We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children.
Today we met with several other sections of the class for our first lecture of the semester. It ran the gauntlet of lots of different topics, but opened with that statement given by President Hinckley regarding the family. That topic is hard for me to understand because I was not born with those inclinations towards marriage, and while I want a family, I know that my proclivities aren't conducive to procreation. Family and marriage are still the end goals for me, but lately those goals have been clouded a bit by lots of confusing and frustrating events lately.
Another topic we covered which I'm afraid I might be taking too far is the concept that blind faith in leadership is not something the Church ascribes to. President Brigham Young said, and I'm paraphrasing a little, that we cannot put all of our trust in our leaders and that the whisperings of the Spirit should tell us if our leaders are acting according to the dictates of God. That is a concept I hold to dearly, but lately I have been getting this feeling that the Church is fallible, or at least incomplete, in regard to homosexuality. My tendencies, which God has suffered that I be submitted to, are in complete opposition to the Church's standing on the subject of homosexuality. I struggle with that because I didn't wake up one day and decide that I'd like to be with a man. As long as I can remember, I have felt that attraction to my gender and I feel like it's a part of who I am and I shouldn't have to change it. In that regard, same-gender attraction and a desire to live a homosexual lifestyle is my truth and reality and I feel like the talking heads in suits I see every six months don't really understand. And that's where faith comes in and I'm afraid that right now, it's faith that I have a hard time accessing.
Confusingly, our next topic of discussion addressed that concern, although not completely satisfyingly. Our individual personalities have always existed; in an almost-inconceivable eternity, our personal essence has always existed and was not created by God. God provided the spirit body to house that essence, and then provided the physical body as we maintained our first estate, but He did not create us out of nothing. Our intelligence is as eternal as God Himself. Therefore, God created us not of His own imagination, but under a set of specific parameters our essence placed on him. He did not create me to be gay. He created me under a set of circumstances that might suggest I'd be gay in this life. While that takes away some of the bitterness and anger I have towards Him for allowing me to suffer like this, I also wonder how He'll be able to change me later if/after I've endured. And there's where more faith comes in.
The current plan of action is to build that faith and hope that some of those answers come, or at the very least, that the questions don't trouble me as much. Phew.
The current plan of action is to build that faith and hope that some of those answers come, or at the very least, that the questions don't trouble me as much. Phew.
the sad and rather horrifying fact is that that one proclamation has caused and is causing young gay Mormon men everywhere to commit suicide or to subject a straight woman to a marriage with a gay man who can never, no matter how hard he tries or how sincere he is, fulfill her needs.
ReplyDeleteIn my books that is emotional abuse.