Mormons and Prop 8

• An Open Letter To Mormons
• Contact Information

I am an ex-Mormon, excommunicated for being gay.

Born of pioneer families and raised in the church, I graduated from Mormon Seminary and served a two-year mission. I suffered years of creepy Mormon leaders delving into my teenaged sexuality, and twisted aversion/torture therapy at the hands of Mormon Elders. I was excommunicated at my family’s request.

I have never taken an action against the Mormon Church, other than my personal expressions of anger and hurt from the torture and abuse I experienced by not conforming to the Mormon ideal of normal. Until now. In the fight for Prop 8, the Mormon Church mobilized on an extreme scale and promoted propaganda that was dirty and dishonest. As one who has lived my life at the intersection of gays and Mormons, I cannot now stand silent.

I doubt the Mormon Church can be changed in this generation…maybe someday. Meanwhile, I say let the churches keep that which they deem sacred, but in the secular sphere, I want my civil rights.

An open letter to Mormons from a gay ex-Mormon

I realize you are shocked by our reaction to Prop 8.

Frankly, we were surprised by our response too! You may have triggered the single greatest reaction ever from the gay community. (For thoughts on how Prop 8 created this firestorm, see here.)

We are having a miscommunication. For you, same-sex marriage is a concept that you can have “beliefs” about. You believe that same-sex marriage affects the “sanctity” of marriage. For us, this is our lives. We have relationships. We have commitments. We have children. Your “belief” is that our relationships, our commitments, and our families should not be equal to yours under the secular laws of the United States. In your beliefs, to let them be the same would be disaster.

Why? You don’t try to enforce ideal families on opposite-sex marriage. You don’t fight for laws to make divorce illegal. You don’t support laws to remove children from single widowed or separated parents. You don’t move to ban the infertile from marrying. These laws would protect many more families and children than your attacks on gay people. But you don’t fight for that.

You say it is about the “sanctity” of marriage. Then why don’t you fight for the legal separation of civil unions from sacred marriage? Of all Americans, you know the difference with your distinct sacred marriages ! Separate secular unions from the church sacrament of marriage: a win/win. But you don’t fight for that.

We are left with only one explanation: you are bigots. You just don’t like us. You don’t like our sex, our relating, our families. Our very existence threatens you somehow. If Mormon men knew there were gay marriages occurring anywhere in the country, they would stop performing their husbandly duties. What children you did have would be neglected by their mothers. No one will come to church or pay tithing. The human race will turn out the lights and end.

I call on all Mormons to keep your minds out of our bedrooms. What is wrong with you people? You don’t have enough problems with your own families, your own relationships, your own lives? You are in such deep and peaceful alignment with the cosmic divine that you can spend your time and money coming after my life, my love, my relationship? You “believe” this is God’s priority? Well sorry, but in our secular government, your mythology does not trump my reality.

Stop. Just stop. Stop believing this is either truth or righteousness. It isn’t.

Here is my challenge. You believe that all children are a gift from God. You (officially) get that being gay may be intrinsic. So ask yourselves: What gift is God sending to families and cultures in the form of these gay children? What gift did God send for my church? What is true about gay people that God would send these beings with such delicate and wonderful qualities, when they so clearly are not in alignment with our ideas of gender and family?

I assert that a gay spirit is a gift from God. We are the in-between people in human society – in between sexes, in between the material and spiritual worlds, in between standard social roles. I know this is threatening to your binary black/white, right/wrong, male/female worldview… but consider that maybe that is the point! That is the gift! In traditional societies we were the shamans, healers, teachers, mediators, and priests. Yet because society, and particularly Christian society, is so fearful of sex and bodies, you have taken away our spiritual roles. If we appear overly sexualized, it may be because society does not let us play the roles we were actually born for. If you don’t want us as your teachers, your priests, or your healers, if you don’t want us in your society, then our sexuality with each other is all we have left. If we look sad, or even tragic in your eyes, consider who we would have been if we’d grown up in a society that recognized, honored, and encouraged our gifts from birth. I believe we are all the less for the loss of these gifts. (For my favorite teaching this topic, see here.)

My dear Mormons, you are powerful people who work for an ideal world. But you don’t see your own shadow: your ideal world is only for those who conform, those who fit. God made the world, and our spirits, much more diverse and interesting than you believe. 

Please, people. Just once it would be nice to see the Mormon Church mobilize politically for the (non-Mormon) poor and sick instead of against civil rights. I dream of a day when Mormons organize members, contribute money, put up yard signs, lead neighborhood mobilizations, and stage bus trips, to move the political system to benefit of the least among us. Just once.

So C’mon. Pull your heads out of the 1950s and into the sunshine of the modern world. You will find it isn’t all that bad. I am the child of a Mormon family. If your “family values” doesn’t fully include me, inclusive of my decidedly non-standard spirit, then your definition of family really needs some work.

Contact

Send feedback, updates, etc. via the following web form. I will receive it as an email.

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