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Hello dear friends, old and new… It’s been another couple years since I’ve checked in with all of you here. I occasionally check back to read the current discussions, but I largely feel like I’ve moved beyond the scope of this forum. So many of you lent me your words of consolation and comfort many years back when I was at a pivotal movement in my life. I was attempting to return early from my mission and was frightened and unsure of what my future might hold. I can never fully explain how much your support meant to me back then. It made all the difference.
In light of this, I wanted to come back and share with you
an article about myself and my fiance that was published this last Friday by EsquireAnyway, I hope those of you who’ve known me here will find some silver lining in the piece. Thank you.
Link:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a45719/gay-mormon-community/?zoomable Thanks for linking this. What a fantastic article. You are doing God’s work by highlighting this turmoil. That’s my opinion anyway. One of the families I baptized in 1989 were and are real stalwarts. The parents divorced, but both continued to be fully committed to their kids and to the church. They have 4 sons, 3 of whom completed faithful missions. The youngest is the same age as my oldest son; he was born years after I finished my mission. He is gay and in a committed relationship that his mother supports because she loves her son and wants him to be happy. It breaks my heart that this family has been faithful through so many decades of personal issues, never wavering, always sacrificing and giving to build up the church, and now their youngest son. . . who served and completed a faithful mission to build up this church . . . is cast out as an apostate because he has to be true to who he is and be able to pursue his own happiness, too.
Living celibate and alone for your whole life became untenable when the laws surrounding gay marriage changed. It was a huge tipping point. We are on the wrong side of both history and morality. We would have done better to require a homosexual equivalent of the law of chastity, requiring lifelong fidelity and marital commitment before sex. There is nothing I could say to this family that would make this right. I half wish I had never been involved. I feel like I let them down, even though I don’t agree with the hateful exclusion policy. I am still reeling.
Fantastic article! Thank you for sharing your story. Thanks for the response. hawkgrrrl wrote:Living celibate and alone for your whole life became untenable when the laws surrounding gay marriage changed. It was a huge tipping point. We are on the wrong side of both history and morality. We would have done better to require a homosexual equivalent of the law of chastity, requiring lifelong fidelity and marital commitment before sex.
You’re absolutely right on this. As mentioned in the article, my brother has chosen to take this road… at least for now. I truely hope that he will be able to find his way into a meaningful and happy relationship one day.
Wonderful. Thank you. You probably don’t realize how deeply we appreciate knowing this site helped you in some way to be able to find personal peace and write something like this. God bless you.
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing. Thank you so much for sharing this with us. It also warms my heart that we could be of help to you when you had so few people that you could turn to in confidence. I have 4 thoughts.
1) I am so very happy that you and Kyle are happy. Life is difficult and will challenge you but I hope that you hold onto that happiness, in some form, forever.
2)I LOVE your Mom!
Quote:Linda says sometimes people ask her how she can be part of a Church that doesn’t accept her sons. “I say, ‘How could I not?’ I need to have that to get through the hard times.” She tears up when asked about Garett’s and Kyle’s spiritual futures. Apostates, after all, do not ascend to the highest level of heaven. Shawn puts an arm around her as she struggles to regain her composure, but her voice still breaks. “That’s really what keeps my faith. I just hope that in the next life it will all make sense. I have to have faith that my God is a loving God.”
3)
Quote:No matter what the Church says, Kyle and Garett are determined to be married for eternity.
The event that precipitated my faith crisis was the stillbirth of my daughter. Interestingly, stillbirths do not technically count as living souls in church doctrine. No temple ceremonies are performed for them. As far as I have been able to determine, whether or not she is included as part of my “eternal family” is completely up to me. If I believe that she is one with us then she is – and the lack of church records confirming this fact does not change it in the slightest. I hope you see where I am going with this. You and Kyle can be eternal in the same way. I have taken to calling it the “binding clasp of love.”
4) They sure found a dour and forbidding picture of Elder Nelson didn’t they
:Your friend,
Roy
Roy wrote:4) They sure found a dour and forbidding picture of Elder Nelson didn’t they
:
Ain’t that the truth
[img]http://esq.h-cdn.co/assets/16/24/480×575/gallery-1466373113-nelson.jpg [/img] This is such an amazing article. I’m sure it will be helpful for a lot of people out there. Quote:They don’t even feel comfortable holding hands in public—”unless it’s Sunday, when most people who wouldn’t like us are at Church,” says Garett.
This struck me because I’m such a believer in the healing power of the Sabbath. That day, when life slows down and the church parking lots fill up, is your day of rest from disapproval and exclusion.We can all hope for the time when we worship together. I remember Richard Bushman’s reaction in an interview not long after the policy. He said, “We are a pastoral people,” and as much as said, But this policy isn’t.
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