BEING GAY & MORMON - THEN AND NOW
How is life for today's young gay Mormons different from what it was for me 50 years ago?
Today, the LDS Church is not the LDS Church I grew up in. And today’s gay-aware world is certainly not the myopic straight world I grew up in.
When I was young, we Mormons did everything possible to differentiate ourselves from any other Christians. After all, Mormonism taught (and still teaches) that Catholic and Protestant Churches are apostate! But today, the LDS Church desperately wants to be thought of as a branch of the very Christianity they used to condescendingly disregard. It's no wonder that so many of us from those earlier days who have since left Mormonism, have ended up without any specific religion, or even atheists.
When I was a young man grappling with homosexuality, there was no such thing as an "out gay Mormon." "Gay" wasn’t a noun (except for girls who happened to be named Gay). It was only considered an endurable, sinful adjective. Amazingly, there exists today a small but vocal segment of Mormon gays and their Mormon allies who accept homosexuality as unchangeable. And yet they somehow find the capacity to struggle and contort themselves to stay in the Church! I simply cannot fathom performing the required mental and emotional gymnastics to accomplish that, but it is undeniably a thing now.
As active, believing Mormons, both my Mom and my ex-wife took on leadership roles without any real freedom or power to manage objectives and staffing. They were merely operation coordinators. Programs and processes were directives from the Priesthood males in power above them, and local decisions required male approval, thus effectively rendering their own decisions mute. I haven’t heard of any substantive changes in this regard, but at least now women can offer prayers in General Conference.
As a teen, I never (knowingly) saw a homosexual portrayed on TV or in the movies. Homosexuality was never discussed in my parents' home, or at church. I knew the words "homo" and "queer" from school friends, but I had no clear understanding of what they really meant until I was much older. In my 20s, I watched with great interest the 70s sitcom "Soap." It had a gay character who was openly referred to as "gay." I so appreciated seeing the show, and I watched it religiously, but secretly - from the safety of my "gay closet."
These words gave me a name for how I felt. But I STILL felt very bad. The words felt very foreign to me, and I couldn't imagine that they really applied to me. I felt ashamed to think they described me. And I thought that if I ever referred to myself as "homo" or "gay," it might somehow serve to make me even more "that way" than I already was. So I tried very hard not to even think of the words.
And most important of all, I naively thought that my safety and my "cure" lay within the Church.
They didn’t.
Today, a young preteen gay boy or girl of any religion has a rich supply of resources: gay-themed media, gay Mormon blogs, gay ex-Mormon blogs, Youtube videos, and just plain gays in the media, who are out and proud, not addicted to drugs and not living in a van down by the river!
And specifically for young gay Mormons, there are the Mama Dragons.
These women are everything I dreamed my mother might have been. My Mom died shortly after I came out as gay. But if I'd had any idea there were LDS women like Mama Dragons out there when I was a teen, I think I would have felt safe enough to come out of the closet earlier. It would have prevented a TON of pain that later took a terrible toll on the people I loved most: my ex-wife and kids. If you are a gay Mormon youth, or the parent of one, please, please talk to a Mama Dragon . You can e-mail them at: mamadragonstoryproject@gmail.com. They are loving Mormon mothers who are also FIERCELY protective of their gay kids. They are people with a moral compass that elevates everyone they interact with. This is what real love is.
There was a movement a few years ago called “It Gets Better.” I’m here to testify that it IS better. It’s better today, even while religious leaders still cling tight to Stone Age opinions. The world, our American society and some in the LDS fringe community are better today than they were 50, 40..... even 10 years ago. And it will continue to get even better.
You CAN do this, inside or outside of Mormonism.
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