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. 

Putting My Brave Face On

About 2 weeks ago, in an attempt to regain some control over my life, I closed my facebook account and shut down this blog. I had reached a point where I greatly resented the public nature of my journey. If I could change the past I would go back and start this blog as an anonymous venture. The passive-aggressive nature of some facebook interactions and misunderstandings had accumulated and worn me down. And perhaps most of all this blog was beginning to shape me rather me shaping it.

(There was also a very specific catalyst for the shutdowns but I won’t discuss it here).

It is one thing when friends un-friend you on facebook, it is quite another when a family member does it. How on earth does religion trump family? It would seem as though the religion that most likes to present itself as family-friendly has a rather bad track record of keeping families together. All of the focus on the afterlife has blinded people to the needs and feelings of those right in front of them in the here and now! I watched an online friend go through the full gamut of emotions recently resulting in serious consideration of suicide. And we all know about the suicide attempts and actual suicides of LGBT Mormon youth in the States.

It saddens me to be experiencing rejection and unkindness from family. The loss of friendships has also been hard but there have been many beautiful people ready to pop up and take their place; do I have to replace family as well? I guess I am beginning to learn that family is not a right but a privilege and must be earned with love, respect and kindness.

I am blown away by the lack of compassion shown by Mormons. There are some that shine out and do what you’d expect any decent human to do but then there are a disturbing number who refuse to even try to understand an apostate’s pain. The horribly overused label stating that a person has “Left the church but won’t leave the church alone” is one that is sadly so entrenched in Mormon culture and yet it is so hurtful to anyone who is trying to process the enormous changes going on in their life. Think for just a moment of how you might feel if everything you thought was true was turned upside-down and it happened at whirlwind speed and then imagine that the people who you have been closest to for your whole life tell you that you must never speak about this to them, ever. For you to discuss your confusion, feelings of betrayal and hurt, your loss… all of these very real emotions and experiences are rejected by those whom you love and instead you are told that you are mistaken, lost and evil.

Instead of discussion there is ignorance. Instead of love, distance.

And so because I started this journey with my brave real face on I now have to choose whether to ‘disappear’ and regain some peace or move forward in the face of hypocrisy and unkindness and put my name to my thoughts and experiences. I know that by writing these things down I will help someone else who is right now being shunned by their Mormon family and friends. After all of the lessons I heard in church about writing a journal to help my progeny it turns out that the most useful thing I can do with my words is to help people survive the turmoil that can come in the first stages of post-Mormonism.