Today marks the anniversary of the policy change that
labeled members in same-sex relationships as apostate and prohibited their
children from receiving ordinances. It is also the anniversary of this blog,
which was born from the pain and mourning of that moment.
While I now retain membership in the Church, I am acutely
aware that one day I too will be pronounced apostate, my ordinances annulled
and my records annotated with an asterisk (*homosexual). It brings to mind
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne's faith
community discovers her to be with child, though she has been separated from
her husband for a long time. Rather than kill her outright, they devise a worse
punishment: she must wear a scarlet A on all of her clothing, becoming a living,
shameful representation of her adulterous sin and a warning to others to
refrain from the same. Yet the leaders of her community did not count on her
indomitable spirit and her talent as a seamstress. She meekly complied with
their censure and created exquisitely embroidered ‘A’s on her clothing. Rather
than show shame, she showed them beauty.
After her lover dies of guilt, Hester leaves her
community for a time. When she returns years later, she takes up residence in
her old cottage by the sea-shore. She lives apart from the bustling town, at
once a part of the community and separate from it. She chooses to occupy a
liminal space, and through that act changes everything:
But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester’s life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more especially,--in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion,--or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought,--came to Hester’s cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and counselled them, as best she might.
What would happen if, despite the rhetoric of apostasy,
queer Mormons and their allies remained active in the Church? They would remain
on the margins of the ward, without callings or ordinances, but continue to
exert a loving influence. Perhaps with time the label would cease to hold
opprobrium and instead garner respect. “These are the people,” members might
say, “who followed the spiritual promptings in their heart. These are the
people who loved when others were too afraid. These are the people who accept
the Lord even when our Church thinks they do not.”
Ultimately we do not choose the label that others give
us. But we can, like Hester Prynne, transform the label into something of
beauty. If all queer people leave the Church or keep their orientation or
gender identity a secret, then subsequent generations of queer youth will
continue to pass through an excruciatingly painful and lonely process of
self-discovery, a process that some do not survive. Nothing will change in the
Church because those who could be an example to the believers, the lights on
the hill, have hidden under a bushel (Matt 5:14-16).
For a long time I waited for change to come from the top down, for a
magnificent and sweeping transformation in the Church. But now I realize
that God touches one heart at a time as each person undergoes personal
conversion. When a member looks into the eyes of a queer person, they at last
see what God sees: a heart full of beauty, strength, and love.
We need more wise women and men to keep the borders of
the Church. We are the gatekeepers between the civilized and the natural, the
old and the new. When we stay, we flood the Church with wild ideas, raw
material from which new revelation can be fashioned. We are an unanswered
question to which the Lord will reply, if only we keep asking. In the meantime,
those who know rejection’s sting are imbued with a greater capacity for
empathy, for hearing the problems of others and refraining from a judgemental
stare. Those who have been wounded know how to heal. We can choose to cast out
the bitterness that rankles, soothing our hearts with the balm of the Savior’s
Atonement, and then apply the Healer’s art in turn. Our Church is sick, and we
must be the ones to mend it.
If we believe in the Gospel, then we believe in the
progress of Truth. Light and Knowledge will pour down from heaven, illuminating
every corner of the human soul. Darkness and ignorance will give way as the
Lord extends His power to encompass even the decrepit cockles of the hardest
heart. The dams of prejudice will burst before this onslaught, and one more
corner of Zion will be reconciled to the whole.
Apostates, we need you. We need your love and your
patience and your forgiveness. I know how hard it is to stay, to accept even
for a moment a lesser position in the Kingdom of God. But are we not following
the example of our Master, who descended below all things to exalt all things
in turn? A man cannot be saved in bigotry. We need to give Church members a
chance to right their wrongs, to learn to love their neighbor. In this endeavor
Christ’s Atonement will sustain us, “for God hath not given us the spirit of
fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (1 Timothy 2:7).
Love will win in the end. For God is love, and God always
wins.
