Being gay is your trial in life

[Anonymous]

I’ve found myself getting very frustrated by this approach towards homosexuality. At its core, I believe it’s deeply offensive to gay people, and if you really dig into this philosophy, it creates problems and paradoxes that undermine large parts of Mormon theology. Acceptance of homosexuality as a necessary and normal part of nature and our eternal identity just works better.

Here’s why it’s offensive. When you strip away the fluffy words, this is what you are saying: “Your Spirit is not gay, but there’s something about your physical experience on earth that makes you feel like you’re gay.” In other words, “You are defective”. Fortunately, our leaders have softened their language, whereas in the 70s, that “defect” was considered vile, repugnant, embarrassing, unclean, debauchery, and acting on those natural but “defective” tendencies was grounds for assault, expulsion from school, excommunication, and being socially ostracized. (I have references for all those statements)

Let’s walk down this path as a thought experiment, and let’s assume for a brief moment that homosexuality is somehow a defect of the physical body. What we are saying, in essence is:

Hypothetically: There are physical conditions which alter our essential experience of ourselves in mortality. Somehow the body hijacks the emotional core of our being, and replaces it with something else. There’s no way to overcome this condition, and there’s no reliable way to separate our “true” self from the “hijacked” self; in these chases, the affected person is advised to “wait it out”, and at the resurrection their body will be restored to a perfect state.

But even that can’t be right, because if the condition is truly a physical condition, then the Spirit would be free from its effect at the moment of death, right?

Also, if you buy into this theory, there’s no reason to believe that this condition is limited to homosexuality. Let’s expand our thinking and speculate that there are a multitude of other physical conditions that would cause someone with seeming complete power of their faculties to have a false experience of themselves. And this false experience could conceivably be comprehensive, or in other words, the experience you have of yourself on earth is completely different than your “real” spiritual self. Can you imagine the strange experience at death, what we can only imagine as spiritual schizophrenia? You would have complete memories of your thoughts and emotions on earth, but suddenly they would feel like they belong to someone else.

What if you don’t like your “real” self?

What if you can’t stand the “real” version of your spouse?

How accountable are you really, if your entire mortal existence was essentially in someone else’s shoes?

What kinds of things might be controlled by this phenomena? Anger, addiction, skepticism, anti-authoritarianism?

We’re taught that our spirits were “ignorant” before they came to earth, that the process of being exposed to right and wrong would give us the knowledge and experience to grow to become more like Heavenly Father. That happens in the form of memories and experiences (which are essentially all we take with us when we die). These people, including gay people, essentially leave their mortal experience with warped and disconnected memories.

Essentially, it’s like taking infants with otherwise perfect vision and making them wear glasses that distort their vision, and then telling them they’re going to hell when they can’t figure out the way through the maze you set up. Then, to avoid hell, you provide the option of sitting in a chair while all the other kids have fun running through the maze. “You can do the maze after you die”. Not cool.

When you chase this concept down, it just doesn’t pan out. It works for people with physical limitations, and it works for people with mental disabilities (because we deem them ‘not accountable’), but it just doesn’t work for gay people.

I think it’s time that our leaders try to figure out how to make homosexuality fit with Mormon theology. It’s really not that hard to make it fit, and like many other things, God waits to reveal it until society is “ready to receive it”. If we’re not already there, we will be in the next 20-30 years.

This is how I personally view it (and how it could be made to fit within LDS theology):

Homosexuality is a natural and necessary part of our society. It’s part of the diversity required to maintaining societal and biological balance. It’s not simply a fluke or a defect – God planned it as the natural order of things. The more we’ve learned about nature, the more we’ve recognized its place. As our earth life mirrors our eternal existence, there’s no reason to assume that this diversity wouldn’t be part of the natural order of eternities. This could be a critical part of the gospel saved for the latter days when society would finally be advanced enough to be able to hear the truth.

Being gay is part of a person’s eternal identity. It makes them unique and will carry with them throughout eternities. At times, God has made changes to marriage and family relationships, and now our society is prepared for the acceptance and understanding of homosexual members to receive the blessings of marriage and sealing.

… Something like that. Not trying to start a flame war, but thoughts?

[Anonymous]

I follow your logic.

Reminds me about an item I wrote a while back http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7068&p=98845#p98843” class=”bbcode_url”>http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7068&p=98845#p98843 (just the one comment I made, not the entire thread)

[Anonymous]

That is my basic understanding of how Elder Bednar (and some others) have framed this discussion. I posted the following on another thread.

Quote:

Just to summarize. Elder Bednar seems to be saying that SSA is not a central characteristic of a person’s identity. That is fine as far as it goes but it does not seem to be applied to heterosexuals. Being a man or being a woman (including the part about being attracted to the opposite gender) is something that is taught to have existed in the pre-mortal realm and will continue in the eternities.

Being gay cannot be an essential characteristic because God’s plan only works for heterosexuals. God would not create children and then forever exclude them from his plan. Homosexuality then becomes a difficulty of the mortal probation only that can be endured and outlasted.

Just as has been said that “We are spiritual beings, having an earthly experience” – Gay people can be thought of as “Spiritually straight beings, having an earthly gay experience.”

Does that correctly describe what Elder Bednar seems to be saying?

[Anonymous]

marty wrote:

When you chase this concept down, it just doesn’t pan out.

No, it doesn’t pan out. It doesn’t make sense.

Like your line of thinking, this doesn’t just apply to homosexuality in the church, but many unique situations that require personal adaptation.

But it certainly doesn’t make any sense to me.

God’s plan can work for everyone. Why does it only work for heterosexuals? I don’t see it does. Gender can be an eternal part of our identity. I don’t know why sexuality has to be.

When I have this conversation with others, it seems it all comes back to “homosexuality is a sin”. When I ask “Why?” …the only answer is “because the church leaders said it was.”

So…we’re back to the discussions we were having in the other thread on Chapter 9 of the Prophets. Can they be wrong? Yes. So…I go down that line of thinking. That just makes more sense to me.

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

We are spiritual beings, having an earthly experience” – Gay people can be thought of as “Spiritually straight beings, having an earthly gay experience.”

Yes, perfectly put. I think most people would agree with that statement, but I don’t think people chase it down to it’s logical conclusions, which is in a word, weird.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Anonymous]

“spiritually straight” is a weird concept to me.

“spiritual sex” is weird.

I agree with Marty…when you go down the path…it gets weird to me. Religion is weird.

[Anonymous]

marty wrote:

Hypothetically: There are physical conditions which alter our essential experience of ourselves in mortality. Somehow the body hijacks the emotional core of our being, and replaces it with something else. There’s no way to overcome this condition, and there’s no reliable way to separate our “true” self from the “hijacked” self; in these chases, the affected person is advised to “wait it out”, and at the resurrection their body will be restored to a perfect state.

But even that can’t be right, because if the condition is truly a physical condition, then the Spirit would be free from its effect at the moment of death, right?

Also, if you buy into this theory, there’s no reason to believe that this condition is limited to homosexuality….

What if you don’t like your “real” self?

What if you can’t stand the “real” version of your spouse?

How accountable are you really, if your entire mortal existence was essentially in someone else’s shoes?

What kinds of things might be controlled by this phenomena? Anger, addiction, skepticism, anti-authoritarianism?

Thanks for the thread. I think this is an important conversation.

I guess, for me, I’ve always kind of had this kind of mindset. For me, I believe “who we are” in this world is largely determined by our genetics and learning environment. That’s one of the many reasons why the atonement was such a comfort–it would make up for all the biological and environmental factors which prevented us from being our true, godly selves.

Yes, it does potentially open the floodgates for questions about agency, but for me, knowing that biology was stacked against me, didn’t excuse me of participating in behavior that I was fortunate enough to understand was wrong. Yeah, we all have the light of Christ, but we also have a lot of other things working against us. Interesting that you were taught that our spirits were “ignorant” before we came to earth. I didn’t receive that teaching. My lessons about the Premortal existence actually seemed to indicate the opposite: with all the talk of the War in Heaven, of each of us making a very important choice after weighing the importance of agency against the promise of us all returning, etc. Goes to show how instruction or what is stressed can vary.

I’m feeling very skeptical right now about things changing anytime soon. When it comes to gender roles, the Church seems to be in high retrenchment mode right now. It’s the battle they’ve picked to fight. For me, “the Plan” now has a new emphasis about gender roles and traditional means of conceiving children. I remember watching a session of general conference, and cringing at commercial (before or after, I can’t remember), which was basically a gender advertisement for the Church. It was filled with bright, sunny, middle-aged women talking in “primary voice” about how different women are from men and how that’s wonderful. I rolled my eyes and had to stop myself from letting out a chuckle. My mom was even embarrassed by the add. Sometimes the Church doesn’t know when to give it a rest.

I also find it ironic that, according to Bednar, when it comes to “labels” of heterosexuality or homosexuality, they are irrelevant because we are all children of God. However, when it comes to “labels” of gender (man or woman) it’s incredibly important and central to everything. For me, this doesn’t have to be the case. Man or woman, all are alike unto Christ, and all should be able to return to him. But the Church is bound and determined to hold onto how important that “label” is.

[Anonymous]

university wrote:

I’m feeling very skeptical right now about things changing anytime soon. When it comes to gender roles, the Church seems to be in high retrenchment mode right now. It’s the battle they’ve picked to fight. For me, “the Plan” now has a new emphasis about gender roles and traditional means of conceiving children. I remember watching a session of general conference, and cringing at commercial (before or after, I can’t remember), which was basically a gender advertisement for the Church. It was filled with bright, sunny, middle-aged women talking in “primary voice” about how different women are from men and how that’s wonderful. I rolled my eyes and had to stop myself from letting out a chuckle. My mom was even embarrassed by the add. Sometimes the Church doesn’t know when to give it a rest.

I had a calling in primary recently. I was surprised at the new songs that we were having the children sing that basically enshrined the nuclear family. One song specifically included verses about the different roles of the father and mother. It seemed to me that the church was laying it on pretty thick to children as young as 4.

Even putting aside the issues of SSM, I felt that this was very insensitive of people with single parents, living with extended family, with grandparents as legal guardians, or any other family configuration.

university wrote:

I also find it ironic that, according to Bednar, when it comes to “labels” of heterosexuality or homosexuality, they are irrelevant because we are all children of God. However, when it comes to “labels” of gender (man or woman) it’s incredibly important and central to everything. For me, this doesn’t have to be the case. Man or woman, all are alike unto Christ, and all should be able to return to him. But the Church is bound and determined to hold onto how important that “label” is.

I believe that the labels of being a man or a woman are very much tied up in heterosexuality. Remember that in LDS theology a man or a woman alone cannot become exalted. An asexual woman or man that is not interested in marriage would frustrate God’s plan for themselves just as much as a gay person (hypothetically) would. Accordingly, it is not enough to be a man or a woman that obeys the commandments (including the law of chastity). Eventually everyone must enter heterosexual marriages or be damned (stopped from further progression).

[Anonymous]

LookingHard wrote:

I follow your logic.

Reminds me about an item I wrote a while back … just the one comment I made, not the entire thread)

Wow, that’s interesting.

[Anonymous]

Heber13 wrote:

Gender can be an eternal part of our identity. I don’t know why sexuality has to be.

This comment jarred something loose in my brain. Who (or what) determines our identity, an external force or an internal force? Are we not the owners of our own identity? Can we shape our identity to our own liking? Is there a force (other than society ) that reigns us all in, wishes to turn us into something that we wouldn’t choose for ourselves?

marty, you’re touching very close to some of the paradoxes that solidified my faith crisis. A personal answer that finally brought me some measure of comfort was that there is no afterlife.

marty wrote:

Can you imagine the strange experience at death, what we can only imagine as spiritual schizophrenia? You would have complete memories of your thoughts and emotions on earth, but suddenly they would feel like they belong to someone else.

My orthodox answer to that would have been that when we resurrect there is still a period of time where we continue to grow, perhaps this period would last thousands of years. Initially we would retain all of our learned behaviors but the key difference is that with a resurrected body the physical limitations would no longer serve as a barrier to learning. For the first time we would be in a position where we could learn whereas before the physical limitation served as a constant barrier. To trivialize things, if I were born without arms there’s no way I could learn to juggle, write, play guitar, etc. Once I resurrected I’d still be terrible at juggling, writing, and playing guitar but I’d have arms and be in the position to learn those things if I so desired. In other words it would be the traditional concept of perfection, that we grow into line upon line.

When I explore those ideas suddenly the more orthodox purpose of life, to learn and grow, becomes less relevant. What if we’re at a physical disadvantage that prevents us from growing? What was the purpose of life if you’ve got to wait around for the resurrection to grow?

This is a good time for me to clarify that I don’t view same sex attraction as a disability. Everyone’s view of god’s plan is clouded and limited. Unfortunately I believe gay people were pigeonholed into being “defective” because people lacked the vision that would have helped them entrench gay people firmly into god’s plan where they belong. In Bednar’s recent interview he says (and I feel it was said sarcastically):

Elder Bednar wrote:

…the father has not changed his mind about how the plan should operate.

Which doesn’t sound like a person that’s open to further light and knowledge. A better answer to a question seldom comes the the person that believes they already have the answer. Perhaps it’s time to ask again, learn what glorious things god has in store for all of us?

There’s more that I could say but this post is already long and I’d be speaking more to what we continue to view as disabilities because that’s what’s colored my past. I’m worried that focusing on disabilities would be off topic, since again I don’t view same sex attraction as a challenge or deficiency that must eventually be overcome. Sometimes I almost take that step back to apply those same thoughts to what most do consider disabilities but it’s difficult. Enough about that.

I’ll end on this. In my most orthodox days I felt like I was losing a part of my identity in my never ending quest for perfection. I felt like I had to shed the real me and become this… I don’t know, a carbon copy of everyone else? It was unsettling. God beautified and gave variety to the face of the earth, I believe that driving force extended into the 6th day of creation.

[Anonymous]

I’ve been lurking very seldomly on this site for many reasons, but seeing Bednar’s comment on “no homosexual members of the Church” as well as Nibbler’s mentioning of it tipped me into commenting.

Bednar’s comment is very troubling to me. I understand that perhaps he was trying to make the conversation of “We are all God’s children and so things like sexual orientation don’t matter to God” with the intent of uniting everyone, but really it’s just Heterosexual Privilege screaming. Just like white people overwhelmingly don’t understand black people with race issues, straight people don’t understand gay/trans/queer people with sexual orientation issues. Bednar gets to make the blanket statement of “can’t we all just get along and forget about all these ‘silly’ labels?” PRECISELY because he literally never has to think about his label. Ever. It “worked” out for him: he got a wife, he got his own children, they have paired off with opposite gendered partners. He doesn’t have to think about how to be inclusive because he’s already included. Now I’m singling him out specifically because of his comments, but this applies to basically every straight person ever.

Quote:

A better answer to a question seldom comes the the person that believes they already have the answer. Perhaps it’s time to ask again, learn what glorious things god has in store for all of us?

Love this line of thinking, Nibbler. It also makes me wonder, not only are we not open to other answers if we believe we have all of them already, but we also close ourselves off to further questions if we believe that all the questions we currently have are answerable and answered. The inkling to wonder and ponder and be curious is closed off if we think we can pin down everything in the universe, and more importantly, if we think we already have.

[Anonymous]

nibbler wrote:

In my most orthodox days I felt like I was losing a part of my identity in my never ending quest for perfection. I felt like I had to shed the real me and become this… I don’t know, a carbon copy of everyone else? It was unsettling. God beautified and gave variety to the face of the earth, I believe that driving force extended into the 6th day of creation.

I think the reason a lot of people don’t like the term “faith crisis” is because it isn’t one; they’re finally happy.

[Anonymous]

DancingCarrot wrote:

straight people don’t understand gay/trans/queer people with sexual orientation issues….He doesn’t have to think about how to be inclusive because he’s already included.

Amen.

[Anonymous]

Heber13 wrote:

DancingCarrot wrote:

straight people don’t understand gay/trans/queer people with sexual orientation issues….He doesn’t have to think about how to be inclusive because he’s already included.

Amen.

And Amen.

[Author]

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