This is the text of the talk I gave at the 2017 Sunstone Symposium session "Why We Stay" at the Ray A. Olpin Student Center, at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, on Friday, July 28, 2017. Other presenters were Robin Linkhart, Maxine Hanks, and Nathan McCluskey.
I was excommunicated from the Church in 1986. I am a gay man in a 25-year-long relationship with my husband Göran Gustav-Wrathall. We were legally married in July 2008. Over the years people have asked me how it is that I could consider myself Mormon if I'm not a member of the Church. What covenants are there for me to renew on Sunday morning, sitting in the pews, as I pass, without partaking, the sacrament tray to the person sitting next to me? To the extent that there is a relationship between me and God that has the Church as a context, real as it is to me, it is invisible to outside observers. That’s OK. I stay because I cannot deny what I know.
God is real. Christ is real. The Spirit is real. When the Spirit is present, I know it is present. When it is gone, I feel its absence. When I obey its promptings, I have it with me. And when I disobey, I lose it. I can and do lose it on occasion. And with the Spirit, my life is infinitely fuller and richer and more peaceful and meaningful, than without it, so I obey, to the best of my ability. And when I lose it, I do whatever I need to do to get it back again. And one of those things is to stay active in my ward and to keep the discipline of the Church and the Gospel in my life.
I stay because God has told me that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is his church and it's where he wants me. It’s where, time and time again, as recently as the last time I attended my south Minneapolis ward two weeks ago, the Spirit meets me and teaches me. My heart is softened, the Lord shows me my weaknesses and works with me and draws me to him. At times I have been reassured. At times I have been corrected. I find myself renewed as I meditate on the Sacrament prayer, as I make those promises in my heart, and ask for the Lord’s help to keep those promises. I have had sacred experiences with my priesthood leaders, including through blessings they have given me, that convinced me of the reality of priesthood power. I have witnessed and been the beneficiary of the miraculous healing power of the priesthood. I revere the priesthood as I revere God. I have been blessed to have my fellow Saints claim me as one of their own, and care for me, and encourage me. They accept me and my husband with love and without judgment, and they trust me to find my way forward through faith and hope and love the same way as everybody else.
Are there complications and contradictions? The main one is that I feel prompted to stay true and committed to my husband. We experience all the challenges of any couple, as I've observed both among those who've managed to make their marriages work as well as those who haven't. My marriage to Göran is a school in which I learn patience and sacrifice and empathy. I learn what it is to be one with another human being. My relationship with Göran does not cause me to lose the Spirit. To the contrary I've experienced a richness of the Spirit as I've honored my commitments to him.
What does this mean? I trust that the seeming contradictions between my experience with my husband versus church teaching and policy will all work out. It will work out for me personally as long as I keep that Spirit guide in my life. In my last meeting with my stake president, he simply counseled patience. “What is time unto the Lord?” he said. I am learning patience above all. Time and life experience will grind away everything ephemeral and show what is eternal and what is not.
The older and more experienced I become, the more I am aware of my weaknesses and failings and my need for grace. I have learned how utterly dependent my happiness is on the first principles of the Gospel, faith and repentance. Faith is not merely belief, it is allowing oneself to trust divine providence, even when one cannot see the ends toward which that providence guides us. Repentance is not merely an act, it is a posture, a way of life, an openness to learn and grow and become. When we fall, it is a willingness to pick ourselves up and start over. I am grateful for the grace God has shown me time and time again, often when I knew myself unworthy of it. This is a journey that must be renewed daily. It does not matter how far I've travelled in my journey up to this point. I will never reach my destination if I ever stop walking.
Sometimes I can barely believe I've been on this path for 12 years already. There have been a couple of moments in my journey with the Church when I have wondered how I would continue on with it. Not necessarily doubted that I would continue, but wondered as in having a sense of amazement. One of them was in the immediate aftermath of the November 2015 LDS policy on gay families.
On the afternoon of November 5, 2015 I was chatting on Facebook with other leaders of Affirmation when news of the policy began to break in social media. It wasn't until I saw copies of authenticated text from the new handbook that it really began to sink in. My initial personal reaction was not positive. I think among the first words out of my mouth were, “That's barbaric.” It seemed vindictive to me. In that moment, it looked to me like revenge for the Church’s stunning defeat in the Supreme Court, in Obergefell v. Hodges. And to me it was barbaric to use children to strike at the parents. I knew, and still know the personal situations of enough LGBT Mormons in same-sex relationships raising children in the Church to immediately grasp what impact this would have on them, not to mention the larger impact that this could have on LDS attitudes toward the LGBT community.
As I continued to reflect, there were two dominant thoughts in my mind. The first was that any hope of broadening connections between the larger LGBT community and the Church had been dashed. During my time of service as senior vice president and as a member of the board of Affirmation I and other leaders in the organization had been working hard to broaden those contacts. We had opened up a dialogue with church leaders at all levels, and had been meeting with LDS Church public affairs since December 2012. We were striving to make room for LGBT Mormons to claim their faith as Latter-day Saints, as I have since my profound conversion experience in September 2005.
In September and October 2016, Affirmation conducted a survey of its membership worldwide. Based on the survey data, which looked representative of the Affirmation community that we served, over half of Affirmation members reported being active in the Church prior to the policy. After the policy that percentage dropped to somewhere between 20% and 25%. In a January 2016 leadership gathering in Los Angeles, Affirmation leaders expressed anger, a sense of betrayal, and even guilt for having encouraged LGBT Mormons to engage with the Church. We had observed widespread trauma among LGBT Mormons and their families.
My other dominant thought was less a coherent thought and more a sense of gnawing hurt, sadness and doubt. If I had to put words to it I would say I was wrestling with my sense of my own place in all of this. Hadn't the Lord told me to come back to the Church? Hadn't the Lord reassured me that my relationship with my husband was blessed by him, that I should honor it and safeguard it as one of my greatest personal treasures? I was running for president of Affirmation, and had made the decision to run based on personal prayer and fasting and a clear sense that this was also something the Lord wanted me to do. How was I supposed to do this now? I remember the morning of November 6, I got up out of bed, went downstairs to kneel in our living room and pray before beginning my daily scripture study. I remember feeling heartsick, wishing that what had happened the previous afternoon had been just a bad dream.
But then I began to pray. I began to pour my heart out to the Lord, saying simply, please help me to understand. Please help me to know what to do. And it was like a light went on. Peace flooded through me. My mind was filled with light and reassurance. And the Lord in essence said to me don't worry about this. I've got this one. And you and your husband are still OK.
It was hard for me to articulate what this personal revelation meant, because my sense of things was so counterintuitive. Most members of the LGBT Mormon community saw the policy as a giant step backwards, as a triumph of bigotry. I saw it now as a step forward. A step through. We had to go through this to get to the other side. And the other side would be very, very good.
What had we lost? We had lost some illusions about a liberal progressive evolution of church policy on this issue. I was always skeptical of that kind of a scenario. I always suspected that this issue could only be tackled head-on, in the form of listening deeply to the real stories of LGBT Mormons, followed by doctrinal searching and prayer for new revelation.
What we hadn't lost was ourselves, our stories, in their depth and totality. The Church might not understand us, but God does. God sees us. God saw me and said I was OK and that I need not worry and that he had this one.
In the weeks after, I saw signs that ordinary, mainstream, believing heterosexual Mormons were really struggling with this. My Bishop called me to see if I was OK. We met and talked. He told me that by his estimate at least 60% of the members of our ward were struggling with this. The Sunday after the policy a stranger came up to me in church and asked if I was John Gustav-Wrathall. When I told him I was, he told me that he was investigating the Church. He said to me, “I just wanted you to know that I'm with you on this one.” Other members of my ward came up to me and hugged me and promised me that I was not alone.
At the end of November my mother passed away, and I spoke at her funeral. I told the story of her own personal revelation telling her that her gay son was OK, and prompting her to accept my husband as her own son. After the funeral, it seemed like there were a procession of members of my dad's ultra conservative Springville, Utah ward coming to me and wanting to talk about the policy, many of them with tears in their eyes.
In early December, I asked for and was quickly granted a series of meetings with church representatives and leaders in Salt Lake. I met with an apostle, and, after telling some stories of the trauma that I had observed among ordinary LGBT Mormons, I said, “On the drive up here, I was discussing the policy with my father. My father was very troubled by the term apostate. I am now defined as apostate under this policy. I told my father that I did not believe it was the Church’s intention to stigmatize me or others in my situation. The concept of apostasy is simply used to draw a line between what the Church currently understands as doctrine and what it does not. Was I correct in what I told my father?” The apostle’s response was that what I had told my father was exactly right. It was clear to me that in his willingness to meet with me there was a desire to engage, to draw in and include despite very difficult doctrinal understandings. After writing about this meeting in a blog post in Times & Seasons, I was accused by some of lying about having met with church leaders. The disbelief was proof of what I already knew about the situation, namely that it is more complex, and our leaders recognize it as more complex, than labels like “apostate” are widely understood to imply.
Yes, there has been defensiveness. There has been retrenchment and doubling down and an intensification of anti-LGBT attitudes in some quarters of the Church. But there has been an opening up as well, an opening up and a deepening of dialogue. For good or for ill this is an issue that the Church can only move through, not back or away from.
The policy did create genuine trauma for LGBT Mormons. And it has been a duty of mine as president of Affirmation to make space for people to distance themselves from the Church. But I believe that some of us are called to stay, and the Lord has a very important role for us as part of his plan to move us not away from or around but through.
My testimony has never required members of my ward to “be nice” to me. Nor has it required that the Church treat me as equal. It has nothing to do with the membership of the Church somehow collectively holding correct beliefs about everything. It doesn't piss me off when somebody says something stupid in Sunday school or priesthood meeting. My testimony doesn't require an aesthetically pleasing account of church history. As an historian, I like my history messy, by the way. I like it human and real. The hand of God is more recognizable in that kind of story. I don't know what to make of the Book of Mormon, other than to say that it is the most spiritually powerful and transformative text I've ever encountered. For me, the jury is out as far as Book of Mormon historicity goes. I haven't been satisfied by the critics that it's a fraud, but there are certainly aspects of the text that are puzzling if we want to try to take it literally (which the text itself somewhat demands of us). I suppose that's fundamentally no different from any foundational scriptural text that exists anywhere. But I certainly know that the Book of Mormon is true in the way that is most meaningful to me, which is in the reading and the application of it.
For me the Church is not true “in spite of” the flaws of its members, “in spite of” our individual and collective missteps. It is true in them. It is true in our bearing with one another through them. The scriptures are more or less an archive of human error and divine correction. The trueness of the Church is in having an authentic relationship with a living God who is drawing us into a more god-like life. That’s what priesthood, at its core, is about. That kind of relationship, which demands the discipline of priesthood, necessarily involves us making both individual and collective mistakes, and requiring correction. I’m not sure God’s plan works any other way.
So I’m here, I’m queer, I’m Mormon. Get used to it.
In the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Monday, October 19, 2015
Colonizing Narratives/Annihilating Narratives
Historically the majority of social narratives about gay people have been social constructionist narratives.
This is different than saying the narratives have been socially constructed. Not a majority but all narratives are socially constructed. But a social constructionist narrative about gay people says that gay people are not really gay. They are a group of people who have constructed a social identity that makes them gay. There is, lurking behind every social constructionist narrative of sexual identity, an essentialist premise about the nature of human sexuality. Strict social constructionists may deny that there is an essentialist premise behind their theories. But even if that were possible, the problem is that into the intellectual vacuum created by the denial that we can actually know what anything is in itself essentialist assumptions rush. Human nature abhors a vacuum.
There are two basic essentialist premises that have typically undergirded social constructionist narratives. One is that all human beings are by nature heterosexual. In this narrative, homosexuality is caused by a fault or a flaw: usually either perverse intention on the part of the homosexual him or herself ("this man/woman sinned") or because of failed upbringing on the part of the parents ("his/her parents sinned").
The other essentialist premise behind social constructionist theories of gayness is that all human beings are, by nature, bisexual. "Normal" upbringing will inculcate the heterosexuality required for the propagation of the race; while failed upbringing will cause people to fixate on homosexual yearnings. That was basically Sigmund Freud's theory about homosexuality.
In late 19th- and early 20th-century Germany we saw a third type of essentialist premise behind a social constructionist theory of homosexuality that was embraced by the masculinist wings of the German homosexual rights movement: that all men (they were really unconcerned with women) are by nature homoerotic, and that homoeroticism is therefore the basis of all higher civilization. There's a tragic irony in that particular story, as recounted by Robert Beachy in Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity. Masculinist homosexuals embraced the rise of Nazism, and many hailed Hitler as the charismatic, "homoerotic" leader their theories predicted would rise in any "Männerbund" or "male society." Hitler and the Nazis, of course, did not return the favor. Adolf Brand, a leader of one of the masculinist factions of the German gay rights movement of this era saw what was happening only too late: "The former [Community of the Special] members have now given their trust and support to the very person [who] has publicly declared that if the [Nazi] Party comes to power, all homosexuals will be strung up from the gallows" (p. 239).
Social constructionist narratives are by their nature universalizing and colonizing. They tell gay people that we don't actually know what we are. Philosophical types who want to deny that anybody can know anything I'm sure find this very intellectually pleasing. But in its final analysis, when imposed on others it is patronizing and disempowering -- even annihilating. As Friedrich Radzuweit, a German gay rights activist in the 1920s and 30s protested, "the claim that human beings shared a fundamental bisexuality... undermined not only the experience and identity of most homosexuals but also the moral and pragmatic arguments for legal reform" (p. 235). The Nazis, as Beachy points out, were only too happy to embrace a social constructionist narrative of homosexuality, to justify the murder of gay men and women in Nazi concentration camps (pp. 237-238).
Is there legitimate debate and discussion about the construction of gay identities? Absolutely! Again, citing Beachy's study of the late 19th- and early 20th-century gay rights movement in Germany, we see a number of competing views. One viewed homosexuality as a "third sex," i..e., homosexuality as a gender identity (of which gay rights activist Magnus Hirschfeld was an advocate). Another insisted that to be gay is merely a sexual orientation that has nothing to do with gender identity (of which Friedrich Radzuweit was a vocal advocate, and which Hirschfeld was willing to allow). I confess I don't have much patience for the homo-supremacist, misogynist and anti-Semitic theories of people like Adolf Brand or Hans Blüher. But I'm interested in (and love to discuss) the ways we create identities on the foundation of our sexuality as we experience it.
But gay experience deserves to be treated with respect. You can tell me that my experience of my sexuality as a gay man as something that is innate, immutable, and natural is merely a social construct. Please don't be offended if I protest that you are colonizing me, that your construction of my sexuality doesn't leave me a legitimate social space.
This is different than saying the narratives have been socially constructed. Not a majority but all narratives are socially constructed. But a social constructionist narrative about gay people says that gay people are not really gay. They are a group of people who have constructed a social identity that makes them gay. There is, lurking behind every social constructionist narrative of sexual identity, an essentialist premise about the nature of human sexuality. Strict social constructionists may deny that there is an essentialist premise behind their theories. But even if that were possible, the problem is that into the intellectual vacuum created by the denial that we can actually know what anything is in itself essentialist assumptions rush. Human nature abhors a vacuum.
There are two basic essentialist premises that have typically undergirded social constructionist narratives. One is that all human beings are by nature heterosexual. In this narrative, homosexuality is caused by a fault or a flaw: usually either perverse intention on the part of the homosexual him or herself ("this man/woman sinned") or because of failed upbringing on the part of the parents ("his/her parents sinned").
The other essentialist premise behind social constructionist theories of gayness is that all human beings are, by nature, bisexual. "Normal" upbringing will inculcate the heterosexuality required for the propagation of the race; while failed upbringing will cause people to fixate on homosexual yearnings. That was basically Sigmund Freud's theory about homosexuality.
In late 19th- and early 20th-century Germany we saw a third type of essentialist premise behind a social constructionist theory of homosexuality that was embraced by the masculinist wings of the German homosexual rights movement: that all men (they were really unconcerned with women) are by nature homoerotic, and that homoeroticism is therefore the basis of all higher civilization. There's a tragic irony in that particular story, as recounted by Robert Beachy in Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity. Masculinist homosexuals embraced the rise of Nazism, and many hailed Hitler as the charismatic, "homoerotic" leader their theories predicted would rise in any "Männerbund" or "male society." Hitler and the Nazis, of course, did not return the favor. Adolf Brand, a leader of one of the masculinist factions of the German gay rights movement of this era saw what was happening only too late: "The former [Community of the Special] members have now given their trust and support to the very person [who] has publicly declared that if the [Nazi] Party comes to power, all homosexuals will be strung up from the gallows" (p. 239).
Social constructionist narratives are by their nature universalizing and colonizing. They tell gay people that we don't actually know what we are. Philosophical types who want to deny that anybody can know anything I'm sure find this very intellectually pleasing. But in its final analysis, when imposed on others it is patronizing and disempowering -- even annihilating. As Friedrich Radzuweit, a German gay rights activist in the 1920s and 30s protested, "the claim that human beings shared a fundamental bisexuality... undermined not only the experience and identity of most homosexuals but also the moral and pragmatic arguments for legal reform" (p. 235). The Nazis, as Beachy points out, were only too happy to embrace a social constructionist narrative of homosexuality, to justify the murder of gay men and women in Nazi concentration camps (pp. 237-238).
Is there legitimate debate and discussion about the construction of gay identities? Absolutely! Again, citing Beachy's study of the late 19th- and early 20th-century gay rights movement in Germany, we see a number of competing views. One viewed homosexuality as a "third sex," i..e., homosexuality as a gender identity (of which gay rights activist Magnus Hirschfeld was an advocate). Another insisted that to be gay is merely a sexual orientation that has nothing to do with gender identity (of which Friedrich Radzuweit was a vocal advocate, and which Hirschfeld was willing to allow). I confess I don't have much patience for the homo-supremacist, misogynist and anti-Semitic theories of people like Adolf Brand or Hans Blüher. But I'm interested in (and love to discuss) the ways we create identities on the foundation of our sexuality as we experience it.
But gay experience deserves to be treated with respect. You can tell me that my experience of my sexuality as a gay man as something that is innate, immutable, and natural is merely a social construct. Please don't be offended if I protest that you are colonizing me, that your construction of my sexuality doesn't leave me a legitimate social space.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
"Inventing" Homosexuality
For my birthday, a friend gave me a new and highly acclaimed book in the field of gay studies and gay history, Gay Berlin: Birth of a Modern Identity, by Robert Beachy.
The book's title and the book's introduction clearly point to the author's analytical frame, which draws on the "social construction of homosexuality" model that has come to dominate much of the field of Queer Studies. The social construction model seeks to explain why there is no "gay rights" movement before the nineteenth century, not to mention no people identifying as openly "gay," no "gay community," etc. It also conveniently relies on the fact that we simply have no scientific data about sexuality that dates back any further than the late nineteenth century. Social construction theory focuses on discourse. It focuses on social ideas and images, which we can study from the period of ancient history on by examining literature, law and art. Radical social construction theory suggests that there is no scientific basis for "gayness" as an identity. Without discourse about gayness, gayness does not exist. And while social constructionists loudly protest that their work is misused by social conservatives who want to make the case that gayness should not exist, the truth is that the radical social constructionist argument readily lends itself to those uses.
But what I find fascinating about this study -- which is comparable to George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 -- is that in turning a microscope to the "invention" of homosexuality in its historical specificity (not in the abstract, theoretical way in which Michel Foucault discovered it), we always find that homosexuality is not in fact "invented," but "discovered." We would never say that Columbus "invented" America, though one could certainly compellingly argue that the concept of "America" was an invented one, that it posited a mythical "Western" world conceived of as radically different from the "Old World," etc.
Similarly, homosexual people certainly existed prior to 1867 when the German term Homosexualität was coined. A plethora of concepts and ideas have been used to attempt to frame and tame the existence of gay people for public consumption and for a variety of political and social purposes, some beneficent and some maleficent. But gay people have always existed. The recency of a publicly articulated gay identity and gay rights movement is no more proof that homosexuality does not exist per se, than, say, the recency of Copernicus' heliocentric model of the solar system is proof that the sun actually rotates around the earth. Both are proof, rather, that human understanding is collectively capable of progressing, that we actually know more about the way the universe functions, just as we know more about human sexuality, by applying scientific methods.
I think the best evidence of the falsehood of radical social construction theory in studies such as Beachy's and Chauncey's is how the concept of homosexuality emerged in the modern world from two primary sources: first, from gay people themselves; and second, from the medical and social work professions that were among the first to seriously consider gay people's testimony of their own experience as a source of data about sexuality. Nobody told Karl Heinrich Ulrichs that his attraction to men was innate, natural and immutable. In fact, everybody in his life, his devout Lutheran family, his colleagues in the legal profession (which ultimately disbarred him), the editors of newspapers that derided him, and his political opponents (virtually everybody with power in the nascent German state) all told him exactly the opposite. It was in consulting his own feelings and his experience that he came to know they were wrong. And when he bravely spoke publicly about his experience, he became a laughing stock in German society at large, but a hero to other gay people or "urnings" (the name he coined for homosexuals by drawing on classical mythology), who understood and related very immediately and personally to his account of his experience.
The truth is that "homosexuality" or "gayness" became possible as a modern identity not so much thanks to the scientific professions (though science has validated the identity) but thanks to the rise of modern mass democracy and urban, industrial economies. "Gayness" has not existed till now not because gay people did not exist, but because familial and social structures prior to the late nineteenth century exacted too high a price for gay self-expression. The gay community exists today because liberal institutions allow gay people to express ourselves and to tell our stories, and they allow us to form relationships that make sense to us and communities that support us and our relationships. And the gay rights movement exists because liberal democracy allows us to have a say in the laws that govern us.
Much has been made in the literature on gay history of the "medicalization" of homosexuality. I remember as a graduate student reading about Karl Heinrich Ulrichs' gay rights activism in Germany. At that time, Queer Studies was barely on its feet as a discipline. (I was one of the organizers of the third national queer studies conferences for grad students.) I remember reading about Ulrichs' quaint theory of homosexuals as a "third sex," an idea that was taken up by Magnus Hirschfeld and the Scientific Humanitarian Committee (based in Berlin), and that was rejected by other German homosexuals, who preferred a more "manly" definition of what it meant to be a man who loved men. At the time I too rejected the notion of gay men and women as a third sex. I felt it played too much to "stereotypes." Of course gay men could be masculine sports heroes, and gay women could be feminine nurturers. That in spite of the fact that as a boy I hated sports and preferred bookish and artistic pursuits, enjoyed playing house with my brother, fell in love with Judy Garland, secretly played with my sisters' Barbie dolls, and snuck into my parents' bedroom when they were gone so I could surreptitiously try on my mother's lipstick and high heels. Those kinds of stories are common enough among gay men and women, it's hard to deny that it points to something. Ulrichs and Hirschfeld were trying to make sense of biographical data that are striking for their consistency with what anybody familiar with gay men and women will still observe today.
What is also striking to me is how eerily similar to present-day understandings nineteenth-century gay rights activists' analysis of the problems gay people face in a heterosexual society and their proposed solutions are. They identified family rejection, social isolation, religious intolerance, refusal to recognize gay relationships, and the specter of suicide driven by extreme rejection. Ulrichs also engaged with religion, with the God of the Lutheran faith he was raised in. God must love gays, he insisted, because He made us.
Of course, ultimately, an "essentialist" view of gay history can't be proven much better than a social constructionist view. To do it we'd need data that we just don't have and can never get for bygone ages. But what we can see of the emergence of public homosexual identities in the nineteenth century to me suggests more of a "coming out" than a creation.
The book's title and the book's introduction clearly point to the author's analytical frame, which draws on the "social construction of homosexuality" model that has come to dominate much of the field of Queer Studies. The social construction model seeks to explain why there is no "gay rights" movement before the nineteenth century, not to mention no people identifying as openly "gay," no "gay community," etc. It also conveniently relies on the fact that we simply have no scientific data about sexuality that dates back any further than the late nineteenth century. Social construction theory focuses on discourse. It focuses on social ideas and images, which we can study from the period of ancient history on by examining literature, law and art. Radical social construction theory suggests that there is no scientific basis for "gayness" as an identity. Without discourse about gayness, gayness does not exist. And while social constructionists loudly protest that their work is misused by social conservatives who want to make the case that gayness should not exist, the truth is that the radical social constructionist argument readily lends itself to those uses.
But what I find fascinating about this study -- which is comparable to George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 -- is that in turning a microscope to the "invention" of homosexuality in its historical specificity (not in the abstract, theoretical way in which Michel Foucault discovered it), we always find that homosexuality is not in fact "invented," but "discovered." We would never say that Columbus "invented" America, though one could certainly compellingly argue that the concept of "America" was an invented one, that it posited a mythical "Western" world conceived of as radically different from the "Old World," etc.
Similarly, homosexual people certainly existed prior to 1867 when the German term Homosexualität was coined. A plethora of concepts and ideas have been used to attempt to frame and tame the existence of gay people for public consumption and for a variety of political and social purposes, some beneficent and some maleficent. But gay people have always existed. The recency of a publicly articulated gay identity and gay rights movement is no more proof that homosexuality does not exist per se, than, say, the recency of Copernicus' heliocentric model of the solar system is proof that the sun actually rotates around the earth. Both are proof, rather, that human understanding is collectively capable of progressing, that we actually know more about the way the universe functions, just as we know more about human sexuality, by applying scientific methods.
I think the best evidence of the falsehood of radical social construction theory in studies such as Beachy's and Chauncey's is how the concept of homosexuality emerged in the modern world from two primary sources: first, from gay people themselves; and second, from the medical and social work professions that were among the first to seriously consider gay people's testimony of their own experience as a source of data about sexuality. Nobody told Karl Heinrich Ulrichs that his attraction to men was innate, natural and immutable. In fact, everybody in his life, his devout Lutheran family, his colleagues in the legal profession (which ultimately disbarred him), the editors of newspapers that derided him, and his political opponents (virtually everybody with power in the nascent German state) all told him exactly the opposite. It was in consulting his own feelings and his experience that he came to know they were wrong. And when he bravely spoke publicly about his experience, he became a laughing stock in German society at large, but a hero to other gay people or "urnings" (the name he coined for homosexuals by drawing on classical mythology), who understood and related very immediately and personally to his account of his experience.
The truth is that "homosexuality" or "gayness" became possible as a modern identity not so much thanks to the scientific professions (though science has validated the identity) but thanks to the rise of modern mass democracy and urban, industrial economies. "Gayness" has not existed till now not because gay people did not exist, but because familial and social structures prior to the late nineteenth century exacted too high a price for gay self-expression. The gay community exists today because liberal institutions allow gay people to express ourselves and to tell our stories, and they allow us to form relationships that make sense to us and communities that support us and our relationships. And the gay rights movement exists because liberal democracy allows us to have a say in the laws that govern us.
Much has been made in the literature on gay history of the "medicalization" of homosexuality. I remember as a graduate student reading about Karl Heinrich Ulrichs' gay rights activism in Germany. At that time, Queer Studies was barely on its feet as a discipline. (I was one of the organizers of the third national queer studies conferences for grad students.) I remember reading about Ulrichs' quaint theory of homosexuals as a "third sex," an idea that was taken up by Magnus Hirschfeld and the Scientific Humanitarian Committee (based in Berlin), and that was rejected by other German homosexuals, who preferred a more "manly" definition of what it meant to be a man who loved men. At the time I too rejected the notion of gay men and women as a third sex. I felt it played too much to "stereotypes." Of course gay men could be masculine sports heroes, and gay women could be feminine nurturers. That in spite of the fact that as a boy I hated sports and preferred bookish and artistic pursuits, enjoyed playing house with my brother, fell in love with Judy Garland, secretly played with my sisters' Barbie dolls, and snuck into my parents' bedroom when they were gone so I could surreptitiously try on my mother's lipstick and high heels. Those kinds of stories are common enough among gay men and women, it's hard to deny that it points to something. Ulrichs and Hirschfeld were trying to make sense of biographical data that are striking for their consistency with what anybody familiar with gay men and women will still observe today.
What is also striking to me is how eerily similar to present-day understandings nineteenth-century gay rights activists' analysis of the problems gay people face in a heterosexual society and their proposed solutions are. They identified family rejection, social isolation, religious intolerance, refusal to recognize gay relationships, and the specter of suicide driven by extreme rejection. Ulrichs also engaged with religion, with the God of the Lutheran faith he was raised in. God must love gays, he insisted, because He made us.
Of course, ultimately, an "essentialist" view of gay history can't be proven much better than a social constructionist view. To do it we'd need data that we just don't have and can never get for bygone ages. But what we can see of the emergence of public homosexual identities in the nineteenth century to me suggests more of a "coming out" than a creation.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Disentangling the Gospel from Culture
When I teach my American Religious Histories class at United Theological Seminary this year, I plan to introduce a new monograph by George E. Tinker entitled Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide (Fortress Press, 1993).
Tinker examines the ministries of four of the most celebrated Christian missionaries to work among Native American peoples: John Eliot (1604-1690), a Puritan missionary in New England; Junípero Serra (1713-1783), a Catholic missionary in California; Pierre-Jean De Smet (1801-1873), a Catholic missionary in the American Midwest; and Henry Benjamin Whipple (1822-1901), the Episcopal bishop of Minnesota. What is most interesting about the book is how forcefully Tinker documents the moral uprightness and the good intentions of these missionaries. Each of these missionaries -- as best historians can discern -- worked tirelessly and selflessly, and genuinely loved the Native peoples among whom they served, desiring to help them. And yet Tinker also demonstrates how the programs and policies these men were instrumental in developing resulted in economic, social and spiritual ruin that endures today.
Tinker poses the question, how could the best of intentions result in such horrific outcomes for Native peoples and their descendents? Tinker's purpose is not to lambast Christianity or Christian missionaries. For what it's worth, he is himself a Christian minister who is also Native American (Osage/Cherokee). To me, that makes his answer to this perplexing question about good intentions going awry that much more interesting. The culprits, according to Tinker, are two-fold: political and cultural.
First, each of the missionaries he studied was in various ways dependent on the sponsorship and support of governments that were committed to the (mis)appropriation of Native lands and the elimination of Native peoples -- if not through outright genocide, through cultural assimilation. These men have each been celebrated because they criticized and stood up to proponents of outright genocide; but they accepted the corollary that if Native peoples could not be physically eliminated, they had to be culturally and socially assimilated or amalgamated into the American (or in the case of Serra, the Spanish) body politic. In other words, these men were on a political mission as much as -- if not more than! -- they were on spiritual missions. That political mission was to serve serve state demands that Native lands by incorporated and Native populations be pacified. In other words, culprit number one was a corrupt relationship between church and state, in which state power was used to force Natives to convert, and in which churches allowed themselves to be used as apologists for state-sponsored theft, murder and exploitation.
Second, each of these men wholly identified Christianity with European or Euro-American culture. Tinker specifically shows how, especially among American missionaries, Christianity was identified with individualistic capitalism and with the nuclear family. It was also, for what it's worth, identified with European dress and personal grooming and the use of European languages (and abandonment or suppression of native languages). (As if God wears a suit and tie and speaks exclusively English.) This is particularly interesting to me, as a Latter-day Saint, since neither the New Testament nor the experience of the early Latter-day Saints seems to support the notion that God intended the Saints to be good capitalists. (Read Acts 2:44-45 if you don't believe me.) And of course nineteenth-century Mormons were in the process of reforming marriage and family in a way that would make Mormon families look more like the polygamous, extended kinship networks common in Native American societies, than like the nuclear families that were becoming the norm among Victorian Protestants and Catholics. Of course, Mormon polygamy was considered every bit as much an affront to "Christian" America as Native American family and sexual norms of the same period.
Tinker shows how disruptive imposing American agrarian capitalism, nuclear family values and English language was to Native American communities. And none of these things (not to mention European dress or other paraphernalia of American culture) is demonstrably Christian, at least not as far as I can tell.
But that's where Tinker's argument gets really interesting. Because American Christians (Protestant, Catholic and other), both in times past and in the present, have been absolutely convinced that you couldn't be a good Christian unless you were a capitalist. The New Testament notwithstanding. I'm sure there will be a fair number of people to read this post whose blood is kind of boiling right now at my suggestion that a good Christian is really something more like a communist than a capitalist. And I think it would be rather bad theology not to admit that the Gospel ought to be a disruptor of culture. Tinker says "culture consists of habitual responses to the world" (p. 113). And it seems to me that nothing is so clear as the fact that our collective "habitual responses" may or may not be constructive or life-giving. Culture can provide stability and a framework for growth. But it can also reinforce addictive, demeaning, destructive patterns of behavior. Revelation often comes in the form of divine reprimands, calls to repentance to abandon idolatrous, self-destructive "habitual responses." So it seems to me that good Christians ought to be cultural critics.
What was particularly appalling about European Christian treatment of Native Americans was that they were only too glad to be cultural critics of other peoples' cultures, but they were completely blind to the idolatry in their own culture. In fact, they generally behaved like fanatical adherents of their own cultural superiority in relation to all non-European culture (and even in relation to other European cultures than their own!). It seems to me the Gospel ought to make us critics mainly of the culture that defines our own "habitual responses." Morality is most meaningful to us within the framework of our own culture, because that is the culture we understand best; that is the culture that has formed us, when the Gospel ought to be reforming us. Europeans knew that stealing other people's land, murdering them and reducing them to slavery was wrong. They justified it by developing rationales of racial and cultural superiority, but they still knew it was wrong. I don't buy that "their-understanding-was-limited-by-their-time-and-place" bunkum. It was wrong and they knew it. When we do unto others what we most definitely would not have them do unto us, that would always be a good place for Christian cultural reformers to start. Not by telling other people how long their hair should be or what language they should speak or whom they should be allowed to marry.
One thing I found particularly ironic in Tinker's book was the numerous sections where he describes Native American reverence for the sacred and for God that was misinterpreted by European and European-American Christians because they didn't speak Native languages or understand Native culture. Far too often, Europeans were trying to destroy just those facets of Native culture that -- I think -- a true understanding of the Gospel might have moved them to appreciate.
Tinker ends his essay not by suggesting that Christianity is the wrong religion for Native Americans, but by insisting on Native American spiritual and social autonomy. Indian peoples, he says, need to believe in their own ability to determine what is right for them spiritually, economically and politically, and he asks for genuine non-Native-American "friends who will join us in the struggle against the continuing imperialism of Western, European-American culture." He continues:
Ultimately, as a Mormon I believe in the power and centrality of agency in God's yearnings for his children. And as a gay Mormon, that inclines me want to be the kind of friend to Native Americans that George Tinker invites to join the struggle.
Tinker examines the ministries of four of the most celebrated Christian missionaries to work among Native American peoples: John Eliot (1604-1690), a Puritan missionary in New England; Junípero Serra (1713-1783), a Catholic missionary in California; Pierre-Jean De Smet (1801-1873), a Catholic missionary in the American Midwest; and Henry Benjamin Whipple (1822-1901), the Episcopal bishop of Minnesota. What is most interesting about the book is how forcefully Tinker documents the moral uprightness and the good intentions of these missionaries. Each of these missionaries -- as best historians can discern -- worked tirelessly and selflessly, and genuinely loved the Native peoples among whom they served, desiring to help them. And yet Tinker also demonstrates how the programs and policies these men were instrumental in developing resulted in economic, social and spiritual ruin that endures today.
Tinker poses the question, how could the best of intentions result in such horrific outcomes for Native peoples and their descendents? Tinker's purpose is not to lambast Christianity or Christian missionaries. For what it's worth, he is himself a Christian minister who is also Native American (Osage/Cherokee). To me, that makes his answer to this perplexing question about good intentions going awry that much more interesting. The culprits, according to Tinker, are two-fold: political and cultural.
First, each of the missionaries he studied was in various ways dependent on the sponsorship and support of governments that were committed to the (mis)appropriation of Native lands and the elimination of Native peoples -- if not through outright genocide, through cultural assimilation. These men have each been celebrated because they criticized and stood up to proponents of outright genocide; but they accepted the corollary that if Native peoples could not be physically eliminated, they had to be culturally and socially assimilated or amalgamated into the American (or in the case of Serra, the Spanish) body politic. In other words, these men were on a political mission as much as -- if not more than! -- they were on spiritual missions. That political mission was to serve serve state demands that Native lands by incorporated and Native populations be pacified. In other words, culprit number one was a corrupt relationship between church and state, in which state power was used to force Natives to convert, and in which churches allowed themselves to be used as apologists for state-sponsored theft, murder and exploitation.
Second, each of these men wholly identified Christianity with European or Euro-American culture. Tinker specifically shows how, especially among American missionaries, Christianity was identified with individualistic capitalism and with the nuclear family. It was also, for what it's worth, identified with European dress and personal grooming and the use of European languages (and abandonment or suppression of native languages). (As if God wears a suit and tie and speaks exclusively English.) This is particularly interesting to me, as a Latter-day Saint, since neither the New Testament nor the experience of the early Latter-day Saints seems to support the notion that God intended the Saints to be good capitalists. (Read Acts 2:44-45 if you don't believe me.) And of course nineteenth-century Mormons were in the process of reforming marriage and family in a way that would make Mormon families look more like the polygamous, extended kinship networks common in Native American societies, than like the nuclear families that were becoming the norm among Victorian Protestants and Catholics. Of course, Mormon polygamy was considered every bit as much an affront to "Christian" America as Native American family and sexual norms of the same period.
Tinker shows how disruptive imposing American agrarian capitalism, nuclear family values and English language was to Native American communities. And none of these things (not to mention European dress or other paraphernalia of American culture) is demonstrably Christian, at least not as far as I can tell.
But that's where Tinker's argument gets really interesting. Because American Christians (Protestant, Catholic and other), both in times past and in the present, have been absolutely convinced that you couldn't be a good Christian unless you were a capitalist. The New Testament notwithstanding. I'm sure there will be a fair number of people to read this post whose blood is kind of boiling right now at my suggestion that a good Christian is really something more like a communist than a capitalist. And I think it would be rather bad theology not to admit that the Gospel ought to be a disruptor of culture. Tinker says "culture consists of habitual responses to the world" (p. 113). And it seems to me that nothing is so clear as the fact that our collective "habitual responses" may or may not be constructive or life-giving. Culture can provide stability and a framework for growth. But it can also reinforce addictive, demeaning, destructive patterns of behavior. Revelation often comes in the form of divine reprimands, calls to repentance to abandon idolatrous, self-destructive "habitual responses." So it seems to me that good Christians ought to be cultural critics.
What was particularly appalling about European Christian treatment of Native Americans was that they were only too glad to be cultural critics of other peoples' cultures, but they were completely blind to the idolatry in their own culture. In fact, they generally behaved like fanatical adherents of their own cultural superiority in relation to all non-European culture (and even in relation to other European cultures than their own!). It seems to me the Gospel ought to make us critics mainly of the culture that defines our own "habitual responses." Morality is most meaningful to us within the framework of our own culture, because that is the culture we understand best; that is the culture that has formed us, when the Gospel ought to be reforming us. Europeans knew that stealing other people's land, murdering them and reducing them to slavery was wrong. They justified it by developing rationales of racial and cultural superiority, but they still knew it was wrong. I don't buy that "their-understanding-was-limited-by-their-time-and-place" bunkum. It was wrong and they knew it. When we do unto others what we most definitely would not have them do unto us, that would always be a good place for Christian cultural reformers to start. Not by telling other people how long their hair should be or what language they should speak or whom they should be allowed to marry.
One thing I found particularly ironic in Tinker's book was the numerous sections where he describes Native American reverence for the sacred and for God that was misinterpreted by European and European-American Christians because they didn't speak Native languages or understand Native culture. Far too often, Europeans were trying to destroy just those facets of Native culture that -- I think -- a true understanding of the Gospel might have moved them to appreciate.
Tinker ends his essay not by suggesting that Christianity is the wrong religion for Native Americans, but by insisting on Native American spiritual and social autonomy. Indian peoples, he says, need to believe in their own ability to determine what is right for them spiritually, economically and politically, and he asks for genuine non-Native-American "friends who will join us in the struggle against the continuing imperialism of Western, European-American culture." He continues:
Genuine friends do not invade one another, physically or spiritually. Genuine friends do not prescribe for one another. But genuine friends do stand beside one another, supporting one another in times of need and crisis. (p. 121)As a gay Mormon, caught in the cross-hairs of an ugly culture war, I resonate with everything Tinker says here. I don't believe there are necessarily easy answers to the question: "What, in our culture is idolatrous, and what is the Gospel?" The rightness or wrongness of same-sex marriage continues to be debated, though there are growing numbers of Christians who insist that the Gospel demands that gay couples be encouraged and blessed in their desire to make loving commitments to each other. There's evidence that denying marriage to committed same-sex partners has disastrous effects, not only on gay individuals, but on larger familial and social structures. How does the Gospel speak to this?
Ultimately, as a Mormon I believe in the power and centrality of agency in God's yearnings for his children. And as a gay Mormon, that inclines me want to be the kind of friend to Native Americans that George Tinker invites to join the struggle.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Why We March
In 2012, there was unprecedented Mormon participation in LGBT Pride celebrations in the United States and Latin America. Mormons Building Bridges brought together over 300 active Latter-day Saints to march in Salt Lake City Pride in a show of love and support for the LGBT community. Hundreds of other Mormons in over a dozen other cities followed suit.
Naturally, there was controversy, for the very reasons that many Mormons felt impelled to march at Pride in the first place.
Involvement by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Prop 8 campaign in California in 2008 widened already painful divisions between the LDS Church and the gay community. Those wounds were still fresh as of last year; they are still fresh now, as we await, perhaps within the next 24 hours, a Supreme Court ruling on Proposition 8 and on DOMA.
Caught in the middle of the rift between LGBT Americans and straight, active Mormons are LGBT Mormons. Many LGBT Mormons love and are loyal to their faith and their Church. The majority are alienated from the Church, having experienced extreme rejection at the hands of their fellow Latter-day Saints. Within that alienated majority -- whether they quietly dropped out or were excommunicated -- there are mixed feelings about the Church. Many are angry and in pain; many have left and moved on; some quietly continue to practice a faith shaped by their Mormon upbringing far from the precincts of organized religion; some yearn for reunion or reconciliation with their Church and/or their families.
The majority of those who marched at Pride were active Mormons who wanted to make a concrete demonstration of empathy and support of the most basic sort. Their views in relation to homosexuality ranged across a spectrum from, on one end, a simple yearning for greater understanding and empathy to, on the other end, full support for civil equality. Some even envisioned a Church in which gay couples and their families could participate fully and without hindrance. All of them gladly marched side-by-side with LGBT Mormons across the spectrum of Church activity and beliefs.
For many in the LGBT community, any gesture of reconciliation short of complete and total support for full civil and religious equality would be considered too little too late.
But for many, myself included, any gesture of support was warmly welcomed and encouraged and gratefully received.
For Mormons to march in Pride in 2012 it took an act of great courage. You risked, on the one hand, misunderstanding and rejection on the part of fellow Latter-day Saints. You worried about the possibility of Church discipline. You also risked facing skepticism and rejection from those within the LGBT community (both Mormon and non-Mormon) who saw your actions as self-serving or insufficient.
What did we learn from Pride in 2012, and what does Mormon participation in Pride look like in 2013?
First, we learned that people's worst fears about Pride never materialized. No active Mormons who participated in Pride reported experiencing alienation or ostracism (or Church discipline!) for having participated. To the contrary, many of their fellow Saints expressed curiosity about or interest in Pride, and a desire to make the Church a more welcoming place for LGBT people and to expand areas of common ground between the Church and the LGBT community.
For example, in the aftermath of Pride, I met with both my bishop and my stake president to discuss my reasons for marching and for helping to organize a contingent of Mormons to march. I talked about my yearning as a gay man to be able to march as a Mormon, to be able to integrate every aspect of who I am into one great whole. I shared stories of healing and reconciliation that took place at Pride. As a result of my talks with them, they expressed support for future contingents.
Since Pride last year, the LDS Church launched its "Mormonsandgays.org" web site. Affirmation, the oldest and largest gay Mormon organization in the world, reorganized its leadership and took concrete steps toward building bridges with the Church. Local and regional conferences of Mormons have been organized -- some with official Church sponsorship and participation -- geared toward expanding the dialog between "Mormons and gays."
The overall positive experience has been bringing active Mormons to Pride in growing numbers. Earlier this month, Mormons Building Bridges' second ever contingent in Salt Lake City Pride brought out 400 marchers, 100 more than last year, even as significant numbers of Mormons who had marched under their banner last year marched under different banners this year (such as with the ACLU, for those who wanted to express more unequivocal support for civil rights and civil equality).
Second, we learned that participating in Pride was difficult, powerful, healing, and necessary.
Yes, for many participation in Pride definitely went out of the "comfort zone." It was stressful and scary in some ways, even as there were positive experiences. (Not to mention that the parade route was long, and the weather was hot!)
So many participants reported life-changing experiences. My contingent at Twin Cities Pride was often greeted by smiles and waves and shouts of surprise and excitement. "The Mormons are here? Look, here come the Mormons!" Parade watchers ran forward to exchange hugs with marchers. Participants in numerous cities described on-lookers with tears of joy in their eyes.
Last year I described a particularly powerful encounter in which a man approached one of our marchers, and told of being excommunicated from the Church three days after his lover died. That reminded us all why our participation in Pride was necessary, why we should have organized contingents to march a long time ago. It was that story in particular that had moved my bishop to encourage me to keep on organizing Mormons at Pride.
Miles to go!
To me it feels completely different now than it did a year ago.
A year ago, the idea of Mormons at Pride was shocking. Now it feels strangely normal, maybe part of a much better, "new normal." Will it still take people out of their comfort zones? Are there still risks? Yes and yes.
We have a lot of work left to do, many miles yet to march. There are so many unanswered questions for those of us who are LGBT and Mormon. We still struggle to know what our place is in the Church. There is still much pain, much alienation. There is still bullying, there is still suicide. LGBT people are still afraid to walk into a Mormon chapel, not knowing how they will be received.
Christ still has a work of healing for us to do.
If you are interested in joining me and other "Mormon Allies" marchers at Twin Cities Pride this year, email me, or check out our event on Facebook.
Naturally, there was controversy, for the very reasons that many Mormons felt impelled to march at Pride in the first place.
Involvement by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Prop 8 campaign in California in 2008 widened already painful divisions between the LDS Church and the gay community. Those wounds were still fresh as of last year; they are still fresh now, as we await, perhaps within the next 24 hours, a Supreme Court ruling on Proposition 8 and on DOMA.
Caught in the middle of the rift between LGBT Americans and straight, active Mormons are LGBT Mormons. Many LGBT Mormons love and are loyal to their faith and their Church. The majority are alienated from the Church, having experienced extreme rejection at the hands of their fellow Latter-day Saints. Within that alienated majority -- whether they quietly dropped out or were excommunicated -- there are mixed feelings about the Church. Many are angry and in pain; many have left and moved on; some quietly continue to practice a faith shaped by their Mormon upbringing far from the precincts of organized religion; some yearn for reunion or reconciliation with their Church and/or their families.
The majority of those who marched at Pride were active Mormons who wanted to make a concrete demonstration of empathy and support of the most basic sort. Their views in relation to homosexuality ranged across a spectrum from, on one end, a simple yearning for greater understanding and empathy to, on the other end, full support for civil equality. Some even envisioned a Church in which gay couples and their families could participate fully and without hindrance. All of them gladly marched side-by-side with LGBT Mormons across the spectrum of Church activity and beliefs.
For many in the LGBT community, any gesture of reconciliation short of complete and total support for full civil and religious equality would be considered too little too late.
But for many, myself included, any gesture of support was warmly welcomed and encouraged and gratefully received.
For Mormons to march in Pride in 2012 it took an act of great courage. You risked, on the one hand, misunderstanding and rejection on the part of fellow Latter-day Saints. You worried about the possibility of Church discipline. You also risked facing skepticism and rejection from those within the LGBT community (both Mormon and non-Mormon) who saw your actions as self-serving or insufficient.
What did we learn from Pride in 2012, and what does Mormon participation in Pride look like in 2013?
First, we learned that people's worst fears about Pride never materialized. No active Mormons who participated in Pride reported experiencing alienation or ostracism (or Church discipline!) for having participated. To the contrary, many of their fellow Saints expressed curiosity about or interest in Pride, and a desire to make the Church a more welcoming place for LGBT people and to expand areas of common ground between the Church and the LGBT community.
For example, in the aftermath of Pride, I met with both my bishop and my stake president to discuss my reasons for marching and for helping to organize a contingent of Mormons to march. I talked about my yearning as a gay man to be able to march as a Mormon, to be able to integrate every aspect of who I am into one great whole. I shared stories of healing and reconciliation that took place at Pride. As a result of my talks with them, they expressed support for future contingents.
Since Pride last year, the LDS Church launched its "Mormonsandgays.org" web site. Affirmation, the oldest and largest gay Mormon organization in the world, reorganized its leadership and took concrete steps toward building bridges with the Church. Local and regional conferences of Mormons have been organized -- some with official Church sponsorship and participation -- geared toward expanding the dialog between "Mormons and gays."
The overall positive experience has been bringing active Mormons to Pride in growing numbers. Earlier this month, Mormons Building Bridges' second ever contingent in Salt Lake City Pride brought out 400 marchers, 100 more than last year, even as significant numbers of Mormons who had marched under their banner last year marched under different banners this year (such as with the ACLU, for those who wanted to express more unequivocal support for civil rights and civil equality).
Second, we learned that participating in Pride was difficult, powerful, healing, and necessary.
Yes, for many participation in Pride definitely went out of the "comfort zone." It was stressful and scary in some ways, even as there were positive experiences. (Not to mention that the parade route was long, and the weather was hot!)
So many participants reported life-changing experiences. My contingent at Twin Cities Pride was often greeted by smiles and waves and shouts of surprise and excitement. "The Mormons are here? Look, here come the Mormons!" Parade watchers ran forward to exchange hugs with marchers. Participants in numerous cities described on-lookers with tears of joy in their eyes.
Last year I described a particularly powerful encounter in which a man approached one of our marchers, and told of being excommunicated from the Church three days after his lover died. That reminded us all why our participation in Pride was necessary, why we should have organized contingents to march a long time ago. It was that story in particular that had moved my bishop to encourage me to keep on organizing Mormons at Pride.
Miles to go!
To me it feels completely different now than it did a year ago.
A year ago, the idea of Mormons at Pride was shocking. Now it feels strangely normal, maybe part of a much better, "new normal." Will it still take people out of their comfort zones? Are there still risks? Yes and yes.
We have a lot of work left to do, many miles yet to march. There are so many unanswered questions for those of us who are LGBT and Mormon. We still struggle to know what our place is in the Church. There is still much pain, much alienation. There is still bullying, there is still suicide. LGBT people are still afraid to walk into a Mormon chapel, not knowing how they will be received.
Christ still has a work of healing for us to do.
If you are interested in joining me and other "Mormon Allies" marchers at Twin Cities Pride this year, email me, or check out our event on Facebook.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Stories
I did an interview recently with Daniel Parkinson for the Gay Mormon Stories podcast. The interview has recently been published in four parts:
That's perhaps much longer than most people are willing to listen. But it's also more conversational and real, and allows you to immerse yourself in the grit of people's real stories in all of their grandiose complexity.
Daniel was a good interviewer. He's a professional psychologist, and he managed to get my guard down and get me talking about stuff that, in retrospect, surprised me a bit. I shared some stuff I've never shared in any other context.
Daniel and I, though contemporaries at BYU and in the Mormon mission field (he also served in a French-speaking mission), come from fairly different perspectives (his much more secular than mine). Those differences made for a much more interesting interview. I was sometimes startled by the thoughts and memories his questions provoked. The end result felt strangely satisfying.
Gay Mormon Stories is part of a much larger enterprise of documenting and disseminating stories of LGBT Mormons that is taking place in many different places and formats: through blogs, published memoirs (just search on "gay Mormon" on Amazon.com), documentaries and dramas. Increasingly, the national media are tapping into the gay Mormon experience as well. The quantity of data is increasingly overwhelming. Extravagant. But there seems to be a hunger for it -- both inside and out of the Church.
The historian in me wonders what future historians will make of the mass of data we are in the process of accumulating and archiving. I wouldn't dare to predict which direction history is moving (as some do). I've studied enough history to know that there are always surprises.
But in the meantime I'm awed by the power of asking simple questions, and seeking answers from the storehouse of our lives.
- Part 1 covers my upbringing, my mission, my experience at BYU, and the depression I experienced after my mission as a result of struggles in relation to my sexuality;
- Part 2 covers how I was saved from near suicide, my departure from the Church, and my search for deeper understanding of my relationship with God and of my sexuality;
- Part 3 covers the challenges of finding a husband, and -- once I'd found Göran -- building a home and family with him; my early exploration of the connections between spirituality and sexuality; and my coming out to and reconciliation with my parents; and
- Part 4 covers my return to the LDS Church, becoming the father of a gay son, and what my journey with the Church has meant to me and my family, ending with my testimony.
That's perhaps much longer than most people are willing to listen. But it's also more conversational and real, and allows you to immerse yourself in the grit of people's real stories in all of their grandiose complexity.
Daniel was a good interviewer. He's a professional psychologist, and he managed to get my guard down and get me talking about stuff that, in retrospect, surprised me a bit. I shared some stuff I've never shared in any other context.
Daniel and I, though contemporaries at BYU and in the Mormon mission field (he also served in a French-speaking mission), come from fairly different perspectives (his much more secular than mine). Those differences made for a much more interesting interview. I was sometimes startled by the thoughts and memories his questions provoked. The end result felt strangely satisfying.
Gay Mormon Stories is part of a much larger enterprise of documenting and disseminating stories of LGBT Mormons that is taking place in many different places and formats: through blogs, published memoirs (just search on "gay Mormon" on Amazon.com), documentaries and dramas. Increasingly, the national media are tapping into the gay Mormon experience as well. The quantity of data is increasingly overwhelming. Extravagant. But there seems to be a hunger for it -- both inside and out of the Church.
The historian in me wonders what future historians will make of the mass of data we are in the process of accumulating and archiving. I wouldn't dare to predict which direction history is moving (as some do). I've studied enough history to know that there are always surprises.
But in the meantime I'm awed by the power of asking simple questions, and seeking answers from the storehouse of our lives.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Of Mormon Politicians
OK, just so everyone knows where I'm coming from, full disclosure right from the beginning: I support Obama, and I plan to vote for him in November. The health care plan isn't perfect, but in my opinion it's an improvement over what we had previously. (In my opinion, it doesn't go far enough. I'm a believer in single-payer universal health care, like the system they have in Finland, my mother's home country.) Also, in my opinion, Obama is the only real choice for the gay community, and for gay families.
I want to lay out up front what makes me tick, politically. From the time I was a teenager, I have embraced the notion that the ideal social and political order would be something along the lines of the United Order of the early Mormon Church. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with early Mormon history, what I'm specifically talking about (in ideal terms, at least) is the brand of Christian communism described in Acts 2:44 and Acts 4:32 (i.e., having "all things in common"). As a teenager I would have explained that the ideal social and political system would be NEITHER American style capitalism NOR Soviet-style communism, but a blend of the best features of both those systems. I liked Mao's dictum: "To each according to his need, from each according to his ability." Give me Mao's economics, but with total political and religious freedom, and you have some general idea of what I'm talking about.
Now people will hasten to point out to me that Utopian/Christian communism has been tried many times and failed. Early Mormons tried it, and ultimately abandoned it. It's all well and good to say, each of us will work to the best of his or her ability, contributing to the welfare of the whole, and each will receive according to their needs, receiving no more nor less than anybody else. But unless you link financial rewards to performance, people will not be motivated to work hard, and the whole system will come crashing down in a puff of disincentives. Only raw capitalism (the argument goes) with its haves and have-nots, will truly motivate the vast majority to create the kind of social wealth that the good life requires. We need inequality, even poverty. It's not perfect, but it's the system that works best, given human nature.
And I would always have agreed, that in order to have the kind of system that I think is ideal, the human race needs to evolve to the next level spiritually. A central message of the Book of Mormon is that Zion, that ideal political and social order in which people have all things in common, is not possible until we collectively vanquish pride, envy and covetousness. In order to have something like Zion, we collectively, as a people, need to evolve to the point where we are motivated more by the common good than we are by personal rewards. In other words... Kind of like the Star Trek universe.
My youthful idealism has been tempered somewhat in middle age. I still believe that the United Order is the highest political, economic and social goal toward which we should be striving. I still believe that my faith, in it's highest expression, has profoundly real-world political, economic and social implications. In order to truly live my faith, I should strive to build a world where there is no poverty. However, that youthful idealism has been tempered by the recognition that compromise, patience and allowance for human weakness is a virtue. I've come to accept that the "ideal" is often the greatest enemy of the good. I've accepted another profoundly spiritual principle as my guide in politics: "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little" (Isaiah 28:10; Doctrine & Covenants 98:12). If I live in an imperfect world or an imperfect social order, it is still valuable to make incremental improvements -- as along as we're moving in the right direction.
In order to get there, we all have work to do -- both personal work and political work. Part of the reason I'm committed to the Church is because I believe it will help me become more like the kind of person who can abide Zion. (Vis-à-vis the social order: there's profound wisdom in the principle of tithing!) If my faith is not helping me grow into a more selfless, more generous, more humble, more loving human being, then my faith is in vain.
To illustrate my political evolution... As an eighteen-year-old, when I first registered to vote, I registered as a Socialist. Understand that I registered as a Socialist out of my deeply held, orthodox religious convictions as a Mormon! I saw the Socialist Party as being closest in its overall goals to the United Order of early Mormonism. Now, in my late forties, I am a registered Democrat. I'm not a big fan of either the Democrats or the Republicans, but I've resigned myself to the fact that we have a two-party system, and the best way to move things along is to work within the system, and the Democrats are closest to my values as a Mormon. As a Mormon and a Christian, I feel that my political choices ought to be driven by a concern for the less fortunate, that I ought to be willing and glad to pay taxes so that a portion of my income can go to make things better for everybody. I believe that the Republicans are too much about private good versus public welfare, about coveting one's means and being stingy about the common good. To my mind, those are profoundly anti-Christian, and anti-Mormon values.
Now I say this, without trying to cast any aspersions on my Republican brothers and sisters. I acknowledge that they might see things differently; that they have totally valid reasons for believing that the Republican Party is closer to the religious values they espouse. I grant them the same freedom and respect to engage in the political process as they see fit that I hope for myself. In other words, I'm not saying here that being a Republican necessarily makes you a bad Mormon. I'm just saying that based on my personal history and perceptions and understanding of my faith, I must engage politically as a Democrat; and I see my engagement as perfectly consonant with the religious values I hold.
I feel it's important to put that all out there, to preface this brief statement about the Romney candidacy: I'm glad Romney's running. I truthfully think he's the best candidate that the Republicans have put out there in a while. I'm glad that Romney's faith as a Latter-day Saint has spurred a lot of dialog about Mormonism, and I think the fact that we have a major party candidate who is a Mormon has had the beneficial effect of generally increasing Americans' understanding of Mormonism, and has helped to dispel a lot of negative stereotypes about Mormonism.
At the same time, I hope Romney's candidacy will not promote the impression that Mormons must all be extreme, politically conservative Republicans. I hope it will not encourage Mormon Republicans to act as if Mormons of other political persuasions are bad Mormons. (For what it's worth, I don't see any signs that that is happening, at least not here in Minnesota.) I deeply disagree with most of the platform that Romney is running on, and I disagree with it as a Mormon.
My faith is much, much bigger than Romney's politics.
I want to lay out up front what makes me tick, politically. From the time I was a teenager, I have embraced the notion that the ideal social and political order would be something along the lines of the United Order of the early Mormon Church. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with early Mormon history, what I'm specifically talking about (in ideal terms, at least) is the brand of Christian communism described in Acts 2:44 and Acts 4:32 (i.e., having "all things in common"). As a teenager I would have explained that the ideal social and political system would be NEITHER American style capitalism NOR Soviet-style communism, but a blend of the best features of both those systems. I liked Mao's dictum: "To each according to his need, from each according to his ability." Give me Mao's economics, but with total political and religious freedom, and you have some general idea of what I'm talking about.
Now people will hasten to point out to me that Utopian/Christian communism has been tried many times and failed. Early Mormons tried it, and ultimately abandoned it. It's all well and good to say, each of us will work to the best of his or her ability, contributing to the welfare of the whole, and each will receive according to their needs, receiving no more nor less than anybody else. But unless you link financial rewards to performance, people will not be motivated to work hard, and the whole system will come crashing down in a puff of disincentives. Only raw capitalism (the argument goes) with its haves and have-nots, will truly motivate the vast majority to create the kind of social wealth that the good life requires. We need inequality, even poverty. It's not perfect, but it's the system that works best, given human nature.
And I would always have agreed, that in order to have the kind of system that I think is ideal, the human race needs to evolve to the next level spiritually. A central message of the Book of Mormon is that Zion, that ideal political and social order in which people have all things in common, is not possible until we collectively vanquish pride, envy and covetousness. In order to have something like Zion, we collectively, as a people, need to evolve to the point where we are motivated more by the common good than we are by personal rewards. In other words... Kind of like the Star Trek universe.
My youthful idealism has been tempered somewhat in middle age. I still believe that the United Order is the highest political, economic and social goal toward which we should be striving. I still believe that my faith, in it's highest expression, has profoundly real-world political, economic and social implications. In order to truly live my faith, I should strive to build a world where there is no poverty. However, that youthful idealism has been tempered by the recognition that compromise, patience and allowance for human weakness is a virtue. I've come to accept that the "ideal" is often the greatest enemy of the good. I've accepted another profoundly spiritual principle as my guide in politics: "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little" (Isaiah 28:10; Doctrine & Covenants 98:12). If I live in an imperfect world or an imperfect social order, it is still valuable to make incremental improvements -- as along as we're moving in the right direction.
In order to get there, we all have work to do -- both personal work and political work. Part of the reason I'm committed to the Church is because I believe it will help me become more like the kind of person who can abide Zion. (Vis-à-vis the social order: there's profound wisdom in the principle of tithing!) If my faith is not helping me grow into a more selfless, more generous, more humble, more loving human being, then my faith is in vain.
To illustrate my political evolution... As an eighteen-year-old, when I first registered to vote, I registered as a Socialist. Understand that I registered as a Socialist out of my deeply held, orthodox religious convictions as a Mormon! I saw the Socialist Party as being closest in its overall goals to the United Order of early Mormonism. Now, in my late forties, I am a registered Democrat. I'm not a big fan of either the Democrats or the Republicans, but I've resigned myself to the fact that we have a two-party system, and the best way to move things along is to work within the system, and the Democrats are closest to my values as a Mormon. As a Mormon and a Christian, I feel that my political choices ought to be driven by a concern for the less fortunate, that I ought to be willing and glad to pay taxes so that a portion of my income can go to make things better for everybody. I believe that the Republicans are too much about private good versus public welfare, about coveting one's means and being stingy about the common good. To my mind, those are profoundly anti-Christian, and anti-Mormon values.
Now I say this, without trying to cast any aspersions on my Republican brothers and sisters. I acknowledge that they might see things differently; that they have totally valid reasons for believing that the Republican Party is closer to the religious values they espouse. I grant them the same freedom and respect to engage in the political process as they see fit that I hope for myself. In other words, I'm not saying here that being a Republican necessarily makes you a bad Mormon. I'm just saying that based on my personal history and perceptions and understanding of my faith, I must engage politically as a Democrat; and I see my engagement as perfectly consonant with the religious values I hold.
I feel it's important to put that all out there, to preface this brief statement about the Romney candidacy: I'm glad Romney's running. I truthfully think he's the best candidate that the Republicans have put out there in a while. I'm glad that Romney's faith as a Latter-day Saint has spurred a lot of dialog about Mormonism, and I think the fact that we have a major party candidate who is a Mormon has had the beneficial effect of generally increasing Americans' understanding of Mormonism, and has helped to dispel a lot of negative stereotypes about Mormonism.
At the same time, I hope Romney's candidacy will not promote the impression that Mormons must all be extreme, politically conservative Republicans. I hope it will not encourage Mormon Republicans to act as if Mormons of other political persuasions are bad Mormons. (For what it's worth, I don't see any signs that that is happening, at least not here in Minnesota.) I deeply disagree with most of the platform that Romney is running on, and I disagree with it as a Mormon.
My faith is much, much bigger than Romney's politics.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Where We've Come From
This documentary, "The Homosexuals," by Mike Wallace, is a kind of time capsule. I can't help but marvel how different the world was in 1967. (I was four years old!) There are still reverberations in our culture of the debates over homosexuality that were taking place then, forty five years ago.
1967 was the height of the Civil Rights Movement. African American activists were transforming the way Americans thought about human rights. Ordinary people like Rosa Parks and "the Little Rock Nine" and the sanitation workers in Memphis inspired people from all walks of life to stand up and try to make a difference. Still, at that moment in history, it took incredible intestinal fortitude and faith for gay men and lesbians to dare to suggest that maybe they, too, should be treated with dignity.
The psychological theories featured so prominently in the documentary, supposedly explaining homosexuality, are now almost universally rejected. Charles Socarides is featured announcing to a classroom that homosexuality is "a disease that has reached almost epidemic proportions." Then there was the cultural commentator bemoaning how the "homosexual mafia" had a stranglehold on American arts and fashion (!!!), insisting that gays were insinuating their "deep hostility toward women" into American culture. Then there was Gore Vidal, pronouncing the institution of marriage "absurd" and "obsolete." The spokesmen (no women in this documentary) from the Mattachine Society seemed well adjusted and reasonable, if a bit anxious to prove themselves "normal."
What also intrigued me were the Protestant and Catholic religious leaders who acknowledged that culturally based revulsion against homosexuals was contrary to the Christian faith. They seemed oblivious to the possibility that that culture of revulsion colored their own theological views of the subject.
Then there were the self-loathing homosexuals. It seems so obvious now, so self-evident, that so much of what, in 1967, was perceived as "disease" or "mental illness," was actually the result of extreme social isolation, self-loathing and terror. It took incredible strength and courage even to begin to challenge that. And we are so much better off today. I'm so glad we don't live in that world any more.
It didn't just "get better" on its own. It got better because people were willing to stand up, even in the face of extreme ridicule and hatred. The documentary includes clips of gay rights protesters, dressed in suits and ties, carrying signs, and picketing quietly and with dignity, while passers by ridicule them as fit for the loony bin. It's impossible to come away from this documentary without a profound sense of just how extreme and how pervasive the hatred of homosexuals once was in our culture. We owe that generation a LOT.
(Mike Wallace deserves props too for taking on this topic at a time when to do so might have aroused a lot of hostility!)
Worth a watch, if only to remind ourselves how far we've come (and how far we have yet to go).
Thursday, May 26, 2011
The Fight Over Marriage Comes to Minnesota
It hasn't been fun watching the same-sex marriage debate roiling other states. Until now, the gay marriage debate has been an abstract issue for Minnesotans. Previous efforts to amend the Minnesota state constitution were stopped in the legislature. But in the last election, Republicans took over the Minnesota state legislature (even as they lost the governor's mansion), and now Republicans in the legislature have put an anti-gay-marriage amendment on the ballot for 2012. (The voting in the legislature has been almost totally along party lines, with only a couple of Republicans joining Democrats in opposition to a marriage amendment.) So now we get to have a public referendum on same-sex relationships.
Recent polls are showing that a majority of Americans favor same-sex marriage, and a a majority of Minnesotans oppose banning same-sex marriage. Both sides claim polling data in Minnesota that supports their position. And as we know from the Prop 8 campaign in California, public opinion can change in the course of a campaign. So for these reasons, and also because Minnesota is currently seen -- both by gay marriage opponents and by gay marriage supporters -- as a bellwether for the nation, it looks likely that national organizers on both sides of this issue will get involved here. Which means we could be in for a fight, and it could get ugly.
This is not something I am constitutionally capable of sitting through on the side lines. Even if I wanted to keep silent and let others fight this fight, every molecule in my body would force me to my feet, to get out of the house, and to open my mouth. Bottom line, I'm getting involved. I've joined the Faith Steering Committee of OutFront Minnesota.
The mood of many GLBT folks here is gloomy. Many do not look forward to having the merits of our lives, our love, and our families publicly debated and demeaned in the way that only politics can demean.
But I am not gloomy. I am glad, and I am excited. Public opinion is evenly divided which means we can win this. And I believe that, since we live in a Democracy, the only way a lasting resolution of this problem will ultimately be brought about is not in a court, and not by executive fiat, and not even in a legislature, but by the voice of the people. Minnesotans now have an opportunity to discuss, not legal finery or constitutional procedure, but substantive values and real lives. If we do this, if we talk about our lives, and about why love, family and commitment matter to us, we will win.
Gay folks are a small minority everywhere, so it is frightening and dismaying to have our lives, our rights, and our families voted on by majorities. But our opponents aren't bigots, they're just afraid because they don't understand. If we stop looking at those who oppose same-sex marriage as our enemy, and start looking at them as folks who just don't know us well enough yet to be our friends, we will find the voice that will enable us to tell our stories in a way that will reach and touch real people and make a difference. If we just have patience and faith, and if we show kindness, we will find friends in unexpected places.
We must not be fearful, and we must not be dismayed. We must find the hope and the courage that only love can inspire.
If you live in Minnesota, and, gay or straight, you want to help, let's talk!
Recent polls are showing that a majority of Americans favor same-sex marriage, and a a majority of Minnesotans oppose banning same-sex marriage. Both sides claim polling data in Minnesota that supports their position. And as we know from the Prop 8 campaign in California, public opinion can change in the course of a campaign. So for these reasons, and also because Minnesota is currently seen -- both by gay marriage opponents and by gay marriage supporters -- as a bellwether for the nation, it looks likely that national organizers on both sides of this issue will get involved here. Which means we could be in for a fight, and it could get ugly.
This is not something I am constitutionally capable of sitting through on the side lines. Even if I wanted to keep silent and let others fight this fight, every molecule in my body would force me to my feet, to get out of the house, and to open my mouth. Bottom line, I'm getting involved. I've joined the Faith Steering Committee of OutFront Minnesota.
The mood of many GLBT folks here is gloomy. Many do not look forward to having the merits of our lives, our love, and our families publicly debated and demeaned in the way that only politics can demean.
But I am not gloomy. I am glad, and I am excited. Public opinion is evenly divided which means we can win this. And I believe that, since we live in a Democracy, the only way a lasting resolution of this problem will ultimately be brought about is not in a court, and not by executive fiat, and not even in a legislature, but by the voice of the people. Minnesotans now have an opportunity to discuss, not legal finery or constitutional procedure, but substantive values and real lives. If we do this, if we talk about our lives, and about why love, family and commitment matter to us, we will win.
Gay folks are a small minority everywhere, so it is frightening and dismaying to have our lives, our rights, and our families voted on by majorities. But our opponents aren't bigots, they're just afraid because they don't understand. If we stop looking at those who oppose same-sex marriage as our enemy, and start looking at them as folks who just don't know us well enough yet to be our friends, we will find the voice that will enable us to tell our stories in a way that will reach and touch real people and make a difference. If we just have patience and faith, and if we show kindness, we will find friends in unexpected places.
We must not be fearful, and we must not be dismayed. We must find the hope and the courage that only love can inspire.
If you live in Minnesota, and, gay or straight, you want to help, let's talk!
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Check Your ______ At the Door
One of my students recently commented that she wondered if the more educated a person is, the less need they will feel for religion. This is an interesting comment coming from a person who is both religious and educated enough to be seeking a degree at a theological seminary.
My American Religious Histories class has been in session for three weeks now. And one of the things we tackle early in the semester is the decline of "establishment Christianity" in favor of the more free-wheeling, more individualistic "free-market" Christianity of the early Republic. (I have them read Nathan Hatch's, The Democratization of American Christianity, which includes an interesting account of early Mormonism.) We discuss how Americans in the early 1800s were openly questioning and rebelling against the then "Powers That Be" of organized religion. This resulted in a Christianity or Christianities that were more reflective of the deepest values and aspirations of ordinary Americans, but it also created a kind of chaos of competing religions, all vying with one another. This was the "war of words and tumult of opinions" that Joseph Smith, Jr. described in his own story.
This way of beginning my American Religious Histories class is always more than a bit disconcerting to my students. The majority of my students are liberal, well-educated seminarians preparing for ordained ministry in main-line Christian denominations. I sort of force them to confront right at the outset of my course the fact that most of the dynamism in American religion has come from less educated people who rejected seminary learning and religious hierarchy, who embraced a religion of the heart, and who had experienced a kind of "born-again" conversion in dramatic encounters with the Spirit of God. As the message sinks in, I often see my students' faces expressing puzzlement, disappointment and disillusionment. Last Thursday, one of my students raised his hand and asked, "If what you're telling us is true, then what are we doing in here, at a seminary?"
I always love those kinds of questions. I always love the struggle that comes with them. Everything we ever learn of value always comes from confronting those kinds of painful existential questions.
The same student who asked if education somehow made a person less religious also asked if it might be true that in order to be religious you have to somehow "check your brain at the door." This is a common accusation flung by liberals of many religious persuasions at more conservative or "fundamental" religion. But it seems to me there are many different things that individuals can be asked to check at the door in order to become acceptable to any given religious institution. Some of us have to check racial or ethnic or working class backgrounds. Some of us have to check our yearnings for transcendence or our spiritual experiences. Some of us have to check our deep emotions, our pain and our wounds. Some of us have to check our non-traditional families, our sexuality, or our gender-nonconformity. In so many ways, we get (or give) the message that whatever you are that doesn't fit with some arbitrary image of acceptability doesn't belong here. So if you can't check it at the door, you don't belong either.
These kinds of barriers are so commonplace in most religious communities, it's almost assumed to be what religion is all about. It's why in so many people's minds, religion is basically just some form of judgmentalism masquerading as godliness. This in spite of the fact that at the heart of the Christian message is the utter repudiation of this attitude. Isaiah denouncing the Sabbaths of the wealthy self-righteous. Jesus purposely violating purity laws and laying his hands on lepers. Alma turning his back on the wealthy, respectable Zoramites and addressing himself to the poor they had cast out of their synagogues.
True religion addresses itself to our fullness. When my heart is filled with the Spirit of God, my brain doesn't shut down. It actually starts working overtime! My hunger to understand, to know, and to experience actually deepens and broadens! When I feel a burning fervor and love for God, my love for my partner does not wither and atrophy, it is set on fire! The love of God fills me with a love that overflows all the bounds of my heart, that naturally stretches toward others, starting with my 'significant other' and our son and my family, and going ever farther out in concentric circles to every other child of God with whom I share this planet. To be religious in the truest sense, to feel a profound connection with the Spirit does not make me asexual. To the contrary, the Spirit lets me see and know with crystalline clarity the fullness of my experience as an embodied spirit, as an intelligence with a soul. Becoming pure is not a process of becoming disengaged from our bodies. Becoming pure, rather, is a process of understanding the profound connections between what we think, what we feel, and what we are.
We are so terrified of the power that exists in our fullness, we do almost anything to avoid or ignore it, to cover it up and deny it. And we do this in so many ways! We are afraid of intellect, we are afraid of questions. But we are also afraid of miracles! We are afraid of the mysterious! We are afraid of bodies, of sexuality. We are afraid of truth. We are afraid of the fullness not just in others but in ourselves! This is why every time God sends a messenger, the first words out of their mouths are almost inevitably, "Fear not!" We cannot enter into the way of Christ until we have understood the basic principle that perfect love casteth out all fear.
So whatever you've got, whenever you enter the spaces we define as sacred, don't check it. Bring it!
My American Religious Histories class has been in session for three weeks now. And one of the things we tackle early in the semester is the decline of "establishment Christianity" in favor of the more free-wheeling, more individualistic "free-market" Christianity of the early Republic. (I have them read Nathan Hatch's, The Democratization of American Christianity, which includes an interesting account of early Mormonism.) We discuss how Americans in the early 1800s were openly questioning and rebelling against the then "Powers That Be" of organized religion. This resulted in a Christianity or Christianities that were more reflective of the deepest values and aspirations of ordinary Americans, but it also created a kind of chaos of competing religions, all vying with one another. This was the "war of words and tumult of opinions" that Joseph Smith, Jr. described in his own story.
This way of beginning my American Religious Histories class is always more than a bit disconcerting to my students. The majority of my students are liberal, well-educated seminarians preparing for ordained ministry in main-line Christian denominations. I sort of force them to confront right at the outset of my course the fact that most of the dynamism in American religion has come from less educated people who rejected seminary learning and religious hierarchy, who embraced a religion of the heart, and who had experienced a kind of "born-again" conversion in dramatic encounters with the Spirit of God. As the message sinks in, I often see my students' faces expressing puzzlement, disappointment and disillusionment. Last Thursday, one of my students raised his hand and asked, "If what you're telling us is true, then what are we doing in here, at a seminary?"
I always love those kinds of questions. I always love the struggle that comes with them. Everything we ever learn of value always comes from confronting those kinds of painful existential questions.
The same student who asked if education somehow made a person less religious also asked if it might be true that in order to be religious you have to somehow "check your brain at the door." This is a common accusation flung by liberals of many religious persuasions at more conservative or "fundamental" religion. But it seems to me there are many different things that individuals can be asked to check at the door in order to become acceptable to any given religious institution. Some of us have to check racial or ethnic or working class backgrounds. Some of us have to check our yearnings for transcendence or our spiritual experiences. Some of us have to check our deep emotions, our pain and our wounds. Some of us have to check our non-traditional families, our sexuality, or our gender-nonconformity. In so many ways, we get (or give) the message that whatever you are that doesn't fit with some arbitrary image of acceptability doesn't belong here. So if you can't check it at the door, you don't belong either.
These kinds of barriers are so commonplace in most religious communities, it's almost assumed to be what religion is all about. It's why in so many people's minds, religion is basically just some form of judgmentalism masquerading as godliness. This in spite of the fact that at the heart of the Christian message is the utter repudiation of this attitude. Isaiah denouncing the Sabbaths of the wealthy self-righteous. Jesus purposely violating purity laws and laying his hands on lepers. Alma turning his back on the wealthy, respectable Zoramites and addressing himself to the poor they had cast out of their synagogues.
True religion addresses itself to our fullness. When my heart is filled with the Spirit of God, my brain doesn't shut down. It actually starts working overtime! My hunger to understand, to know, and to experience actually deepens and broadens! When I feel a burning fervor and love for God, my love for my partner does not wither and atrophy, it is set on fire! The love of God fills me with a love that overflows all the bounds of my heart, that naturally stretches toward others, starting with my 'significant other' and our son and my family, and going ever farther out in concentric circles to every other child of God with whom I share this planet. To be religious in the truest sense, to feel a profound connection with the Spirit does not make me asexual. To the contrary, the Spirit lets me see and know with crystalline clarity the fullness of my experience as an embodied spirit, as an intelligence with a soul. Becoming pure is not a process of becoming disengaged from our bodies. Becoming pure, rather, is a process of understanding the profound connections between what we think, what we feel, and what we are.
We are so terrified of the power that exists in our fullness, we do almost anything to avoid or ignore it, to cover it up and deny it. And we do this in so many ways! We are afraid of intellect, we are afraid of questions. But we are also afraid of miracles! We are afraid of the mysterious! We are afraid of bodies, of sexuality. We are afraid of truth. We are afraid of the fullness not just in others but in ourselves! This is why every time God sends a messenger, the first words out of their mouths are almost inevitably, "Fear not!" We cannot enter into the way of Christ until we have understood the basic principle that perfect love casteth out all fear.
So whatever you've got, whenever you enter the spaces we define as sacred, don't check it. Bring it!
Monday, March 23, 2009
Faith Promoting History
This week I am covering Mormon History in my American Religious Histories classes. As always, I find it is every bit as challenging to teach the history of my own faith tradition as it is to teach the history of the faith traditions of others. If not more challenging!
I am, of course, vividly aware of the fact that I don't teach LDS Church history to liberal Protestant seminary students in a graduate level history course in the same way I would teach it to LDS members in a Sunday School or Priesthood class. Yet, I have a testimony, and that certainly informs my teaching in the academic setting, just as it would inform my teaching in a church setting.
For instance, in three and a half years of attending LDS Sunday School and Priesthood classes, I have witnessed only one mention of polygamy (that I can remember). And it was referred to only parenthetically, as the teacher discussed how Emma Smith's faith and how her love for her husband were put to the test by polygamy. (That was actually a rather remarkable discussion!) Yet, no graduate-level history class that includes any coverage of Mormonism could afford to minimize discussion of polygamy in the same way. (By the way, one of the best treatments of LDS polygamy, from a doctrinal as well as a historical perspective, is Lawrence Foster's Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community. The author is a non-Mormon, but the book is written from a perspective that is very sympathetic toward Mormonism, and the discussion of LDS polygamy is respectful and insightful.)
I'm not saying that the lack of discussion of polygamy in modern LDS devotional settings is wrong. I believe it is appropriate to focus discussion in devotional settings on what is necessary for us to live the gospel today -- to focus on teaching with the Spirit in such a way that we will be equipped to practice faith, repentance, and charity in our daily lives. And in general a detailed discussion of the history of polygamy really would be irrelevant to that objective. I do believe it behooves Church members to be well-enough educated about their own history to be able to answer questions by non-members intelligently (and correctly). But it is probably right that Sunday School is not the setting in which all of that education needs to happen.
But while the content of a more secular teaching setting must necessarily be different, still I do not believe that teaching in that setting should exclude the context of faith. Of course, just as certain academic teaching norms would be inappropriate in Sunday School, so certain devotional approaches would be inappropriate in a grad school course. Yet I do not -- I cannot -- teach church history (my own or others') merely as an academic exercise. My students need to understand how the historical travails of the church have produced a dynamic, living community. They need to understand something about the faith that provides Latter-day Saints a compass for navigating through the challenges of today's world. As a believing Latter-day Saint, I can also share how that works for me personally.
Every time I teach, it is challenging and exciting. I'm still re-examining and weighing old approaches, thinking about what worked last time, and what I'd like to do differently this time. And each class is different. The student dynamics are different, and what I bring to my teaching is different, depending on what questions and challenges I am wrestling with. So every teaching experience is really art more than science, really spirit more than letter.
I can't wait to see what happens tonight!
I am, of course, vividly aware of the fact that I don't teach LDS Church history to liberal Protestant seminary students in a graduate level history course in the same way I would teach it to LDS members in a Sunday School or Priesthood class. Yet, I have a testimony, and that certainly informs my teaching in the academic setting, just as it would inform my teaching in a church setting.
For instance, in three and a half years of attending LDS Sunday School and Priesthood classes, I have witnessed only one mention of polygamy (that I can remember). And it was referred to only parenthetically, as the teacher discussed how Emma Smith's faith and how her love for her husband were put to the test by polygamy. (That was actually a rather remarkable discussion!) Yet, no graduate-level history class that includes any coverage of Mormonism could afford to minimize discussion of polygamy in the same way. (By the way, one of the best treatments of LDS polygamy, from a doctrinal as well as a historical perspective, is Lawrence Foster's Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community. The author is a non-Mormon, but the book is written from a perspective that is very sympathetic toward Mormonism, and the discussion of LDS polygamy is respectful and insightful.)
I'm not saying that the lack of discussion of polygamy in modern LDS devotional settings is wrong. I believe it is appropriate to focus discussion in devotional settings on what is necessary for us to live the gospel today -- to focus on teaching with the Spirit in such a way that we will be equipped to practice faith, repentance, and charity in our daily lives. And in general a detailed discussion of the history of polygamy really would be irrelevant to that objective. I do believe it behooves Church members to be well-enough educated about their own history to be able to answer questions by non-members intelligently (and correctly). But it is probably right that Sunday School is not the setting in which all of that education needs to happen.
But while the content of a more secular teaching setting must necessarily be different, still I do not believe that teaching in that setting should exclude the context of faith. Of course, just as certain academic teaching norms would be inappropriate in Sunday School, so certain devotional approaches would be inappropriate in a grad school course. Yet I do not -- I cannot -- teach church history (my own or others') merely as an academic exercise. My students need to understand how the historical travails of the church have produced a dynamic, living community. They need to understand something about the faith that provides Latter-day Saints a compass for navigating through the challenges of today's world. As a believing Latter-day Saint, I can also share how that works for me personally.
Every time I teach, it is challenging and exciting. I'm still re-examining and weighing old approaches, thinking about what worked last time, and what I'd like to do differently this time. And each class is different. The student dynamics are different, and what I bring to my teaching is different, depending on what questions and challenges I am wrestling with. So every teaching experience is really art more than science, really spirit more than letter.
I can't wait to see what happens tonight!
Sunday, March 16, 2008
A Sense of History
My life these past months has been full and beautiful. Our relationship with our foster son continues to grow in surprising and interesting ways (about which I plan to blog more in coming weeks). I love my teaching and my students. I find myself entering a new stage of spiritual growth, where I am consolidating and working out more and more of the gritty details of being both gay and partnered and a testimony-bearing Latter-day Saint.
I've also had to be more efficient and disciplined than I've ever been before in my life in order to be a good foster dad, a partner, a provider, and a teacher. My workload at the law firm has gradually been increasing, which has made it more challenging to accomplish everything I need to accomplish there and not end up working a lot of overtime that would erode my time with my family. And every single spare moment that I am not at work, at church, or spending time with my family, I am doing class work: preparing lecture notes, reading, grading papers. This hasn't left much time for anything else, and my blog and other writing projects have unfortunately had to take a back seat. I'm rewarding myself today with some blog time, because -- due to "Reading Week" at the seminary and "Holy Week" this coming week -- I have two weeks off from teaching, and have managed to work ahead a couple of weeks. (I plan to be back in full force after my course is done in early May.)
In the meantime, I wanted to share some of the questions I have been wrestling with as part of the work of teaching a course on American Religious History. It has been important to me, in my teaching about the history of the different faiths that have shaped American life, to make some effort to represent each faith tradition as members of that faith tradition would like to be represented. This is always a challenge, something that, as I have told my students, cannot be approached without "prayer and fasting" (i.e., lot's of humility). In a few weeks I will be faced with another, slightly different challenge: representing my own faith tradition.
I have chosen to focus on the concept of Restoration as the organizing theme for looking at Mormonism. I first want to look at dissident Christian groups throughout the Middle Ages, the Reformation, and the American Great Awakenings who hungered for a restoration of primitive Christianity, as it was taught and practiced by Christ himself. Then I want to discuss LDS Church history within that context, as a group of people who gathered around the prophet Joseph because they saw his theophanies and revelations as proof of the kind of restoration that Christians had longed for for centuries. More importantly, Joseph's followers experienced theophanies and received revelations of their own confirming the truthfulness of Joseph's experience. They experienced the power of God in startling ways in the Church Joseph established, and saw this as proof indeed that the Heavens had once again been opened.
I believe this focus on restoration and modern-day revelation reflects the central categories in which most Latter-day Saints today understand their faith, and is also true to the best historical scholarship available in Mormon studies.
I do not plan to focus a lot of attention on one of my major concerns, homosexuality and Mormonism. I will address it somewhat as I discuss Mormon beliefs about the family (as I will also address issues related to women and the Church). But I have also told my students that I believe true learning requires us to "get personal," to acknowledge how our life experience has shaped our perspectives, and I have made it clear that my students are welcome to ask me any questions they want about my perspectives as a gay man and as a believing Mormon. So I suspect it will come up.
I would love to hear what you think about how I plan to frame my discussion of Mormon history. I've posted a draft of my lecture notes, and welcome thoughts or feedback. Do you agree with my approach? What themes would you focus on if you were presented with the task of teaching a group of people about your faith?
I've also had to be more efficient and disciplined than I've ever been before in my life in order to be a good foster dad, a partner, a provider, and a teacher. My workload at the law firm has gradually been increasing, which has made it more challenging to accomplish everything I need to accomplish there and not end up working a lot of overtime that would erode my time with my family. And every single spare moment that I am not at work, at church, or spending time with my family, I am doing class work: preparing lecture notes, reading, grading papers. This hasn't left much time for anything else, and my blog and other writing projects have unfortunately had to take a back seat. I'm rewarding myself today with some blog time, because -- due to "Reading Week" at the seminary and "Holy Week" this coming week -- I have two weeks off from teaching, and have managed to work ahead a couple of weeks. (I plan to be back in full force after my course is done in early May.)
In the meantime, I wanted to share some of the questions I have been wrestling with as part of the work of teaching a course on American Religious History. It has been important to me, in my teaching about the history of the different faiths that have shaped American life, to make some effort to represent each faith tradition as members of that faith tradition would like to be represented. This is always a challenge, something that, as I have told my students, cannot be approached without "prayer and fasting" (i.e., lot's of humility). In a few weeks I will be faced with another, slightly different challenge: representing my own faith tradition.
I have chosen to focus on the concept of Restoration as the organizing theme for looking at Mormonism. I first want to look at dissident Christian groups throughout the Middle Ages, the Reformation, and the American Great Awakenings who hungered for a restoration of primitive Christianity, as it was taught and practiced by Christ himself. Then I want to discuss LDS Church history within that context, as a group of people who gathered around the prophet Joseph because they saw his theophanies and revelations as proof of the kind of restoration that Christians had longed for for centuries. More importantly, Joseph's followers experienced theophanies and received revelations of their own confirming the truthfulness of Joseph's experience. They experienced the power of God in startling ways in the Church Joseph established, and saw this as proof indeed that the Heavens had once again been opened.
I believe this focus on restoration and modern-day revelation reflects the central categories in which most Latter-day Saints today understand their faith, and is also true to the best historical scholarship available in Mormon studies.
I do not plan to focus a lot of attention on one of my major concerns, homosexuality and Mormonism. I will address it somewhat as I discuss Mormon beliefs about the family (as I will also address issues related to women and the Church). But I have also told my students that I believe true learning requires us to "get personal," to acknowledge how our life experience has shaped our perspectives, and I have made it clear that my students are welcome to ask me any questions they want about my perspectives as a gay man and as a believing Mormon. So I suspect it will come up.
I would love to hear what you think about how I plan to frame my discussion of Mormon history. I've posted a draft of my lecture notes, and welcome thoughts or feedback. Do you agree with my approach? What themes would you focus on if you were presented with the task of teaching a group of people about your faith?
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Take the Young Stranger by the Hand
The title of my book, Take the Young Stranger by the Hand, is actually a paraphrase from the 1851 constitution of the Boston Young Men's Christian Association, the first YMCA founded in the United States.
Here is the full quote, as it appears in C. Howard Hopkins' History of the YMCA in North America (1951, p. 18):
This mission to mobilize Christian men to care for the souls of other men, to guide them toward "good influences," is what fascinated me about the early YMCA, and drew me to research and tell its history.
In a sense, this has become my personal mission.
Here is the full quote, as it appears in C. Howard Hopkins' History of the YMCA in North America (1951, p. 18):
[The YMCA should be] a social organization of those in whom the love of Christ has produced love to men; who shall meet the young stranger as he enters our city, take him by the hand, direct him to a boarding house where he may find a quiet home pervaded with Christian influences, introduce him to the Church and Sabbath School, bring him to the Rooms of the Association, and in every way throw around him good influences, so that he may feel that he is not a stranger, but that noble and Christian spirits care for his soul.
This mission to mobilize Christian men to care for the souls of other men, to guide them toward "good influences," is what fascinated me about the early YMCA, and drew me to research and tell its history.
In a sense, this has become my personal mission.
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