I See You

I posted this link on facebook yesterday. 
Bryan Michael Egnew took his life on September 10th 2011. Just weeks before he had come out as a gay man to his family and church (LDS/Mormon). His wife took their 5 children to another state and refused to let Bryan see them. The church excommunicated him.

An LDS friend of mine commenting under the link:
" I think there's always more to it than we will ever know."


...and I found myself typing out a pretty decent response. 


We can never know the whole story. The part that we do know (and we know from many other cases of gay members who have committed suicide after revealing their homosexuality whilst still remaining celibate and faithful) is that the lay leaders are not acting in unison. You have an openly gay Bishop (celibate) who is supported by the leadership of the church and is encouraged to tell his story. Then you have Bryan (and many others) who are excommunicated for being honest about their struggle, still living the commandments* but the treatment they receive is really rough. Excommunication is a big deal, especially if Bryan (and others) still believe in the church. 

The main leadership of the church needs to train the lay leadership in how to love and embrace the gay members of their wards. 

This is the very least I would like to see happen. 

My pipe dream is that the church will renounce their homophobic 'doctrines' since all 'revelation' on the matter has been developed through impressions of elderly men discussing the issue together based on how they FEEL bout it. None of them have actually spoken to god and anyone who knows the gospel and the history of the church knows this. 

People can only accept what they themselves perceive to be true. No one can make someone believe something else. We all ought to be free to live our lives the best we know how without any self-professed authorities lording over you. To condemn people to a life of misery based of how some men in power feel about homosexuality is really rotten. The delusions run deep and I understand how real it feels but when people are ending their lives because they have been rejected by their church and because they think they are evil and because they can't find happiness in the church then this is serious business that MUST be addressed by the church leadership and MUST be questioned by believing members as they are the only ones that the leadership will listen to. 

There is always more to any story but we have enough info from Bryans story (and others) to know 
that something needs to change.


*I realised after writing this comment that I had made an assumption that "[...] his Church immediately excommunicated him because he refused to denounce his sexual orientation." meant that he was excommunicated for admitting he was gay only. I made an assumption that he had been living faithfully as a husband and Mormon before that. Which may very well still be the case; I just want to point out that the article isn't very clear on it so my comments about him being faithful are an assumption. It doesn't change my opinions on the matter but it is important that I point out I made an assumption there. 


I noticed something else after writing this comment. The friend who had commented is a believing member who has supported me since the very first day I announced my disaffection from the church. I noticed that I was able to write down my thoughts in response to their comment in a more calm and reasonable way than what I may have done had someone else written the comment. I think that my friend and I have built up a good base of respect and friendship to be able to say what we think to each other and to really hear the other one. Although we believe very different things the lines of communication are open and I really think that we are taking in what the other is saying. I cant say that for so many other interactions that I have with LDS members. Most of those conversations seem like a complete waste of time. 


I am really encouraged by this relationship and the possibilities it in itself holds as well as what it means for me in how I want to speak to everyone I come into contact with.


As it turns out there is more to this story (there always is). My anonymous commenter motivated me to look a little further. The article in PRIDE in Utah is being called a slur. The only source that is named in the article is a friend of Bryan's (Jahn Curran). The article claims that Bryan's facebook page was censored to remove information about his homosexuality. So there are quite a number of questions left unanswered.  

The main reasons I wrote this post were a.) to give voice to Bryan and his struggle that so sadly ended in him taking his life. b.) to talk about how a believing friend and I were trying to see each others POV on it. 


At the end of the day this man was a member of the LDS church. He married and had a family instead of living true to himself as a gay man because he believed that was what god wanted him to do. He struggled through life because there are people who think they know God's mind and they have no qualms lying to people and destroying lives. 


This for me is the crux of the issue. I would like to get the full story but as I said before, we have enough of the story to say:
  
"The Church of Latter-​Day Saints still has no official guidelines for how to respond when someone comes out. "


... and that is making all the difference. 

Down the Rabbit Hole

You know that post last night about trolling on Mormon facebook pages? This morning I woke up to find a string of comments from one of those pages which appears to be a substantial effort to try and (re)convert me.

It began about 3 weeks ago and I thought we were done but apparently WE are not done.  At first my evangelist berated me for having a negative view of the BOM. Then we had a misunderstanding where I thought they were comparing homosexuals to pedophiles. They said "And I ask you, "Do you love everyone the way they are? Even the rapists and pedophiles; serial killers and wife beaters? Because you just said that they were born that way."You see why I was alarmed right? The phrase of mine that triggered this statement was that I had said that any god I could believe in would love everyone as they are. What my evangelist keeps failing to understand is how incredibly insulting and tiring it is to hear homosexuals lumped in with pedophiles and rapists! Why do people immediately feel the need to go there? what is the link? The link in their head is SIN, they lump all of these things together as sins and completely fail to realise that they are being unbelievably cruel and bigoted  in their approach. Not to mention that they are just plain wrong! There is no sin in LOVE. The LGBTQI community teaches me daily about love.   


After clarifying that my 'born that way' statement was in relation to the LGBTQI community (doesn't anyone listen to Gaga anymore!) my evangelist went on to repeat themselves. "So, I'll rephrase. "Do you love everyone the way they are? Heterosexual or Homosexual? Rapist or not? Pedophile or not? Tax cheaters or not? Liars or not? Thieves or not? Animal abusers or not? Drug abusers or not?" It would appear that you think He should love EVERY PERSON as they are because they are born that way." Gah!  There are only 2 behaviours in there that don't harm another person and they are homosexuality and drug abuse. The rest impact upon others ranging from mild to severe in impact. You could argue that drug abusers hurt those close to them too BUT who are homosexual people hurting? the insecure and sexually repressed religious knobs? is that who? pfffft! give it a rest!


We then got into why I lost my belief in god. Which goes something like this:
"I was born into the church. I have read the BOM many times and the Bible, PoGP, D&C, 4 years seminary, 4+ years Institute, Gospel Essentials teacher, Young Womens Counsellor, Relief Society Counsellor. Then at age 31 I was reading Jacob2 (again) and this time didn't gloss over the mention of polygamy, referrenced it to D&C 132 and read it with a desire to understand. The ultimatum to Emma - 'accept polygamy or be destroyed' I "likened unto myself" and found no love from god. I realised I was a piece of property to him and worth less than my husband. I still believed in the church at this point and so I felt spriritually devastated by this new awareness of my place in gods plan. I spent the next year trying to find explanations that would show me I was wrong. Instead I found more and more damning evidence that the church is a fraud concocted by Joseph Smith etc. I have made my peace with Joseph. I love my Mormon friends but I 
despise Mormonism."


My evangelist friend then goes on to tell me about a bunch of women in the scriptures. Eve. Mary. Evangelist even quotes from the BOM "The Lamanite king Lamoni also bore testimony that his Redeemer was to be “born of a woman.”"Is that supposed to make me feel better?!!! that a woman was mentioned in scriptures as a baby maker! "Sarah, wife of Abraham, is mentioned only in passing as “she that bare you.” I think evangelist has forgotten whose point they are trying to prove! "Sariah, was the helpmate of the visionary Lehi and mother of the eight or so sons and daughters" Fuck me! helpmate (helpmeet?) and mother of 8, NO thanks! "
The unnamed wife of Nephi" Nameless, faceless, hopeless! To be fair, unnamed wife of Nephi did a pretty cool thing - "However, she does present a good example of a distraught woman turning to prayer when her husband’s life was endangered (as I'm sure a man would do if his wife was in danger). “With her tears and prayers” and in spite of threatenings, she tried to persuade the rebellious brethren to release her bound husband. (See 1 Ne. 18:19.) " Evangelist then makes mention of a maidservant who was beaten and then fled to the other side (the righteous side) and gave the baddies away. Evangelist sums it up with mention of the groups of  women mentioned in the BOM - sisters of Nephi, daughters of Ishmael, Lamanite daughters. 

Then this comment - "I guess you've forgotten that there are women in the Book of Mormon; good and bad, just like the men." No, but thanks for proving my point; that all of the heroes in the BOM are men. The women exist and are mentioned as some appendage to a man or men. As I've said before - Blech! 

Perhaps most insulting of all was the response to my earnest account of my feelings of pain etc upon discovering that Emma (and I) would be destroyed by god if we would not accept polygamy. Evangelist's response was to say that Joseph himself was threatened with destruction from god if he showed the golden plates to anyone (conveniently fixing the problem of people asking for proof of the plates) and again with destruction if HE would not institute polygamy. God! what a trial! having sex with pretty young (already married) women. Gag me with a mother-fucking spoon! 

NOH8 Photo-shoot

There's not much you can convey to someone once they've stuck a bit of gaffa tape over your mouth. I wonder if this will catch on as a technique for photographers working with unruly models. The up side of this for me was that I didn't have to smile! or even worry that much about my expression, although looking at it now I think that I could have expressed a little of something! 

If you've been living under a rock and don't know what the NOH8 campaign is about then you can visit them here. I've lifted this bit of info from their website bcos I'm sitting here with a hot water bottle trying to ease some stomach cramping before heading off to teach Body Balance in a minute (wah wah), so yeah, too lazy to summarise. 

"On November 4, 2008 Proposition 8 passed in California, amending the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. The defeat provoked a groundswell of initiative within the GLBT community at a grassroots level, with many new political and protest organizations being formed in response. 

The NOH8 Campaign is a photographic silent protest created by celebrity photographer Adam Bouska (http://www.bouska.net) and partner Jeff Parshley in direct response to the passage of Proposition 8. Photos feature subjects with duct tape over their mouths, symbolizing their voices being silenced by Prop 8 and similar legislation around the world, with "NOH8" painted on one cheek in protest."


Funds raised by the NOH8 Campaign are used to promote and raise awareness for Marriage Equality and anti-discrimination on a global level through an educational and interactive media campaign.

Make LOVE people!