Dale, tell me again about your suffering

[Korihor]

Dale Renlund told his listeners he has witnessed firsthand the "ugliness of prejudice and discrimination." He noted he was bullied as a teen in 1960s Europe because he was an American and a Mormon.

"Ridicule, harassment, bullying, exclusion and isolation, and hatred toward others [are] repugnant," he said, and "not pleasing to the God I love and worship."

http://www.sltrib.com/news/5397681-155/ ... obia-urges

For having lots of mirrors in the temples, they sure don't seem to look into them.

Mr Renlund, in order to assess the emotional trauma you suffered, will you please complete this form?

[2bizE]

Holy crap. This form is hilarious. Well done Korihor.
I think Redlund complains and whines too much. Oppressed as an American mormon in Europe. Oh brother...

[Not Buying It]

He may have been the target of "ridicule, harassment, bullying, exclusion and isolation", but as Korihor so deftly suggested in the OP, he fails to recognize that the organization he helps lead is guilty of all of these behaviors toward those it feels threatened by, particularly the dissidents in its midst. And they are ramping up the rhetoric against those dissidents, so it will only get worse.

It is hard for me to not see the hypocrisy in what he is saying. How many of you have seen the video going around from last month of a stake leader turning off the mike of the 12 year old girl who talks about being a lesbian and then telling her to "please sit down" during Testimony Meeting? I'd say there is some harassment, bullying, and exclusion going on there. And it is hardly the only example.

[redjay]

I am European and have been a member of wards and branches where when I was 'the youth program at one point, and have seen my own kids have hardly any mormon peer support. So you can end up marginalised and isolated - partly keeping yourself away from the world, it can be pretty bloody lonely.

Luckily I was never persecuted, neither were two of my children, but one has experienced being shut out by cliques at school, and at times mocked. But the real kicker is that kid has absorbed this for nothing (yes intolerance is wrong) but what I mean is that we have followed a lifestyle that sets us apart as weird in this part of the world for no good reason: no sex before marriage, no alcohol, no work on a Sunday etc. mostly because JS had an vivid imagination/experience that grew from a tall tale to a pharisaical world religion.

[Corsair]

It is hard for me to not see the hypocrisy in what he is saying. How many of you have seen the video going around from last month of a stake leader turning off the mike of the 12 year old girl who talks about being a lesbian and then telling her to "please sit down" during Testimony Meeting? I'd say there is some harassment, bullying, and exclusion going on there. And it is hardly the only example.

That was an uncomfortable video to watch. It starts off well enough and I have to give credit to the 12 year old girl who has clearly considered her words. She is trying to establish a peaceful, second class coexistence in the LDS church. Their ward and stake leadership made the awkward decision to shut off the microphone and the cringe inducing follow up by the bishopric did not help.

The institutional LDS church can handle lots of topics in fast and testimony meeting. This includes travelogues, TMI with medical procedures, exuberant young children, and long winded adults. But I fear that the LGBT issue is the hill that the LDS church will die upon.

[LostMormon]

It is hard for me to not see the hypocrisy in what he is saying. How many of you have seen the video going around from last month of a stake leader turning off the mike of the 12 year old girl who talks about being a lesbian and then telling her to "please sit down" during Testimony Meeting? I'd say there is some harassment, bullying, and exclusion going on there. And it is hardly the only example.

That was an uncomfortable video to watch. It starts off well enough and I have to give credit to the 12 year old girl who has clearly considered her words. She is trying to establish a peaceful, second class coexistence in the LDS church. Their ward and stake leadership made the awkward decision to shut off the microphone and the cringe inducing follow up by the bishopric did not help.

The institutional LDS church can handle lots of topics in fast and testimony meeting. This includes travelogues, TMI with medical procedures, exuberant young children, and long winded adults. But I fear that the LGBT issue is the hill that the LDS church will die upon.

I hope I don't get stoned by the NOM community, and forgive me for the thread jack, but I am going to go against the grain here a bit on that video of the little girl. I hope this is not the case, but it looked very staged to me. Just from the way the video was taken, and how the girl was obviously reading a prepared statement, makes me wonder if she even came up with the testimony, I mean is she even old enough at 12 to really know her sexual orientation? I sure hope this is not the parents using their daughter to dig up dirt on the church, so they have something to put on their facebook feed.

It does however show that the church is not ready, or comfortable to deal with the LGBT issue.

OK, throw your stones now.

[oliver_denom]

I hope I don't get stoned by the NOM community, and forgive me for the thread jack, but I am going to go against the grain here a bit on that video of the little girl. I hope this is not the case, but it looked very staged to me. Just from the way the video was taken, and how the girl was obviously reading a prepared statement, makes me wonder if she even came up with the testimony, I mean is she even old enough at 12 to really know her sexual orientation? I sure hope this is not the parents using their daughter to dig up dirt on the church, so they have something to put on their facebook feed.

It does however show that the church is not ready, or comfortable to deal with the LGBT issue.

OK, throw your stones now.

I read an account somewhere from this girl's mother. From what she said, her daughter belongs to a support group for LGBTQ Mormon youth who are navigating life in the church. Her goal was to write out a testimony and record it in order to share with her support group. The idea was that showing everyone that you can be your authentic self in church is possible. It looks like both this young woman and her parents had every expectation that it would be a positive experience.

It's a bit naive, but I can speak from personal experience that a parent wants to both encourage and protect their child, and sometimes its a struggle. On one hand you don't want them to get hurt, but on the other hand you want them to be brave and go courageously into the world. On occasion, that means allowing them to do things and finding out the hard way. It's a tough lesson to learn so young.

[RubinHighlander]

Dale Renlund told his listeners he has witnessed firsthand the "ugliness of prejudice and discrimination." He noted he was bullied as a teen in 1960s Europe because he was an American and a Mormon.

"Ridicule, harassment, bullying, exclusion and isolation, and hatred toward others [are] repugnant," he said, and "not pleasing to the God I love and worship."

First world problems Dale. I think those words are far more applicable directed at the conservative bigotry of TBMs and the COB toward gay and black mormons.

[wtfluff]

I mean is she even old enough at 12 to really know her sexual orientation?

This question is not meant as "casting a stone", I'm just curious:

At what age did you "choose" your sexual orientation?

[Corsair]

I hope I don't get stoned by the NOM community, and forgive me for the thread jack, but I am going to go against the grain here a bit on that video of the little girl. I hope this is not the case, but it looked very staged to me. Just from the way the video was taken, and how the girl was obviously reading a prepared statement, makes me wonder if she even came up with the testimony, I mean is she even old enough at 12 to really know her sexual orientation? I sure hope this is not the parents using their daughter to dig up dirt on the church, so they have something to put on their facebook feed.

It does however show that the church is not ready, or comfortable to deal with the LGBT issue.

OK, throw your stones now.

I find it refreshing that you are approaching this with some level of skepticism. This was posted on Reddit this morning and several commentators were assurring everyone that this was not at all staged. However, Reddit is an excitable place and I personally cannot at all validate what the video showed. I appreciate your thoughtful approach and perhaps more information will come up. If this is a staged incident then I can only hope that the truth comes out and this is rightly condemned.

[LostMormon]

I mean is she even old enough at 12 to really know her sexual orientation?

This question is not meant as "casting a stone", I'm just curious:

At what age did you "choose" your sexual orientation?

I never said "choose", and I don't want this to get into an argument or discussion about if sexual orientation is a choice or not. I don't remember for sure how old I was when girls became interesting, but 12 just seems a bit young to really know for sure if you're gay or not, maybe I'm just getting old, and have forgotten.

[wtfluff]

I mean is she even old enough at 12 to really know her sexual orientation?

This question is not meant as "casting a stone", I'm just curious:

At what age did you "choose" your sexual orientation?

I never said "choose", and I don't want this to get into an argument or discussion about if sexual orientation is a choice or not. I don't remember for sure how old I was when girls became interesting, but 12 just seems a bit young to really know for sure if you're gay or not, maybe I'm just getting old, and have forgotten.

Again, I'm not trying to argue, I'm just trying to follow your line of thinking.

If a 12-year-old "bore their testimony" that they were heterosexual, would you question if they "really knew" if they were heterosexual?

As for me, I was much younger than 12 when I "knew". In fact, my first kiss was probably somewhere around 2nd grade, and honestly there was no question whatsoever before or after that I was attracted to the opposite sex.

[alas]

I mean is she even old enough at 12 to really know her sexual orientation?

This question is not meant as "casting a stone", I'm just curious:

At what age did you "choose" your sexual orientation?

I never said "choose", and I don't want this to get into an argument or discussion about if sexual orientation is a choice or not. I don't remember for sure how old I was when girls became interesting, but 12 just seems a bit young to really know for sure if you're gay or not, maybe I'm just getting old, and have forgotten.

Some gay individuals know from five or six, others do not figure it out until twenty five or six, or even older. For example, I have a lesbian daughter who was married and in trying to figure out what was wrong with her marriage, finally figured it out. She was 24. I have a niece who knew at 10. I have heard others say that it was always just a part of them even before they had a name for it, and as soon as they saw or heard about the concept, they just knew. My grandson knew that my daughter and her partner were a family and loved each other at three years old. I was explaining what marriage was, because my youngest son was getting married and he asked what that meant, and I named the people he knew that were married. (All hetro, because there was no gay marriage then.) He caught on, "people who love each other" and HE added "like E and J." Yup kiddo, you got it.

[Not Buying It]

Pretend for a moment the young girl's video was in fact staged. Even if it was, how does that make the response from the priesthood leadership appropriate?

Last I checked no one had been given terms and conditions for open mike Sunday. If they are going to have rules about what you can and can't say in Fast and Testimony Meeting, they should make them clear and explicit rather than vague and unspoken. I say the priesthood leadership squandered an opportunity to show inclusion and Christlike love and acceptance, and were quite rude and disrespectful.

[Korihor]

I hope I don't get stoned by the NOM community, and forgive me for the thread jack, but I am going to go against the grain here a bit on that video of the little girl. I hope this is not the case, but it looked very staged to me. Just from the way the video was taken, and how the girl was obviously reading a prepared statement, makes me wonder if she even came up with the testimony, I mean is she even old enough at 12 to really know her sexual orientation? I sure hope this is not the parents using their daughter to dig up dirt on the church, so they have something to put on their facebook feed.

It does however show that the church is not ready, or comfortable to deal with the LGBT issue.

OK, throw your stones now.

I find it refreshing that you are approaching this with some level of skepticism. This was posted on Reddit this morning and several commentators were assurring everyone that this was not at all staged. However, Reddit is an excitable place and I personally cannot at all validate what the video showed. I appreciate your thoughtful approach and perhaps more information will come up. If this is a staged incident then I can only hope that the truth comes out and this is rightly condemned.

i don't know if it was "staged", I'll have to take their word for it. But it was obviously planned. People don't record the testimony of a 12 year old girl on a normal F&T meeting. Regardless, the BP/SP1C handled it poorly.

I offer my support of the girl/family that took this action. They were ready to make their voices heard and they did it as best they thought possible. Kudos to them for having the cojones to take a stand.

It's just more evidence of what we already know. Both sides are pushing their views and one currently has a slight edge that seems to be eroding.

[Mad Jax]

What do you think he might mean by "bullying and harassing?" Some of that is no joke. I know there were some pretty harsh places to be a teen in 1960s Europe.

I came up in the 1980s, and what happened to a number of poor kids that were suspected of being gay (or just were gay) was nothing to dismiss, so I'm reluctant to hop on board unless the details are known. Maybe it was merely mean words and a love tap on the arm that comes with the territory of being a teen, in which case yea, suck it up buttercup. But I just don't know.

[LostMormon]

Pretend for a moment the young girl's video was in fact staged. Even if it was, how does that make the response from the priesthood leadership appropriate?

Last I checked no one had been given terms and conditions for open mike Sunday. If they are going to have rules about what you can and can't say in Fast and Testimony Meeting, they should make them clear and explicit rather than vague and unspoken. I say the priesthood leadership squandered an opportunity to show inclusion and Christlike love and acceptance, and were quite rude and disrespectful.

Agreed 100%, as I stated earlier, it shows that the church is still uncomfortable, and not ready to deal with LGBT issues, but does it really come as a big surprise to any of us?

Staged may not really be the word I am looking for, as I think that the reaction from the leadership was real, and I am not saying this is what happened, but I just think it looks a bit suspicious from the covert angle of the camera, and how the girl was obviously reading her testimony, and as Korihor points out, it's not often that someone records testimony meeting. I just think maybe, just maybe a parent had prepared her testimony, hoping to get some kind of reaction, so they could get something "juicy" to put on their facebook feed.

[LostMormon]

This question is not meant as "casting a stone", I'm just curious:

At what age did you "choose" your sexual orientation?

I never said "choose", and I don't want this to get into an argument or discussion about if sexual orientation is a choice or not. I don't remember for sure how old I was when girls became interesting, but 12 just seems a bit young to really know for sure if you're gay or not, maybe I'm just getting old, and have forgotten.

Again, I'm not trying to argue, I'm just trying to follow your line of thinking.

If a 12-year-old "bore their testimony" that they were heterosexual, would you question if they "really knew" if they were heterosexual?

As for me, I was much younger than 12 when I "knew". In fact, my first kiss was probably somewhere around 2nd grade, and honestly there was no question whatsoever before or after that I was attracted to the opposite sex.

Question is not really the word I would use, but yes it would surprise me to see a 12 year old get up and bear a testimony about being heterosexual. That just doesn't seem like something that would be on the mind of a typical 12 year old, but maybe I am just getting too old to remember what it was like at that age.

[document]

My thoughts on the OP:

I know a few people who have been persecuted for their religious beliefs: my mother had her clothes ripped off in public when leaving an LDS meeting house in the 1970s so they could see her Mormon underwear (she wasn't endowed yet), my priest received death threats for standing up and saying "Gays are OK people", a Sikh man at work was physically shoved and threatened because they mistook him for a Muslim (still persecution, even if the person was dead wrong in their appraisal). A look at the current happenings in Syria to Christians there or Sectarian violence in Muslim communities shows that even my friends' experiences with persecution are mild.

Unfortunately the definition of persecution is highly subjective and relies upon the receiving end of things. That subjectivity is often based upon personal experience, the less persecution that you see in life, the more small things seem to be persecution. I was a victim of physical abuse from my father, so I see "abuse" differently from others. My co-parent considers raising voice to be abusive while I consider it undesirable, but not abuse. Her experience growing up was never seeing the end-result of physical abuse in her friends or her own experience while mine was on the floor with someone kicking you. It skews our definitions.

When I grew up Mormon, I was so involved in the culture that I had never had doctrinal or cultural push back. Nobody ever questioned my beliefs. The first time I realized it was when there was a booth at the fair dedicated to pushing the three evils of the world down: Catholicism, Mormonism, and Judaism. I walked away and said something about persecution or hate and got a lecture from my mom (that's when I learned of her being stripped in the street). But, to me it was persecution, to her it was just criticism easy to be ignored.

So, if you consider healthy criticism to be persecution, it probably means that you haven't had much persecution.

My thoughts on the thread-jack:

When my then-wife and I resigned from the LDS church they removed the records of my children except for my baptized 8 year old son. He was "of age" and had to choose for himself. We left it up to him, although we did cut contact from the church. About a year and a half later, when the November Policy hit, my son decided to resign from the LDS church without prompting. In fact, neither of us were with him when he decided, he was at Grandma's house and saw the news when they were watching TV together. She was confused and he was upset, he asked how to no longer be Mormon and we had him write up a letter of resignation. The only thing he was prompted on was that he had to say he no longer wanted to be a member of the Mormon church and sign his name. He wrote up his reason (unprompted) and we attached a cover letter with both our signatures indicating that we agreed with his decision.

The response from my LDS friends infuriated me. There were constant accusations of coaching because no child would truly understand the ramifications of resignation and what it does to the eternal soul. However, they conflicted with their own doctrine in that once a child reaches the age of 8, they are fully accountable. They even call it "The Age of Accountability" and the child chooses to be baptized. If a 9 year old doesn't understand the ramifications of resignation then an 8 year old doesn't understand the ramifications of baptism and eternal covenants. Either at 8 a child can make decisions or they cannot. Mormons are trying to have it both ways.

If the child is "coached" into making a public statement against a Mormon teaching, then a child is "coached" into making a public statement supporting Mormonism (testimonies, baptisms, confirmations, etc.).

In regards to understanding your sexual orientation at a pubescent age, it is coached.
In regards to feeling your sexual orientation at a pubescent age, it is natural.

Let me explain. There are two things going on in a person, what is biologically occurring and how we are perceiving it. I was heterosexual well before I knew what the term meant. When I started going through puberty I found out that I love boobs and hips. I found myself lured by bra and panties in ads and funny feelings rushing through me when a bit of skin was shown on TV. The first time I really noticed it was getting an erection and funny feelings when a girl bent over in class while wearing a pleated skirt.

I had no idea that I was "heterosexual", but it doesn't take away from the fact that I was heterosexual. I didn't understand what sexual orientation was, that came a few years later with some education and yes, some coaching. Someone took those feelings I had during puberty and now that I'm a fully grown male and attached a word to it: "straight".

I'm watching my nephew finishing up puberty right now and he is gay. It's one of those things where he won't notice the gorgeous woman in the bikini at the pool but sees all the young men around instead. His parents first noticed it when had Jockeys ads in his room and it was clear he was masturbating to it.

I know the family well, and I'm pretty darn sure the child has no idea is "homosexual", but it doesn't take away from the fact that he is homosexual. With education and coaching, he is understanding the feelings that he is having. Because of his families feelings towards his natural inclinations, he believes he is broken and suffers from a disease called "same-sex attraction". He understands his sexual orientation and responds to it due to coaching.

What I saw in the video was indeed an educated young woman. I assume from it she has had a support structure who is helping her to understand that she is not broken, that God loves her, and that her feelings of attraction to her gender is being called "gay". The problem in the video is that she is clashing against a culture who doesn't accept "gay" but pushes for "same-sex attraction" and still pushes for reform of the individual. For some, that means a life of abstinence and lack of romantic and life-building relationships.

So, from what I see is a girl who is gay, but the argument really as being the culture clash between two forms of morality. Gay is OK and gay is not OK.

[achilles]

I mean is she even old enough at 12 to really know her sexual orientation?

This question is not meant as "casting a stone", I'm just curious:

At what age did you "choose" your sexual orientation?

I never said "choose", and I don't want this to get into an argument or discussion about if sexual orientation is a choice or not. I don't remember for sure how old I was when girls became interesting, but 12 just seems a bit young to really know for sure if you're gay or not, maybe I'm just getting old, and have forgotten.

I knew I was gay by the time I was ten. I didn't have the words to describe it, but I knew.