moral lines. This cannot be okay. We study the atrocities committed by others, by people not of our in group and think they must be monsters. They must be something so other than us for them to have done that, or allowed that to be done, to other humans. To God’s children.
I am amazed and horrified at my ability to justify.
There is so much more peace in my heart when I let it be wrong. When I trust my feelings of abhorrence. When I say, this cannot be of God. When I let myself think about it, and acknowledge the full horror of it. When I can vow to do better when I encounter similar atrocities in the future, because I will not justify it. It is so much easier to live in my own soul.
The linked article was written by my friend, Jeremy Quist, a LGBTQ former-member of the church. It is heart-breaking and vulnerable and so important. We need to listen to the voices of those whose lives depend on us to hear.
To my LGBTQ friends and family, I am so sorry for not loving you better. For not listening sooner. For choosing not to understand so that I could be comfortable in my misunderstanding. I am probably still not getting things right, but I am ready to learn to do better. Because I love you.
