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Recently LDS singer David Archuleta has announced that he is part of the LGBTQIA+ community. https://ew.com/music/david-archuleta-reveals-struggles-with-sexuality-and-mormon-faith/ https://www.vulture.com/2021/06/david-archuleta-comes-out-as-part-of-lgbtqia-community.html https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/06/12/david-archuleta-comes-out/ I am reminded somewhat of Benji Schwimmer
https://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3247&p=40749&hilit=benji#p40749 Both David and Benji are LDS men that found success at reality TV talent show competitions and became sort of Mormon celebrities. Both David and Benji put their respective careers on hold to serve a proselyting mission for the LDS church.
There are some differences. Benji had some dabbling in same-sex relationships that resulted in some unofficial discipline/probation (not being permitted to take the sacrament) and an annotation in his membership record that he has SSA (that subsequently precluded him from working with the youth of the church… forever). All the news reports at current appear to be based upon David Archuleta’s Instagram post and information is still quite limited but at current it does not appear that David has had any sort of church discipline.
David went on a mission in 2012 and then came out to his parents as gay in 2014. It sounds like this has been a disconnect between his sexuality and his faith that David has struggled with for a long time.
David says that he came out to his parents as gay but then later felt that he might be on the bisexual spectrum and now wonders if he might even be asexual. I imagine that it must be difficult to try to discover/define your sexuality on a world stage. I wonder if his evolution/vacillation on the subject might be used against him by those not wanting to listen with empathy or make more space within the church for LGBTQIA+ members. I worry that they may feel that David “changed” from being gay, to being Bi, to being asexual and that he could “choose” to be heterosexual if he set his mind to it.
David is calling for an increase in compassion and kindness from people of faith communities towards people among the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.
I had actually thought David came out a long time ago. Maybe it was leaked that he came out to his parents in 2014. I can’t say I have a highly developed “gaydar” but what I do have pings with David – in other words, I’ve always thought he was gay. No big deal though because I agree with David and others that it’s not something people choose and we as a church and as a people need to be more loving and accepting. I have also come to understand that there is a spectrum associated with same sex attraction and clearly David isn’t positive yet where he is on that spectrum. And I believe the asexual part does complicate that a bit for him – and I think being asexual is something else the church (and we as a people) need to understand, welcome, and tolerate better. I’m glad David made a statement like this. I think the more well known members who can say “Hey, look at me, I’m a faithful believing person who is temple worthy, etc., and I’m LGBTQA+.” I think Dan Reynolds, who is even more outspoken, is also good. I remember the Benji Schwimmer story and other more recent examples like the Charlie Bird (AKA Cosmo, BYU mascot) and the guy who came out as gay at BYU graduation a couple years back (can’t recall or readily find the the name at the moment). I think the more voices, the better.
I wish they’d stop inquiring into people’s private lives in general and think that would go a long way to resolving many of the issues raised. There are plenty of things in my life I like to keep private or restricted to certain in-groups by choice and don’t care to discuss with, say, a bishop or any putative authority. One of the things David said is pretty relevant to all of us here and something I think every LGBTQA+ needs to hear and understand/embrace: Quote:I’ve tried for almost 20 years to try and change myself until I realized God made me how I am for a purpose, and instead of hating what I have considered wrong I need to see why God loved me for who I am and that it’s not just sexuality.
To remain Christians or believers on some level I think it’s pretty important to believe in God’s love and mercy.
I recently caught part of a Creflo Dollar sermon. I’m not a regular watcher, I was flipping channels (still possible with my antenna). But he was talking about how when we try to prove our worthiness (he didn’t use those exact words) or work out our own salvation we are actually denying God’s love and the blood of Christ because Jesus already did that – He already paid the price. I believe we need to hold on to the idea that God doesn’t love us because of what we do or don’t do – God just loves us and loves us just the way we are.
DarkJedi wrote:
God doesn’t love us because of what we do or don’t do – God just loves us and loves us just the way we are.
I agree. I felt this in the depths of my own FC.
I am no longer concerned/fearful about earning/losing my spot in heaven. Like the Hogwarts’s sorting hat, I believe that HF will put me where I most need to be and He will do it with a full knowledge, love, and acceptance of who I am.
DarkJedi wrote:
… But he was talking about how when we try to prove our worthiness (he didn’t use those exact words) or work out our own salvation we are actually denying God’s love and the blood of Christ because Jesus already did that – He already paid the price. …
At times I’ve thought that our culture is so obsessed with worthiness, obedience, and qualifying for god’s favor that it’s as if our whole goal in this life was to become good enough to where we no longer had need of Jesus/a savior.
It would be nice to explore the fields that lie out beyond “if we’re more obedient then…”
I have admired David for as long as I have known about him – for multiple reasons. I hope his openness helps others – both those who are outside what we have defined as normal (carefully worded description) and those who are not but struggle to understand and accept them.
nibbler wrote:
DarkJedi wrote:
… But he was talking about how when we try to prove our worthiness (he didn’t use those exact words) or work out our own salvation we are actually denying God’s love and the blood of Christ because Jesus already did that – He already paid the price. …
At times I’ve thought that our culture is so obsessed with worthiness, obedience, and qualifying for god’s favor that it’s as if our whole goal in this life was to become good enough to where we no longer had need of Jesus/a savior.
It would be nice to explore the fields that lie out beyond “if we’re more obedient then…”
No doubt! As I was listening to Creflo Dollar, who I haven’t paid much attention to in the past, I was thinking “This is what we believe.” But I’m not sure most people would get that as the take home on any given Sunday. David ties in there because, well, this is what we believe…but that may not be the take away on any given Sunday.
I’m going to look and see if there is a transcript, or similar transcripts, of Creflo Dollar’s sermon and perhaps it’s a topic for another thread. It really resonated with me and he put it so much better than I can. -He even had a line in there (paraphrasing) about us thinking we’re better than Jesus because we think what we do earns us something that Jesus already did.
Old-Timer wrote:
I have admired David for as long as I have known about him – for multiple reasons.I hope his openness helps others – both those who are outside what we have defined as normal (carefully worded description) and those who are not but struggle to understand and accept them.
I agree, and also like David. Yes, I’ve thought he was gay but I’ve also always been pretty accepting of gays and feel they are treated poorly by the church (institution) and the church (community) in general. I can’t imagine what he has endured by those who are not so open and accepting and those who are more judgemental. I was 30 when I married, so I have a little taste of some of it, but not all. Yes, I know there were people who wondered if I was gay (some people told me so) and I relate somewhat to David’s asexualism. Nevertheless, David is a “menace to society” as was I and there are church cultural expectations that David is not meeting – thus I think part of what is happening here is David saying “I’m good, don’t worry about it.” The church needs to grow and mature, thank you David for helping. The “God loves me for who I am” message (as opposed to “God loves me if I do X, and Y, and Z”) needs to be the take away much more often than it is.
Related, I think, although not directly to David Archuleta. This article regarding more younger church members identifying as sexually non-binary is in today’s Salt Lake Tribune. The article does specifically look at Gen. Z (those born after 1997), but also notes Millennials (which would include David). https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/06/21/jana-riess-there-are-more/ ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/06/21/jana-riess-there-are-more/ Quote:Not surprisingly, there is more sexual diversity among younger Latter-day Saints than older ones. While 94% of baby boomers said they were heterosexual, just 77% of Generation Z did. (This analysis borrows Pew’s cutoff dates for the generations, which uses 1997 as the first birth year of Gen Z. Only adult Gen Zers over age 18 were eligible for the study.) So, 23% of Gen Zers who identify as LDS say they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or other. And nearly as many (19%) of millennials did as well. It’s notable that this finding is nearly double the 10% that Benjamin Knoll and I found among millennials in the 2016 Next Mormons Survey (which broke down into 7% bisexual, 2% gay or lesbian, and 1% “other”).
Riess notes three points for consideration:
Quote:First, generationally, sexual diversity is high among Gen Z Mormons because it’s high among Gen Z as a whole. In terms of sexual orientation, Nationscape’s Gen Z Latter-day Saints look a lot like non-Mormons their same age
Quote:The second point is that Gen Z Mormons currently show more sexual diversity than older generations of Latter-day Saints because, frankly, some of them are statistically likely to leave the church but have not yet done so.
Quote:Finally, one surprising aspect of the study is related to race and geography. Nationscape’s data suggests that among Mormons, some racial and ethnic minorities were more likely to also be sexual minorities.
Among all Americans, heterosexuality was 87% for Hispanics and 90% for Blacks, but among Latter-day Saints it was 71% for Hispanics and 74% for Blacks. It’s a statistically significant difference because the sample size is big enough that this isn’t just a random sampling error. Still, it’s unclear why Black and Hispanic Mormons exhibit more sexual diversity than their non-LDS counterparts.
I think a big part of the trend has to do with new levels of acceptance for non-hetero individuals. Another part comes from there being more categories to consider. I think a good number of youth today search their feelings for evidence of their attractions, whereas previous generations would actively repress anything that wasn’t hetero. “Search your feelings” – Star Wars Quote I recently had a sex/pornography talk with my teenagers individually (patterned after Dr. Jennifer Finlayson Fife’s lesson plan). One of my children told me that they think they may be non-hetero. It wasn’t like a “coming out” moment . It was just matter of fact and flowed naturally from the conversation. My child has plenty of time to figure it out.
In this David is a good example. He isn’t fixed in one category or another. Just because he told his parents one thing in 2014 does not mean that he is forever married to that identifier.
There seems to have been an update on David’s status as he struggles and figures things out for himself. https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/01/23/david-archuletas/ ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/01/23/david-archuletas/ I think his struggles are very much like what other LGBTQIA+ people who grew up in the church go through, including suicidal ideation. Some excerpts:
Quote:“I can no longer…pretend like everything’s fine,” he says in the video.
Quote:“That’s what I wanted,” he says. “I grew up believing it and defending it…[thinking] I’m going to get married and have kids and have a wife and be married in the temple and get to live happily ever after.”
His sexuality, he says, did not allow that.
Quote:He hoped he could “overcome the lack of feelings…and make it work,” he says. “But there’s this really strange emotion that comes up each time I would try and do that — this guilt, the shame, [that I wasn’t] good enough.…You start feeling bitter towards the girls, in my case, and I just didn’t even want to see them anymore.”
Quote:“I don’t want to play this part for my whole life,” he says in his video. “I’m feeling like I’m going nuts.”
Quote:“In my religion, it’s OK to be attracted to men, just still marry a woman because it’s the right thing to do. That’s the eternal perspective,” Archuleta says. “Like that’s what’s going to really make you happy.”
He says he was taught that being with a man would make him unhappy and sad and cause him to “lose the light.”
Quote:The dissonance between his attractions and marrying a woman “caused me to despise myself,” Archuleta says. “I decided…I needed to change something if I wanted to look at myself in a better light, which was scary because I thought, there’s no way I can accept that I’m into guys…that I could accept that and be happy and be OK with myself, and be OK with God.”
Quote:What would God prefer — him being romantically involved with someone “who is the same as me,” he wondered, or “not being here and not existing?”
Archuleta then started to think staying alive might be all right — “even if I’m gay.”
After endlessly asking deity to take away his attractions, he says he got a clear answer: “You need to stop asking me this because I’m not going to change this.”
The Latter-day Saint musician now feels God loves him as he is.
Quote:Though Archuleta’s painful mental wrestling has been replicated thousands, if not millions, of times among Latter-day Saint LGBTQ members, the singing sensation has a public platform and more visibility than most who privately suffer.
“David’s bravery to open up and be so vulnerable is incredibly commendable,” says Madi Hawes, chair of the student outreach committee for Brigham Young University’s USGA (Understanding Sexuality, Gender, and Allyship) group. “To me, the most important thing he said in the entire video was ‘I’m here.’”
Quote:“So many people think being gay is all you want is to have physical sexual relations and give into those desires of lusting,” he says. “It’s like, no, it is the same way a heterosexual person would want to fall in love. … Are you thinking only about sex when you want to marry someone and share your life with someone? No, you want to connect with them on an emotional level. You want to share goals with them. …You just want to go and do things together. And, you know, go and eat…make breakfast or lunch, or watch a movie or go on a walk together. …It’s that connection that I had to pretend I could offer to the girls I was with.”
Going forward, Archuleta says, “there’s a greater likelihood for me to marry a guy than a woman at this point.”
That is a heavy weight on his shoulders. May he find all the love and support that he needs. To quote a friend, “May there be a road.”
DarkJedi wrote:
“So many people think being gay is all you want is to have physical sexual relations and give into those desires of lusting,” he says. “It’s like, no, it is the same way a heterosexual person would want to fall in love. … Are you thinking only about sex when you want to marry someone and share your life with someone? No, you want to connect with them on an emotional level. You want to share goals with them. …You just want to go and do things together. And, you know, go and eat…make breakfast or lunch, or watch a movie or go on a walk together. …It’s that connection that I had to pretend I could offer to the girls I was with.”Going forward, Archuleta says, “there’s a greater likelihood for me to marry a guy than a woman at this point.”
to recap from another discussion, it appears that the highest life satisfaction scores result when people form relationships with others where there is mutual attraction. The satisfaction scores fall by about 15% when the marriage is a mixed orientation marriage. However, satisfaction scores in mixed orientation marriages are still much higher than for singles. I think this is because of what David explains above. So much more than just sex is the desire to share your life with someone. However, while mixed orientation marriages may work for some, they do fail at more than twice the rate of traditional Mormon marriages and should not be seen as a panacea.
My takeaway is that the worst option from a menu of bad options for those with SSM that wish to remain in the church is for them to stay perpetually single. That burden is just too great.
My wife and I watched the 51 minute stream/post together. My observations:
1) I have deep sympathy for Brother Archuleta. Whatever he does moving forward, I am hopeful that he finds a path that can give him some peace. I have considered myself as an ally for at least the last decade but I do not think that I have really “felt” the predicament of LDS and LGBTQIA+ youth in quite the same way before.
2) David makes a compelling (theoretical) doctrinal argument for suicide. In my mind, the argument is in the same vein and possibly derived from old quotes about virtue being more important than life. “teach both sons and daughters that chastity is worth more than life itself.” J Reuben Clark. “Your virtue is worth more than your life. Please young folk, preserve your virtue even if you lose your lives.” David O. McKay. “It is better to die in defending one’s virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle.” Spencer W. Kimball. As David seems to present the wrestle that he had with his sexuality, his faith, and suicide ideation – if he were to end his life in order to prevent falling into temptation and losing his “virtue” then surely God would forgive him. Perhaps it would even be seen doctrinally as the more moral and noble thing to do…
These quotes are all pretty old but I’m not sure that they have been strongly refuted and our current doctrinal positions and policies do not exactly offer a much better prognosis.
3) I felt that David offered a decent argument for allowing SSM in temples. He states that we currently seal adopted children to their legal (but not biological) parents. Essentially, why could we not do something similar for same sex couples and families. I think for this to be applied, it would take a huge dose of humility about what we do not know about the afterlife and how spirit children may be created etc. I do not think this particular change is likely. However, it would be nice for us as a church to say essentially, “There is much that is not known about the afterlife and how sealings may apply to various situations. In the absence of sure knowledge, we will err on the side of providing ordinances to as many people as possible.”
4) I felt that David’s argument for allowing SSM families to participate in our church communities outside of temples was a home run. He acknowledges that doctrinally, being in a SSM is not the ideal. However, we already have lots of families that are not the ideal. Whether it is working mothers, or divorce, or single parents, or mixed faith marriages, there are lots of examples where families do not live the ideal and we make allowances for them. We don’t (or at least shouldn’t) shun them, ostracize them, or excommunicate them. We have compassion upon their circumstances. Why then do we not have a similar feeling of compassion and accommodation for our LGBTQIA+ members?
I wonder if the church could not draw doctrinal inspiration from the apostle Paul, 1 Cor. 7 “8 Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. 9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” Maybe it would be better for the LDS LGBTQIA+ youth (along with the widows) to stay unmarried but if they cannot control themselves, they should marry (SSM) for it is better to marry (SSM) than to burn with passion. To frame it as “Good, Better, Best,” maybe eternal heterosexual marriage is “best,” and a lifetime of faithful singleness waiting for eternal heterosexual marriage is “better,” but can we support SSM as “good” for those that may find it impossible to reach the “better” and “best” options in this life?
5) I feel bad for the extra pressure that David must have felt as a representative or ambassador for the LDS church and the extra scrutiny that he must have felt. I am hopeful that his message might help some LGBTQIA+ youth. However, I personally do not want to make David into some sort of representative or ambassador for LGBTQIA+ issues within the church. That is not fair to David to put that on his shoulders. He can “find himself” without it having to affect an entire movement. Some of that might be unavoidable because of his fame, reach, and openness. However, I would wish to give David the space to live his own life without the bubble and microscope.
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