Mormon and Gay

This is for encouragement, ideas, and support for people going through a faith transition no matter where you hope to end up. This is also the place to laugh, cry, and love together.
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achilles
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Re: Mormon and Gay

Post by achilles » Wed Oct 26, 2016 5:26 pm

fetchface wrote:OK so God hates gay sex yet he consciously decides to create people who are exclusively attracted to their own sex. Then he tells them to just skip the whole love thing for their whole life and live alone but be thankful for your trials!

God sounds like kind of a jerk.
This, plus the problem of evil is the main reason why I struggle to believe in God now.
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

― Carl Sagan

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Hagoth
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Re: Mormon and Gay

Post by Hagoth » Wed Oct 26, 2016 6:04 pm

Mormorrisey wrote:I feel about this website as I felt about the "diversity videos" they just released. The rhetoric is truly wonderful, and I'm actually sincere about that; the problem is that these beliefs are not even close to being put into practice, and there is a legacy of non-diversity that the church needs to apologize for, not build itself up about
When showing those videos and reading the good parts of the website are part of the standard curriculum for Sunday school, priesthood mtg., RS and primary lessons I will sit up and take notice. In the meantime I still feel that this is mostly about calming those members who really do believe in gay people and were upset by the new policy. But it is also about the church starting to realize that forward is the only viable direction to move.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."

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Hagoth
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Re: Mormon and Gay

Post by Hagoth » Thu Oct 27, 2016 8:24 am

achilles wrote:Now to the problematic part of the message. The Church expects gays and lesbians to remain single and celibate. I actually agree with a Law of Chastity that calls for celibacy before marriage and monogamy after. I just don't agree that gays and lesbians should not be allowed to marry. Lifetime singleness and celibacy is emotionally crippling. I know this personally, and the scars run deep. No one should be alone. Yet it is demanded of LGBT members if they want even a scrap of dignity and belonging. And zero support is offered for this.
It's a terrible dilemma. You have to either be married/chaste, or gay/celibate/chaste, you can't be both. Despite the lip service, the church doesn't really have a place for gay people except as models for valiant loneliness in the face of discrimination. Allowing gay and lesbian people to marry 1) admits that they exist and, 2) legitimizes their union in a way that is in line with the law of chastity as defined in the temple. That blows everything out of the water. Extending the golden rule seems to some like a reasonable possibility at the milk level, but once you get to the meat level, real (and basically secret) underlying doctrine, it just doesn't fly. Trade in that golden rule for the iron rod that must not be spared.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."

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Corsair
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Re: Mormon and Gay

Post by Corsair » Thu Oct 27, 2016 9:29 am

Josh's story on the new website is painful because it comes closest to describing the fate of being gay int he LDS church. He starts acknowledging that being single and celibate for the rest of his life may be difficult but retains faith that God has a plan for him. This is a huge amount of faith that could not muster.

The recent book "A Reason for Faith" from Deseret Book includes an essay by Ty Mansfield titled "Homosexuality and the Gospel". Brother Mansfield attempts to talk about every possible angle for "experiencing SSA" without openly acknowledging the inevitable conclusion that a gay Mormon has only three real options:
  1. Enter a mixed orientation marriage
  2. Stay single and celibate
  3. Leave the church
As I was reading Brother Mansfield's essay I kept wondering when he was going to point out these options. Instead he spends every possible opportunity dissecting definitions and rethinking faith while never trying to leave or look outside the bounds that God (ie., the LDS church) has set. This "Mormon and Gay" website continues this duplicitous tradition and insists on a burden that is the rhetorical opposite of 19th century polygamy.

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The Beast
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Re: Mormon and Gay

Post by The Beast » Thu Oct 27, 2016 10:36 am

Wow! Gina nailed it! Contradiction after contradiction. No consistency of message. Bednar yaks out of one side of the church mouth, this website talks out of the opposite side.
But the problem right now isn’t that there are different views ricocheting around the Mormon world. That’s just symptomatic. The problem is systemic. The problem is that the vertical, power based, governance system that has been so central to the church is failing, out-dated and no longer serves our grand religious or spiritual purposes. Because its not trustworthy.
Are you on the square? Are you on the level?

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achilles
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Re: Mormon and Gay

Post by achilles » Thu Oct 27, 2016 2:26 pm

Brother Mansfield attempts to talk about every possible angle for "experiencing SSA" without openly acknowledging the inevitable conclusion that a gay Mormon has only three real options:

1. Enter a mixed orientation marriage
2. Stay single and celibate
3. Leave the church
There is one more.

4. Suicide

I know whereof I speak. When years of pay, pray, obey fail to afford happiness, and one finally comes to the terrible realization that a) the Brethren don't know what they are talking about and don't really have your back, and b) the remainder of life has nothing to offer but increasingly crippling loneliness, suicide becomes a valid option. It is very important for members of the Church to understand this. Under these circumstances, suicide begins to make a lot of sense to the suffering LGBT person.

Brother Mansfield's first book In Quiet Desperation begins with the story of Stuart Matis and his terrible march toward death. In the end his family could do nothing but watch as his desire for life slowly ebbed away. From a Newsweek article:
It had become an all too familiar sound. Late on the night of Feb. 24, Stuart Matis's mother lay awake in bed, listening to her 32-year-old son pacing his room, unable to sleep. She worried that his depression was worsening. A year earlier Matis had told his parents he was gay, and all three, as devout Mormons, had struggled to reconcile Matis's homosexuality with the teachings of their church. Matis found little comfort in Mormon doctrine, which regards homosexuality as an "abominable" sin. A church therapist instructed him to suppress his sexuality or to undergo "reparative therapy" to become a heterosexual...

That night, his mother got out of bed and wrote a letter asking the church to reconsider its position on gay Mormons. Only later would she learn that her son had been up writing his own letter, to his family and friends, explaining why he couldn't continue to live. Early the next morning, 11 days before voters would overwhelmingly approve Prop 22, Matis drove to the local Mormon church headquarters, pinned a do not resuscitate note to his shirt and shot himself in the head.

http://www.newsweek.com/be-gay-and-mormon-159959
Note the irony of the URL for this article and compare it to the Church's new website URL.

"Do not resuscitate." This is serious business folks. It can be extremely deadly. If I had been able to find a quick and painless way to do it during October 2013, I would not be here typing this message.

(NOTE: I am not suggesting anyone commit suicide. If you ever feel suicidal reach out for help. Call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255)
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

― Carl Sagan

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Mayan Elephant
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Re: Mormon and Gay

Post by Mayan Elephant » Thu Oct 27, 2016 4:05 pm

very thoughtful, achilles.

the suicide layers are not as simple as do i live or do i die.

suicide seems to be the most visible and obvious termination of one's will. but often, without a suicide plan, choices are made under the misguided belief, or even hope, that "I am better off dead." the out is not a bullet or a fall, but recklessness and a spiral where if the consequences are death, so be it. and THAT is where i give the church the world's biggest finger and FU. those are the kids held up as "what happens when you ______." they deserve just as much concern and empathy as those that are seemingly in control.

this just gets me riled. the church did not take a step forward with this campaign, website and essay. anything less than full dignity, support, acknowledgment, rights and services to all people is a huge step backward in 2016. and the church just took that step back. when gays can marry and participate and, god forbid, have sex, gasp, without the indignity heaped by those a-holes, then the church can get a cookie. for now, no cookies. to hell with em.

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Corsair
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Re: Mormon and Gay

Post by Corsair » Fri Oct 28, 2016 8:41 am

achilles wrote:There is one more.

4. Suicide
I was trying to not be a downer, but you expressed the problems quite well. The Mama Dragons group would not need to exist if option 4 was not so frequently taken. If it were just a bunch of middle aged women annoyed because their faithful and celibate sons and daughters were not producing grandchildren then it would be on the border of humorous. And this is not some theoretical concern of mine since I do have an LGBT child that I have encouraged to go her own way. I'm deeply happy that she is successfully doing so, much to the consternation of my dear, believing wife.

The situation with LGBT suicides is not remotely funny and I cannot conceive of the emotional depths that Wendy Williams Montgomery and the other Mama Dragons have endured. After all the work and pleading and heartache that Sister Montgomery has endured, she still has attended recent funerals of young men that were close friends of her and her family. And she still makes every attempt to attend her local ward and be nominally and faithfully supportive of LDS leadership. If there is any divine justice in this universe then Wendy Williams Montgomery and her family will gain a stunning and joyful reward in Heaven from an appreciative God.

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