gailymormon

On the Occasion of the True Marriage
Of My Good Friends Emmanuel and Courtney

Mnemosyne, Goddess of Memory,
Mother of the pink-ankled Muses who dance on Mount Helikon,
Sing through me this day, an epithalamion for the union of Emmanuel and Courtney.

Goddess, sing first of Emmanuel, born from an island sitting atop the broad back of the sea.
Dark, like the all-nourishing Earth, and lithe as the deer hunted by Artemis.
Aphrodite brought to him as a young man visions of beauty, fearlessness, and fierceness,
And graceful movements that transported him across the sea,
Flying over the cresting waves to a new home, a stranger in a strange land.

Sing also, Goddess, of Courtney, sprung forth from the union of two great houses:
The fair-skinned Germani, of odd predilection, and proud, warlike nature,
And the gentle mountain folk of Manti, collectors of dolls and multicolored cocks.
Growing up among the Mormons, Courtney rebelled against their ways.
Lost to himself, but ever mindful of the glory of his forebears,
He wandered from the mountains of Utah, across the vast expanse of prairie,
To the coastal lands of New England, embraced by the arms of the sea.

Sing now, Goddess, of the meeting of Emmanuel and Courtney,
Of the love that has sprung up between them:
Like Jonathan and David, whose love surpassed the love of women,
Like Achilles, whose rage at the death of Patroclus brought down the high towers of Troy,
Like Alexander, who erected numberless statues to the memory of his beloved Hephaestion,
Emmanuel and Courtney have found in their love an undiscovered country
And a new home.

Pour down upon these friends, Goddess, the ambrosia of true love, and
Unite their proud houses with the sound of trumpets and banners flying.

Mnemosyne, Goddess of Memory,
Mother of the pink-ankled Muses who dance on Mount Helikon,
As our lives unfold, year upon year, bring ever to our memory
The beauty of this day,
The joining of these lives,
The love of these men:
Emmanuel and Courtney.

I delivered this talk in sacrament meeting at the Washington DC Third Ward on Sunday, January 20, 2013. The first counselor in the bishopric asked me to speak on how the gospel has changed my life, and invited me to be as honest as I wanted to be. I have transcribed the talk here to the best of my memory. Ellipses (“…”) indicate places where I got a bit choked up and had to pause.

At the end of the meeting, the bishop responded to my talk with doctrinal clarifications, summarized below. I knew that a member of the stake presidency and a high councilor were sitting on the stand. But I didn’t know that Michael Otterson, managing director for church public affairs, and Senator Mike Crapo were in the congregation. Oops!

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Good morning, sisters and brothers! (Response: “Good morning!”) Kerry asked me last Sunday to speak about how the gospel has changed my life. I was quite excited and thought about it all week, and I put together a talk in my mind. But as I was going over it last night at 10 PM, I realized it was a bunch of malarkey—to quote Joe Biden—so I tossed it and jotted down a few notes. So this could be a wild ride for all of us!

I grew up in a strong Mormon family and served a mission, but I left the church 12 years ago because I’m gay and I didn’t feel like there was a place for me at church. When that happened, all of the spiritual scaffolding Mormonism erected for me growing up was suddenly removed, which presented both challenges and opportunities. I became an atheist for awhile, something that can be very freeing.

At a certain point I started using drugs and realized I couldn’t stop. I joined a 12-step group and they told me the only way they knew to stop using drugs was to turn my life over to a power that was greater than myself. They said I had complete freedom to choose whatever Higher Power I wanted, but that freedom was balanced the responsibility to look inside myself and be completely honest about the Higher Power that would work for me.

So I did look inside myself and I found that what worked for me was something I had learned in church, about a Heavenly Mother. I have to say I’m a little uncomfortable talking about Heavenly Mother here because Mormons don’t tend to talk about Her, for reasons I don’t understand. But if I’m going to be honest in telling you my story, I need to talk about Her.

So I talked to Heavenly Mother and I said: I’ve really messed up my life. I’m lost, I’m addicted to drugs, I have done terrible things to people, I have become a kind of person I don’t like. I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage. I don’t deserve Your help. And She said … I don’t care about any of that! There is nothing you could do that would make Me stop loving you. And so … She saved me, brothers and sisters! … She saved me from myself. She did for me what I couldn’t do for myself. She saved me, then She brought me to therapists who helped me reconnect with my spirituality and deal with my anger toward the church. Then, last summer, She called me to return to church, and now I’m here.

My theology is based on my experience: Our Heavenly Parents love us and ask us to love Them and to love each other. God accepts me the way I am, with all of my virtues and imperfections. I believe the scriptures when they say that salvation is free, that we are saved by grace. When people say we’re saved by grace “after all that we can do” I don’t know what that means. One of the most wonderful Mormon doctrines—I don’t know why we don’t talk about it more—is that virtually all human beings will be saved in one of the three degrees of glory. They are all degrees of glory!

Sisters and brothers, I am already saved, just as I am. I could sit home on my couch watching TV for the rest of my life and I would be saved in a degree of glory. So why, you might ask, would I come to church? I am not here to earn my salvation. Jesus has already given me that. I am here because … … I was lost and God saved me. … God loved me just as I am and I have to share that love with other people. That love impels me to do things I would never do otherwise—wake up early to come to church; I’m going to start today as Primary chorister and I am terrified out of my mind.

But God’s love—not only can I not earn God’s love, I can’t get rid of it! It’s like that episode of I Love Lucy with the conveyor belt, or like tribbles in Star Trek. Or, where I come from in central Utah, during zucchini season if you leave your car doors unlocked, you’ll come out of the Safeway and your car will be filled with zucchini. God’s love is like zucchini! …

Coming back to church, there are a few things I have learned for myself. I have prayed and I know that my sexuality as a gay man is just as much a gift from God as anyone else’s sexuality, with the same responsibility to use it in a loving way.

As I return to the church, I see it with new eyes. I am not comfortable with the gender inequality I see in the church. I look forward to the day when our sisters will hold the priesthood and fill any leadership position that brothers can do now.

Thank you for listening to my story. I’m going to step down now before lightning strikes me. I say these things in Jesus’ name, amen.

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At the end of the meeting, the bishop went to the podium and said he appreciated hearing my story but there were some corrections he needed that make, that I probably suspected he would make. He said we do believe in a Heavenly Mother but we don’t advocate praying to Her; we believe in salvation through works and grace, rather than grace alone; and that the position of the church is that there is no gender inequality—women have different responsibilities than men but they are equal. [I found it interesting that he did not mention anything about homosexuality.] He affirmed that I was indeed called the week before to be a Primary chorister and he had great confidence in my ability to inspire the children musically—a Mr. Holland’s opus situation. A few hours later, the bishop told me several people had asked him if it was appropriate for me as a gay man to work in the Primary. He responded that he was very confident I’m the right person for that calling.

The response from ward members was overwhelming in the positive. One sister told me she also prays to Heavenly Mother. Another sister related that she is in recovery for alcohol. Several younger couples in the ward gave me thumbs up and told me they agreed with what I had said. (One of the couples had even been inactive for two years previously because of the church’s treatment of gay people.) A brother told me my talk inspired him to mention Eliza R. Snow and the doctrine of Heavenly Mother in his priesthood lesson on Lorenzo Snow.

Mormons are generally familiar with division of the priesthood into the Melchizedek priesthood and Aaronic priesthood. In this blog post, I will suggest that both of these priesthoods are a subset of something called the priesthood of all people.

Priesthood is the power to act in God’s name. What does it mean to act in God’s name? Our Heavenly Parents’ motivating force is love: They love us and They ask us to love Them and each other. I therefore propose that anyone who can act in a loving way toward others (i.e. any being with moral autonomy) has the capability of acting in God’s name or, in other words, holds the priesthood.

The priesthood of all people is divisible in as many ways as people themselves are divisible into groups. There is a priesthood of mothers, of fathers, of children, of spouses, of siblings, of friends, of ecclesiastical leaders, of musicians, of construction workers, of astronauts, and so on. These categories of priesthood are not meaningless: people in each of these roles can perform loving acts in ways that are specific to that role.

What then of the Mormon priesthood? I propose that when our Heavenly Parents were organizing the church in various dispensations, they carved out part of the larger priesthood for people who would perform specific functions within the church. For example, ancient temple priests could act in loving service (i.e. use the priesthood) by following the instructions for priests set down in scripture.

In carving out priesthood for the church in this dispensation, our Heavenly Parents specifically stated that it could be exercised only through love. In Doctrine and Covenants Section 121, God states that priesthood has no authority except to persuade “by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned.” Those who exercise their priesthood with love will have an “everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever.” (vv. 41-46). In other words, when Mormon priesthood holders act out of love, others may feel an increase of love that will naturally incline them to follow. This is true, of course, for all people.

I suggest that the Mormon priesthood is not more important than the priesthood of all people. Mormon priesthood holders are given opportunities to show love to others in a particular context, but I suggest that our Heavenly Parents are concerned not so much with context in which we show love but that we do show love where we can.

Finally, what implications does the priesthood of all people hold for Mormon women? Should they be allowed to exercise the Mormon priesthood? It is not my place to make decisions for the Mormon church. It seems to me, however, that priesthood is given to people based on their ability to exercise it. The priesthood of all people is available to those beings who have moral autonomy because beings without moral autonomy are incapable of exercising it. The priesthood of, say, musicians (or of mothers or fathers) is given to them because they are capable of exercising their priesthood in a way that other people cannot.

The question, then, is whether women are capable of performing the functions that Mormon male priesthood holders perform. Are women capable of administering the sacrament? Making decisions for an entire ward or stake? Witnessing of Jesus Christ to all people, as do apostles? The answer is obviously yes. This position is supported by the scriptures—which speak of prophetesses and female apostles—and Mormon church history, which shows that Joseph Smith organized the Relief Society as a “kingdom of priests” to “move according to the ancient priesthood” and ordained Emma Smith and other Mormon women to the priesthood.

If the scriptures and church history support a female Mormon priesthood, why are Mormon women not currently allowed to exercise it? Again, I would not presume to say. One possible explanation, however, is that in the social milieu of past times, women seemed less capable of performing priesthood functions and were therefore not allowed to. Looking about the world now, however, we have ample evidence that women can lead and serve at the highest levels. To the extent the exclusion of Mormon women from the priesthood rests solely on historical rather than doctrinal grounds, I personally see no reason why it ought to continue.

Since I have some experience being Mormon—and a great deal of experience being gay—several friends have asked me what I think of the new website http://www.mormonsandgays.org.

After reading through it and watching all of the videos, I think it’s wonderful! I have read many of the criticisms levied against the site: that it fails to change the church’s underlying position, that the message of basic Christian love is one the church should have been teaching all along, that the church is being disingenuous or hypocritical or is trying to have it both ways, or that this message is “too little, too late” to erase the enormous pain the church has caused gay people and their families and allies in the past.

I truly understand these criticisms. They are validly held. For me, the site’s message consists not only of what it is saying, but how it is saying it. The church’s position has not changed, but the tone is significantly different. Here apostles and others are modeling for church members how to accept gay folks in families and in congregations as friends and fellow children of God. How to suspend judgment. How to listen. How to place gay people in the “us” category and not in the “other” or “them” category. This will have an immediate impact on church leaders, church members, and gay Mormons. The gay Mormon experience will change significantly because of this website. The lives of many gay Mormon youth in particular will be substantially better because of this website.

For those who, like myself, are left doctrinally unsatisfied, I say: the perfect is the enemy of the good. I would love to see a revelation tomorrow in which God clarifies that homosexuality is just as much a divine gift as heterosexuality, and that gay couples can now marry in the temple. But just because mormonsandgays.org isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it’s not an excellent step in the right direction. I like to give credit where credit is due.

With regard to the deep pain the church has caused gay members and our allies: I know that pain. That’s why I left the church 12 years ago. Speaking only for myself, I now know that the church was able to hurt me because I had unrealistic expectations of it—admittedly fostered by the church’s own rhetoric of following the leaders and prophets never leading anyone astray.

I returned to the church not too long ago. I believe I have grown up a good deal spiritually, enough to realize that the church and its leaders are just as imperfect as I am. Why does this not bother me? Because the church is not my ultimate source of spiritual strength. I have an unmediated relationship with God, who is my nurturer, my lawgiver, and my judge. I know unreservedly that my sexuality is a gift from God and not any more a “struggle” or a “challenge” than anyone else’s sexuality. The church is simply wrong, and that’s okay.

Instead of viewing the church as my infallible conduit to God, I view it as a sibling, since we were both created by God. My sibling hurt me, but since I am imperfect and need God’s forgiveness, I feel compelled to extend that same forgiveness to the church. If it will be patient with me on my journey toward divine wholeness, I will be patient with it as it finds its way out of homophobia. I choose to engage fully with my sibling despite our imperfections because we love and enrich each other. To paraphrase Carol Lynn Pearson (in her delightful new book, The Hero’s Journey of the Gay and Lesbian Mormon), I am a gift to the Mormon Tribe, and the Tribe is a gift to me.

I have thus far seen my call to return to the church in terms of serving fellow church members and the church as a whole. As a stranger in a strange land—an out and confident gay man among the Mormons—but more importantly as a human being and follower of Christ serving other children of God however I can.

But recent experiences have shown me that I have a unique opportunity to do missionary work among inactive gay (and gay-friendly) Mormons and my mostly-liberal non-Mormon friends and acquaintances, both gay and straight. These people might never entertain communication about the Mormon church from a more traditional source, but they are curious as to why in heaven’s name a gay person would return to this particular church.

The open-hearted curiosity of my non-member friends is a rare gift, and has allowed me to explain what I find most compelling about Mormonism: eternal spiritual growth and progression, the blessing of embodiment, the collapse of distance between the material and the spiritual, essentially universal salvation, and, most importantly to me, the infinite love of a Savior and Heavenly Parents who make any and every sacrifice to assist in our progress and salvation.

My inactive gay Mormon (or formerly Mormon) friends and acquaintances have reacted in a variety of ways to news of my return. Some have actually returned to activity with me, others are curious and open, and still others have talked honestly with me about the obstacles that currently prevent them from returning. I think these conversations are planting valuable seeds that few other people could plant.

I also believe my story is having some effect among straight Mormons who have left the church or become less active because of its treatment of gay folks. Examples include my last missionary companion and his wife, who stopped going to church for precisely this reason. They were surprised to learn that I, as a gay man, have returned to activity. I am hoping this will create a space in their hearts for eventual fellowship once more with the saints. I have also talked with parents of gay friends, where the parents became less active because they are unable to reconcile love of the church with love of their children.

In short, I feel the work reviving in my soul! Gay Mormons have unique and wonderful opportunities to thrust in our sickle and harvest fields that remain white with the souls of our Heavenly Parents’ children. Every one of them is precious beyond measure.

On Saturday, I showed up to the new chapel at 9 AM to participate in our ward’s cleaning assignment. I vacuumed and changed trash bags in the classrooms and bathrooms.

I can report that I have a much greater appreciation for the work that goes into keeping a building clean. I must have previously thought that buildings magically clean themselves! It felt good to contribute and interact in goal-directed activity with other ward members.

I feel a greater sense of ownership in the building, not only because of the cleaning but because I have begun paying tithing. I think of tithing not only as a way of helping others who are less fortunate who may come to the church for assistance (i.e. “charity” in the best sense of the word) but also as a membership fee. I use the facilities so it is only right for me to contribute to their upkeep.

I noted with pleasure during the cleaning that there were equal numbers of men and women, and people volunteered for whichever duties they wanted, which did not seem to fall along any gender lines. Thumbs up!

This past Sunday I accompanied a musical number in sacrament meeting and taught a lesson on the word of wisdom in elders’ quorum.

For my lesson, I divided the chalkboard into columns of Acts and Motivations.  We began with the central act of our theology, Christ’s atonement, and found that its motivation was love.  Then a discussion of the two great commandments to love God and each other, and how these two principles inform not only the substance of all other commandments (WHAT to do), but the motivation behind them (WHY we do them).

We then looked to the word of wisdom specifically—what acts it proscribes and recommends—and discussed why it is loving advice from Heavenly Parents, how obeying it shows love to those who gave us the gift of bodies and to the people around us who would be greatly affected by use of alcohol, drugs, tobacco, etc.

In the spirit of “proving contraries,” we looked at Jesus’ statement that things that go into a person do not defile, but things that come out of a person do defile.  My suggestion was that this is consistent with the word of wisdom because the Pharisees were using the dietary laws as a sword rather than a shield.  This led to the concept that the word of wisdom should be used for our own temporal and spiritual well-being but should not be used to judge other people.  Others elders resolved the seeming incongruity with the idea that taking alcohol or drugs into the body in fact affects what comes out.

Finally, we talked about what to do if we find ourselves on the wrong side of the word of wisdom.  I shared that in my years away from the church, I developed a drug addiction which led me to 12-step recovery.  Others in the quorum emphasized that everyone is welcome at church, even (and perhaps especially) people who are struggling with word of wisdom problems.

I have much more of a testimony of the word of wisdom after teaching this lesson.  I have even *gasp* given up coffee.  But not green tea.  Baby steps.