Affirmation: Gay & Lesbian Mormons

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Steve

Excerpt from "Not Faceless," by Adam Shayne (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 21:1 [Spring 1988], pp. 5-6).

Gay people are not an abstraction. We are real people with a distinguished history living authentic lives. We love, we work, we play, and we contribute enormously to the good of society. But many of us suffer, particularly those gay Mormons who will despise themselves until their homophobic Church accepts them. My friend Steve was such a gay Mormon. Entrapped by BYU security, he "voluntarily" underwent aversion therapy at BYU and was later pressed into marriage by a zealous stake president who convinced him that prayer, laying on of hands, and "commitment" had cured him. It hadn't, and a few years later Steve was sexually active with other men, estranged from his wife and children, and overwhelmed by guilt--the product of a good Mormon upbringing that had carefully taught him to hate himself. Despairing, Steve turned to the Church for help and was eventually excommunicated by a "court of love." Two weeks later he took his life.

Steve's is not an isolated case. While Stout and his profession debate whether gay people are reliable witnesses of their own experience, and the readers of fret about the "homosexual problem," thousands of gay Mormons must endure an unremitting assault on their integrity and self-esteem from a church that preaches love but practices hate. This hate makes it impossible for my family to accept both me and the Church; it tells me the love I have for my lover is born of sin; it would isolate me from my rich friendships with other gay people; it would excommunicate me for claiming more from life than furtiveness, loneliness, and frustration. And it is this hate that would place Church authority between me and God. Maybe Stout, his colleagues, their liberal friends, and perhaps even a few apostles might get it right some day, but how many more Steves will there be in the meantime?