A Prophet’s Voice

What does the Church’s narrative look like for people who experience same-sex attraction? What would their ideal journey be? I have read the words of prophets and apostles, and as best I can tell, this is what they envision for us.

A boy¹ is born, and either through latent biological factors or sociological and environmental influences, this boy develops feelings of same-sex attraction during his pubescent years. He is concerned, but has read the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet and knows that if he experiences these feelings he should go to his parents and bishop for counseling.

Once seated before his bishop, he is assured that he is still loved and in no ways a less valiant child of God. As this young man has not committed any transgressions, and merely has feelings of same-sex attraction, there is no need for repentance or church discipline. This bishop is well versed in the words of modern apostles, and directs the youth towards resources such as mormonsandgays.org or the seminal talks of Dallin H. Oaks and Jeffery R. Holland. The young man understands that he is first and foremost a child of God, and only secondarily a being who experiences sexual feelings. Instead of fixating on what makes him different, he instead focuses on his Church callings, on preparing for a mission, and on service to his family and ward members. He should not associate with any groups that identify primarily by their sexual orientation. Dating is reserved as a group activity where he becomes good friends with the young women in his ward and develops good social skills.

He serves a mission and returns with honor. Because he was so focused on missionary work, issues of same-sex attraction were not a temptation. He enrolls in a good university to continue his education and prepare to provide for a family.

Dating becomes a new goal in order to reach marriage. The young man is perturbed by how difficult this may be, for his feelings of same-sex attraction have not lessened. He goes to speak with his bishop again for more advice. After studying the words of the apostles, his bishop instructs him that he should continue to date lots of different women and make strong friendships with them. He should not marry a woman unless he feels genuine attraction towards her. Otherwise he should continue to serve diligently in the Church in order to keep his feelings of same-sex attraction in the background.

At this point there are two possibilities for the hypothetical young man. If his feelings of same-sex attraction are not overly strong and he also experiences attraction for the opposite sex, then he will in due time find a woman to whom he is attracted and be able to marry in the temple. At this point his feelings of same-sex attraction are just like any other extra-marital attraction: they are to be managed carefully in order to maintain fidelity in his marriage. In some cases, he may develop a strong romantic attraction to a woman without the accompanying sexual attraction. In this case he may make the decision to enter into a committed marriage and rely on his covenant promises to make the marriage a success. In both cases, his continued commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ will serve as the bulwark of his marriage.

The other possibility is that his feelings of same-sex attraction are so consummate that he experiences no attraction to the opposite sex. In his case, he should continue to make strong friendships with women in the event that one of those relationships might flower into attraction and subsequent marriage. However, he is not expected to marry in this life. Instead he should devote his energy and resources to the Church, ensuring that the Gospel is foremost in his life. His relationship with God and with the Savior Jesus Christ should be the focus of all that he does. In this way his primary identity is that of a child of God, and he should be able to maintain ascendency over his sexual feelings.

When this man dies, he will be released from the imperfection of same-sex attraction. It is an affliction of this life only, tied to the physical and imperfect mortal body, and will be healed in the afterlife. If he married, his love for his wife will be made perfect and whole. If he did not marry, his sexuality will become whole, and he will find a righteous woman to marry in the spirit world, for the prophets have frequently promised that all the blessings of the Gospel will be made available to those who are righteous in this life, including marriage for those who, through no fault of their own, were not able to marry in this life.

At times in his life, this man may stumble. He may allow his thoughts to fantasize about a homosexual relationship, masturbate, view homoerotic pornography, or even have a homosexual affair. All these can be repented of through the man’s diligence, the counsel of his bishop, and most importantly, the atonement of Jesus Christ. With time he should learn the self-mastery necessary to not indulge in any of these temptations. While acknowledging that these feelings of same-sex attraction will most likely never go away, by focusing on the Gospel and making Jesus the center of his life, the man will be able to choose not to act in this manner, and the feelings will become of secondary importance. He will find fulfillment in this life and eternal life in the next.

This is the story that Church leaders weave, the mythos² by which they would have me live. While others find it compelling, it fails to resonate with me. When I picture myself as that man, as the depicted life as my life, I break down in tears. I do not believe that such a path could bring me happiness. And yet I still ask myself if I could not choose to believe it, to drift through life shrouded in in the certainty of the official LDS narrative. Perhaps I could, but for now a different path calls, one I must forge between the two narratives of Queer and Mormon.

At the same time, I cannot fault others for choosing this life and this story. What does not hold the ring of truth in my ears may harmonize well in another’s. And who am I to demand that Church leaders change their tune? I have the spiritual autonomy to sing my own melody and delight in the dissonance, and I should also allow them theirs.

But that autonomy was hard won, pried from the ridged grasp of prophetic infallibility and nursed into the supple song I now enjoy. And sometimes a young mind can find no peace in this narrative and no escape, shaking with the clanging incongruities until it shatters and is silent, a voice that will sing no more.

Notes:

1) Curiously enough, there is no narrative for women who experience same-sex attraction. It is conceptualized primarily as a male problem. One would assume that women should follow a similar pattern for their spiritual journey. This article suggests some interesting theories as to why no such female narrative exists.  

2) Mythos in the sense of a culturally significant narrative that aids in the creation of a cosmology. It is neutral in terms of truth or factuality.

Mixed-Orientation Marriages

Can Oil and Water Mix?

I’ve had mixed-orientation marriages (MOMs) on the mind of late. Marriage is complex enough when both spouses are attracted to one another, let alone when one or both do not experience typical sexual or romantic attraction for their partner. In these instances we usually hear of gay men marrying straight women, though lately more stories of gay women married to straight men are beginning to emerge. I did some digging into the history of MOMs in the LDS Church and found some heartbreaking stories, as well some interesting developments in modern MOM culture. So let’s begin.

As best I can piece together the narrative, Church leaders used to counsel gay members to marry members of the opposite sex, possibly as late as 1987, as a means of curing homosexual feelings. The idea was that if people were to have heterosexual sex and realize how wonderful it was, as well as have children, they would live out the heteronormative lifestyle and find true happiness therein. Unfortunately, such a plan didn’t work out terribly well. Many families ended in heart-wrenching divorce, the most famous of which is Gerald and Carol Lynn Pearson. Some time after the divorce, Carol Lynn would ask her ex-husband:

“What would have happened if--if you had just made yourself stay where you were with us? If you had just forced yourself to put your other needs away?

Gerald thought a moment and then replied. “I would have become increasingly bitter and empty--just like Frank.” Frank was an old friend whom Gerald had recently run into. He was a homosexual who had married and stayed married and had gained eighty pounds in the last two years and hadn’t touched anyone during those two years, not even his wife. “I had to do what I’ve done. I haven’t done it perfectly. I would change a lot if I could, but I had to do it.” Had to? All that we had, all that we lost… Could not other choices have brought us to some better destination? (Carol Lynn Pearson 204)

With time it became apparent that marriage alone was not enough to make MOMs work. It was then that the leaders of the Church allied themselves with reparative therapy. The basic idea of early reparative therapy (aimed almost entirely at men) was that those who experience homosexual feelings had some form of arrested development that prevented them from fully growing emotionally or mentally into men. By teaching participants to act manlier and deal with childhood traumas, therapists promised that homosexual feelings could be cured. And so a new generation of young Mormons took the plunge into a new round of MOMs. Ironically enough, Emily Pearson, the daughter of Gerald and Carol Lynn, would follow in her parents’ footsteps and marry a gay man, Steven Fales. He even told her of his attractions in a place which was most symbolic of history’s tendency to repeat:

Why the hell had I brought us there to talk of all places? To the house where my mother had found out that her husband was gay? (Emily Pearson 225)

Yet Emily and Steven pushed forward, convinced that they could do better than previous generations:

Steven: We were gonna write a different story. We had faith in this new “reparative therapy”, in the Church, and in ourselves. We could lick it! We were supposed to be together. We had fasted and prayed. We had all the right confirmations. We would succeed where the previous generation had failed. We would defy Good-bye, I Love You and write Hello, I Love You (Fales 20).

Emily: Maybe together we had a “greater than us” work to do. Maybe we could marry and actually be successful at it. Maybe we could write a book together -- a far different book than the one my mother wrote. We would conquer successfully what my parents had failed miserably at. Steven and I could be the poster children for reparative therapy (Emily Pearson 227).

Steven took therapy sessions from the head of NARTH himself, The National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality. He was taught the importance of connecting with his primal masculine energy, of behaving like a real man, and even quit his dream of theater and Broadway because it wasn’t masculine enough. But the wheels of history continued to turn, and soon Emily and Steven’s marriage ended in an even more bitter divorce than Gerald and Carol Lynn’s. It seems that being manlier wasn’t any more successful at curing homosexuality than heterosexual sex. 

And that brings us to today. The current Church policy is less ambiguous, though not widely known:

“Marriage should not be viewed as a therapeutic step to solve problems such as homosexual inclinations or practices” (Hinckley) and “Persons who have this kind of challenge that they cannot control could not enter marriage in good faith. On the other hand, persons who have cleansed themselves of any transgression and who have shown their ability to deal with these feelings or inclinations and put them in the background, and feel a great attraction for a daughter of God and therefore desire to enter marriage and have children and enjoy the blessings of eternity — that’s a situation when marriage would be appropriate” (Oaks and Wickman).

Elder Oak’s assumption that homosexuality is solely a male experience is a topic for another blog post. For now let’s focus on the rest. There is still some debate of exactly what “ability to deal with these feelings or inclinations and put them in the background” means. As far as I can tell, people should at least have some bisexual or biromantic tendencies before entering into a heterosexual marriage. Those who have exclusively homosexual/romantic feelings should remain single and celibate.  

Whether or not people can change from homosexual to bisexual or heterosexual is also uncertain. The official Church stance seems to be: sometimes.

Case studies I believe have shown that in some cases there has been progress made in helping someone to change that orientation; in other cases not (Oaks and Wickman).

People have found a diminishing of that same-sex attraction, almost to the point of vanishing, and others not at all. (Christofferson)

Elder Oaks didn’t rule our conversion therapy completely, but also spoke out against pseudo-therapies in general:

The Church rarely takes a position on which treatment techniques are appropriate, for medical doctors or for psychiatrists or psychologists and so on . . .The aversive therapies that have been used in connection with same-sex attraction have contained some serious abuses that have been recognized over time within the professions. (Oaks and Wickman).

So to sum up the principle: if you feel genuine attraction towards someone of the opposite sex, the Church says yes to marriage. If you don’t, the Church says no to marriage. Maybe therapy can reveal some bisexual tendencies, and maybe not.

There are still plenty of people in the Church today who would classify themselves as predominantly gay, yet have entered into MOMs. In one case a man said he experienced a singular instance of opposite-sex attraction towards his wife. In another a man was biromantic, though homosexual, and felt that this was sufficient to build a marriage on. In both cases these men were open about their feelings with their wives before marriage and had accepted their sexuality as something that wouldn’t change and are candid about it with friends, family, and ward members. I imagine that they suffer considerably less stress than their predecessors, as they don’t pressure themselves to change their orientation or gender expression.

The question is will the marriages work out this time around? The average MOM lasts 16.6 years (Dehlin et al. 299), yet this new practice of accepting a queer identity in a MOM is less than a decade old. It’s simply too early to have any data on whether or not this mentality will prove effective. History seems to show that many MOMs don’t make it. As of 2014, the divorce rate was 50%, projected to be 69% if conditions remain unchanged (Dehlin et al. 299). Yet many of these marriages were made when the stress of shame of queer opprobrium dominated. Genuine self-acceptance and acceptance of a queer identity coupled with open communication between spouses might prove the key to a successful MOM. Or it could be the newest fad that grinds another generation into crippling divorce. For my friends’ sake who are in MOMs, I certainly hope and pray the former is the case.

The sad part is that the Church now counsels queer members to ignore their sexuality as much as possible, focusing instead on their identity as a child of God. While these two identities could theoretically co-exist peacefully (and give MOMs the best chance at survival), pitting these two identities against one another as antithetical could produce similar stress factors which collapsed the marriages of the last and second-to-last generations.

So here are the questions for the day. Are the current methods of maintaining MOMs more successful than those that have come before? And if not, will humans discover or God reveal the right formula for a successful MOM? I personally do not believe a MOM is for me, but I also wouldn’t rule it out for others.

For now I will watch, wait, and see.

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Works Cited:

Christofferson, D. Todd. “Purpose of This Website.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 2012. http://mormonsandgays.org/ Accessed 8/15/16.

Dehlin, John P., Renee V. Galliher, William S. Bradshaw, Katherine A. Crowell. “Psychological Correlates to Religious Approaches to Same-Sex Attraction: A Mormon Perspective.” Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health 18 (2014): 284-311.

Fales, Steven. Confessions of a Mormon Boy. New York: Alyson Books, 2006.

Hinckley, Gordon B. Reverence and Morality. Ensign. April 1987. https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1987/04/reverence-and-morality?lang=eng. Accessed 8/15/16.

Oaks, Dallin H. and Lance B. Wickman. “Interview With Elder Dallin H. Oaks and Elder Lance B. Wickman: ‘Same-Gender Attraction.’” Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2006. http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/interview-oaks-wickman-same-gender-attraction. Accessed 8/15/16.

Pearson, Carol Lynn. Good-bye, I Love You. New York: Random House, 1986.

Pearson, Emily. Dancing with Crazy. USA: Hulabaloo Press, 2012.

The Worth of Souls

In Egyptian mythology, the beast Ammit was said to devour the unworthy heart or soul that weighed more than a feather. All but the purest of souls were consumed.

Today I learned of another two suicides. Two teenage boys, both Mormon and both gay. They died within two days of each other. Of course, the decision to kill oneself is never a simple one, and there are usually many complex factors that lead a person to do so. To pin it solely on sexuality or rejection from their faith tradition, particularly to weaponize their deaths against the opposing camp, has already been done often enough.

I have contemplated writing this post before, but tonight feels like the right moment. It will take a tone of emotionless pragmatism. If you still feel tender in the wake of tragedy, I advise you to read elsewhere.

Often suicides such as these spark discontent among others. Comments such as “The Church needs to stop!” or “When will the Church finally change?” follow each death. The answer I’ve come to is that the Church will not change. It simply does not make sense in the economy of heaven.

My brother just completed a mission in Madagascar. As we drove out into the country, he explained that missionaries did not look for investigators outside of major towns; it is not feasible to do so. The people in the country are uneducated, and therefore cannot read the Book of Mormon or easily understand new complex abstract concepts like the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation. Even if they did baptize people, the new branch president would be too tempted to steal Church funds to feed his starving family. And it simply would take too much time to walk the large distances in between houses. You can contact and convert more people when they are in a concentrated area. So despite there being amazing people in the countryside who may very well accept the Gospel, they aren’t worth the proselytizing effort or the Church’s limited resources, which can be more effectively spent elsewhere.

Anyone who has served a mission knows that the Church is concerned about numbers. We count how many people are in Church each Sunday, and we proudly announce total Church membership at Conference each year. The formula is simple: we want to bring the Gospel to as many people as efficiently as possible. The worth of souls may be great in the sight of God, but even a soul of infinite worth is worth less than two souls of infinite worth. The Church does the math and tries to save the majority of people, even when it means leaving others behind.

So let’s bring this back to LGBTQ issues. True, the worth of each queer soul is of incomparable value, but it makes better sense to sacrifice them for the greater numerical good. While Europe and North America may be more accepting of queer people now, they are still anathema everywhere else. The Church is expanding globally, and they need to take into account their image in Russia, China, and Uganda. If they start teaching that LGBTQ people aren’t sinning, they risk losing access to the billions of potential converts in these countries. It makes more sense to sacrifice a couple hundred thousand queer Mormons in exchange for many more souls saved in heaven. This is especially true  when some queer Mormons stay in the Church anyway, ensuring that their souls too are saved.

But there’s more at risk than new converts; the current membership would also be in danger should the Church change their position. Many would leave because they would not be able to accept queer people in the Church. We already saw this happen in 1978 when the Priesthood Ban was lifted and people of African descent were given equal status.

What’s worse, people’s faith in the Prophet’s infallibility would be shaken. The Church has assiduously taught that homosexuality is a sin for the last sixty years. They have placed special emphasis on it for the last 20, with “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” and more recently the November Policy Change. When members have complained, they have doubled down and said that it is through revelation that they guide the Church, and that this is all God’s decision.

Should a new revelation come that changes all of these doctrines and policies, allowing queer people to marry or even to exist, then members would inevitably ask what good prophetic revelations are. Our Church is distinguished from the many other Christian sects by its adherence to Priesthood authority and modern day prophets. Without this, it could spell the end of Mormonism as we know it. Christ’s one true church would topple, and no one would receive the saving ordinances that allow access to the Celestial Kingdom. Entire generations of souls would be bereft of the blessings of the Gospel.

So do the math. Two gay Mormon teenagers took their lives this week. Two souls lost in pain, despair, and ostracization. Quite possibly they were lost to the sin of acting on their homosexuality, meaning that they are lost for all eternity. But that is a small price to pay for the continuation of Christ’s true Church and the hundreds of thousands of souls it will save this year alone. Even 100 or 1000 suicides wouldn’t make queer acceptance worth it.

I remember the parable of the lost sheep at times like this: “What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?” (Luke 15:4). But if, by going after that lost sheep, the entire flock were scattered while the shepherd were away, would he still go after it? I am also reminded of what the Spirit whispered to Nephi before he decapitated Laban in cold blood:

It is better that two teenage boys should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief. 

Mythopoesis

Recently Elder Bednar was asked “How can homosexual members of the Church live and remain steadfast in the Gospel?” He responded by explicitly changing the question. “There are no homosexual members of the Church,” he replied. “We are not defined by our sexual attractions.” The rest of the response boiled down to a reaffirmation of a heteronormative cosmology, with the assurance that all had access to it. In practical terms, the answer to the question was to ignore the importance of sexual attraction and focus instead on the doctrine of heteronormativity.

I have many friends who were deeply offended by this talk. I have other friends who built up apologetics and exegesis from it. What made it such a contentious hotspot, I believe, is that it goes to the heart of core narratives, where Elder Bednar seeks to rewrite another’s worldview.

To understand the importance of Elder Bednar’s words, as well as the importance of words in general, we must go back to the beginning. It is important to remember that the Judeo-Christian Creation was an act of speech. At each stage, God spoke and existence followed:

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. (Genesis 1:3)

God’s words existed first and were the agents for bringing about reality. John understands this as he opens his gospel with the Logos hymn:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:1, 3)

Normally we Mormons are too quick to substitute “Word” for “Christ,” erasing the metaphor in the process, namely that we live in a world made from divinely creative words.

Another man to examine words was Jacque Derrida (1930–2004). He built on the work of other semiologists such as Saussure, who realized that words are only significant in its systemic relation to other words. But if words have no inherent meaning, they cannot describe objective reality, only other words. And since our concept of reality is composed of thoughts, which are in turn composed of words, then reality becomes what we are able to express through language. If an objective reality exists, it is only accessible through the medium of language; therefore we create our own worlds through words. These word-worlds are what we commonly call myths.

The word “myth” has accrued a negative connotation of falsehood in English; myths, we say, stand in opposition to truth and reality. But in its first use, back when it was still the Greek word μῦθος, it simply meant word, speech, story, or narrative, without distinction of true or false. Perhaps a good definition for myth is a story that is central to a people’s identity and worldview. They are the core narratives that shape the way we see ourselves and reality. As I continue to use the word myth in this context, remember that it is not pejorative, nor does it imply anything about validity.

Thus the myth of the Norse gods creating the world out of a giant’s corpse, the myth of God creating the heaven and the earth, and the myth of Big Bang all serve the equal purpose of helping humans understand reality. What is true and false is the wrong question. The question is if your myth, your world story, satisfies you and allows you to function, for we live off of stories as surely as we live off bread (Matthew 4:4). To abandon all myths, all narratives, is to plunge ourselves into the Void, and humans can’t survive long there. We need a story to live.

Myths are the way in which humans maintain control over reality. To name something, to give it shape and form through words, is to gain power over it. For this reason God had Adam name the animals, for he gave dominion of them to man (Genesis 2:19-20; 1:28-30). This is why parents name their children at birth; it completes their creation, gives them concrete form in reality, and gives the parents control over the child’s narrative. It is why God changes the names of others when they covenant to serve him (Genesis 17:5, 15; 32:28). It is why receiving a new name is still a part of Mormon worship today (D&C 130:11). Names have power, and to control a name is to control the person.

Homosexuality has had an equally fraught history with words and power. During the Middle Ages it was termed “the unspeakable crime.” While there were certainly people with feelings of affection and attraction for others of the same sex, and no shortage of sexual intimacy as a result, the concept of “homosexual” as a person, as an identity, did not yet exist. As long as the act remained “unspeakable,” existence was impossible.¹ There were no words to express it. It was condemned as an act, but not as an individual. This all changed with the sexologists of the 19^th century. They began to study and codify sexual acts and behaviors and, as the –ology suffix implies (Greek λόγος=word), coined new words for people who exhibited homosexual tendencies. It not only brought homosexuality into existence, but placed it in the power of the medical community that named it as part of a pathological narrative of sex. This would prove detrimental to Religion’s control over homosexual people. By giving them a name and existence, the medical world also gave them a voice. Once they learned to exercise it, they began creating their own myths about themselves, ones that were independent of sin or illness. They created their own words or reformed old ones (gay, lesbian, bi, queer), their own language. Homosexuals began to speak, and thus create.

The act of creating new myth, new narratives, is called mythopoesis (litterally “myth making”). Perhaps the great myth-poet of our time was Joseph Smith. He created new civilizations, new heavens, new gods. He revitalized Christianity, proximizing the myths so that they were no longer exclusively an Old World phenomenon, but had American and modern roots as well. Whether he was the instrument of God or created on his own is irrelevant. The important thing is that these myths were created and formed a new cultural identity for the early and modern latter-day saints.

Mythopoesis occurs on several different levels. Each individual ultimately decides what myth he or she will believe. The aggregate beliefs of individuals form a cultural myth. And finally, institutions may directly form canonized or authorized myths. These three layers of mythopoesis (individual, cultural, and institutional) influence one another constantly, shaping and reforming one another. When people subscribe to an institutional myth, they are expected to make their individual narratives conform to those of the institution. Of course, no institution is able to make a comprehensive mythology, so individuals will still exercise mythopoesis within the boundaries of the broader myth. Failure to comply with an institutional myth will often result in formal ostracizing. Rebellion against a cultural myth may result in social estrangement, but cultural myths lack a centralized body to administer formal sanctions.²

The question over LGBT rights and religious freedom, therefore, is not only a question of who is right, but a question of who controls the narrative and, consequently, who controls the people. For nearly 2000 years, religion had undisputed control over sex in the West. But when the medical community took control of the narrative, they altered it from sin to sickness. This created enough of a gap for individuals to enter the discursive process and create a counter-narrative of unjust oppression, reforming the civil rights narrative to fit their experience. It is no wonder, then, that the leaders of the Church have fought so hard to maintain control of the narrative of homosexuality. It is natural for institutions to fight against counter-narratives that threaten their power. In a worst case scenario, a cultural myth will be incorporating into the mythology of a stronger institution, which would limit the control a smaller institution has over its adherents. This is exactly what happened when same-sex marriage became legal; the American government, which nominally has more sociopolitical power than the Church, adopted the counter-narrative and has limited the Church’s control over homosexual individuals. The Church is no longer able to prevent them from having sex, developing relationships, marrying, adopting children, and gaining general acceptance in society.³

The LDS Church has a long history of reserving the rights of mythopoesis for their leadership. Perhaps the earliest example (at least canonically) is that of Hyrum Page, whom Joseph commanded to stop receiving revelation because it was of the devil. Thus Joseph was able to maintain exclusive power over the cosmic mythos he was constructing, divinely instructed or otherwise:

But, behold, verily, verily, I say unto thee, no one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church excepting my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., for he receiveth them even as Moses. (D&C 28:2)

Each prophet of the Church has since claimed the same exclusive right, reinforcing the claim through the institutional myth, which seeps into cultural and individual myths. This places a limit on an individual’s ability for mythopoesis and self-creation, and also creates a unifying social order. In some instances, individual mythopoesis, especially myths that run counter to the institutional myth, are strongly discouraged, if not outright outlawed. As Elder Oaks said not too long ago:

Unfortunately, it is common for persons who are violating God’s commandments or disobedient to the counsel of their priesthood leaders to declare that God has revealed to them that they are excused from obeying some commandment or from following some counsel. Such persons may be receiving revelation or inspiration, but it is not from the source they suppose. The devil is the father of lies, and he is ever anxious to frustrate the work of God by his clever imitations.

Thus deviant myths are literally demonized, and the institutional Church is able to maintain control over the narrative and its members.

At last we can return to Elder Bednar’s comment on homosexuality. He saw the words “homosexual member of the Church” as a dangerous syncretism of two different mythologies. By using the word homosexual, a word coined through an outside cultural myth, it opens the door for other contradictory and affirming myths to enter into Church discourse. That is also why the Church is so adamant about using the words “same-sex attraction” rather than gay. If they control the words, they control the people.³

Recently more and more members of the Church are creating an alternative myth, the same myth that Elder Bednar tried to squelch. It is a myth that one can be openly gay and affirming in the Church. Some variants are subtle, merely refusing to think of homosexuality as bad or allowing it to be a part of one’s identity. Others take it further, saying that they can form romantic and/or sexual relationships without transgressing God’s laws. The most extreme do so while remaining active participants in the Church, even after they are excommunicated. These counter-narratives go directly against what Church leaders have said, and so weaken their authority and power over the collective narrative. In this sense, queer Mormons who refuse to accept that homosexual feelings are wrong or broken are all, truly, apostates. Merely claiming to exist, claiming their own words and identities, queers the Mormon mythos. And apostles, as keepers of the Gospel’s purity, are duty-bound to oppose it.

So here is the question for me, and for you, dear Reader. We each have the inherent power of mythopoesis. It is a sign of latent divinity, to shape and form reality according to our words. I, a man, experience attraction to men, both sexual and romantic. Will I submit to my institution’s mythos and accept it as my own? Or will I exercise my mythopoetic power and add to the counter-narratives? And the question that I have put off until the very end, because I do not yet have an answer: Which course is the right thing to do?

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Notes:

1. This is the current narrative in queer theory, but I find it somewhat flawed. Humans have an innate drive to name everything, and it would not surprise me if queer folk at the time did not invent their own words for their identities, a jargon that was never recorded and is lost to the impermanence of orality. Modern scholars tend to overvalue the written word, as it is all they have to study.

2. For more on discursive narratives of power, see Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, Volume 1.

3. Such a portrayal of the Church may seem to cast it in a negative light. Such was not my intention. All institutions and individuals seek power to maintain mythological autonomy. Power and its preservation are rather neutral concepts. It is only through the lens of our country’s social myths, of the American Revolution and Star Wars rebels, that domineering institutions take on a sinister appearance. Servitude and willing subjugation has long been a part of Christianity. In fact, the words servant (as in servant of God) comes from the Latin word servus, which is synonymous with slave. It is my own belief that Church leaders act in sincerity when they create, maintain, and enforce their mythos. They truly believe that they are receiving revelation from God, that this particular myth is true, and that adherence to it will ultimately save souls. But this discussion is to describe narratives and how they play into power dynamics, not to debate what is right and wrong.