Jack Naneek is a free lance artist based in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He writes, makes movies and videos, reads, and listens, a lot. But really, he just likes to draw and think. He's a lifelong member of the church.
All posts by Jack Naneek
These videos were created for Latter-day Saint parents and allies to voice their love for their LGBT brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. They want to give a message of comfort and support to other parents who are navigating the difficult conflicts that can arise in families around this issue.
“Cogito!” (“I think!”) follows the intellectual adventures of a recovering academic outside the walls of academia.
My bishop (who was some type of engineer/businessman in real life with no formal pastoral training) didn’t bat an eye at the situation I was describing. He simply could not believe that the clean cut, three-piece-suit-wearing man that partook of the sacrament each Sunday and taught youth Sunday School could do such horrific things without reason or provocation. Instead, his focus turned on me.
That is when this bishop started to ask the probing questions, at first coming dangerously close to crossing the line, then eventually stepping completely over it. He started to assess for the presence of trust within my marriage. Then he assessed for the presence of intimacy. Then he started to asked about my sexual history before my marriage, before I even knew my husband. He told me to describe the sexual interactions I had as a teenager and as a young adult. He wanted to know what sexual things I had done, at what age, and with whom. These questions had absolutely no bearing on the situation I was facing, nor was there any reason for this bishop to need or ask any of this information.
Can Exploitation Happen In Religious Communities?
Seeing how uncomfortable I was at his questioning, he told me his reason for asking such things: He had a special way with women and I owed it to him to answer his probing questions because of this gift. He couldn’t help me if I did not allow him to have all the information he needed. He proceeded to tell me that if I submitted myself to him, he could fix me for my husband; that he “had done this before.”