Mormon and Gay

I've been reading people's responses to the new "Mormon and Gay" website produced by the LDS Church. There's a way in which I haven't really had the luxury of thinking about the new web site in terms of my own personal feelings about it. In my role as president of Affirmation, my first reaction to the web site was all about the impact I thought the web site would have on the community I am trying to serve (we're still dealing with a lot of trauma from the events of the past year), and whether or not the web site could advance a profitable dialog between LGBT people and straight/cis- people in the LDS Church (I think it can, though that dialog will still require a lot of work on the part of everybody, and a lot of the LGBT folks are really tired and hurting).

It just so happened that the web site came out in the midst of a very tender moment in my life, the day after my husband went through an intense day of surgery to receive a kidney transplant. Through that whole process I was very aware of his (of our) mortality, and just how extremely fragile life is and how infinitely precious Goran is to me, and the way in which over the course of nearly 25 years of life together I don't even really know any more how to separate "me" from him, from us. One of the most sacred moments in my life has now become the moment he finally started to come out of the anesthesia to a state of full consciousness.

I had been there by his side for several hours holding his hand, and even though he couldn't open his eyes, when he first realized it was me there, he started to sob. He just sobbed! And then hours later when he could finally speak, he pulled me up close to him, and he whispered, "You've always been here for me!" I replied, "Yes. I love you." Suddenly he began sobbing again. He told me he didn't feel worthy of my love. I replied that I didn't feel worthy either. We both forgave each other and then wept together, enveloped by the most incredible warmth and peace, absolutely nothing hidden or held back, absolutely nothing to come between us, and I felt like I had never experienced a more pure emotion than the total, unconditional love we expressed for one another in that moment. And I realized that love is so powerful precisely because of how it forgives, and how it teaches us our worthiness. And I felt God present there, smiling, saying: "See! You've finally understood what it is to be one with somebody!" It was this incredible, sacred moment.

The Church is where I learned the Gospel. And the Gospel taught me about grace, it taught me about repentance, it taught me about love, personified in Christ. But I didn't really fully understand these things until I had Goran as my teacher. And I couldn't be in this path or have Goran as my travel companion if it hadn't been for God, lighting the way, teaching me, protecting me, prompting me, comforting me. And then teaching, protecting, prompting and comforting us. Blessing us.

So I don't know what to make of certain teachings that are presented as absolute and unchangeable by Church leaders right now. It seems to me that there is a larger truth (of which the Church's doctrine on marriage is a subset) that encompasses not just my personal experience but the experience of countless other LGBT folks and the love that we might be privileged to share with a significant other, whether that other is of the same or a different sex. And I hope and pray that the Church's truth will some day be large enough to encompass that whole truth.

For me, that's not different than any other aspect of the Gospel as we currently have it, which, if I understand the project of the Restoration writ large, is a project of enabling us to progressively encompass ever and ever larger truths, until we're capable of comprehending everything God comprehends. We're not there yet. So I'm willing to walk with the Church for as far as it will let me, and hope we can all get there together. I'm still very imperfect, and I need the Church to continue to help me in the process of perfecting myself.

I think the new web site is trying to expand the boundaries of what people are willing to encounter and think about, and so I enthusiastically support it and embrace it. I won't condemn it for its shortcomings. I love the movement in the web site which is for the most part in the direction of listening. I hope we'll all find the grace both to tell our truths and to listen, and if the web site helps us do that then it's served its purpose.