Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with several other Mormon and Mormon-esque friends to talk about the relationship between our LGBT brothers and sisters and the Mormon church. HRC sponsored the meeting in an effort to understand how they can better support those of us who are trying so desperately to see full equality between straight and gay Mormons within in the Mormon church.
The meeting started with a prayer and introductions. I was thrilled to see so many dear faces and meet so many new friends. As is our way, we spoke about the injustice of the fight against gay marriage. In fact, gay marriage was the main topic of conversation in the meeting, all of us pouring out our hearts about how difficult it is to gain empathetic ground with traditionally-believing Mormons about the rights and happiness of our beloved gay friends and family members.
As the meeting drew to a close, we went around one more time to discuss our final thoughts. Many of us spoke of the unending battle of standing up for marriage equality and of loving our fellow man, until we got to a mostly quiet young man, Samy Galvez, president of Understanding Same Gender Attraction at BYU (go like them on Facebook). He said, “Ninety-five percent of what we’ve talked about today is marriage equality. You all are completely ignoring the fact that a huge percentage of Mormon kids are killing themselves because they are gay.”
His words hit me like a ton of bricks.
Later, as I was recounting the story to my own gay brother, he said, “Yeah, you can’t get married if you’re dead.”
Again with the bricks.
Last weekend forced me to realize I have been wrong in my support of marriage equality. Setting up marriage as the end-all/be-all for my beloved gay and lesbian friends only perpetuates the same belief that people must have partners in order to be full people and to be happy. That is the message the Mormon church sends to straight people and it’s the same message I send when all I talk about is marriage equality.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a hard and fast supporter of marriage equality. I still believe and will advocate that marriage needs to be open to all consenting adults who want to bind themselves legally to one another. But my heart breaks at the anguish and self-loathing so many of our young people must feel and that is sustained by the words they hear in their homes and at church.
A while ago, I created a series of graphics to bring awareness to the issue of gay suicide. In creating them, I’d felt the influence and love of God, and I’m not sure why that moment wasn’t the turning point I needed, but last weekend, I received the message loud and clear and I now pass that message on to those gay and lesbian kids who are struggling just to stay alive:
I love you and I want you in my life. I want you to sit at my table and tell me your stories. I want you to pour your pain and anger out onto my strong heart so that I can lighten your load. I want to tell you silly stories and watch you laugh. I want to pray with you and place my hands on you and my arms around you while we talk of Jesus and Heavenly Father and of the great love and healing that can be found in our Heavenly Mother.
Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. There are many things we can do as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to stop the suicides of so many of our own and I believe every Mormon can get on board with each one of them.
1. Get Educated. There are lots of resources out there to learn about the struggle our gay kids and adults face. Here are a few, written and produced by members of the church:
Goodbye, I Love You by Carol Lynn Pearson
No More Goodbyes by Carol Lynn Pearson
Supportive Families, Healthy Children by the Family Acceptance Project (Caitlyn Ryan and Bob Rees)
No More Strangers
USGA at BYU
Far Between
Mormons and Gays (the LDS church’s own resource for members)
2. Join In. Use your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blog or whatever platform you have, to extend the hand of fellowship and love. Share posts and articles that show love and compassion to our LGBT brothers and sisters. No matter what your beliefs on LGBT issues are, I believe we can all come together and agree that nobody should die because they do not feel loved. Find ways to show the love.
3. Stop expressions of negativity around LGBT issues. Stop micro-aggressions. Learn about your own straight privilege. Don’t say things like “I love gay people, but [insert something you don’t love]” because whatever comes after the “but” negates everything you said before it. Don’t pass judgement on behaviors or choices of gay people. Judgement is not yours to deliver. Strip away your learned stereotypes. Stop negativity and judgement and learn to love our LGBT brothers and sisters as God loves them—fully consuming and never-ending.
4. Love. Just love and only love. In Matthew 22:37-39, the Savior says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” It is difficult work to strip away judgment and to just love, but your ability to do so will evolve and grow the harder you work. We are the literal hearts and hands of God on earth and it is through us that His love is expressed to one another.
Jerilyn
Bio: Jerilyn Hassell Pool was born and raised in Southern Oregon, the eldest of 8 children. She is the mother of five children, ages 7 to 23. She has been married for nearly 25 years. She has a calling as the pianist in the local Spanish-speaking branch (although she speaks no Spanish) and is active in feminist and LGBTQ communities as a Mormon advocate for inclusion and acceptance. She works from home as a freelance web and print designer.
All posts by Jerilyn
You made me cry. Damn it.
I couldn’t possibly love you more now.
Thank you. May we be better, starting now and always.
It is impossible not to love you. Yes, I declare that to be true for all people, full stop. Thank you for constantly teaching me. I ride your educational coattails.
A thousand times, YES. Thank you, dear one!!
Love is key. As we are taught in John 14:15,
“If ye love me, keep my commandments.”
The FIRST great commandment is to love God. It seems that this LBGT topic tends skips right over this greater commandment. Love him enough to KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS.
The SECOND great commandment is to love our neighbors. Love everyone, no matter their sexual orientation, race, religious belief, gender, etc.
Just don’t put the cart in front of the horse.
Absolutely! I love how the first great commandment tells me that I must love God. It doesn’t tell me that I should tell others how they need to love God. It doesn’t tell me that loving God means that I speak unkindly of others who are finding their way through this sometimes difficult journey we call life. We must just love God.
And happily, I can work on the second great commandment of loving others while I still try to find ways to love God.
I’m sure everyone has different experiences, but for me, I find that expressing love and kindness to others, bearing others’ burdens, mourning with those who mourn, is when I feel greatest love for God.
Pat, thank you for reminding me of this. If there were a way for me to do a personal act of kindness for you, I would.
We cannot love God completely and fight against marriage equality. If we fight against gay rights, we fight against the truth, and the truth is in God. The blood of many gay youths is resting to one degree or another on the heads of LDS leaders who have pretended to know a commandment from God because they have heard that supposed commandment from other men who have heard it from other men all the way back to either falsehoods or mistranslations in the bible.
I used to be prejudiced against gay people. I used to think they were sexually perverted because that is what the church leaders taught. Only God in His infinite mercy and power has seen fit to correct me and only He could. It is not a commandment for a gay person to not be gay. If you believe it is I suggest you pray to God that you may find a sure witness in the matter. Otherwise you may be damning yourself with a false tradition.
*facepalm*
This is almost as bad as the usual “if you don’t agree with me, you’re a bigot!” arguments.
Powerful words, Jerilyn. I stand with you.
Carol Lynn, I am thrilled to link arms with you.
Yes, acceptance first. The Family Acceptance Project says that gay children who are not accepted by their family are 8x more likely to commit suicide, and 3x more likely to engage in high risk behaviors like drugs and 3x more likely to engage in risky sex. Though marriage equality should come quickly after that — in a John Dehlin survey of LDS LGBT individuals, those trying to be strictly celibate had a lower quality of life than those suffering from Lupus. Those legally allowed to marry had higher quality of life scores than the general population.
All of this information is from John Dehlin's TEDx talk on being allies.
HI! Here are a few other resources!
Affirmation.org – They’re about to have a conference in Salt Lake City this weekend and are all-around awesome. Their tagline? “LGBT Mormons, Families, and Friends”
A couple of pride days in LDS-heavy areas:
ProvoPride.org – Sept 20 at Provo, UT
Moab Pride – Sept 28 at Moab, UT
Hope this is useful to somebody!
I love you and your beautiful, tender heart, Jerilyn! This couldn't be more perfect. <3
Jerilyn, I love and support your words. . . Your passion. As a former LGBT Mormon youth, I remember truly believing my Mormon god would rather see me dead than go where my heart led. And there is true tragedy when a young life is so senselessly ended short of the promise of it’s potential. It hurts us all. I do not wish to detract from the plights of my younger LGBT Mormon brothers and sisters, yet let me highlight another uniquely Mormon LGBT subset of tragedies.
These are those who embrace, in faith, the other two promises of Mormon LGBT policy. Those who’s faith demands of them the suppression of all hope of love by embracing abstinence and those who seek a like minded partner of the opposite sex who embrace temple marriage and the promise that the love of friendship and shared children will be enough to walk worthy through this life and partake of what we are taught are the greatest of earthly obtainable blessings.
Of the last ten LGBT Mormon suicides and suicide attempts (including my own) which have repeatedly shattered my own heart, nine have not been LGBT youth, but rather from this latter group. When we LGBT Mormons who survive our adolescence, but continue in the faith either alone or in mixed orientation marriage, find ourselves deep into depression, self medication, fornication, adultery, guilt, shame, self hatred, and unable to do that which our faith promised us we would be blessed with the strength to do, we find we have not only disappointed our god, but we have betrayed our promised church’s covenants, destroyed our platonic spouse’s years and happiness, hurt the children we may have created, and are cut off from our congregations as sinners because we are finally embracing our true nature. We each have found that to do otherwise is just a form of slow suicide.
So we older LGBT Mormons enter our new world alone. Stripped of family, friends, our faith and church membership, we enter a world void of support programs and awareness for us older LGBT Mormons. We who tried so hard to suppress and rule our natures to honor our desires to fulfill the commands of our God and faithfully seek His promised blessings, we now confront our own true nature late in life.
We are the ones I know who are now quietly ending or trying to end our lives. I swallowed my bottle of pills in my late thirties at the end of my mixed orientation marriage, after destroying the life of a beautiful woman and my best friend, whom I thought I loved enough, to be hated by my family who must now come to terms with having a gay spouse, a gay son, and gay sibling. Cut loose from my religion because of grave sin, and too old to have dedicated support to help me find my way in an unfamiliar world, death so easily feels like the best answer. The only answer left.
So yes, let’s focus on our youth, who need our love and knowledge that being gay is not worse than being dead, but let’s also keep an eye out for the older LGBT Mormon who tries to live the life encouraged by church policy and finds they cannot. Let’s help them choose life as well.
Amen, dear Sister Jerilyn, amen. Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "as I have loved you, love one another." NO ASTERISKS. No "EXCEPT …" Love EVERYONE, plain and simple. Love your gay neighbor as yourself, your lesbian neighbor, your transgender neighbor, your Muslim neighbor, EVERYBODY. I link arms with you my dear friend, so that no one may fall down or worse be kicked down if there is anything I can do to help them stay up.
This was simply fabulous Jerilyn.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Here's my counter suggestion list for how to stay active in the LDS church:
1) get educated on what God the Eternal Father has said on the subject, not what mankind has said.
2) Don't join groups that are wolves in sheep clothing. If they're telling you that the prophet is wrong then they might be wearing the clothing but their heart is following the world and their own knowledge and opinions.
3) Stop expressing negativity about what the Prophet has declared. If you think he's wrong well then I'm not sure who you think has a higher authority than him to declare the Lord's will in these latter days. But whoever you think that might be, go right ahead and follow that person but don't pretend you can serve two masters.
4) Obey the commandments of God. Be obedient. The Lord has commanded us to make choices about who we will serve and who we will follow. To do so we have to make judgement about what is right and what is wrong. The scriptures make it very very clear that we are to judge all the time as this is a crucial part of agency and making choices. We're just not supposed to do it unrighteously.
so you think John Dehlin knows better than the prophet does about what is best for people? Well that's your choice. Good luck with following him.
Unfortunately following the prophet for gay people means living a life of depression and self loathing. And in far too many cases, suicide.
If men are that they might have joy, why does following the prophet cause so much misery?
I’m afraid you don’t have the authority to declare how life is for all gay people. There are many who obey the commandments and are perfectly happy with doing so. I’d be happy to share some links to articles and blogs by them if you’d like but they are not hard to find.
One of my favorite verses in the Book of Mormon is after all the years of war in the book of Alma when it is stated that there were many whose hearts were hardened by the wars and contentions and trials and many whose hearts were softened. Both groups went through the same struggles but it was their choice what the outcome was.
Men ARE that they might have joy and wickedness never was happiness (or joy). I’m afraid you can’t ignore hundreds of verses in the scriptures by quoting one verse. Holiness is happiness. I was born with a desire to make sweet love to most of the women I meet and see and from a worldly perspective this might seem to lead to a lot of happiness and joy for me to do so. But the gospel teaches otherwise and I believe that God knows what is best for me.
when you look at the research it turns out that suicide is higher among gays but that this is true regardless of what community they are in or how accepting their culture is of homosexuality. Even in places where it is embraced they still have a higher suicide rate.
People in general also tend to have higher suicide rates in areas that are more strict of conservative but a lot of people want to mesh those two facts together to make it appear that a lack of acceptance is causing the suicide rate when it isn't actually.
The Holy Ghost has higher authority than any human being with any title. Nephi warned to not follow a man (prophet or otherwise) unless his precepts were taught by the Holy Ghost. You should wish luck to those who follow the brethren without seeking a confirmation on everything they teach.
your statement might be true when seeking individual revelation but not when it comes to revelation for the entire church. The Lord created the church organization and system for a very good reason and He has higher authority than the Holy Ghost. God has declared how revelation is to be received for the church, not man.
Unless you think that prophets are frequently wrong in which case whatever prophet stated that the Holy Ghost has higher authority than the prophet could have been wrong about that. Come to think of it, not sure which prophet or scripture you think DID make that statement. But it doesn’t really matter.
Welcome to the fight for lives. (Although I think you've always been here) You're voice is powerful and so needed. I love this so much!! Thank you!
excellent – thank you. the more awareness the better
Thank you so much for writing this article. You put into words feelings that I have had for many years. I was very young when I was forced into a situation that involved outing a very close friend to his bishop. The situation was not of my choosing, I did not understand why it happened at the time, because it didn't fit with what I had been taught about the commandment to love one another. Today I do all I can to fulfill that commandment. That definitely includes loving and welcoming our brothers and sisters that are members of the LGBT community.
Thank you! great response!!
Utahhiker801,
‘Don’t say things like “I love [the Church], but [insert something you don’t love]” because whatever comes after the “but” negates everything you said before it.’
Sound advice for the ‘nacle.