Saturday, November 18, 2017

An Answer to an Interview Question

I recently had a Social Work student ask to interview me for a project in her Diversity class (you didn't think of me as diverse did you?!). She was doing a project/paper on LGBTQ individuals who have chosen to stay active in the LDS Church. She sent me several questions and I spent some time typing out my answers (actually during an graveyard shift in the ER...the Ogden area didn't have too many crazy people tonight so I had plenty of time) and when I got done typing out my super long answer to one of the questions I decided that I wanted to post it here because I feel like it accurately describes a lot of feelings I have on the subject.

The question was "How do you balance your sexuality and your religion?"

This was my answer:

I’m assuming that the reason for this question is because the religion I am a member of has been so outspoken about its teachings related to homosexuality. I think this question is kind of difficult to answer without having a lot of context but I will try.
 I feel like, first, it is important for me to acknowledge that I am lucky. From the moment I started being open about my sexuality, I had very important, key people that were supportive of me, and I know that things could have been much different if they had responded differently. My parents and my church leaders never made me feel like there was something wrong with me, or that my feelings were something evil. They never suggested that I created these feelings somehow or that I was less of a person or less worthy of a person because I am gay. I know that others have not experienced this. I know there are many whose families disown them, whose church leaders belittle them or make them feel wrong, and so I am empathetic to and understanding of people who feel like the church and its followers are judgemental, closed-minded, and ignorant. I am lucky because the response of family and church leaders helped me to form an understanding and belief about what God thinks about my being gay. In terms of God’s involvement and feelings about it, I believe that my being gay was intentional, that it is on purpose, and that there is a purpose to it, not just something to “deal with,” and it isn’t something that I should be ashamed of or scared of.
 I believe that historically the church’s position on homosexuality and the things that church leaders said were wrong and damaging. But I also believe that it was because they didn’t know better and that I can’t expect church leaders to always have known everything about everything because we can’t have that expectation of anyone, even religious leaders. The tone in which homosexuality is spoken about by church leaders now, is SO much different than it was 20 or even 10 years ago. I think that is because more and more people are open about their experiences with sexuality and so it has required that these things be looked at, prayed about, and questions answered. I admit that there are times when church leaders will speak about the issue and they will use a term or a phrase or something that hits me the wrong way, but I can still appreciate how much different it is now than it was even just 15 years ago when I was a teenager and I feel like progress is being made toward more full understanding.
That being said, the church continues to hold to the teachings of marriage being only between a man and a woman, and that isn’t a very popular thing to believe, and is understandably upsetting to most everyone outside of a few religious settings. I say “understandably upsetting” because I feel like my experience as a gay person helps me to understand why it seems so wrong to limit marriage between a man and a woman. I didn’t ask to be gay. I didn’t create these feelings. They didn’t just accidently happen as a mishap in development, they are part of me like my skin color, or my height, or my birthmark on my left foot. Why would a church, or more importantly, God not allow me happiness with someone I love and want to create a good, moral life with just because we are the same sex?  I think that question is really important: If you believe that God has an issue with homosexuality, what is his problem with it?  I think the answer to that question is kind of involved and is actually pretty different from what many Mormons would say is the answer.
I think most Mormons would immediately respond with, “Gay people can’t have kids and God wants us to have kids.” But there are so many arguments that can be brought against this like, “what about heterosexual couples who can’t have kids?” or “what about people who just stay single?” Ultimately, I think if someone responds with simply “gay people can’t have kids,” then they are a jerk and you probably shouldn’t ask them any more questions. I think that unfortunately, there are a lot of religious people who take their own feelings about homosexuality (that its uncomfortable and “icky” or weird) and project those feelings onto God, holding a kind of assumed belief that God is against homosexuality because he thinks it’s icky and it makes him uncomfortable. I know and have enough interaction with gay people and gay couples and have witnessed love and genuine affection they have for each other to feel certain that God doesn’t think that its gross. I don’t believe that his direction regarding homosexuality is because he’s uncomfy. God is a much more mature, dynamic, and all knowing being. I believe that he sees beauty and goodness in these relationships and doesn’t categorize everything about them as evil and wrong. God’s great like that…because he knows everything…he doesn’t have to slap a label on something and put it in a designated box and keep it there. He can dissect things, understand them, and appreciate and love what is good about them.
The more complicated answer is that Mormons believe in eternal progression. This is, in fact, the whole purpose of life and the whole point of being born and coming to earth. We existed before we came here, we are here to learn and progress and grow, and we will continue learning and progressing and growing after we die. The church puts A TON of focus on the family, so much focus that sometimes as members we talk about getting married and having kids and creating a family as being the purpose of life on earth. This isn’t true, not entirely. Its not, not about having families, but it is only about creating families in that it is a part of progression on earth for many if not most people. That distinction I think is important, the actual purpose is progression, for many their progression involves getting married and having kids in this life, but it doesn’t require that…not here. For some, marriage and having kids doesn’t happen in this life. Mormon’s believe that, if they want it, everyone will have the opportunity for marriage and children at some point in the great expanse of eternity.
I have to kind of take a side-step here and explain something about eternal progression and perfection. Mormons believe that God is perfect. But Mormons also believe that progression is eternal. Which, if you think about it, seem to come into conflict with one another. If God is perfect now, he wouldn’t need to progress anymore because he’s already perfect. There is a popular scripture in Matthew 5:48 that says “be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” In LDS scripture, there is a footnote to the word “perfect” to the greek translation which is “complete.”  I think in so many ways Mormons would do so much better if we focused on working to become complete rather than becoming perfect. The difference in the words, for me, change so many things that make more sense to me. But again, if God is complete than how is eternal progression a thing? If he is complete? How does he keep progressing?  There is another Mormon favorite scripture that says that God’s glory (or purpose) is to “bring to pass the immortality and the eternal life of men.” Meaning that all of his efforts are about helping further our progression. So, how is God complete and yet still progressing? His progression is now through his children, us. As we progress toward completeness, we add to his progression or “glory.”
Let me give a hypothetical example that simplifies things a whole ton, but hopefully helps make sense of what I’m trying to say. Let’s say that two couples, a heterosexual couple and a homosexual couple die in a car crash. They move into the next life and for what would maybe be like, millions of years earth time, they work and learn and grow and become and experience. They do all of these things to the point that now we have 4 perfect/complete individuals that know and are everything (this is super simplifying likely very complicated things that in my simple mortality I can’t totally understand…but stay with me). At this point, the heterosexual couple could continue to progress through their posterity and the homosexual couple would reach the end of their progression. Not because God thought they were icky, or not because they are selfish, and not because they are inherently evil but because natural law (which Mormons believe there are unchangeable natural laws) causes their progression to come to a stand-still.
This is why the church focuses on marriage between a man and a woman. Because Mormons believe that with homosexuality, whether now, or in 50 years, or in billions of years into eternity, at some point will cause a halt or block in progression for a person.
Why did I do all of this explaining about beliefs? It probably has gotten annoying to read and you are wondering when I’m going to just stop and move on, but I often feel a need to make this explanation because I feel like knowing the context can help people to understand why the church teaches what it does and why I feel like I can align myself to a religion that seemingly is so harsh about these things.  Because if a religion, or a church believes these things are true, like, really believes these things are true and actual facts, then teaching what it believes to be true is the merciful thing to do. Teaching these things that fit importantly into an eternal perspective is what, as a church, they really have to do, otherwise a million years into my progression I would be like, “Hey…why didn’t you tell me this was so important! I was looking to you for guidance!” Current church leaders teach, for what a lot of people are difficult and often determined to be emotionally damaging things to hear, but if they believe its true are they supposed to not teach it? I am hopeful that they will continue to get better at teaching these things in a tone and language that expresses their truth, but gets better at trying not to dishearten or offend.
All of these things are matters of faith. I believe that these things are true, but I understand and appreciate that not everyone believes these things are true. Some people don’t believe that there is a God. Some people would read this and say, “I think you’re wrong, I think that God is totally cool with homosexuality without any reservations.” Some people would say “you’re wrong, gay people are gross and God thinks they are too!” And to all of those I say, “congratulations! You are a person. And as a person you get to believe what you want to believe about faith, God, and religion.”
I believe that it is VERY possible to believe something different than someone else, even about things as emotionally charged as religion and homosexuality and still love each other, respect each other, enjoy each other’s company, and desire good things for them. Some of the most important relationships in my life are with people who I know don’t believe these things are true. We disagree, but our disagreement doesn’t supersede how much we love each other!
Again, I'm lucky. My open-minded parents, my understanding church leaders, my opportunity to meet and marry someone who understands and works with me, my career as a therapist that allows me opportunities to understand myself... all of this combined to create a scenario in which I am gay, but have the luxury of mostly fitting into a hetero-normative environment that abounds in LDS church culture. There are so many that aren't as lucky. I can't say with certainty that if things had been different, if even just one of those circumstances had changed, that I wouldn't have left the church feeling upset, judged, and left out. I see and understand why people do, and I work in my own life to try to help others have positive experiences like I have had with all of these things.

I went on for a very long time just now… but if you ask a complicated question you’re going to get a complicated answer!