It's time to check in with each other again

Sunday sucked. I woke up to news notifications on my phone about the massacre in Orlando. I turned on the TV and yelled "Nooooooo" when I found out the shooting happened at a gay club.

I gasped, along with members of the media, as the death toll jumped from 20 to 50 during a press conference.

I wept as I started reading about the victims. I cried hearing about the mother who was getting text messages from her son, who later died in the attack. The victim's words "Mommy I love you" brought on so many sad, painful emotions.

I could go on and on, but I'm sure you've already read and taken in every printed and spoken word about Orlando, whether it be opinion, fact, or snarky remark on Twitter.

So let me get to my main point - please check in again on your LGBT/SSA loved ones, friends, acquaintances, enemies, etc.

Find out how they're doing. If they want to express their anger, listen. If they want a hug, give it to them. Tell them you love them. It's not a time to judge. And don't you dare use the words "Love the sinner, hate the sin" in any shape or form.

I use the word 'again' in the title of this blog post, as I first made this suggestion right after the policy change in the LDS Church. You can't compare the two events, but the repercussions among the LDS LGBT community are the same. Mohos are hurting. Mohos in the closet may be terrified at the thought of coming out. Recently out Mohos may feel unsafe as they experiment with dating in public. There are many differences of opinion and outlook when it comes to LGBT/SSA members of the church. But this is the time for everyone to come together in unity and strength - setting aside those differences.

My condolences to the family and friends of those involved in this horrible, senseless attack.

Who are you? Part 4 - Losing faith on the mission

Howdy! How's everybody doing?

Time for the next installment of your favorite Gay Mormon Southpaw segment: Who Are You? The latest interviewee, Corbin Brodie, followed me on Twitter. We started chatting, and I learned that he recently published a book on growing up gay and Mormon. I love read other Mohos' stories and was immediately intrigued and wanted to include him in my little franchise. I'm happy to provide his answers to my short interview below. (And of course if you'd like to learn more about Corbin, please check out his book!) I'm amazed at the beautiful writing talent of all who have shared their stories. (And there are more to come!)

As always, if you're interested in sharing your story, contact me using the form on your right.

Here we go...

Q. Explain your correlation/involvement to the Moho blogging community.

A. It’s a new thing for me, as I’ve increasingly seen how much gay related issues have moved to centre ground in Mormon cultural dynamics, public discourse and public relations. This has been fascinating for me to see because when I was younger and still a member it would have been inconceivable that you could openly admit to being gay and Mormon and get any other reaction than horror from members. As someone who has been there, growing up gay and Mormon and struggling through it when it was impossible to even talk about it, I felt I had something to add to the conversation.

Q. What's life been like both gay and Mormon?

A. When I was a teenager it was a nightmare. In high school I’d see that other people could date, have boyfriends/girlfriends, talk about who they liked to parents or friends, experience the romance and magic of dancing together at high school or church dances, have a smooch, and enjoy the whole wonder of it, with all its fun and excitement and clumsiness and awkwardness and heartbreak. 

Just the fact other kids could openly talk about their romantic feelings and experiences pained me because I couldn’t even do that. On top of it, there was this feeling that I had to be not just a good Mormon but an exemplary Mormon, to make up for how I was inside, and in order for God to “cure” me. It was only while on my mission in Japan that it dawned on me how ridiculous and cruel this all was and I finally accepted who I was. Since returning from my mission I’ve not had to struggle with being gay and Mormon because I stopped being Mormon. Even then I had all that lifetime of internal programming to get out of my system because Mormonism isn’t just a religion, it’s a culture, and that culture always remains a part of you.

Q.  What's your current status with the church?

A. My belief in the Church completely collapsed halfway through my mission, although I stayed the whole two years for family and other reasons. When I got home I continued to attend church for a few months, to spare my mother’s feelings for a while, but then I stopped going and have never been back and haven’t missed it at all. It would be hard for me to convey how quietly molten with anger I was by the end of my mission, and how profoundly I resented what I felt I had been robbed of while a teenager and for those two years while trapped on a mission, two years which I felt could and should have been two of the most wonderful years of my life. 

I have never bothered to officially resign from the Church and formally request my membership be cancelled, as many people have done, because whatever this institution had in its records seemed meaningless to me. I had Mormon friends “alarmed” that I’d left, who tried to “counsel” me and who were horrified that I was happily and actively gay without in any way feeling ashamed of it. I hardly knew how to respond to the condescension, blindness and arrogance in their attitudes and just ignored them completely.

Q. Are you out to friends and family?

A. I’m completely out to friends and family. I came out at one point to my brother but with my mother I simply lived openly the way I wanted to, without feeling I had to come out in any formal way. I felt I didn’t have to explain anything. There was a point not long after returning from Japan when I did come out to my straight male non-Mormon friends and although they were stunned to start with I never lost a single friend. They were great about it even though I was the only gay person they knew. If anything, the fact I was no longer hiding anything made our friendships all the more fun, open and interesting.

Q. What is your current status? (Single, in a relationship, etc.) Are you happy?

A. Until recently I’d been in a relationship for almost two years, but just before Christmas my boyfriend got offered an amazing job in the United States he couldn’t turn down so we had to call it a day (I live in the UK). So single at the moment but not planning to stay that way. I’ve had several long term boyfriends in my life who have all been some of the most beautiful human beings I’ve ever known. At the moment I’d say yes I’m happy, although I tend to think of happiness as something you experience here and there, not something you obtain and hold on to. I'd call myself very existentially satisfied.

Q. Who is your celebrity crush? 

A. Ha ha, I find it hard to get truly attracted to someone unless I know them personally and have talked to them. The UK talk show host Graham Norton is someone I think is quite cute, funny, smart and charming.

Q.  You mentioned you started losing your faith while serving a mission. What led you to the overall disbelief of the church? 

A. It was a slow, gradual process made up of different elements. Being gay was not even the main issue. Unlike many people who leave the Church, I never thought about or wrestled over doctrine, Church history, Joseph Smith issues etc. For me it was simply that the Church utterly failed to give me any spiritual connection with the cosmos. On my mission I saw so much bullying, so much fakeness, so much dishonesty, so much corporate-style salesmanship, so much hypocrisy, so much fanaticism, such clear examples of people pretending they knew things they didn’t know, that the whole miasma of belief I’d been brainwashed with as a child collapsed. Once that happened the penny dropped for me intellectually. I was very interested in history and just immediately saw that it was all man-made, that it was all made up in the 19^th century. I'm pretty sure I would have left the Church even if I had not been gay.

Q. What was your immediate reaction to the Handbook policy change on gay couples and kids?

A. It didn’t surprise me. Over recent years the Church has softened its rhetoric towards homosexuality but I see that as a pure public relations exercise. Underneath it, the hostility is still there. It’s obviously shocking that even non-gay Mormon children would be made to pay the price for this hostility. What amazes me is how the Church talks about love all the time but has to be taught about love by non-Mormon society. It’s an institution which claims to have privileged access to eternal truth and a higher form of love and knowledge, yet it’s always struggling to keep up with society at large. 

It was only when non-Mormon society changed its prejudiced attitude towards black people that the Church belatedly abandoned its own bigotry. After years of terrible psychological and emotional abuse of young gay Mormons, it was only in recent decades when society became more accepting of gay people and gay equality that the Church suddenly changed its own tune and tried to – very clumsily – adopt a more “accepting” attitude. But no amount of rhetoric about love and acceptance can really disguise the hostility and callousness. 

When Dallin H. Oaks was questioned the other day about the rash of suicides in the wake of the new handbook policy, he actually had the lack of tact to say that “Nobody is sadder about a case like that than I am”. As some people have responded, “really?” He’s sadder about it than the dead young person’s parents and friends and boyfriend or girlfriend? It utterly amazes me that anyone who is gay would remain Mormon, that they would just endure the breathtaking arrogance, that they would lose their own lives because of such condescension, that they would accept such humiliation and attack on their own dignity as full spectrum human beings.

Q. What are your thoughts on Mixed Orientation Marriages?  

A. I don’t have a problem with them because, to me, people should be free to live their lives as they want to. If they aren’t hurting anyone, it’s all valid. Mixed orientation marriages, if they are about love and if the two people get a reward and spiritual satisfaction from it, are perfectly valid. I don’t understand it, but I accept it. Perhaps the only thing I’d have reservations about is if a gay person is in one for purely religious reasons, and wouldn’t be otherwise. But I still just think of it as none of my business.

Q.  You've recently published your journal entries from the mission. Give a brief summary of what we'd find in your book.  

A. My book is called The Gate and The Garden: The Apostate Journals of a Gay Mormon Missionary in Japan. It is literally the actual journals I kept on my mission, along with the short stories and poems I wrote at the same time, on that journey. I’ve changed names and where people are from and some incidental things to protect people’s privacy, and tidied up punctuation and some things like that, but otherwise it’s exactly what I wrote back then.  

What the reader will find is a very detailed documentation of how a believing 19 year old Mormon boy went on his mission, secretly believing and hoping that God would cure him of his private homosexual feelings if only he did his best and trusted in faith. It documents how bit by bit, step by step, he lost his faith in Mormonism and accepted himself as gay wholeheartedly. The second half is all about how he struggled to keep these two things concealed while surviving the whole two years for family reasons. 

It’s kind of strange that I’d been so affected by anti-gay hostility in the Church that even after I realized I didn’t believe a word of Mormonism any more, it took a while longer to be able to write about being a gay Mormon. I guess that says something right there. When I did it all came tumbling out in my journals, the whole experience of growing up gay in the Church, my feelings, my experiences. There must be so many young gay Mormons who have gone on missions and only in that crucible learned to be who they are that it surprises me I’m the first person – as far as I can tell – to actually publish journals describing that experience. 

The book is about more than this though. It gives a real feel for what a two year mission can be like on the ground. It certainly gives a lot of information about being a missionary in Japan a few decades ago. It’s also about larger issues. It’s about crossing the bridge from childhood to adulthood. It’s about discovering the joy of being who you are, not who you are told you should be. It’s about being intellectually independent. It’s also about a kind of creative awakening, with the poems and short stories I wrote as a means of self-expression while on this whole journey. I certainly feel that gay Mormons or gay ex-Mormons or gay missionaries or gay Mormons thinking of going on missions will find a lot they can relate to and if the book helps anyone struggling with these issues I would feel so happy.

Q. Any advice you'd give to the younger Moho's still in the closet? 

A. I suspect a lot of young gay Mormons who are keeping this secret about themselves are allowing other people to set the terms of how they think, how they live, how they exist as a human being. I’d suggest they start setting their own terms and flipping things the other way round. Instead of worrying that they will disappoint their family or Church members, they should allow themselves to feel disappointed that family and Church members have put them in such a position. 

Instead of feeling that their gay feelings are some kind of selfishness, they should pause to consider the selfishness of people who tell them they can’t enjoy love and intimacy while themselves enjoying it. Instead of allowing other people to tell them what “spirituality” is, they should reach deep inside themselves and feel how much genuine spirit is there, and how it ties them to the universe, and experience that awareness honestly. 

When you’re young you sometimes forget that one day you will be old. Young gay Mormons should ponder how they will feel at the end of their lives, if they’ve lived that life for other people and only too late realized they allowed those other people  - just people, with their own blindness and selfishness – to take their life from them. 

More than anything, young gay Mormons have every right to feel angry. Getting in touch with that anger - which is the voice of their own dignity - is, I think, the healthiest thing they can do, instead of letting that anger turn against them and destroy them.

Q.  Anything else you'd like to add?

A. I just want to say I have never regretted leaving the Church and living my life fully as a gay person. Gay life isn’t all fun and roses; there’s as much pain and messed-up-ness there as elsewhere. Yet I’ve met some of the most amazing beautiful people and had some of the most fulfilling relationships. 

And just living honestly and on my own terms has released so much energy for me to live richly and wholeheartedly. The value of living an authentic life and living it fully has been my pearl of great price. The older I’ve become and more experience I’ve had, the more it astonishes me I could ever have considered surrendering my life because other people told me to.

Who are you? Part 3 - Coming out of the closet twice

I had planned on rolling out a bunch of these "Who are you?" segments, but then the whole Handbook policy leak happened and that shifted the focus in my writing and thoughts (along with many other Moho bloggers.)

I feel this is an appropriate time to bring you another one! I've had several private conversations with this interviewee, and he's just awesome. This past year, he's dealt with coming out of the closet twice 1) as gay and 2) as ex-Mormon. I told him several times that his story will help others gay Mormons trying to figure out what to do with their future. And he writes so well bringing it all together - plus he has great analogies. You'll find our "interview" below.

For the past couple "Who are you?" segments, click here. And If YOU want to share your story - let me know. Contact me using the form on the right or drop me a line - gaymormonsouthpaw (at) gmail (dot) com. I promise full anonymity. You give me your one single fact - and I'll ask my questions based on that.

Enjoy. 

Q. Describe your correlation/involvement to the Moho blogging community.

A. My involvement is actually in infancy. I've read Moho blog posts occasionally but never been a regular patron. Recently I've been thinking about starting a blog or finding somewhere to share my thoughts and stories but I'm still on the fence. I've been sharing some of my experiences on Reddit and it has been helpful for me as I deconstruct myself and try to figure out who I really am at my core.

Q. What's life been like both gay and Mormon?

A. Being gay and Mormon is like being the Incredible Hulk. Most of the time things are alright, and you live a normal life, because you have compartmentalized so thoroughly that an entire side of who you are is locked away tight. However, often things happen that will set you off. Maybe you see your nieces and nephews playing and realize that you'll never experience having a family of your own. Or it could be a remark in church about eternal families and the necessity of marriage. It could just be nothing--you're sitting on a bus and you forget to forget.

Suddenly the walls you've built in your mind crumble and it hits you and you're reminded: I'm gay. Except you don't turn into a giant green monster of epic strength; you turn into a puddle of agonizing emotions. You know what you are. You've heard your church leaders talk about it: you're a pervert, an abomination, abhorrent.

All of the words said about it run through your mind. Your mind replays in exquisite detail the look of disgust that played across your mother's face when she saw a gay kiss on television. Each joke, each grimace, each condemnation. You know that all of that is unknowingly directed at you. You're an abomination that is hiding in plain sight. If they knew the real you.. 

But there's no reason for them to ever know because you don't want to spend an eternity in torment cut off from your family. Because you really believe it. You believe the things that have been taught by the people you've trusted your whole life. So nobody, not even your most homophobic family member, could possibly hate you as much as you hate yourself. Your mind plays over the options endlessly: 

• embrace my disgusting self, and be cut off from my family in the next life, condemned to endless torture;
• live a life of celibacy, with no companionship. An entire life alone, with pity and mild disgust from those around you being your only company;
• suicide--cleansing the filth of your existence from the world, but guaranteeing your place in a hell and breaking your families heart

Sometimes pushing the Incredible Hulk back into his box, rebuilding the walls of denial, and forgetting about The Secret took only minutes or seconds. Sometimes it would take months. 

Life as a gay Mormon is feigned normalcy when you can manage the repression and sheer agony when you can't. 

Note: I write those options out in the way I thought of things growing up in the church. I know now that being gay is not filthy and that I'm a good person who deserves a happy, normal life.

Q. What's your current status with the church?

A. I've always been very invested in the church. It wasn't enough to just go to church, I felt like I really needed to live it in every aspect of my life. I'd planned to live a life of celibacy and I did...for twenty eight years. 

At one point however, I took a break from going to church for a couple weeks. After several years of going to a young single adult each week and listening to the constant reminders of a marriage I'd never have, I decided I needed a break from the torturous banality of it all. I stopped attending for a short while and when I did I was hit with a shocking realization: I was happy without church attendance in my life. In some ways I think I'd expected my life to fall apart and feel terrible on the weeks I skipped church. The reality was that nothing changed; if anything I found myself feeling more fulfilled and less focused on my own problems. 

This was opposite from what I expected would happen and it threw me for a loop. I decided I'd better get things figured out so I set to reading church materials to try to reconfirm my testimony. Unfortunately for the church, I'd learned a lot about critical thinking since the last time I'd really given the church an honest look. This time around I studied both sides of the issues, chased sources, and didn't accept platitudes and non-answers. After a lot of study and soul searching, I came to the conclusion that the church is not what it claims it is. I left the church almost a year ago and will at some point have my records removed if I'm not excommunicated first.

Q. Are you out to friends and family? If you're not out, what keeps you in the closet?

A. I'm out to my immediate family only, as well as a couple of friends that I knew would be supportive due to their being in similar situations, or no longer Mormon. 

Growing up, I was as closeted as you could get. The thought of admitting I was gay to anyone was enough to conjure detailed suicide plans. If I had been outed as a youth, there is no question in my mind: I would not have survived that day. For lots of years I tried to convince myself that I was imagining things. The thought that I could be gay was too awful to contemplate. 

After leaving the church, things quickly turned on their head and I became much less ashamed of my sexuality. However, I didn't think it was fair to drop two bombs on my family at the same time so I waited for a while before telling my parents. My siblings found out shortly after, and I plan to tell close friends soon, and then make a general social media announcement. I'm impatient to be out of the shadows that I've hidden in for so many years.

Q. What is your current status? (Single, in a relationship, etc.) Are you happy?

A. Right now I'm single. I'm temporarily living in a rural town, so my opportunities to meet people are beyond limited. My whole life I've craved companionship, but it was never a possibility. I'm like an audiophile who was born deaf--my one desire was an impossibility. 

Yet now, here I am. I'm impatient to begin. Hopefully soon I will find a job in another state, move, and be able to find mutual affection for the first time in my life. It's incredible for me to think about. So am I happy? Right now I'm in agony waiting, worrying about the unknowns, and terrified that I won't be able to find the right person. However, I have hope and that's more than I have ever had in my life, so yes; I'm ecstatic.

Q. Who is your celebrity crush?

A. Celebrity crush? Why isn't that plural? How can I possibly pick just one celebrity crush? The best I can do is three: Chris Pratt, Channing Tatum, and Brendon Urie. I've got a thing for people who are comfortable laughing at themselves.

Q. How do you see yourself in the future? (Staying with the church, leaving it, balance both sexuality and church, etc.)

A. Once my family and friends have had a little time for my being gay to sink in I'd like to leave the church on paper. I think severing that technicality would give things a note of finality that would help my subconscious as well as my parents. My parents go through constant torture; hoping that I'll change my mind and somehow the glass will be unbroken. Having my name removed would help I think. 

In my wildest of dreams this is where I see myself: in love with a man who feels the same way about me. Some days I'll wake up before he does, and I'll just watch him while he peacefully sleeps and wonder how I ever thought that self-hate and a lifetime of denial was an option. We'll explore, grow, and learn together. Some nights we'll just curl up on the couch and read. On the weekend we go camping--and as we cuddle together for warmth we stare up at the stars and we talk about life. When the time is right we adopt children and spend our lives loving them. That's my dream, and I hope that someday that will be my future.

Q. What was your immediate reaction to the Handbook policy change on gay couples and kids?

A. I felt like I'd been kicked in the gut with a boot made of knives. Even though I had left the church, this was a clear message of intolerance. All of my family, immediate and extended, on both sides...everyone is Mormon. How would this affect their treatment of me? And what about the people that are still trying to make things work with the church?  

I may not want my children near the church, but that doesn't make me feel any less hurt for those that do. There is no defending it; the policy change is despicable. If those words are from God, then I have no desire to spend eternity with that God. The silver lining was that the policy change set things in motion and a couple days after it was leaked I came out to my parents.

Q. Anything else you'd like to add?

A. Whether you're still an active believer in the church or not; don't ever hate yourself or be ashamed of who you are. You've probably gone through most of your life hearing disparaging remarks, directly or indirectly. This isn't something you chose. It isn't a weakness, temptation, or character flaw. 

Hating yourself because you are gay is like hating yourself because you were born with blue eyes. If you can't accept yourself now, cut out those who pull you down and find those that lift you up. Because afterlife or not, this life is way too short to be spent in misery and self-loathing. If you need someone to talk to get in touch with me.  (GMS Note: contact me, and I'll put you in touch with him) 

As a true southpaw, swiping LEFT on the rejects is slightly offensive

I got bored this past weekend. A little too bored.

I was in the mood to do something adventurous. I've heard a lot of talk about Tinder and thought, 'eh, what the heck?'

This is a huge step. I'm only out to close family and a few friends, so attaching my face and name on a dating app was a little nerveracking.

(For those of you who don't know, Tinder is a "location-based social discovery application that facilitates communication between mutually interested users." Thank you Wikipedia.)

I downloaded the app to my tablet, connected to my Facebook profile, to which it defaulted to 'search for women,' which made me chuckle. I switched it to 'men' and fastened my seatbelt.

If you see someone you like, you swipe to the right, if you'd rather pass on someone, swipe to the left. As if lefties don't deal with enough difficulties in a right-dominated world, swiping to the left for the "thanks, but no thanks" options adds a little salt to the wound. But I digress.

This is how my extremely short evening went:

Ooh. He's cute. Swipe right.
What is he wearing?! Swipe left.
Nice body, but I don't see a face. Swipe left.
Oh my gosh. I love him. Swipe right.
Please keep your freaking tongue in your mouth. Swipe left.
Duck face on a dude is just not attractive. Swipe left.
He's my age and we have lots of similar interests?! Swipe right.
I'm like a kid in a candy store. A candy store full of pretty men.

Then about 3 minutes later...

I get a notification: "It's a match!"
Wait. What?! I just signed up for this thing. How do I already have a match?!
(Pause for explanation: I swiped right on his profile. He swiped right on mine.)
Yes, he's cute. The feelings are mutual?! I can't believe this. Oh boy, this is all happening so fast.
I can't concentrate anymore and am done swiping.
I get a notification: Match dude has sent me a message?!
What?! What do I do?!
Way too fast! I can't take the pressure!
I freeze.
I log out.
I kinda freak out, but with a smile on my face.
Is this real life?
To be continued....

I told the fam damily

No, I did not come out via cake.

If you were to ask me a year ago: "GMS, when do you plan on coming out to your family?" After nervously laughing for a few seconds, I would have given a lame answer like, "never." Then I would change the subject and move on. And then hope you would never ask me that question again.

Which is why I still find it hard to believe what I did during the Christmas holiday. After a series of conversations and emails, I'm officially out of the closet to my immediate family. And it feels 'really' good. Another load taken off my back as I make this crazy journey of being both gay and Mormon.

If I could sum up my family's responses in one word - it would be: perfect. They showed love, support, compassion, acceptance, understanding, etc. And not one person replied with, "I knew it." or "What took you so long?" which makes it even better. I should probably mention the word "love" again, as it was a recurring theme from my family, and to me, the most important action one could show. If I knew it would have been this easy, I would have done it years ago!

As I was thinking and preparing my coming out letter, the Tweet on the left from J.K. Rowling crossed my feed - and I had this calming feeling that everything would be alright. And it was.

For those of you still in the closet, I know how it feels, and encourage you to be open when the time is right. No rush. But it really might be easier than you think!

Moving on.. and if you're still reading this -- I've made it clear that I love data and stats. I'm constantly checking the stats and numbers for this blog and noticed this blog was recently shared on Facebook. I'm happy and excited for the extra publicity, but have no clue as to what FB page it was shared on, nor can I read and respond to the comments (if there were any.) If you got here from a FB page, could you let me know which one brought you here? Since I'm anonymous, it's totally cool if you're anonymous in using the contact form on the right.

Tell your family you love them.