When I came out, I was treated very… gently. People
smiled, hugged me, and told me they loved me. Like many gay Mormons, I did not
separate from the LDS community, and as my friends, family, and church leaders
became more comfortable talking with me about my “situation” many of them began
to, accidentally, tell me to kill myself.
Here’s what I was told-
1. Dying
is better than living in sin.
“You young people, may I directly
entreat you to be chaste. Please believe me when I say that chastity is worth
more than life itself. This is the doctrine my parents taught me; it is truth.
It is better to die chaste than to live unchaste.”
-LDS First Presidency Message
"We Believe in Being Chaste," Ensign, Sept. 1981, 3. Quotes like this
didn’t exactly tell me that suicide was okay, but it did tell me that that I’d
be better off shooting myself than holding hands with my boyfriend.
2. It
is virtually impossible to live a chaste life if you are gay.
- “What comes out of a person is
what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts,
sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit,
sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from
within, and they defile a person.” Mark 7:20-23 Gay members are told, at least today,
that their attraction alone is not a sin. But since thoughts are a sin, it is virtually
impossible for a gay person to stop sinning. And I’m not just talking about
sexual thoughts. Because love and romance go far beyond sex. Every time a gay
member longs for a romantic relationship with someone of the same sex, or every
time they fail to feel a desire for a romantic relationship with someone of the
opposite sex, they are sinning.
3. Even
if you can live a “chaste life,” it is hollow and meaningless.
- Ask any Mormon what the two most
important things in their lives are, the answer will be “church and family,” or
possibly “family and church.” A few
years ago the church stopped recommending heterosexual marriage as a treatment
for homosexuals, so a righteous gay Mormon cannot have a family. They also
began allowing openly gay members to serve in the church as long as they didn’t
act on their gay impulses, but they can serve only minor callings in a ward. (Single
women can serve in almost any calling, but men must be married to serve in high
priest callings or with the youth.) Mormons are told that a man’s greatest
calling is to be a father, a woman’s greatest joy is her children. But gay
people are told that their desire to have children is selfish. If a man marries
a woman, he is exploiting her feelings for her uterus. If two women marry and birth
children, they are selfishly bringing fatherless children into the word. If two
men marry an adopt children, even from the most awful dregs of the foster care
system, they are still selfishly denying them a “real” family. Week after week,
lesson after lesson, testimony after testimony, reaffirms to the gay member,
that all of life’s greatest joys are impossible for them to obtain.
4. Death
is the cure for gayness.
“Gratefully, the answer is that
same-gender attraction did not exist in the pre-earth life and neither will it
exist in the next life. It is a circumstance that for whatever reason or
reasons seems to apply right now in mortality, in this nano-second of our
eternal existence.” –Dallin H. Oaks.
I find the idea that one day God
will rob me of my love for my husband and give our children back to their
parents who abused and abandoned them in life terrifying, but to a gay teenager
lying awake in bed night after night desperately trying to not be in love with
his best friend, death is a welcomed release. To a desperately lonely middle aged
lesbian working in the nursery and longing for a family of her own, death is
her only opportunity.
5. Yes, suicide is a sin, but not as bad as gayness. And sacrificing your life for righteousness’s
sake is the noblest action.
-We’ve already talked about how
death is preferable to uncleanliness. Consider also that suicide is kinder to
those around you. While suicide hurts more than just the victim, the effects
are shorter lived and smaller in scope than the effects of homosexuality. Remember
Mormons are taught that to take someone else’s chastity, even with their
consent, is an act of violence against them, and that bringing children into a “gay”
family is violence against children. If a woman falls in love with another
woman, she could easily believe that by killing herself, she is saving the
woman she loves and her future children. Such a sacrifice seems noble, and in
the next life, free from her homosexuality, she can marry a man and raise children
up unto the lord.
I
know neither the LDS church or its members want gay people to kill themselves.
This message is sent and received accidentally. My
intention is not to criticize church doctrine, but to warn parents and church
leaders that this is the message many gay people are receiving.
