Heat Resistant Love Needed

I have a confession to make.

I am not angry at the Church.

I know that makes me a bad or brainwashed queer in the minds of many. Over the years I’ve had to become accustomed to being dismissed as a toady or as a Stockholm Syndrome victim.

I understand the anger, much, much better than most people seem to think. My self-awareness and coming out process started in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I arrived at BYU only a couple of years after electroshock aversion therapies stopped on campus. I remember walking past a building on campus that my friend Roger Leishman pointed to and said, “That’s where it happened.”

I knew a guy who voluntarily strapped electrodes onto his body over 40 times, and who had burn scars on his arms from trying to stop being gay. I had a friend who made repeated suicide attempts after his conversion therapy failed. I never went through that, but in 1986 I survived a summer where the only reason I’m still here is because the opportunity to carry out my plan never presented itself. It was only lack of opportunity that saved me.

After I survived, I crashed and burned out of BYU, and tried quitting the Church (and was excommunicated instead). And as I started to figure out how and why the things in my life happened the way they happened, I became angry. Very, very angry.

Other things made me angry too in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I watched good friends die of AIDS and saw friends totally abandoned by their families and treated like garbage. A friend nursed his partner through a painful death of complications caused by AIDS, and then was kicked out of their apartment by his partner’s family and banished from the funeral. Good Christian folks. His story wasn’t uncommon. Back in those days, you just assumed that if you were queer, you were on your own to create a chosen family, because your biological family wouldn’t have your back.

I understand anger. It’s been a travel companion of mine for many years. Until it wasn’t any more. Until I took a fork in the road that anger couldn’t follow any more.

One of the things I gradually realized is that every single one of the beliefs at the root of rejecting behaviors “out there” that hurt me so bad were beliefs that I had once fervently held. In my senior health class I defended gay bashing on the grounds that it “might help them to change.” It took many years of searching and personal growth for those scales to fall from my eyes (and from my heart). And I’m gay!

It took time for *me* to have compassion on the fourteen-year-old me who read The Miracle of Forgiveness and who was scared to death that he might be forever lost to the power of Satan and that it was *all his fault.* If I could forgive myself for taking eleven long years to learn to love and accept that fourteen-year-old self enough to come out of the closet and start telling his (and my) story, I could also find it in my heart to forgive the parents and teachers and bishops who fiercely loved me (and him), but just didn’t understand any better than I had understood myself back then. I forgave them because I knew that they knew not what they did, and I knew first-hand the complexities of doing one’s due diligence to figure this stuff out.

Anger was a natural reaction, no different really from cursing the skies when I accidentally miss the nail and bang my thumb with a hammer. (I did that a few times as a teenager doing summer work to earn money for my mission.) But anger didn’t ultimately serve that fourteen-year-old me, and it didn’t ultimately serve the people who mattered most in my life.

Forgiveness did serve, both me and others. Forgiveness unlocked the floodgates of healing tears, of self-acceptance and other-acceptance, of love and hope and faith.

I say this knowing very well that forgiveness can’t be forced. It can’t be demanded. And anger tends to have to run its course. As I said, we tend to walk with anger, until we don’t any more. Until the fork in the road that anger can’t follow looks brighter and better to us.

So I plead with my fellow Latter-day Saints, have patience with our white-hot anger. One of the best ways for it to run its course is for it to be heard out. Your love for us has to be heat resistant if you want to walk with us. If you want to minister, if you want to help, you need to hear us and walk with us even in our anger.

The fork in the road for me was the recognition of how fully and truly and deeply God knew me and how much he loved me. God had spoken to me numerous times over the years, but it took me a while — several years — to actually hear what God was saying to me and to fully believe it.

God told me that he knew me “from my inmost being,” the part of me that was eternal, and he told me it was in that part of me that I was gay. And he told me that he loved me exactly the way I was with a depth and a passion that I could barely understand. The only way I could even begin to apprehend the depth of that love for me is the realization that God was willing to suffer in the garden, to be taken and flogged and spit upon, to bleed at every pore and to be nailed to a cross for me. To experience the full agony of a violent physical death, for me. I know now that the atonement only scratched the surface of his love for me.

His suffering and death, and his rising resplendent from the tomb, and his revelation of himself, his beauty, his light, and his healing, to me personally, to us, to the church today and in every age, are reason enough to me to forgive and to hope. And to let go of every last ounce of anger.

When we are rejected by others, the reason it hurts us so bad is because that rejection adds fuel to the flames of our own shame and self-rejection.

Once we fully accept and love ourselves, once we see ourselves as the beings of light and love that we are, which is exactly how God sees us, there is no arrow or dagger or stone flung at us that can hit us. We’ll be like Samuel up on the walls of Zarahemla.

I have been hurt by some of you. By some of us. I’ve been knocked upside the head by some of the angry bricks you’ve flung. It hurt partly because I took for granted your love and acceptance and understanding, and was shocked by your display of the lack of it. It also hurt because my only desire ever has been to heal and to help, and people were telling me that *who and what I am* was harming people. It caused me to doubt. It hurt.

I’ve watched us doing this not just to me but to many others on both sides of the no-man’s land between so many members of the church and so many members of the LGBTQ community. The collateral damage, the “friendly fire” needs to stop. It won’t help us “win.”

It’s taken me a bit of adjustment, of prayer and fasting and searching, to forgive that too.

I recognize that like the pain I experienced years ago as a young teacher, priest and elder that almost caused me to end my life, the in-fighting in the LGBTQ Mormon community is a reflection of the larger brokenness. It’s part of the bigger problem that we all need to stay focused on healing, and that will take time and patience and inter-connection with each other in order to heal.

I believe in that work of healing and am more committed to it than ever.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Marriage? Not Quite Yet

Yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down bans on marriage of gay couples across the country was welcome news to me and my husband, still on vacation in Europe after the Affirmation conference in London last weekend. After spending a few days in northern Germany visiting friends, we are back in London just in time for Pride. Happy coincidence... I expect to see many Londoners today celebrating this happy news for their gay, lesbian and bi brothers and sisters across the pond.

In fact, we are noticing that Pride in London seems to be a city-wide celebration, as it was when we experienced Pride in Stockholm a few years ago. When we arrived in Liverpool Station late last night on our return from Bremen, there was a huge banner welcoming the LGBT community to London. We're seeing rainbow colors and posters celebrating LGBT equality all over the city. It feels wonderful to be in a place where straight people seem to consider the well-being of their LGBT brothers and sisters, friends, family and neighbors as something they need to both support and celebrate. We are all interconnected, aren't we? Doesn't misfortune that affects any one of us in some sense affect all of us? When one rejoices, shouldn't we all rejoice? This is a profound spiritual principle.

It is apropos this principle of interconnectedness that I'm reflecting on the Supreme Court ruling and the responses to it.

The announcement of the ruling of course (no surprises here) inspired protest as well as celebration. Political and religious leaders, citizens and laity alike have expressed their opinion that the ruling is not constitutional. They insist that laws and court rulings cannot make marriage, ordained by God, what it is not. A number of the states most affected by the ruling (states where bans on same-sex marriage were still in place) still have majorities of citizens who are opposed to same-sex marriage. There's still a lot of rhetoric flying about "freedom of religion," which makes me wonder -- since this ruling does not affect religious communities' ability to self-determine what, within their faith context, constitutes marriage -- if we will see a backlash in the form of discrimination (formal or informal) against same-sex couples, especially in regions of the country that are still bitterly opposed to any form of recognition of gay relationships.

I agree there is, indeed, a sense in which marriage cannot be legislated, though my understanding of that sense is likely different from my conservative brothers and sisters who still oppose my right to be "married" to the man I have shared my life with for almost 23 years.

Marriage has always been a kind of coming together of the entire community to publicly recognize (and hold accountable, and celebrate) a couple's desire to create family. Marriage is like money. It is only good to the extent that people put their faith in it. Let's imagine a town in the U.S. where the majority of residents and business owners believe that the American dollar is worthless. The U.S. dollar is legal tender whether they believe it has value or not -- that's the law. But nobody in town will accept U.S. dollars. Instead, they've set up some local system of barter. So anybody arriving from out of town will find it impossible to buy goods or services with the U.S. cash or credit they carry in their pockets. As a gay American, I still face the reality that while recognition of my marriage is now the law of the land, a significant minority of Americans -- and in many locales, majorities! -- do not recognize it.

This isn't a new situation for Americans. Formal legal equality for black citizens in the U.S. has existed since 1870, when the 15th Amendment was passed. And of course, the U.S. has been a paradise of equality for blacks ever since, right? And the answer of course is not at all. Equality, in a very real sense, is not equality until it becomes tender that is not just legal, but that is accepted by our entire society.

Utopian pipe dreams, right? Have Americans ever achieved that kind of unanimity in their love and care for one another? Not really. But that doesn't prevent that this kind of community is an ideal expressed in our highest religious yearnings. In my own Mormon faith, we call it "Zion." Other religious have other words for it. "Heaven" maybe?

My church issued a statement reaffirming (in case anybody doubted) that this Supreme Court ruling has no effect on the Church's teachings and practices in relation to marriage -- which exclude me and my husband.

For me, this poses a profoundly spiritual problem, a problem that cannot by fixed by court rulings. As a believing Mormon, my highest yearnings include fellowship with God that includes bonds of family that endure in eternity. You indeed can't legislate that.

I wouldn't be where I am today with my husband if I didn't have some profound sense of God having called me into that relationship, and God blessing that relationship. But I live with a series of broken connections, with, at best, a sense that my Church's understanding of my role and place within the Church and in the span of eternity remains incomplete. So the Supreme Court ruling is good; it is important; it is even, in some sense, profound. But for me it is at best one small step in what is yet a very, very long journey, a journey in the scope of which the entire history of the United States is a very small thing.

Religious Freedom... To Do What, Exactly?

In ancient Palestine, a woman is taken in adultery. Those who have caught her in delicto flagrante bring her, as the law demands, before the local elders who determine that, in accordance with the law, she is to be taken to the public square to be stoned to death.  

It is there, as the crowd gathers, preparing to implement the law, that a single individual set apart from the crowd crouches to the ground. Is he picking up a stone? No. He remains low, sitting on his haunches, quietly writing in the sand with his finger, words that will soon be erased by the wind or the hustle and bustle of the crowd. 

As the crowd watches, curious, he simply says, "He who is without sin should cast the first stone."

That story embodies one of the core ethical and spiritual principles of the Christian religion. It embodies, among other things, the notion that no human being is without sin, and that, sinful creatures that we are, human beings do not have the right to condemn and punish others for their sins, supposed or real.

It's a radical notion. Does it put the entire concept of law and order at risk? Should the prisons open their doors and release convicted criminals onto the streets?

I don't know. What I do know is that this story about how Jesus responded to a woman clearly guilty of adultery, clearly condemned under the law, about to receive the punishment that the law demanded, has the same effect on me that it had on the crowd getting ready to stone this woman. It silences me. It induces me to drop the stone I'm holding and walk away.

I came out in an age when gay bashing was routine. My husband was assaulted by two men who used a beer bottle and their fists as weapons, with the slur "f***ing faggot" on their tongues. He was pummeled in the head and had three of his teeth broken. The assault took place in broad daylight. My husband ran to a police officer patrolling the block, and pointed out the assailants, who had made no attempt to flee the scene. The police did nothing.

A few years earlier, when I was single, I had been walking down the street, holding hands with a date, when a man walking a few paces in front of us suddenly turned around brandishing a knife. His words were a snarl: "F***ing faggots!" (Gay bashers were notoriously uncreative when it came to the epithets they used against us.) I grabbed the man I was with by the arm and we ran. We ducked into a nearby convenience store and asked the clerk if we could use his phone to call the police. By then, our would-be assailant had fortunately vanished, so after waiting what we thought was a safe period, we cautiously went back out into the night.

Back in those days, there were anti-sodomy laws on the books, which technically made the majority of the gay community criminals. In fact, when local gay community leaders appealed to the Minneapolis Police Department to more vigilantly patrol areas where gay bashings were common, the police responded that they could not, because if they did, they might have to enforce all the criminal statutes. In other words, the response was a veiled threat to enforce the anti-sodomy statutes.

This was not the dark ages. This was not the McCarthy era. This was the late 1980s and the early 1990s.

It was 1986 when the Supreme Court upheld sodomy laws in the notorious Bowers v. Hardwick decision, allowing states to keep laws on the books that were used to deny not only police protection, but to (often successfully) make the case against laws that would have banned discrimination in housing, employment or medical treatment, or that, significantly, would have offered some legal recognition to committed same-sex relationships.

Gay individuals, of course, wanted (and want) only what almost every heterosexual individual wants (and assumes they have the right to pursue): family, community, security and happiness.

My husband and I gave our love to each other privately in 1992, and then more publicly in a "commitment ceremony" attended by 110 of our family and fiends in 1995. In those days we were criminals.

The Minnesota sodomy statute still remains on the books today, though it was rendered a dead letter by the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court ruling, which overturned the notorious Bowers decision and invalidated every other sodomy statute in the United States. It was no longer illegal to be in a gay partnership in America.

At the time of the Lawrence ruling, there was an outcry from the religious right. They wanted to keep anti-sodomy laws as a sword of Damocles hanging over us. We could be publicly humiliated. Gay bashers could break our bones, threaten and murder us. Companies could fire us. Landlords could evict us. Our loved ones could die in hospitals while we were kept from their bedsides. All in the name of morality and decency.

For the last half of the twentieth century, countless gay, lesbian, bi and transgender individuals have accepted tremendous personal risk in order to come out and make the case that we are human beings and we should not have to live in fear. We deserve the same opportunities to pursue happiness as everyone else. The number of individuals willing to face such risk was exceedingly small prior to 1969, when New York City police engaged in one of the most notorious attacks on the gay community in American history at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. Since then that movement has grown, as, one-by-one, individuals decided they wouldn't take it any more. I publicly came out in 1988 and committed myself at that time to making a safer world not just for myself, but for future generations of lesbian, gay, bi and transgender people.

One of our proudest achievements is the growing American consensus regarding the right of same-sex couples to marry. A majority of Americans have heard our stories and they agree. This right is absolutely essential to establish our individual and familial safety, as it is for all individuals and all families. Without it, we are outside the circle of community and safety on which American civilization has been built.

But now Christian conservatives claim that their rights are being denied.

How exactly is their right to live their religion being denied?

We are talking about the religion founded by the man who crouched in the sand, and told sinners to throw stones, if they dared.

On Religious Freedom and Empathy

To be very honest, the first Saturday session of the 184th Annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was a bit difficult for me. But I still felt the Spirit. And the more I thought about it, the more I was realized that people on both sides of the argument about same-sex marriage are hurting.

I don't think people in the country at large are changing their minds about same-sex marriage because of a decline in moral values. If anything, the move to extend marital rights and responsibilities to same-sex couples actually signifies an increase in morality. I think people are changing their minds about same-sex marriage because they recognize the rightness of holding same-sex couples to the same standards as everyone else, and giving them the same protections as everyone else. End of story.

But at the same time, I can see how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- governed by the principle of revelation -- needs to hold to the doctrines of marriage that we currently have. And I can see how it would be increasingly difficult for people to defend those doctrines in a culture that increasingly sees marriage equality as a matter of simple justice. I know from personal experience that there is a tendency on the marriage equality side of the debate to judge people who disagree with them as bigots. And I can see how, from the viewpoint of the Church, it will be no fun to have society at large seeing them -- once again, as with the priesthood/race issue in the 1960s and 70s -- as a bigoted church. I know from personal experience that Mormons -- regardless of their personal views on same-sex marriage -- will be judged as bigoted just for their willingness to be members of a church judged as bigoted. I believe that is wrong, because I believe that the Church simply cannot -- as much as they humanly would like to -- change a doctrine for reasons of social unpopularity or inconvenience. The Church must be governed by the principle of revelation or not at all. And I think leaders of the Church would be remiss in their duties if they didn't encourage people to be true to their faith and be willing to defend the principle of revelation that governs the Church, even when it forces them into some uncomfortable situations. I have always defended and will continue to defend that principle even when people confront me with the inconvenient question, "How can you as a self-respecting gay man want to have anything to do with that church?"

Fortunately, our country has this thing called the 1st Amendment that keeps church and state separate and that protects religious freedom. So our country -- more than any other in the world -- should be able to create a social compromise that will allow churches to practice and believe in marriage as their doctrines teach and still treat gay and lesbian couples with equity in the society at large.

There were many talks in conference about empathy. And even Elder Neil L. Andersen's talk -- the only talk that explicitly invoked the marriage controversy -- also explicitly condemned bigotry on the part of Church members. When Elder Andersen said that "everyone independent of his or her decisions or beliefs deserves our kindness and consideration, and when he quoted Joseph Smith, reminding listeners to “beware of self-righteousness,” and when he strongly stated that there was “no place for ridicule, bullying or bigotry” in the Church, he was essentially acknowledging that this is a problem on both sides of this debate. That's a huge thing IMHO.

I came away from conference with such a great sense of relief. I felt such a surge of love and gratitude in my heart. I thought, I have a responsibility to be honest and true to myself. To tell my story with love. And Church leaders have now told their members that they have a duty to listen to me and try to understand me with empathy. And I have a responsibility to love without condition and to practice empathy with others.

If I follow those principles, all of which were so beautifully taught at conference, we will find a very, very good way forward. I just know it.

"I could have chosen to be a homosexual"

I came away from Saturday's Circling the Wagons Conference sessions -- as I did from Friday's sessions and dialogs -- with a simultaneous sense of hope and a hearty dose of skepticism.

Some folks I spoke with after the conference had ended expressed frustration that so much of the focus in the conference had been on how people with divergent perspectives on a contentious issue should speak with one another. Much of the focus of the conference was on the ethics of communication. I heard people say they wished that the speakers at the conference had entered into discussion about the substantive issues that divide us.

I understand this feeling, but I disagree. I think the conference did just what we most needed it to do. Before we discuss the substantive areas of disagreement on an issue that has caused as much pain and division as this issue, we need to believe whole-heartedly that those who disagree with us are not our enemies. We've already tried to enter into dialog with people who disagree with us when there is not this trust, believing that somehow the "facts" themselves would resolve the issues. And the results of that kind of dialog have resulted in schism and recrimination, usually escalating into ideological warfare. And we've seen the tragic casualties of that warfare. Real people whose lives are shattered, many of whose shattered lives end in suicide.

What this conference did more than any before it was to bring together many of the most influential LGBT/SSA leaders in the Mormon community, and it provided us an opportunity to try something different than what has been tried before. And we did in fact do something different from what has ever been done before. So there lies my hope.

My skepticism lies in the fact that we spent the weekend investing in a process that requires the development of relationships, and that will require substantially more time, energy, patience and charity. If we don't follow through with the requisite relationship building work, if the main players don't remain committed to the process, we're back at square one in very short order.

*****

In the workshop I participated in, entitled "Navigating Church Activity as an LGBTQ or SSA Mormon," I shared the stand with Ty Mansfield, Tom Christofferson, Kayla Burningham and Jamison Manwaring (our moderator). We had two Northstar members (Ty and Kayla) and two Affirmation members (Tom and I) discuss a common value shared by all of us: activity in the Church. We presented the workshop twice.

What astonished me when all was said and done was how strong our common ground had been. There was no substantial disagreement on any of the major issues we discussed. Common threads included:

• our desire for Church activity was motivated by a profound yearning for a deeper relationship with God
• yes, Church leaders and members make mistakes and "fall short of the mark," and yes it is painful when they do that
• we can and should distinguish between our devotion to God and our activity in the Church
• misunderstanding of and poor treatment of us by other Saints provides us an opportunity to learn the core Christian value of love
• activity in the Church has blessed our lives and made us better people

These themes resurfaced in each of our four stories in poignant ways that often brought tears to the eyes of both speakers and listeners.

Were there areas of difference? Yes. There were profound differences in terms of our perceptions of the role of "same-sex attraction" or "gayness" in our lives, and our perception of how we needed to respond to it.

We were brutally honest about our own experiences, and we didn't hide the parts of our stories that might have starkly set us apart or against one another. The power of the presentation was in the common ground we had found, despite dramatically different backgrounds and stories. 

I am certain we will need to explore the differences in greater depth at some future time. But I am hopeful that when that time comes, we will be grounded in the love and the empathy we felt for each other when we focused on what we share.

*****

Though the focus of the conference was on the ethics of communication, and on beginning to find common grounds and common meeting spaces, that did not mean that the conference was devoid of substantive discussion.

The talk which I found most moving and most interesting was David Matheson's talk. David said two things that struck me, and that I felt pointed to a starting point for future substantive discussion.

First, at one point in his talk, he said, "I was aware that I could have chosen to be homosexual." He spoke of the satisfactions that came from same-sex relationships for him, both physical and emotional. But for him it was ultimately always something that he saw as separate from the core of who he was.

I have been profoundly aware, especially recently, how alien that experience is to me. I have never had any sense that being gay was something that was not just inherently there, so core a part of me that the greatest challenge of my life was to conceptualize how I might possibly have been something different. Unlike many of my peers in the LGBT/SSA Mormon world, I never attempted any form of "reparative therapy." At one point in my journey I blamed myself for not trying everything possible to "change." But as I have matured, and as I have reflected on why I never went to some therapist to get fixed, I have realized it was from a profound wisdom. It was from a deep awareness of how utterly artificial and misguided any such attempt would have been.

I believe that what we have categorized under the artificially simple concept of "sexual orientation" is much more complex than that. And whatever "sexual orientation" is or means, I do not have the same sexual orientation as David Matheson. And it is an error to compare his story to mine, or my story to his.

The second thing David Matheson said that was both substantive and helpful was his admission that in his practice of helping reduce or eliminate unwanted feelings of same-sex attraction, there were individuals he could help and individuals he simply could not. I was grateful for this acknowledgment that there is difference, and that difference matters.

In reflecting on my experience at the conference in general, I realized that finding common ground will help us to learn how to talk authentically to one another. And in reflecting on David Matheson's talk, I realized that talking openly about difference is critical to understanding both ourselves and others.

I don't believe our time together this past weekend was time wasted.

Distractions

One of my favorite parts of the UCC (United Church of Christ) Statement of Faith is the part where it says that God "seeks in holy love to save all people from aimlessness and sin."

That word "aimlessness" made me stop and think for a moment. The word doesn't appear anywhere in the Bible -- at least not the King James Version. Yet, thinking about it, it has always seemed right to me. Lives that have been touched by God are, in fact, not aimless. They are full of purpose.

It seems to me that one way of being aimless is to allow ourselves to be distracted by the worries and obsessions that seem to make the world go round.

For instance, I was poking around on Facebook and ran across a link to a YouTube video featuring members of the Westboro Baptist Church explaining why God hates fags. Then I ran across a quote from that guy who vowed to fast until gay marriage was stopped in Utah. That after reading a series of email correspondence expressing concern about growing support for reparative therapy in certain religious circles. And the recent passage of a series of oppressive anti-gay laws in Nigeria. And on. And on.

The facts in themselves may or may not be distressing (depending on your point of view). What is more distressing to me is the tone of voice in which such tales tend to be recounted -- especially in social media. Usually indignant, annoyed, worried or mocking. Often with a rallying cry to "do something!" or to "make your views known!"

It's easy to get caught in the miasma of angst, especially when the stench gets equally pungent on both sides of any given controversy. I don't agree with Trestin Meacham's view of things, for instance, but I guess he must be pretty upset and scared. I'm not sure what else to make of his behavior or his statements. (Assuming I don't just dismiss him as attention hungry... Though hunger for attention seems to drive a lot of media.)

To me, aimlessness would include letting myself get drawn into these brawls. It would include taking the insults and the assaults personally or letting them worry me.

To me, a purposeful life involves listening first to the "still, small voice." A purposeful life begins with prayer, which leads to knowing who we are and what we need to be about. And then staying focused on that.

I'm not saying we need to be unconcerned about hate groups, or political conflict, or misinformation, or injustice or violence. We live in a broken world, so purposeful lives will very much be about devoting ourselves to making that broken world a better place. But our devotion will be more likely to have an impact if in emerges from deeper, more grounded, more thoughtful selves; from the self-knowledge that comes through listening.

When I listen, things come into focus: my husband, our family, our neighbors, my students my church. The people whose lives cross with ours. Taking care of each other.

'Just Be There': BYU Students Discuss Suicide

This is a beautiful video. I know some of these men and women, and am so grateful for their courage in sharing this important message.



It seems only appropriate to link here to Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's beautiful talk on depression from last weekend's General Conference. As a former sufferer of depression, and as someone who almost committed suicide in my junior year at BYU, I felt extremely grateful to Elder Holland, not only for the advice he offered about how to approach depression in a compassionate, nonjudgmental way, but also for his courage in discussing his own struggles with depression.

Both of these videos make me so proud to be a Mormon!

Where Thieves Break In and Steal

My husband and I recently upgraded our home security system.

Years ago, after we moved into our current home (in the summer of 1996), a couple of our friends experienced break-ins and robberies. It deeply upset Göran, to the point that we invested in a home security system.

As it turns out, no one's ever attempted to rob our house in the seventeen years since. The alarm's been triggered a couple of times -- by our cats. One Sunday morning around Christmas time, for instance, we woke up early in the morning to the wailing of the break-in siren. Göran ran down the stairs, naked and armed with a metal baseball bat, ready to defend our turf, only to find out that one of our cats had triggered the glass-break alarm by knocking the Christmas tree over. On another occasion, while I was on a business trip in Chicago, one of our cats also knocked over a $350 raku vase, with similar results, but this time bringing the police to our residence (since Göran was out with friends). We weren't quite sure which cat, but we think it was Cleopatra.

Still, we have to have the system for Göran's peace of mind. Within the past week, our next door neighbor's garage and another neighbor's garage down the alley were broken into and plundered.

Our upgrades are pretty cool. Video camera surveillance of the property. And everything will be remotely controlled and connected to our iPhones. We can access the surveillance cameras on our phones and see what's going on at home any time we want. We will now get instant notification by text message (with pictures!) whenever an event is triggered.

Heh! Now we'll know for sure which cat to blame for domestic mayhem!

If I had my druthers, we'd do without it. I imagine myself living in pure and ascetic simplicity, without a TV or fancy game systems or computers or expensive furniture or precious china. I guess I'd need a fridge. A small one. And a stove. A few changes of clothes and my books and notebooks.

I'd be like Bishop Myriel of Les Misérables. If anyone stole something from me, I'd just say, "They must have needed it more than I did." You can't be robbed if you don't really consider yourself to own anything in the first place.

On the other hand, it doesn't distress me that we own lots of "stuff" that I honestly think we could do without. If my family needs it, then I "need" it. What counts to me is their happiness and safety. So we're getting the security upgrades.

But I do wonder if, one morning, we woke up like the Whos in Whoville on Christmas morning, to find that even the roast beast was gone, would we learn what it is that really makes us happy? (Each other.)

Still Here: Division in the Aftermath

Yesterday at 5:00 p.m., Governor Mark Dayton signed into law the bill that would enfranchise thousands of Minnesota families headed by gay and lesbian couples.  Six thousand supporters were gathered in front of the Capitol building to cheer him on.  But not everybody is cheering the passage of this law.

It would be easy to dismiss the opposition now.  After more than two decades of feeling like I was a second class citizen, after eight years of experiencing genuine fear at the possibility of being forcibly separated from my spouse, to finally have full legal equality and recognition for our relationship is overwhelming. Göran and I are still exchanging hugs, expressing disbelief that this has finally happened. We are beyond joy.

Yet, there are people today expressing grief at our joy.  I still wrestle to understand their grief, since I can't see how our enfranchisement takes anything at all away from them.  Their families are still safe -- they have always been safe.  Now that my family is finally safe, why wouldn't they rejoice with me?

The Pioneer Press published a photograph of Done Lee of Eagan, Minnesota setting up a mock tombstone in front of the state Capitol reading, "RIP MARRIAGE 2013."  "This is throwing out marriage" he was quoted as saying.  Some protesters who showed up at the Capitol during the Senate debates carried signs: "Proud Father of a God-Approved Family" and "Proud Mother of a God-Approved Family."  Sen. Dan Hall of Burnsville, Minnesota compared division within the state over this issue to the American Civil War. Hyperbolic, of course. But it certainly speaks to the level of frustration and grief that opponents of the new law feel.

The Pioneer Press quoted another opponent of marriage for gay and lesbian couples, Judy Shea, who acknowledged the difficulty of this issue.  She told of her disagreement with a brother, saying, "It's really hard to be on the other side, to have family members that are in pain and speaking differently about this. It's not comfortable." However, she continued, "Many people who think it's wrong would say they weren't really sure how to explain it. But we have to be prepared to explain ourselves. ... This will continue."

It has been the frequent inarticulateness of the opposition that has most frustrated me in the past. Part of me has always really wanted to understand.  Occasionally during the Amendment 1 campaign last year, I would ask an opponent of marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples to explain why they felt the way they did. Sometimes, just before loudly slamming the receiver down on the phone, they would explode, "I don't want to talk about it!"

I found that if I could coax people into talking about it by patiently asking open-ended questions, they would occasionally talk themselves out of it. Talking about it not uncommonly led to the recognition that gay people want and need family just like everyone else, and there didn't seem to be good reasons for denying it to them.

These encounters left me with the impression that often the opposition was inarticulate because they were, bottom line, irrational. They couldn't speak about their reasons for opposing marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples because, bottom line, they had no reasons apart from fear and misconceptions about what it meant to be gay, and lack of empathy for the fact that gay people might want families just like they do.

Not all opponents were inarticulate or seemingly irrational. I did have plenty of conversations with folks who would insist that they had nothing against gay people, but they simply couldn't support same-sex marriage because of their reading of biblical texts about the nature of marriage, or other deeply held beliefs.  They could even acknowledge that others didn't read those same texts the same way they did and didn't share those beliefs.  These more articulate individuals commonly voiced the fear that they would be perceived as "bigots" because of their religious convictions.

In those circumstances, I assured them that I did not regard them as bigots, and I expressed my own conviction that there had to be some way to coexist in the same society even while holding differing beliefs.  Couldn't reasonable people find some way forward that would allow gay men and lesbians to form stable bonds, and protect their relationships and families, and be treated with the same respect that heterosexuals expect?  Isn't the fostering of stable family units in the best interests of everyone, gay and straight?  Did establishing those kinds of supports and protections for gay and lesbian individuals really have to be seen as conflicting with the needs of heterosexual couples and their families?

At the last minute, in the Minnesota House debate over the marriage bill, Republicans offered a "civil unions" compromise.  It was too late for that. The opposition has often seemed so completely lacking in empathy or concern over the impact that their fervor to "defend marriage" would have on real people, like me and my husband Göran, or my friend Daniel who is forcibly separated from his partner because of citizenship issues (like I could have been from mine). I'm sure that seeming lack of empathy has helped, ultimately, to propel the cause of same-sex marriage rights forward.

I do expect that with time, increasing numbers of Americans -- in Minnesota and everywhere else -- will accept marriage rights for all couples, regardless of sexual orientation, and move on to other pressing issues.  But I also acknowledge that there may always be individuals who dissent from this view.

I recognize that folks who disagree with me on this issue are not going away.  But then, I'm not going away either.

Conversation is perhaps more necessary than ever.  Perhaps one reason the opposition was so inarticulate in the days before Amendment 1 failed is because they had it their way, and they didn't see any need to expend energy to reach out to those who differed with them.  Perhaps it would be a mistake for same-sex marriage supporters to make the same mistake once we "win" and get things "our" way.

Bridging gaps and building a deeper kind social unity and awareness will ultimately also be in everybody's best interests.

It Just Got (slightly) Worse

I wish Dan Savage, the man behind the "It Gets Better" campaign had not done this.

The worst part was not his referring to parts of the Bible as "bullshit" in front of an assembly full of high school students. The worst part was mocking those who got up to leave the auditorium as Christian pansy-asses, while those remaining in the auditorium laughed at them.

I've never really been a Dan Savage fan. One of the main reasons I don't read his "Savage Love" column (apart from the sexual crudity) is the way he seems to delight in using a national forum to ridicule people who disagree with him. When I learned that he was the one who helped launch the "It Gets Better" campaign, I thought, "Really? Now Dan Savage is against bullying?" I had to give him props... But still, coming from him it was only slightly less surprising than if it had come from Rush Limbaugh.

Unfortunately, a whole generation of high school students don't know that side of Dan Savage. Or I should say, didn't know that side of him until now. To many high school students, Dan Savage had become something of a hero, defending the defenseless and standing up for a kinder, gentler high school experience, where bullying and bullies could be a thing of the past. That is, until he used his "bully pulpit" (pun intended) to humiliate a minority of students who didn't like the way he was talking about the Bible.

This is a big step back for the It Gets Better campaign.

Or...

It could be an opportunity to teach a really important object lesson.

If I were Dan Savage, I'd issue a great big apology that went something like this:

I just learned something really important about the nature of bullying. What I learned is that people bully not necessarily because they're homophobic, but because they have power and they don't know how to use it... Because they feel insecure and they want to look cool in front of others... I had a position of power speaking to you in that auditorium. Everyone was looking to me, and listening to what I had to say, and that gave me a lot of power. And I used that power to make you feel isolated and ridiculous, to make you look foolish in front of your classmates. And that's the opposite of what I wanted to teach you. What I did was wrong and it was not cool. So I apologize. I hope this can be a lesson to all of us that if we want our schools and our communities and our country to be a safer place, we need to look deep within ourselves, and work more at listening to each other and being concerned about each other's feelings.

I'll be surprised if he issues that kind of an apology. But then, Dan Savage has surprised me at least once before.

*****

Post Script

Looks like Dan Savage did publish an apology on his blog. You can read it for yourselves and see how effective you think it is. To me, it still seems a bit defensive, and I think he does end up sort of calling the students who walked out hypocrites. (After apologizing for calling them "pansy-assed".)

Choices and Relationships

Recently, the committed relationship of two friends of ours came to an end after 15 years. This morning, in my email in-box was a message from another good friend, announcing the end of his relationship of 3½ years. Earlier in the weekend, a friend of mine texted me to let me know that a relationship of several months was now over. Over the years, we've had many friends who've gone through break-ups or divorces. Sometimes both partners in the relationship have been friends of ours, and we've had to negotiate the challenges of preserving our friendships with each, even as their relationship with each other ends.

Whenever this has happened before, I've observed mixed emotions. The anguish of loss is almost always accompanied by relief that a difficult -- perhaps impossible -- situation is finally coming to an end. People wrestle with the hopes and aspirations they had for the relationship at one point or another -- usually including the hope that it might have been a "forever" relationship -- versus the recognition of the ways this particular relationship fell short of that aspiration. There's usually a kind of grieving that accompanies this recognition. Sometimes the grieving includes cynicism about relationships in general; sometimes it includes shame and feelings of guilt or inadequacy.

The truth almost always lies at some paradoxical intersection of the various conflicting emotions. It is possible that a relationship simultaneously facilitated growth (in some areas) and stagnation (in others). In any relationship, we are (with rare exceptions) both the victims of bad choices made by our partner, and the perpetrator of mistakes that harmed our partner and us and the relationship. (It's seldom useful to try to figure out how much we are the former vs. the latter.) No relationship is predestined to end. Any relationship can be preserved if both partners are willing to make the requisite shifts in perspective and to act on their shifted perspectives. At the same time, no relationship is required to last. Ultimately, a relationship begins or aborts, grows or fades, endures or ends based upon the interrelated choices of two people. We choose what we want, and consciously or unconsciously we go for it, with consequences.

It should go without saying that no matter how committed one partner is to a relationship, a relationship is only possible if both are committed.

Is a relationship the be all and end all of existence? I guess the answer to that question always, always depends on the person answering it. Relationships always have the value that we invest in them. They can be of eternal significance, of incalculable worth, capable of rewarding any effort to preserve and nurture them. Or they can be of contingent worth, mere temporary stepping stones on the much greater journey of self-discovery, needing to be let go once we have outgrown their usefulness. Or they can (paradoxically) be both.

I think if a couple manages to live long enough together, they actually experience several different relationships with each other. The relationship I have with Göran, of which we recently celebrated the 18th anniversary, has actually been at least four different relationships that I can name. In a very real sense, in order for us to stay together, we've periodically had to let go of an existing relationship, renegotiate, and accept the terms of a new relationship. We've had to learn to accept that as time went on, we grew and became different people, and we had to be willing to enter into a relationship with that "new" person.

The different relationships Göran and I have had have included: (1) the passionate, idealized, romantic relationship of our early years; (2) the "shared yoke," the trials and difficulties and challenges we somehow managed to support each other through once the blush of romance faded (working through my depression and unemployment; his family and identity issues); and (3) the time of trial as our relationship reached "middle age," as each of our faults and inadequacies became increasingly apparent to the other, our illusions about each other and ourselves and the relationship were shattered or withered, and we had to decide, with eyes fully open, "Do I still love this person?" (Or, more importantly, "Do I feel worthy to be loved?" The questions are interrelated.)

In the third stage, Göran and I have each gone through significant transformations. It is as if our relationship has been a cocoon from which we now emerge as different creatures. He is stronger, more self-confident and assertive. He finally knows who his family are and has answers to questions we've been trying to answer for over a decade. He has a much stronger sense of who he is. And my sins and failings have taught him to be more self-reliant. He is, in many ways, the opposite of what he was when we first met. I, on the other hand, have "discovered religion." I've abandoned many axioms I once accepted as rock solid, and accepted others. I've lost a sense of myself as the center of my own universe. That's part of what confessing God is all about. So in significant ways, we're switching places. I used to be the confident one, he the more dependent; now I'm having to learn the nature of my own dependence, while he spreads his wings. It's not easy!

I believe that in this third stage, we each caught glimpses of what our life missions are. We began to understand what it is we are called to do for the rest of our lives. We increasingly found ourselves in parenting/mentoring relationships with the next generation. And so in the new and fourth stage we are entering, the question becomes, How can we facilitate the other accomplishing his life calling? In a way, this part of the relationship is as perilous as any that came before it. We could easily spin off, putting mission before relationship. Or we could find out how mission and relationship are interconnected. After all, our relationship has always been the home base from which all learning has been made possible before. It's been the framework within which we've each learned who we are by studying ourselves in the mirror of the other.

What if Göran and I had broken it off at the end of relationship (1)? This happens often enough... So many relationships end once the initial electricity goes from ecstatic jolt to modest current. There's still energy flowing, but if you're addicted to the "jolt," you'll pull the plug and go in search of the big charge again. We could have ended it at the end of relationship (2) as well, once we'd made it past some of the early challenges of life and felt like we didn't "need" each other any more. Stage (3) has got to be the hardest. How does a relationship survive when you've become disillusioned with each other? When you've become disillusioned with yourself? I think this is where so many long term relationships end. These are the break-ups that happen after 15-20 years of shared life. And these are perhaps the most painful. But with disillusionment comes truth, so it's hard for me not to get excited about the potential for stage (4). I'm not sure what I would do without the bedrock of affection and shared experience we have after eighteen years together.

If we break off and seek a new relationship, do we pick up where we left off with the new person? Or do we have to start over at stage 1? What do we learn if there is no new person, or rather, if the "new person" is just ourselves?

In the eternal scheme of things, I'm still far too young to answer any of these questions. I suspect the answer will be different for each person and each relationship.

I'm painfully aware of my own inadequacies at the moment. But I am cautiously hopeful that that awareness can be fertile soil for good things.

I'm praying for my friends right now too... Those whose relationships are ending... I pray for them to grieve well and to learn. I pray to be an adequate friend to them. And I am looking to them as teachers too. Whatever becomes of our "relationships," none of us are islands, neither in our singleness nor in our relatedness. Specific relationships are just part of a web of relationality within which we all exist, within which we all learn and grow, and within which we all have a responsibility to nurture and care for one another.

The Spirituality of Fun

I guess I grew up absorbing a kind of Calvinist ethic that says fun is frivolous and meaningless, and only work really matters. Or maybe I've internalized a more general Western Christian discomfort with any sort of pleasure, this idea that matter and the flesh are bad and must be subordinated to the spirit, and having fun is giving too much license to the flesh. Or maybe I have also absorbed the ethic of liberal guilt, which says that because there is so much poverty, misfortune and suffering in the world, it's somehow wrong for me to take (and enjoy!) an extended vacation. Anyway, it seems there are many reasons I can (and subconsciously do) choose to deny myself a month of work-free, agenda-free fun on vacation with my sweetheart. At some level, I know the anti-fun impulse is a lie or a distortion. But it takes a certain amount of spiritual discipline to actually let myself relax, and let my vacation be what it is supposed to be.

This essay is part of that spiritual discipline. I'm writing this mostly to remind myself of the reasons why fun is important, and why guilt about having fun is destructive. And if my thoughts are helpful to any other fun-o-phobes out there, all the better!

Fun is important because people matter and because relationships matter and because our bodies matter. In theological terms, the fullness of joy God intended us to have includes having a physical body along with the pleasures that affords us. It also includes being connected to the human family through intimate relationships. I remember reflecting on this after General Conference a while back, when President Monson concluded with some remarks to the effect that it was important for the Saints to cherish the time that they have with family. He reminded us that in mortality, we only have each other for a brief moment, and we need to make the time that we have with each other count.

Of course work matters too. Work does lend life meaning, but only within a framework that values bodies and relationships! Only within a framework in which fun also has meaning and value. Work and fun are part of the same complex. And of course justice is important. It is terrible that we live in a world where people lack basic necessities. I'm aware that the majority of people in the world aren't as privileged as I am, and lack the resources that make it possible for me to travel and have fun for a month with my spouse. So part of my work -- part of all of our work -- needs to be about creating a world of greater compassion and plenty. Justice matters because relationship matters. Justice, like work, derives its meaning in a framework where pleasure has value. So Emma Goldman stated a positive truth when she said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution!"

Yesterday, Göran and I were walking around in downtown Copenhagen. Göran has this fascination with European royalty. (Maybe it's because of the deprivation he grew up with? Or maybe it's just that he is a retired Queen?) At any rate, in every western Scandinavian capital (in Stockholm, Oslo, and now Copenhagen), a significant portion of our time has been spent visiting and touring royal palaces. So we had just spent some time at Amalienborg Castle, and then had wandered up to visit the Little Mermaid statue. (Having seen it, I don't get what the big deal is. How did this become the symbol of Copenhagen? There was a huge line of tourists there, waiting to get themselves photographed in front of the Little Mermaid. Is the Little Mermaid really to Copenhagen what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris? Really?) Anyway, the weather wasn't cooperating... We decided to take care of some errands, but were finding it impossible to find a department store in downtown Copenhagen. I was getting tired of royal palaces and touristy statues. And it had been cool and drizzly all day, and Göran and I had been doing a lot of walking, and our feet hurt and we were cold and he and I were both getting crabby.

And it's in moments like this when doubts about the value of "fun" can take on a certain gloomy power. It was at this moment that I found myself starting to feel guilty about having spent all this money to come here and do this. But it was also in this moment that I was saved from the gloom by the realization that this man I was tramping up and down cobblestone streets in the rain with in some strange foreign capital really matters to me. He has infinite worth, and so does the relationship I have with him, and it doesn't matter really where we are or what we're doing, not to me, really. We could be anywhere: Timbuktu or Shanghai or downtown Minneapolis. But he wanted to be in Scandinavia, and that's why we rallied the resources and made the time to be in this particular place. So I took a deep breath, and I remembered to be grateful for everything I have, including this vacation, and including him.

I stopped and told him, "Before we can do any other errands, we need a pastry!" So our hunt for a department store turned into a simultaneous hunt for the perfect Danish pastry. And we eventually found both at the same time. There's a gigantic department store in downtown Copenhagen called "Magasin." It's quite possibly the biggest department store I've ever been in. And there's a food court in the basement. We found a pastry shop there and I ordered a Chokoladebolle and Göran ordered a Walessnitte, and we collapsed at a nearby table and just melted into the deliciousness which is Danish pastries. Things got better after that. We just needed to remember to have fun.

Life is short. And it is precious. And President Monson was right: in mortality, we only have each other for so long, and we need to enjoy each other while we have the chance. Life at its best is always laced with the tragedy of loss. So there is a moral imperative to enjoy what we have while we still have each other. We need to make these moments count, to take care of ourselves and others.

So take care of yourselves, and have some fun today!

Take Care of Yourself, Take Care of Others

If you don't take care of yourself, you can't be much use to anyone else. It's impossible to spread happiness to others, if you yourself aren't happy.

It's not that we should be self-centered. There's a difference between selfishness and self-care. It's just that we need to eat right, sleep well, get exercise, breathe, enjoy rest and quiet, and spend time laughing with friends. We need to be able to express love and feel loved. This is all part of the care and feeding that every human being in the world needs, that is more or less the human birthright.

In fact, I suspect that most selfishness in the world is at least in part the by-product of a failure to care properly for and feed the self. Because if our souls are well tended, how could we substitute something as spiritually thin as the hoarding of wealth for something as spiritually rich as sharing?

So if you are tired, rest. If you are weak, stretch! If you are lonely or in pain or depressed, call a friend. If you feel ashamed or guilty, don't beat yourself up! Forgive yourself. Take one step at a time back toward the light. Whatever the next step is, is the only step you need to focus on right now. Learn to trust that if you truly want to do better, God has already forgiven you completely.

Whatever time and energy we need to take to water the garden of our souls, to sun and feed and weed it till it begins to blossom freely, is time and energy well spent.

If you're to give the world some flavor, make sure your salt has savor! If you want to be able to love others, love yourself.

I'm getting ready to take some time off, on a much needed, long-deferred honeymoon with my sweetheart! See you when I get back! And in the meantime, take care of yourselves!

Friendship

Remember a few months ago when I was kind of in a funk, feeling a bit lonely and isolated? In the last few months, my prayers have been answered.

Last fall, I got an email from someone local who had read my Sunstone article, and wanted to talk. Another friend of his (who had given him the Sunstone article in the first place) also wanted to meet and talk. We all have testimonies of the Gospel, and want to support one another in efforts to be faithful in spite of the challenges that come with being both Mormon and gay, so since our initial lunch together we've been meeting once a month holding a "family home evening" together.

Our family home evenings always start with food. Lately it's been evolving into a full-blown meal that we prepare together! Eating (and preparing food) together is this great time for us to just talk and socialize. Then we eventually start the more devotional portion of our time together with a hymn and a prayer. I love it when we sing hymns together. Gay men really know how to sing! J. and S. usually sing harmony and I sing the melody, and we sing with real feeling, with real soul. The prayers are heartfelt too; we tell God what is really on our minds and in our hearts; we pray for each other and for others outside of our circle. We pray for our fellow Mohos! The time we spend together would be worth it, just for the singing and the praying. But then we spend some time reading the scriptures together and talking about gospel principles. And as we do that, we get to do what it's really difficult to do in our Sunday School and Priesthood meetings... We can talk in an uncensored way about some of the struggles and questions related to being gay and keeping the faith. We end the devotional part with another hymn and a prayer. Then we have an "activity," usually a board game. (Last time we played "Settlers of Zarahemla," basically a Mormon version of "Settlers of Catan"! You have the added bonus of getting prophets to call the people to repentance, and racing to build the temple!)

Our family home evenings usually end up lasting five to six hours! And the time just flies. Once a month feels like not often enough for us to get together and talk about stuff, so in between our monthly family home evenings, we've also taken to meeting occasionally for lunch during the work week. This month, a member of our group is performing in "Bare," a play about two boys in a Catholic boarding school who fall in love with each other. So Göran and I and the other member of the family home evening group (and anyone else who wants to come with!) will be going to watch him perform and cheer him on.

In addition to our small family home evening group, I've been extremely grateful for Moho brothers and sisters I've connected with long distance by phone and by email. This has really been so incredibly good for my soul. I actually had a dream a while back in which one of my Moho brothers was giving me a haircut. In dreams, our hair usually symbolizes our thought processes. So I understood this dream about having a Moho brother trimming or cutting my hair to be about him helping me to clarify my thoughts about things, helping me to "think right." That in fact is what he does for me on a regular basis in the various phone conversations we have. And I am so incredibly grateful.

I have benefited so much from these deepening friendships. I can't even begin to tell each of these individuals how grateful I am. I weep sometimes to think about it. I feel like I've been on a long hike in the desert. My feet were bruised and calloused and aching; I was hungry and I was dying of thirst. And I didn't even realize how hungry and thirsty and tired I was until I reached my destination and took a load off my feet, and started to eat and drink water to my soul. Only now that I have been blessed in this way do I realize how much I really needed this gift of friendship.

We all need it. Our journeys are too long and too lonely without it. We need to tend each others' injuries and feed each other spiritually. We need to give each other haircuts! We need to pray for each other. We need to take better care of each other.

***

If you live in the Twin Cities area, and think you might be interested in joining us for our monthly family home evening, just contact me through my blog! You are most welcome to join us -- whether you are LDS or not.

The Vicarious Principle

I've been reading James E. Talmage's Articles of Faith recently. I read it the first time when I was sixteen, and first starting to get excited about the prospect of serving a mission. Later, after my mission, I read Jesus the Christ. Talmage is one of my favorite apostles, and one of the great LDS theologians.* Recently, I've been reading Talmage's discussion of the vicarious principle in LDS teaching and practice, and have been blessed to be reminded of a fundamental insight into the nature of the great vicarious work.

The principle of "vicarious work" is at the heart of all Christian theology. The vicarious principle is built into the Atonement itself. The idea behind the Atonement theology taught in most Christian churches is that we cannot save ourselves. There is nothing we individually can do to fully atone for our own sins. That work had to be accomplished for us by someone who was capable of atoning for sin. And that someone was Jesus Christ.

God regarded Christ's death on behalf of unfortunate sinners who could not save themselves not as a failure of justice but as its fulfillment. Christian theologians have long wrestled with the implications of such a principle. To many the vicarious principle has undermined conventional notions of justice and equity. This is one reason, for instance, that Deists attacked Christian doctrine as repulsive and offensive. If one person breaks the law, and another person is punished instead, in our society we typically consider that a miscarriage of justice. We have elaborate legal mechanisms set up in our society to ensure that only the one actually guilty of a crime gets punished for it. But in the economy of divine justice, it seems, a willing innocent may accept the burden of paying a debt for someone else who can't pay the debt him or herself.

The only real innovation of Mormon theology over the standard Christian principle of vicarious atonement is the extension and broadening of the notion to almost every aspect of Christian practice. If, for example, a person dies without ever having the opportunity to be baptized, another may be baptized in his or her stead. In the Mormon scheme of things, through vicarious work we can all become "saviors in Mount Zion." Many of us have this opportunity to labor and do for others what they cannot do for themselves, extending salvation to all who desire to be saved. Again, this is not considered a travesty of justice in the Mormon scheme of things. It is one of the finest expressions and examples of divine justice, in that it demonstrates the true universality of God's love.

The vicarious work is linked to the Atonement in another powerful way. The vicarious work acknowledges that, in an ideal world, everyone would accomplish for themselves whatever they need to do for their own salvation. Everyone would have a fair chance to learn what they need to learn, and to prove their moral worth. But the world we live in has been distorted by sin. Because of sin, the world is filled with illness and disaster; with war and tyranny; with cruelty and corruption. Families are torn apart by poverty. Infants die of starvation. Minds and bodies are wracked by disease. Relationships are distorted by physical and sexual abuse. Sin has a vicarious effect! Each of us suffers in various ways because of the sins of others! So many of us are caught in chains of causality that limit our choices and make it impossible for us to do for ourselves what we might otherwise do in an ideal world. The vicarious work acknowledges that because of the real power that sin has in this world, some of us are in desperate need of help and healing. And it permits those of us in a position to help and heal to join Christ in his work of reaching out and saving those who cannot save themselves.

The relationship between healer and healed, of course, is not just a one-way relationship, in which one person always plays the healer and the other always plays the healed. In reality, the uniqueness of our personalities and experiences and gifts means that there are areas of my life where I need healing that only someone else can heal, and that person may have other areas of his or her life where only I can heal. Healing is usually a two way street, or even an intersection where multiple paths intersect and healing needs to flow in multiple directions!

What's more magical about this is that sometimes the healing I need can only be provided by someone I regard as my enemy. It is also likely that there are individuals out there who regard me as their enemy, who can only get the healing they need from me.

We live in a culture that has been shaped by Enlightenment individualism. Despite the insistence of our prophets and our poets that "no man is an island," in our culture we insist on believing that we each, in fact, are islands unto ourselves. That we should be complete and self-sufficient in ourselves. The inability to stand on our own two feet is considered a failing and reason for shame. For a man to be dependent on another man diminishes him and makes him less than a man. (Women are allowed to be dependent on men, which tells us something about how women are viewed in our culture.)

In this culture, the vicarious principle is offensive and counter-intuitive. In our culture, those who accept the vicarious principle as valid, tend to accept it as "a mystery," as something that works in theology even though it doesn't really work out here in "the real world."

But if we allowed the vicarious principle to teach us, we might learn some pretty amazing things about ourselves and others. We might learn that:

* the destiny of each of us is interconnected with the destiny of every other one of us

* what happens to one of us has an effect on all of us

* if any one of us is left out, isolated and alone or in pain, left to fend for themselves, we have all failed

* there is no such thing as individual salvation, only collective salvation that links every individual to a family, and every family to the great human family, all offspring of a Heavenly Mother and Heavenly Father

If vicarious atonement of sin is possible, if vicarious baptism or vicarious marriage is possible, it is because there is no meaningful difference between you and me and we are all one with Christ, who stands for us before the throne of God and pleads for every single one of us, and who reaches out to and saves the "least" among us.

Sunday we had Stake Conference and I sat next to my friend Mary. When Mary was struggling and in pain and wrestling with doubt before her baptism, I was there encouraging her, bearing testimony to her, and trying to model faith in the best way that I knew how. When Mary was baptized, there are few occasions in my life that have been more joyous for me. I wish I could have been baptized on that day, but I couldn't be. I had to experience the joy of Mary's baptism vicariously. I saw the joy in her face, and I accepted it as my own joy. Oh, that was sweet! It made me so happy to think, "At least she has been saved." And her first words to me out of the font were, "I won't leave you behind." And when I struggle and am sad, she is there to encourage me and bear testimony to me, and model faith in the best way that she knows how. And she's born witness to me again and again since then how she knows that her salvation isn't complete without me. That has been such an incredible comfort.

___________________________
*Though Mormons are generally uncomfortable with the idea of studying "theology," which they tend to associate with "philosophies of men," Talmage didn't eschew the term, and certainly wouldn't have been uncomfortable applying it to his own work.

The Ninety and Nine (and the One)

I don't feel really comfortable sharing a lot of details about the trial of faith I've been experiencing over the past month or so. But I think I need to share the fact that there has been a trial of faith and it has been really painful and it has involved me questioning everything from the bottom up.

And oddly, just at the moment that I was going through this very personal struggle, a number of individuals who are close to me were experiencing trials of faith of their own. And they were turning to me for strength or answers. And I didn't feel there was a lot I could offer them. I could point them to God, and I could (and did!) pray for them. But it really was a virgins and oil and a waiting for the bridegroom kind of experience. I didn't have any oil to offer them for their lamps... I barely had enough for my own. I could only send them away in search of their own oil.

I've come through this, and to say I feel humbled is kind of an understatement. And some things have definitely shifted for me. And while I don't want to share many specific details of what exactly happened, I do want to try to share what it was like coming through this trial of faith, and how I found some resolution, and what I think I learned from it. And maybe if some of you have experienced some trials of your own, you can share with me what you've learned or what you know.

Part of this trial involved feeling really alone, and really in the dark. And the depth of that loneliness and darkness was more profound than anything I've experienced in the last five years. For most of the last five years, I've had this most blessed experience of the guiding, helping, comforting presence of the Holy Spirit. And that presence has lifted me up and kept me going in circumstances and situations I never would have imagined possible. And it's enabled me to be a source of encouragement and strength to others. When others came to me, I felt I always had something for them, like a bottomless basket of loaves and fishes. Because that presence of the Spirit in my life was like this endless supply of enthusiasm and love and optimism and faith, and I had for myself and for all my friends and family and for strangers too. But part of the most painful part of this trial is that I had nothing. I felt like I just wanted to stop answering the phone, stop answering emails. And I felt truly alone. No Spirit. Nothing. Just me, without a lot of answers or courage.

And the most difficult part of that was wondering what I had done to have been cut off like that. And the answer -- I discovered later -- was nothing. There was nothing wrong I had done. The Lord was testing me. I did what I was supposed to do during a test like this. I took what I knew, what I had learned, and I used my best lights and did the best I could with what I had. I kept struggling, and stayed true. And all the time I was doubting and wondering and asking questions. The biggest question was, "Did I just imagine all that? Did that really happen? Did the Holy Spirit really speak to me? Did the Lord really reveal himself to me? Or was that all in my head?"

There's a basic principle here, and I think it's the reason the Lord tried me and tested me in this way, specifically for me to learn this and understand it well and thoroughly. No faith or faithfulness is possible without the Lord's sustaining grace. Whatever we think we have, whatever righteousness we think we might accumulate, it's nothing without him, without his sustaining presence. Yes, we have to make efforts to do the right thing; the most important aspect of which is turning to him and asking him for help and acknowledging him as the source of all things and as our strength and help; we need to wrestle, we need to struggle, we need to choose the right. But none of that is sufficient without his all-sufficient grace.

Often the Lord prospers us and takes care of us and blesses us, and we aren't even aware of the source of the blessings. We think we've earned it or we were just lucky, or whatever. And the Lord has taught me that even when we are not aware of it, the source of all life and truth and spirit and all good things is the Lord, and if he ever fully withdrew his sustaining grace from Creation, from this incredible Universe all around us, it would all crumple and fold and vanish like so much tissue paper in a bonfire. I realized it's important for me to know that, to know what the source of my strength is.

This is a very humbling thing to know. And it is also humbling in the sense that I am aware that there's not necessarily anything we have done wrong if we don't feel the power and the certitude that comes from having a very real, very direct communion with the Spirit. The Lord may choose to withhold that from us in order to test us in certain ways or to help us learn certain things on our own.

So that brings me to the question of how things have shifted for me. Saturday morning, I knelt to pray, and it was like the windows were suddenly flung open wide and the sunlight came streaming in, and there were tears streaming down my cheeks, and I wept because the Lord finally gave me the comfort I had been without for so long, and reassured me, this had been a test, and I had passed. I recorded all the important, immediate, specific answers to the really painful, specific questions in my journal; they are there for me to remember and to know. To remind myself when reminding is needed. And I thought it would be business as usual again.

I went to Church yesterday, expecting something further, some kind of epilogue. But there was nothing. I felt nothing. It was the first time in five years that I've gone to my LDS ward and simply not felt the Spirit present there at all. And I was distinctly aware of the fact that one of my best friends in the ward was not there. And he's one of the ones I mentioned earlier in this post who has been going through some really painful struggles, through a really painful trial of faith of his own. He told me he couldn't take it any more; he couldn't take the Church any more. He couldn't take the sense of disconnect he has with the members, who don't treat him as a full equal; who treat him in ways that make him feel unequal and an outsider.

I texted him, and I said, "We need to meet." And he replied, "Why?" And I replied, "Because the last time we talked, you were in pain, and you are my brother." And I got no response to that text. And I didn't know what to do about that emptiness. But there was no Spirit for me in Church.

Later that afternoon, my husband and I went to a concert of the Twin Cities Community Gospel Choir, a choir we sang in for 10 years. It was our singing in that choir that got us going to Church. I'd say that choir is the one place where Göran and I have both felt the Spirit in the same time and in the same place. I can't get him to go to Church with me. He just won't. The LDS Church's position on same-sex relationships is a stumbling block he just can't get over. But we went to the gospel choir's concert at Park Avenue United Methodist Church. It's the first choir event we've been to in something like seven years. The church was full to overflowing, packed to the brim, from the back of the balcony to the front row. And Göran and I were in the standing-room-only section. And members and leaders of the choir kept seeing us and they'd get all excited and jump up and down and give us hugs and tell us how much they missed us, and it felt incredible, like this most joyous reunion. And the Spirit was there in such abundance. The gospel choir was singing, and I was watching all these people, black and white and Asian and Hispanic, swaying and clapping and singing.

And I had this vision: this will be the Celestial Kingdom, right here. All the lost sheep, the ones who are out, far away from the ninety and nine, the ones we need to go out into the highways and byways and hedges to find. The ones that don't even want to be found any more because they've been too wounded by all the good righteous ninety and nine who are safe and cozy and satisfied.

Göran felt the Spirit there, like I did. Do you know how I could tell he did? Because of the way he talked about what had happened. He was using words like pain and hope. It was the most spiritual conversation he and I have had together in years, where we were actually speaking the same language at the same time. And he said he wanted to go back to the choir. That was the other clue. So I contacted one of the choir's assistant directors this morning to ask her if we could come and sing with them again. We need this. This is going to have to be Church for me and Göran for a while.

Not that I've lost my testimony of the LDS Church, or that I intend to stop attending. If anything, I've had a renewed testimony of that as well. But I've realized that Church is always only a kind of nexus, a resting place in-between the important saving work we have to do in this place of wonder and fear, good and evil that we call the world. It can never be an end in itself.

I want my friend to find saving faith. I'm not particularly invested in getting him to go back to the LDS Church right now; I honestly don't think that's the most important thing for him (though I would be so happy if he found the faith to be there, as I have). More important that he have a friend who is willing to stand by him as he faces whatever demons are tearing him apart right now. (And I know there are demons.)

And I realized this is my calling. It's to be involved in that work of knitting faith together from the bottom up if need be. To turn light into darkness; or to be a light to those in darkness, wherever they may be.

Bullied

Last night, Göran and I attended a Minneapolis screening of the film Bullied, produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center. So far, over 30,000 copies of the film have been distributed to American schools, to assist with efforts to educate about the problem of anti-gay bullying. The film was shown at Central Lutheran Church -- the church supposedly "smitten" by God for hosting the national ELCA convention that voted to allow same-sex partnered Lutheran pastors to be ordained.

Göran knows Jamie Nabozny, whose story the film told, and whose 1996 court case made history by finding that school administrators were liable for failing to protect Jamie from bullying. Jamie literally fled to Minneapolis to escape the bullying in his home town of Ashland, Wisconsin, and eventually joined the gay fraternity Delta Lambda Phi, of which Göran is a founding member. More importantly, both Göran and I are familiar with the kind of bullying Jamie -- and so many other gay teens -- have had to endure and continue to endure in American schools. Fortunately I escaped the kind of physical attacks Jamie suffered; Göran did not. After watching the film, Göran told me for the first time about being physically assaulted in his high school's gymnasium shower. He described how being both black and gay in a predominantly white school in Iowa meant physical threats and assaults, as well as constant verbal harassment.

Göran and I both know that anti-gay bullying has nothing to do with our "acting gay," as school administrators asserted when Jamie went to them to plead for protection. We were just being ourselves.

The film was followed by short talks by leaders of the SPLC and by Jamie Nabozny. But the most heart-wrenching talk was that given by Tammy Aaberg, the mother of 13-year-old Justin Aaberg, who committed suicide last July as the result of anti-gay bullying in the Anoka, Minnesota school system. It seemed impossible to me that she should find the strength to address this kind of gathering a mere four months after finding her son hanged in his bedroom. It took incredible courage for her to stand before us, as she struggled to control her emotions long enough to communicate a clear and powerful message about how our schools aren't doing enough to make sure that all its children are valued and safe.

I want to thank the Southern Poverty Law Center for what it's doing to educate about this. I also want to thank Central Lutheran Church for hosting this event. Every single pew in that great cathedral was full. Just being there and partaking of the incredibly powerful feeling of love, care, and quiet determination to do the right thing was amazing. It was incredible being there, and having this feeling that all these people surrounding me were there on my side. I long for the day every church will show that same kind of commitment, and be the same kind of sanctuary of hope for GLBT folks.

Wearing Purple

I was bullied in school. There was a group of guys who -- for lack of a better word -- enjoyed sexually harassing me. They would say really vulgar things, and ask me sexually explicit questions, just to see if they could upset me or get some kind of a reaction out of me. They'd also taunt me for being Mormon, with questions like "How many mothers do you have?" The sexual teasing was also related to being Mormon, because these bullies knew I was deeply religious and sexual teasing was the most religiously offensive thing they could think to do. I never thought it was obvious I was gay, but -- according to my sister -- it was considered common knowledge in my high school that I was also queer, a fag. So if that's the case, I was literally tortured for being both gay and Mormon.

Fortunately I was never physically assaulted, though in seventh grade (when I was 12 and 13) the teasing, taunting and bullying was almost constant. Every day there were new insults (or, old insults tediously recycled again and again). It was almost unbearable, and it was everywhere -- in class, out of class, during lunch, and of course the dreaded gym class. In the lunch room there were a group of them who would converge on me like a pack of wolves, and start on me with the nasty questions almost every day.

I generally did the best I could to avoid giving them satisfaction by reacting in any way. Though my mom tells me every day of the seventh grade I would arrive home in tears.

I guess I understood why other, well-meaning kids never stood up for me. Who wants to be next on the bullies' list? What I never understood was why teachers and gym coaches and lunchroom attendants never did anything. They had real power in that situation, but they always looked the other way.

Life does get better. People (usually) eventually grow up and learn that being an asshole is no fun. Junior high is the worst.

I want to say that it was my faith that helped me survive. Knowing that there is right, and the right will eventually prevail gave me both patience and endurance. My faith, and the loving upbringing I had from my parents, also helped me to believe in my own goodness. To know that even if people treated me like shit, I was not shit. Thanks to my parents and my faith, I never doubted in high school that life was worth living, nor that I would eventually prevail over my adversaries.

My suicide crisis came later, in college, as I was coming to terms with my gayness, when certain elements of my religious upbringing made it impossible for me to believe in my own fundamental goodness, and when I began to doubt that I could succeed at anything important in life or find long-term happiness. That I survived that was something like a miracle.

But I'm here, I made it. I survived the bullying and coming out, and have a life I wouldn't trade for any other. I have a husband and a son and a great home; I'm able to do things I love -- writing and teaching. More importantly, I know who I am, and I have a relationship with God and a life full of spirit and truth as well. I've had my share of struggles, but also my fair share of triumphs. And I'm wearing a purple shirt today as a way of saying to those who are still struggling, that life holds too many big surprises to give up on it before you've had a chance to see what they are.

Human Touch

I've been feeling sad a lot lately.

When I've searched my feelings, to try to understand why I've been feeling sad, I couldn't come up with a solid answer. It was a mystery.

Prayer helps. I get on my knees and I pour out my feelings to God. I ask for help, and I wait and I listen. And the Spirit is present as a comforter, reassuring me that I am loved, that I am good, that my Heavenly Parents are proud of me, that I have much to contribute to my family and the world around me. Recently, the Lord has also offered me this: The Spirit whispered to me the other morning that my sadness -- like any affliction -- could be a reminder that I belong to the Lord, because I find such deep comfort in him. It also connects me to the world around me. It makes me more sensitive to the sadness and pain of others, makes me want to reach out more.

Last night, I woke in the middle of the night, and it finally dawned on me why I have been feeling sad. I first began to notice increased feelings of sadness some time in August, after I returned to Minnesota from the Sunstone Symposium, where I had experienced some incredible fellowship with other gay Mormons; so I thought maybe it was just that I was really hungry for a deeper level of fellowship that I had experienced in Salt Lake that I don't regularly experience here. But then last night I realized, a week after my return from Salt Lake, Glen moved out of our house and into his dorm on campus. He only lives three miles away, and we still see him at least once or twice a week, but we've certainly been sad not to have him around the house all the time. We've got a major case of "empty nest" syndrome. But I realized even that is not completely it.

A year ago last September, I convinced the law firm I work for to let me work from home, so that I could be a more constant presence for Glen, so I could be a better father. But since Glen moved out, I am now spending many more hours every week alone at home. A stay-at-home dad without a kid.

Monday, a friend of mine called seemingly for no reason. This friend is very in tune with the Spirit, so I feel certain that the Lord had had something to do with prompting him to call. He was concerned about me and he wanted to know how I was doing. I almost wept I was so happy he called. I told him I was feeling "isolated." I didn't know where the feelings came from. I wasn't even sure why I picked that word at the time. But it does describe what I often feel lately.

Is it possible that there is just a basic quotient of human contact that any person needs in order to feel balanced and healthy and whole? Is it that working alone at home and losing my kid has just tipped the balance into the unhealthy range?

Part of what helped me acquire this insight is that I've been reading Jonathan Langford's No Going Back, and there are is some interesting narrative in there that has prompted me to reflect on the relationship between healthy human touch and spiritual well-being. I realized that I have been "hungry" for touch lately. When Göran leaves in the morning, and when he gets home from work, he's been getting much longer hugs and kisses from me. I've been much more affectionate. (He doesn't mind! He's always wanted me to be a bit more affectionate!) I find I have also become a better, more sensitive, more responsive listener. I think all because of my increased need for human connection.

I can't imagine what my life would be like without some kind of life partner or companion. Göran and I are blessed to have an excellent relationship that has only gotten stronger and stronger over the years, despite bumps in the road we've traveled together. Loving touch is very important to both of us, and it is woven into the life we have together. Good morning hugs and kisses; hugs and kisses after coming home from work. Meeting for lunch. Eating dinner together. Watching TV intertwined on the couch. Holding hands at the theater, or in church, or at foster care meetings. Playing games together. Doing chores together. (I wash, he dries the dishes!) And -- as we both experienced when I was in Salt Lake last August -- neither of us sleep very well if one of us is not curled up against the other as we sleep.

We both take good care of our health. We eat right, we exercise. We don't smoke (and he drinks only very rarely and very little). We anticipate, God willing, having many, many more years together, perhaps adding another four or five decades to the nearly two decades we've been together so far, "growing old together." We are so much closer as a couple now than ever before in our relationship. Each year seems to bring us closer together. I can only imagine how intense our bond will be, if we continue to tend and care for our relationship as much as we tend and care for our physical health. I think I understand why it is that when couples live together into extreme old age, it is not uncommon for one to die shortly after the other.

I wonder about eternity...

I know it is possible to live alone. And yet... I have experienced a noticeable increase in sadness, just because of the reduced human contact that has taken place as a result of the teenager being around less. Where would I be without Göran? I'm not sure.

So I want to extend an invitation. Or make a promise. If you are lonely, reach out to someone. If you have no one to reach out to, reach out to me. I could use a little extra friendship right now.

If you know someone who lives alone, be a friend. Sit next to them in church. Invite them out to the movies or over to dinner more often. (Even though I don't live alone, I so often go to church alone, and it feels so good when someone sits next to me, or invites me to come sit by them!)

Give more hugs. Be kind.

Love one another.