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I hate the term LGBT etc – like a lot of things these terms seem to be pre-set traps. Is LGBTQ? LGBTQIA etc? If you don’t use the correct initials you get set upon.
I sorta don’t either, but that’s more because I don’t think it’s accurate to lump in the T with the LGB. Sexual orientation is a totally separate concept from gender identity. I think it’s unhelpful to slap a label on “not cisgender and/or not straight” folks even if it is in the name of calling attention to marginalization/discrimination and bringing about positive social change. One of my sad observations about human nature is that labels tend to be more prescriptive than descriptive. I think when people slap labels on themselves, they run the risk of the label defining them rather than the label describing a trait of theirs. They often fall prey to groupthink as a result and then identity politics (which is really just a fancy name for tribalism, now that I think of it) happen. For example, conservative gay people tend to be quite rare.
I’d much rather avoid labels altogether and simply think of them as people who happen to be attracted to their own sex.
Excellent comments, Beefster. I work to move the needle of understanding in classes, etc. I watch and time myself carefully, but I have been smilingly vocal about accepting and embracing our non-heterosexual family members. We have eons of training to overcome. That can take time. I don’t love the policy one bit. I also comprehend the generation that made it. I draw on quotes from LDS sources, like the website about loving, connecting and accepting all people.
Baby steps of sincerity can go a long way.
I don’t deal with it, that’s the problem. I tend to try and ignore it. But I do take a fairly strong view on promiscuity – I get that it’s enjoyable, and we all get the urges to do it… but it’s also unhygienic and doesn’t produce a a stable or happy society in the long run. Promiscuity is a major aspect of gay culture unfortunately, even more so than heterosexual culture.
“Promiscuity” is a natural result of cultural prohibitions on committed relationships, especially when all monogamous relationships are considered promiscuous. Really strong nonconformists rebel against such prohibitions, but most people don’t have the ability or desire to fight such a battle. Just saying.
I have a particular problem with the term “gay lifestyle” (Which nobody here has used in this thread). I feel that it is pejorative in that it conjures up images to gay clubbing and promiscuity. The word “lifestyle” also implies “lifestyle choice” and “choice and accountability” to LDS listeners. I find it particularly ironic when “gay lifestyle” is used to describe people wanting SSM. They want to have a marriage, a mortgage, a career, maybe a dog. How is that “gay lifestyle” any different than the “American dream”?
To answer the question in the thread title, I avoid the subject or gently push back at appropriate moments. For example, I find it interesting that a seemingly high number of church members still feel that homosexual orientation is a choice. The recent church literature indicates that church leadership understands that orientation is not a choice. This is an example of the type of gentle correction or push back that I might employ.
Well said, Roy. I agree completely. mom3 wrote:
I work to move the needle of understanding in classes, etc. I watch and time myself carefully, but I have been smilingly vocal about accepting and embracing our non-heterosexual family members.We have eons of training to overcome. That can take time. I don’t love the policy one bit. I also comprehend the generation that made it. I draw on quotes from LDS sources, like the website about loving, connecting and accepting all people.
Baby steps of sincerity can go a long way.
As I ponder a possible return to the Church after resigning, I think that is how I would need to treat it. I have been reasoning that being an LDS insider who nudges the Church forward in this area is better than being a silent critic outside of Mormonism.
Old Timer wrote:
“Promiscuity” is a natural result of cultural prohibitions on committed relationships, especially when all monogamous relationships are considered promiscuous. Really strong nonconformists rebel against such prohibitions, but most people don’t have the ability or desire to fight such a battle.Just saying.
I don’t know if this is accurate, but I remember reading somewhere that lesbians are less “promiscuous” or sexually active than gay men. The reason would be obvious, as men have
in generalmore testosterone and tend to be the hunters/initiators of sexual contact; that is not to say that women can’t be that way too, but I am speaking generally from a biological perspective. Then again, if art imitates life, I think the women on The L Word (cable TV series) were quite frisky, I would know I watched the series twice, love me some lesbians, LOL. Old Timer wrote:
“Promiscuity” is a natural result of cultural prohibitions on committed relationships, especially when all monogamous relationships are considered promiscuous. Really strong nonconformists rebel against such prohibitions, but most people don’t have the ability or desire to fight such a battle.Just saying.
Two generations ago you might have had a case with this, but certainly over the past thirty or forty years, this behavior has not been so much rebellious as part & parcel of the zeitgeist.
I’m middle aged and within my generation you were considered weird if you saved yourself for marriage and if you dated someone for a while a sexual relationahip was expected… it would be very unusual for such a person to stick with just the one their entire life.
Promiscuity as much to do with hormones and lust… drunkenness and invariably (and paradoxically) not getting the ones you *really* like.
Roy wrote:
I have a particular problem with the term “gay lifestyle” (Which nobody here has used in this thread). I feel that it is pejorative in that it conjures up images to gay clubbing and promiscuity. The word “lifestyle” also implies “lifestyle choice” and “choice and accountability” to LDS listeners.It is not pejorative at all. It is a major part of gay culture – one could argue that it is to do with a ban on gay monogamy, but that doesn’t wash. Gay sex has been legal here all my lifetime, and gay marriage for, well, a significant time already. Yet you can still find certain public restrooms which are popular for this kind of activity and cruising grounds where such behavior occurs.
It is not the most endearing aspect of LGBT life, and certainly one of the more dangerous. Yes, I’m aware that many gays don’t participate and there are those who have had stable relationships for years, but this is still a major factor out there in the gay community not just a stereotype.
Lesbians ironically seem to have the opposite reputation and a very low rate of STDs. But to be honest, I have not known many lesbians particularly well.
Heterosexuals have certainly practised promiscuity, but not quite to the same level but Ashley Madison, Tindr etc actually promote such behavior and the undermining of monogamous relationships. As a result, syphilis is at a seventy year high in some parts of the world and we now have a strain of antibiotic resistent gonnorrhea emerging.
Roy wrote:
I find it particularly ironic when “gay lifestyle” is used to describe people wanting SSM. They want to have a marriage, a mortgage, a career, maybe a dog. How is that “gay lifestyle” any different than the “American dream”?
I am not American and to me the so called American Dream is just that, a fantasy with little or no base in reality.
But you do realize that there was a minority element of gay activism which *opposed* SSM on the exact basis that you are talking about i.e. the mortgage and the dog etc?
Their argument (and excuse the jargon here) is that monogamous lifelong marriage is actually a result of patriarchal power structures and a form of heteronormative tyranny which holds back everyone and anyone and that gays who support auch marriage are actually selling out to those hetero norms. Or put more plainly, they think gays who get married are becoming precisely what gays should been fighting against in the first place. These folk tend to be anarchists, but their argument is an interesting one that I don’t really agree with.
My personal feeling about the whole matter is that the state should stay out of marriage except where it involves an obvious criminal act. Gay marriage is here and that’s it ‘- some of its proponents have gone on to other causes, such as promoting gender fluidity etc, but as a debate that bit is largely over as it is a fact on the ground.
In November of 2015, following the revelation of the Exclusion Policy, I decided I could not sustain or by association condone the Church’s behaviour by continuing to participate. I voted with my feet. Eighteen months later, my wife followed. You see, My wife’s sister is gay. The Church machine chewed her up throughout her youth, YSA, and mission. The despair was great and terrible. She was not able to survive in the Church. Now, her relationships are damaged, and her ability to relate to her family is permanently damaged, because the TBM’s will only acknowledge her failure in the Church, and not her success outside of it.
Seeing her bright personality be absolutely crushed mentally and spiritually while I was at my most self-righteous period, and me unable to even approach the magnitude of what happens to marginalized gay members is something I am very ashamed of. I could not comprehend what was going on, why her meetings with leaders and church councillors was making things worse, or why she called home bawling on her mission.
To quote Dr Bronowski: “It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.”
When my oldest was still a teen he mentioned that a friend of his from church was bisexual and her parents freaked out when she had a girlfriend, and I remember thinking “Well, then she can still marry heterosexually, so it’s not that big a deal.” I’ve thought a lot more about that since then, and have a different son who identifies as pansexual (basically bisexual), so while I briefly thought that it wasn’t a big deal because heterosexual marriage is still an option, that’s not how it looks to someone who is not straight. Here’s how it looks to them, particularly now that the stigma to sexual identity has been almost entirely erased for this generation. It looks like “These old cishetero white guys are describing a reality that never really existed. Their narrative / worldview is not accurate for my experience, so what else are they wrong about? Everything? Are they just perpetuating norms of the past for their own tea-party loving comfort? Are they trying to preserve their power and comfort at the expense of people like me by fostering bigotry?”
The last two comments are very hard to hear and still want to go back to the LDS church. I am resigned. I don’t know anyone who is gay but I have empathy for gay people. The only way I could justify going back to the LDS church, by that I mean just attending and being part of the culture, is to say to myself that I would be a voice of reason and spread empathy as much as possible. My best reasoning to be a Cultural Mormon now is, being a silent critic on the outside is actually less useful and practical than being an outspoken enlightener on the inside.
Or am I deluding myself that my progressive opinions, even if stated softly and carefully and respectfully, would be received open mindedly in a largely conservative church?
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