Outed?

This post isn't about me being outed, it's just some musings I've been having about coming out more publicly to more people.

My buddy Kurt messaged me a few hours ago talking about how he had been attending church again semi-regularly for the last few weeks and had the missionaries over for a few lessons as well.  He talked about the things he missed about going to church and about possibly becoming an active member again.  I didn't really know how to respond via Facebook message, but I've been thinking a lot of the same things he has, so with his permission, here are parts of what he said:

One of the big reasons I felt so depressed towards the end of my active membership in the church is that I was trying to be somebody else.  Not me.  Despite the church members around me knowing that I liked guys and had relationships with guys in the past, I was trying to live the life of a straight Mormon guy.  I was trying to be the stereotype of what was expected of me.  

I understand how he feels.  I kind of hate living a "straight" life sometimes, even though most of my readership already knows how incredibly gay I can be.  It just gets kinda annoying when I'm at family reunions and my relatives are good-naturedly asking if there are any cute girls in my life.  This last reunion, a guy I think I like was texting me one night and his texts were making me smile that kind of smile.  All my aunts and female cousins kept asking things like, "Who's the cute girl you're texting, GMP?  She sure is making you smile big!"  Yeah, awkward.

So what then is the solution?  I don't want to deny my testimony and to live my testimony means living a straight life.  Or does it?  

Says Kurt:

I've started to think, what if I was an active gay member of the Church?  No longer pretending or trying to be something else, but embracing the fact that I'm gay and still worthy of the priesthood... I've never tried to be in the Church and just be gay.  It would mean celibacy, it would mean not falling in love, it would mean a life not as a father or a husband.  But it could mean a life with the full Gospel in it.

Being from a pretty liberal and progressive area, I think my denomination would be open and accepting of me as long as I chose not to live the lifestyle, and even then I know some would still welcome me to church every Sunday, literally with open arms.  It also would be nice not to hear some of those encouragements to date from people who have no business doing so.  It might even open up an open dialogue for others who face not only homosexuality but other taboo temptations, like cravings for drugs and alcohol, for example.  In an ideal world, Mormons might no longer feel so much pressure to be perfect and to think good things all the time.  

But such a life is not without its negative implications.  For me, I'm pretty completely gay, but there have been girls that make me feel "straight."  It's rare, but it happens, and if I were out among my church friends, if I ever met that girl, she might write me off completely as "the gay guy" and then the door would be shut forever.

And in my group of friends back home, we can act pretty gay.  We do the whole butt-smacking thing and sit close during movies and stuff, and I wouldn't want to upset that dynamic by throwing a sexual orientation in their faces.  I know they'd be mature enough to accept me and love me, but I don't think they would be as comfortable with acting that way as they used to.  Who knows, maybe I'm underestimating mankind?  Heaven knows it's happened before that a friend of mine remained cool and friendly even after he found out.

Additionally, even though it's never happened to me, I've heard stories of bishops cautioning gay Mormons to keep their struggles to themselves, perhaps in the hopes of not flaunting trials or making homosexuality more acceptable.  Fred and Marilyn Matis, parents of Stuart Matis, wrote in In Quiet Desperation that their friends said that they should be more discrete with their son's sexual orientation both before and after his suicide.  

I'm not positive why people would make that recommendation, but it might have something to do with the amount of access it might give the temptation.  For example, in the last few months, my will to resist has waned pretty significantly to the point that I've acted out sensually with a few guys.  I've never crossed the line, but I'm closer to it now than ever before, and it's all due to outing myself to other gay people.  Since coming out to Toby (and starting this blog), I've encountered more attractive men than ever, and some of those men have been attracted to me as well.  The level of access to romantic entanglement has increased and so has the temptation and desire to submit to it.  If I were completely public, I might become an object of desire to the closeted gays in my circle, which would be good for neither of us.

Given all of those negative (and admittedly hypothetical) ramifications, coming out just doesn't seem worth it.

I'll freely admit that one of my goals in starting this blog was to bring more awareness to the plight of gay Mormons.  I wanted to pioneer a movement where we would feel comfortable being out among our congregations, living faithful lives and doing our best to resist temptation.  I feel incredibly duplicitous, but my confidence is waning and I don't think I have the courage to do that anymore, at least for now.  

The Gay Mormon Pioneer

You can call me GMP.  I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon or LDS Church.  I was born into and raised in a loving LDS family and have gone to church almost every Sunday of my life.  I had a happy childhood with my older brothers and sister and I get along very well with my parents most of the time.  Currently, I am a communication student at one of the LDS colleges.  I am living a fairly typical life for a faithful LDS guy of my age.

There is one qualifying difference, however, between my life and the lives of many other LDS men.  I am, in simplest terms, gay.  However, I don't love the oversimplification that the term "gay" suggests.  Perhaps a more fitting term would be "same-gender attracted," because the sexual connotation of the word "gay" doesn't apply to me, for I've never acted on a sexual inclination with another person.  Still, "same-gender attracted" is a mouthful, so I'll stick with "gay" when referring to myself and within the title of this blog.

Same-gender attraction is a heretofore relatively unexplored issue within the LDS Church, in spite of its surprising prevalence among men and women of my generation and the generations preceding and following.  In June 1930, an ancestor of mine said this in a letter to his posterity:

You, my children, are living in a new age, but you, too, will have your frontiers to explore, your divides to cross, your own deserts to subdue. Most important of all, you will have home and state problems to solve that will challenge the pioneer blood that runs in your veins. Trust in the Lord, be true to yourselves and all will be well with you.

-David King Udall, 1851-1938

My father wrote those words to me in a letter one day and ever since reading them, I haven't been able to shake the feeling that same-gender attraction is one of those frontiers I will explore and that intolerance among members of the LDS Church is one of those deserts I will subdue.  That "pioneer blood" in me is what has prepared me for this unique struggle of reconciling a faithful Mormon life with a proclivity towards a lifestyle not endorsed or permitted within the LDS Church.  It's that pioneer blood that compels me to take this journey.