It's Been A Year

I published some reflections on the policy change and the anniversary of my coming out on Facebook. I've decided to repost them here.

A year ago yesterday was the policy change, which many are calling the Policy of Exclusion. As I watched the controversy unfold over Facebook, I saw many good people, who I care about, say things about LGBT members that I knew they would never say to the face of someone they cared for. I saw many members claim that the policy was fine, because "those LGBT people" didn't want to be a part of the Church anyways, and this policy would make clear to the righteous that they weren't to be led astray by the rebellions of "those people."

And so a year ago today, I came out of the closet as bisexual. I had many reasons for doing this, but a major one was to show people that LGBT people are not this nameless, faceless, vaguely threatening group of "those people." We are people you know and love. We are in your wards. We hear what you say and write about us. And for those of us who have been born in the Church, many of us want very badly to be a part of it.

I have been fortunate, in that I was never forced to choose between having a family of my own and being in good standing with the Church. For the vast majority of LGBT members, an opposite-gender partner is not a viable option. I have tried to think of what it would have been like for me if I were forced to choose between my family and the Church. From the moment I met Mason, I knew how much happiness he would bring me. Would I have been able to glimpse that happiness, and turn away from it in favor of fifty years of celibacy? Would I have been able to deny myself a family while attending church week after week, a Church that constantly teaches that true happiness can only be found in families? I honestly don't know if I could.

I don't write this to try to convince anyone to change their mind about Church doctrine or even the policy. I write this to ask straight members to have empathy for the incredibly difficult sacrifice that the Church asks of its LGBT members. It is not the same as being as single straight member. Single straight members are encouraged to date. They are encouraged to pursue people who interest them. They are encouraged to hope for marriage. LGBT members are asked to suppress their feelings and wait until the next life to somehow figure this out. It is not the same. It is isolating and lonely and difficult.

Because of this, it is no surprise to me that some LGBT members eventually choose to pursue same-sex relationships in some capacity or another. This does not mean they don't want to be a part of the Church; indeed, many of them continue to try to continue to make our religion a part of their lives. And that's part of why this policy hurt - many felt like the Church was saying, "We don't want your efforts to continue to be involved in some way. You can stay and be lonely, or you can leave entirely."

I have seen many straight members claim that if LGBT members feel unwelcome, all they have to do is keep the commandments and they will feel welcome. This is an easy way to absolve the Church and its members from the hurt that LGBT members feel. It is comfortable to feel that you are not complicit in anyone's pain. It is comfortable to feel that there is an easy solution to pain.

I have two things to say to that. The first is that as a commandment-keeping, temple-married LGBT member, who doesn't even have to deal with the loneliness that most LGBT members experience, I can tell you that that isn't true. Simply keeping the commandments does not suddenly make the Church a welcoming place. There are plenty of things that have been done and said, from comments made in Sunday School all the way up to things said in General Conference, that have made LGBT members feel unwelcome, regardless of the status of their temple recommend. I am not referring to simple teachings of true doctrine. I am referring to hurtful things that have no place in the Gospel of Christ and no need to be said, ever, by anyone. And I am referring to the silence that implies agreement in the wake of those comments, the silence that says that we are not important enough to stand up for.

The second thing I have to say is, if possible, more important, and it is that as members of a Church that bears the name of Christ, we have the responsibility to do all we can to make sure that everyone feels the love of Christ through us, regardless of the commandments they are or are not keeping. Christ ate with publicans and sinners; He didn't do as the Pharisees did and wait for people to attain a certain standard of "worthiness" and then come to Him on their own. While teaching the Nephites after his resurrection, Christ taught:

"And behold, ye shall meet together oft; and ye shall not forbid any man from coming unto you when ye shall meet together, but suffer them that they may come unto you and forbid them not;
But ye shall pray for them, and shall not cast them out; and if it so be that they come unto you oft ye shall pray for them unto the Father, in my name.

Therefore, hold up your light that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light which ye shall hold up - that which ye have seen me do. [...]

And ye see that I have commanded that none of you should go away, but rather have commanded that ye should come unto me, that ye might feel and see; even so shall ye do unto the world; and whoseoever breaketh this commandment suffereth himself to be led into temptation. [...]

Nevertheless, ye shall not cast [people not keeping the commandments] out from among you, but ye shall minster unto him and shall pray for him unto the Father, in my name [...] ye shall not cast him out of your synagogues, or your places of worship, for unto such shall ye continue to minister; for ye know not but what they will return and repent, and come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I shall heal them." (3 Nephi 18)

The Savior makes it clear that it is not enough to simply passively say "Well, everyone is welcome at church if they really want to be there." We are supposed to *minister* to people. We are supposed to *actively work* to welcome them, just as He actively left the ninety and nine and sought after the one.

As a missionary, I brought all sorts of people to church and saw members make an effort to welcome them. People with prison tattoos. People reeking of cigarette smoke. People who were clearly not living the gospel. And I saw members go out of their way to make them feel loved and welcome. I saw members fellowship the same investigators for years, making them feel welcome and not judged while they explored the often complicated path of reconciling their life with the Church.

So don't tell yourself that LGBT people will feel welcome if they'd just keep the commandments, because there's no reason that they should be the exception to the fellowship that exists in Christ and has the potential to exist in each one of us. I have seen it in action. It is wonderful. It is healing. And every one of us LGBT members, whether we are keeping the commandments or not, needs that healing, because there has been so. much. hurt.

At minimum, I beg of you all to be very careful to not add to the burden that LGBT members carry, regardless of their activity level. But we are not a church that asks for the minimum. Don't settle for not adding to our burden. Please, help to bear it. Don't tell us that we're not doing enough to bear it on our own; all too often, those who are perceived of not doing enough have simply collapsed under the weight of it. Don't wait for us to come to you. Come to us, seek after us, welcome us, lift our burden upon your back, and help us return joyfully together to the peace of Christ's fold.

On "Defining Yourself By Your Sexuality"

So as I've said before, I'm bisexual.

That seems to make some people uncomfortable. Some people think I shouldn't talk about it at all; others think it's okay to talk about it, as long as I don't use the word "bisexual." The most common explanation I've heard for this idea is that calling myself bisexual means I'm defining myself by my sexuality.

I don't really get that. I'm not defining myself by my sexuality; I'm defining my sexuality by using the word in the English language that most accurately describes who I am attracted to. To me, coming up with a euphemism to describe my sexuality is unnecessary, because there's already a word for it — a word which, by the way, is completely neutral. "Bisexual" doesn't tell you anything more about me than "experiences same and opposite gender attraction" does, and it has the advantage of being 34 letters shorter.

Frankly, I don't think it's anyone's business whether I talk about my sexuality, or how much, or why. However, I will say that I feel like it's an important conversation to have. Far too often, especially in an LDS community, conversations about LGBT issues occur when straight, cis people talk to other straight, cis people about this group of "other" people. And while many of these conversations are well-meaning, the fact that they primarily occur among non-LGBT people contributes to a feeling of othering. It's much easier to accidentally say something insensitive about a nameless, faceless group of people than it is to say that thing about someone you know.

For this reason, I felt uncomfortable talking about LGBT issues when people assumed I was straight. I felt like I was perpetuating the problem instead of helping to solve it.

(Plus, I'm not uncomfortable with my sexuality, and having to censor all the pun opportunities it affords me simply because I hadn't said the words "I'm bisexual" to anyone was just really annoying.)

You don't have to agree with or understand why I chose to come out, but at any rate, I'm going to use the word "bisexual" when my sexuality is relevant to something I'm trying to say.  And if you have a problem with that, I just want to make one thing clear:

If you think that after one word, you know anything about how I feel about my sexuality — if you think you know what choices I've made about it — if you think you can make assumptions about the state of my marriage because of it — if you think you know my feelings on Church doctrine or policy — if you think you can make assumptions about my activity in the Church — if you think my sexuality is going to be an issue — if you think I'm being "divisive" somehow — if you feel like you know what role it plays in my life — 

And if any of the things you think after just hearing the word "bisexual" make you so uncomfortable that you feel the need to tell me I shouldn't use that word —

The issue isn't that I'm "defining myself by my sexuality."

The issue is that you are.

I Didn't Think This Would Be My First Post

So I've had this blog hiding on the Interwebs for the past few weeks, trying to come up with a good blog post and the motivation to write it. I started this blog because I wanted somewhere I could talk about ideas and interesting stuff in addition to my personal life (which is often less interesting), but the first post felt like a lot of pressure because I didn't want people to pigeonhole my blog into one category or another based on what I talked about first.

I guess the fact that I wasn't planning on blogging about this freed me from that self-imposed problem.

(Spoiler alert: I'm not having a crisis of faith or making any big drastic changes in my life, so all of my relatives who are already getting nervous can start breathing again.)

But you see, I am bisexual.

(Cue heart attacks starting again.)

That's not the point of this post; I just wanted to get it out of the way. (If you want to know the point, scroll down to the bolded phrase "the point is this".) While it's a big struggle for a lot of people, for me personally, it hasn't affected my life a lot. This is partly because I was in denial about it until well after I'd decided I wanted to marry my husband, so the most difficult part has been answering his question about whether Anna Kendrick or Emma Watson is more attractive. 

And that wasn't very difficult, because the answer is obviously Anna Kendrick. 

In fact, I probably would have been comfortable telling almost any of you in the right moment; I just wanted it to be relevant to something, because I didn't feel it warranted a big "coming out" moment all on its own for me.

I just didn't expect it to become relevant to something quite so soon.

Unless your Internet has been down, you've probably heard about the Church's new policies regarding same-sex marriage by now; namely, that same-sex marriage is considered to be a form of apostasy, and that children of same-sex couples must wait until they've turned 18 and moved out of their parents' house before being baptized, and must denounce the practice of same-sex marriage and obtain First Presidency permission before doing so.

I was surprised by the news, as a lot of people were. Well, the first policy wasn't too surprising – "apostasy" is a really strong word, which I think hurt a lot of people, but the idea that participating in a same-sex marriage is grounds for excommunication wasn't exactly new. In fact, I'd been expecting a clarification of this sort ever since the Supreme Court decision, since I had heard some people express the idea that perhaps a legally wed same-sex couple wouldn't be breaking the law of chastity. I expected the Church to eventually comment one way or the other, and again, while "apostasy" is a strong way to say it, the policy hasn't actually changed and if that was all it is, I feel like it would blow over.

The policy about children was a little different. I had a lot of questions about it immediately. At the same time, though, while I was surprised by the policy, I wasn't surprised that I had questions. There have been a lot of hard things in the Church that have caused people to question – persecution of the early Saints, starting polygamy, moving to Utah, ending polygamy, making the Word of Wisdom a requirement for a temple recommend, blacks not being able to hold the priesthood even after the civil rights movement, blacks being allowed to hold the priesthood in 1978, the Church's response to some aspects of second-wave feminism, the September Six, Proposition 8, the Ordain Women movement, and hundreds upon hundreds of issues that are more local in scope that I haven't even heard of before. 

People have questioned these things. Heck, even though I have a lot of potential answers to some of these issues, I don't know if those answers are the right ones and how to explain it in some sort of conclusive, all-encompassing way that would defy any objection or criticism. What I do know is that I've had enough spiritual witnesses of the Church and enough glimmerings of possible answers for these issues that I have faith that someday in the eternities, I'll be able to look at God and say, "So...what was that about?" and He'll be able to provide me with an explanation that makes everything clear. As Paul says, "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." 

I'd reached the conclusion on my mission that it was virtually impossible for me to live my entire life in the Church without arriving at an issue of similar weight and importance. So when I heard the policy announcement, while part of me was confused, a part of me was like, well...there it is! (The first one, at least.)

As Mason and I talked about it, the conclusion we arrived at was that we can't see the eternal perspective. Because of this, our sense of what's right and wrong often depends on preventing people from hurt in the short-term. We don't always have the ability to judge whether or not something hurtful will be better for us in the long term. God does have that ability, and therefore, He is able to make different decisions than we can. (If you want an article by a non-LDS philosopher on that point, email me or use the contact link on the FAQ page.) We can try to look for possible answers (some can be found here, although there are definitely objections that could be raised to that article), but in the end, all we can know is the peace of God that passes all understanding (Phil. 4:7). 

As we talked together, as we prayed and read the scriptures, I felt that confirmation. I was reminded of times when I felt the Spirit witness to me that God and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith, restoring their Church upon the earth with a promise that it would never again be taken away from us. I felt a reminder of the love of God that He has for all His children, and a knowledge that He wants to give every single one of them the best possible opportunity to return to Him. He has a plan, and I don't know it, and I don't know exactly how or why this plays into it, but in the very least, I knew that it was going to be all right.

Despite how much time I've spent talking about that, though, that's not the point of my first post any more than me being bisexual is. The point is this:

Everyone has to arrive at this spiritual witness individually, and that doesn't always happen right away even when you want it to. So far on the Internet, I've seen a lot of people argue that it can't be right, and I've seen a lot of people argue that it is right and that anyone who disagrees isn't sustaining the prophets, or doesn't have enough faith, or isn't humble enough to accept the answer, or is too concerned about what the world thinks, or any number of things. Even when people don't necessarily mean to imply that about those who are troubled by this issue, that's often the message that people can hear.

The thing is, whether straight or gay or somewhere in between, a lot of people who are upset by this issue are responding from a place of hurt. It's tremendously difficult to be LGBT in the Church, or to be friends or family with someone who is LGBT. I've been lucky that my life and beliefs ended up dovetailing relatively easily with the Church's teachings, and I've avoided a lot of that difficulty as a result. Despite this, upon hearing the policy change, I felt hurt. I felt uncomfortable with a sexuality that I had come to terms with; I felt worried for people who were more affected by it than me; I felt ashamed of anything I had ever said about LGBT issues ever because suddenly I was doubting my ability to balance tolerance and doctrine. And I felt confused. This isn't because of a lack of faith in the prophets or humility or anything like that. I think it's a pretty normal response. 

I started seeing people post the number for the National Suicide Hotline on Facebook in connection with this, though, and on the other hand I started seeing people get all feisty about anyone who even questioned what was going on, and that probably made me the saddest of all – knowing that somewhere out there, people were feeling exactly that bad, and some people were responding by saying they didn't have enough faith. Elder Holland's recent talk and Elder Oaks' remark on Kim Davis were tremendously inclusive, and when you're facing a long and seemingly endless struggle, feeling hope only to have it crushed again sometimes feels worse than not feeling it at all.

So I guess what I'm saying is, right now I'm fine. Don't worry about me. Seriously – Heavenly Father and I have worked it out on a personal level. But when you talk about this issue, remember that questions are not a sign of sin. Remember that people are hurting. Remember that somewhere in the world, some child or teenager has already learned they can't be baptized for years to come and they feel crushed or angry. Remember that LGBT members who are anticipating a lifetime of loneliness are feeling discouraged and alienated. Remember not to judge people's reasons for struggling with this policy, or any other issue for that matter.

Remember to be kind.

Remember to pray.

Remember to hold to what you know to be true and not be ashamed to stand up for your beliefs.

And remember to extend compassion to others as you do so.