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I as a liberal Mormon *opposed* Prop 8
17 years ago
General
(Copied from my November 15 2008 LiveJournal post, because I feel strongly about it once again.)
In recent days, I've been hearing about a great deal of anger at Mormons for pushing so hard with so much money and influence to pass Proposition 8 in California. "Mormons stole our rights." "Boycott Utah." "Boycott Marriott." "Mormons are our oppressors." "The Church should lose its status as a tax-exempt religion." And there's been nationwide protests outside churches and temples, from Los Angeles to New York City.
...and I can't help but think sometimes, that maybe it's somewhat deserved. I'm a liberal Mormon. I've always been a liberal Mormon. My family is predominantly liberal. But in wider Mormon culture, for years now, there's been a creeping advancing...cultural sickness. One where people demand absolute loyalty and obedience from one another, and where they demand the most far-right possible social and political position, and where difference of opinion and freedom of thought themselves are now treated with scorn, contempt, stonewalling, and in some rare occasions even violence.
In seminary, I'd been taught that...everyone (even someone in the Church) is entitled to their independent political belief, and to their own conscience and their own link to the Spirit. That the Church does not put itself at stake in politics because it would be a giant untenable conflict of interest. That I as an individual can search, and ponder, and pray for myself about questions ethical in life, and have my questions answered personally from a greater source. But now, it feels like this sickness has become so predominant that the Church leadership itself has begun to break these rules.
Don't get me wrong. I still believe. I still believe in...so many of the same things. I am still a Mormon. But for me, being a Mormon was never this. It wasn't the bashing and disenfranchisement of social and political liberals and their allies. It wasn't the intimidation of people who think differently than the most vile prejudices of people. That is not what I believe in—it is not my faith and not my testimony.
Fortunately, I have found that I'm not alone.
Mormons for Marriage (Equality)
Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons
I fundamentally believe that God loves all his gay and lesbian children, and understands who they are, and the love and purity in their hearts. I fundamentally believe is not at all wrong to be gay, any more than it is wrong to be straight, or a person of color, or a Buddhist, or a Pagan, or a liberal. None of that makes you an evil, bad or wicked person, and that has always been my mature understanding. I do not believe it is wrong or corrupting for same-sex couples to have all the same secular legal protections as opposite-sex couples who register a full civil marriage. Same-sex couples are perfectly fit in every way and should have every right to be seen together in public, and to raise children, and to speak their minds and innermost hearts without fear or realistic threat of retribution.
As for the Church, I have one understanding of a church—a temporal organization of mortals in common agreement in worship. Religious history has shown that churches—even those based on the absolute truest and purest of principles—have repeatedly had to reinvent themselves when mortal members and mortal administration became more stiffnecked among themselves, and more kneejerk in action, and less loving and less benevolent. Sometimes these churches imploded quite painfully, but still with hope that something better and nobler and wiser could rise out of the ashes. If the Church I grew up in becomes more and more socially and politically rigid, it will end up not only alienating a great many good and ethical people, but will become brittle, and crack and break under its own mortal temporal ethical weaknesses. Nothing made by mortal men is perfect or lasts forever, but needs the Lord's blessing and guidance to continue to thrive. And it is possible, through ones own great pride and arrogance, to break that blessing, and become brittle and break.
One thing that I feel has gradually broken is my greater sense of active communion with the Church. There still remains a great deal of abstract bedrock communion, in terms of affirmation of common truths. But active communion broke when it became a genuine danger to my welfare and quality of life to adhere to the dictates of my own conscience. Children of God should not treat one another the way so many members of the Church have been treating other children of God in recent years. It's...very wrong. It breaks my heart. We have only those gifts God has given us, and among the most precious of those is individual freedom of choice and will. That's been cruelly trampled, and it's ironic, because the Lord wanted us to have free will—it was the Adversary who originally wanted to deny free will and force everyone to be equally obedient.
(Since I posted this, I found myself a couple of times slurred by other gay people who were angry at all Mormons for allowing this to happen. The fact that I was diametrically opposed to Prop 8 didn't matter. But ironically, opposing an entire category of people because of their background is exactly what allowed bile like Prop 8 to pass. Gay people shouldn't turn to hate—they should make alliances with people who support them, even if those originated from the ranks of those they might consider their natural enemies.)
In recent days, I've been hearing about a great deal of anger at Mormons for pushing so hard with so much money and influence to pass Proposition 8 in California. "Mormons stole our rights." "Boycott Utah." "Boycott Marriott." "Mormons are our oppressors." "The Church should lose its status as a tax-exempt religion." And there's been nationwide protests outside churches and temples, from Los Angeles to New York City.
...and I can't help but think sometimes, that maybe it's somewhat deserved. I'm a liberal Mormon. I've always been a liberal Mormon. My family is predominantly liberal. But in wider Mormon culture, for years now, there's been a creeping advancing...cultural sickness. One where people demand absolute loyalty and obedience from one another, and where they demand the most far-right possible social and political position, and where difference of opinion and freedom of thought themselves are now treated with scorn, contempt, stonewalling, and in some rare occasions even violence.
In seminary, I'd been taught that...everyone (even someone in the Church) is entitled to their independent political belief, and to their own conscience and their own link to the Spirit. That the Church does not put itself at stake in politics because it would be a giant untenable conflict of interest. That I as an individual can search, and ponder, and pray for myself about questions ethical in life, and have my questions answered personally from a greater source. But now, it feels like this sickness has become so predominant that the Church leadership itself has begun to break these rules.
Don't get me wrong. I still believe. I still believe in...so many of the same things. I am still a Mormon. But for me, being a Mormon was never this. It wasn't the bashing and disenfranchisement of social and political liberals and their allies. It wasn't the intimidation of people who think differently than the most vile prejudices of people. That is not what I believe in—it is not my faith and not my testimony.
Fortunately, I have found that I'm not alone.
Mormons for Marriage (Equality)
Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons
I fundamentally believe that God loves all his gay and lesbian children, and understands who they are, and the love and purity in their hearts. I fundamentally believe is not at all wrong to be gay, any more than it is wrong to be straight, or a person of color, or a Buddhist, or a Pagan, or a liberal. None of that makes you an evil, bad or wicked person, and that has always been my mature understanding. I do not believe it is wrong or corrupting for same-sex couples to have all the same secular legal protections as opposite-sex couples who register a full civil marriage. Same-sex couples are perfectly fit in every way and should have every right to be seen together in public, and to raise children, and to speak their minds and innermost hearts without fear or realistic threat of retribution.
As for the Church, I have one understanding of a church—a temporal organization of mortals in common agreement in worship. Religious history has shown that churches—even those based on the absolute truest and purest of principles—have repeatedly had to reinvent themselves when mortal members and mortal administration became more stiffnecked among themselves, and more kneejerk in action, and less loving and less benevolent. Sometimes these churches imploded quite painfully, but still with hope that something better and nobler and wiser could rise out of the ashes. If the Church I grew up in becomes more and more socially and politically rigid, it will end up not only alienating a great many good and ethical people, but will become brittle, and crack and break under its own mortal temporal ethical weaknesses. Nothing made by mortal men is perfect or lasts forever, but needs the Lord's blessing and guidance to continue to thrive. And it is possible, through ones own great pride and arrogance, to break that blessing, and become brittle and break.
One thing that I feel has gradually broken is my greater sense of active communion with the Church. There still remains a great deal of abstract bedrock communion, in terms of affirmation of common truths. But active communion broke when it became a genuine danger to my welfare and quality of life to adhere to the dictates of my own conscience. Children of God should not treat one another the way so many members of the Church have been treating other children of God in recent years. It's...very wrong. It breaks my heart. We have only those gifts God has given us, and among the most precious of those is individual freedom of choice and will. That's been cruelly trampled, and it's ironic, because the Lord wanted us to have free will—it was the Adversary who originally wanted to deny free will and force everyone to be equally obedient.
(Since I posted this, I found myself a couple of times slurred by other gay people who were angry at all Mormons for allowing this to happen. The fact that I was diametrically opposed to Prop 8 didn't matter. But ironically, opposing an entire category of people because of their background is exactly what allowed bile like Prop 8 to pass. Gay people shouldn't turn to hate—they should make alliances with people who support them, even if those originated from the ranks of those they might consider their natural enemies.)
(although i wont deny mormons are also in for prop 8 as well, but seriously its mostly the religious nuts i call 'cultists')
honestly this is the kinda stuff that happens when we have a religion based government regardless of what kind that backs it...
Thank you. Thank you for helping me to understand that not everyone is against equality in marriage. I'm not gay myself, but I have several friends with mates that are the same gender, and I'm owned by another male personally. I've been told to my face by the religious types, Mormon, Christian, and otherwise, that the relationship I have with my friends, with my owner, and their relationships with each other is wrong, or bad, or that I'm going to burn in hell because I love another male.
Usually, I encounter people like that, and I respond in anger and fury, because their stance on things is so painfully out of sorts with their religion that preaches love and tolerance, that my standard response has become "It's your hell, YOU burn in it!". Now, I think I can look at this a bit more calmly and rationally, thanks to you.
Thank you again.
But there are the Fundamentalists who have taken the Bible to suit their own ends. I know because I was once intesrested in them. Remember: their is a HUGE difference between Religion and Faith.
I have been saddened greatly by the win of Prop 8.
For quite a few religious people, the dictionary term marriage may have inherently religious connotations and meanings to it. To a great many other people though, marriage is a secular institution.
And let me remind you that, to help promote the independence and free organized exercise of religion, the state is prohibited from establishing any religious institution in preference to a secular one. So if marriage is only a religious institution, what business does the state have registering civil marriages at all? But you see, marriage is also a social institution, and this—irrespective of its religious connotations—is what civil marriage exists for. So for the state to recognize any form of marriage, it must do so in an entirely equal and nonreligious context. And since a great many people practice secular marriage, or even gay marriage in certain other religions, it would be unconstitutional for the state to elevate a specific religious understanding of marriage above all other forms.
A religion is entitled to believe whatever it pleases, but it is not entitled to make policy for the state. The tax-exempt status of a religion is based on its nonpolitical status, and when it becomes politically involved, it becomes a political organization with all the ethical involvements implied, and risks losing its tax-exempt status. The sickness I referred to that motivated this kind of involvement of the Church is motivated by a mortal temporal fear of its adherents against "unwanted social change" (Hinckley's words) that would make it far more difficult to treat gay people the way the Church current does. But it's a way the Church and its members have no business treating gay people at all. It's one of the things about the Church as a group of people that I am most ashamed of.
I do not believe this prejudice is genuinely prophetic at all. That said, a Prophet can be a Prophet, but is also a human being. And I'm not just talking about LDS Prophets, but even the Biblical Joshua in the Old Testament was known to make serious mortal judgment mistakes even in capacity of being a man in direct communication with the Lord God.
This is why "search, ponder and pray" is so important to everyone. Because even the Church—even among the most blessed of churches—has full capacity for mortal wrong, because it is ultimately an organization of mortals in common agreement off worship. It can fail. And when it comes to gay people, it has spectacularly failed. And that's why groups like Affirmation are so potent.
As for hate crimes, you seem to think that the notion is about who the victim is. What hate crime laws exist for is when the specific crime is found to be motivated by hateful prejudice. In that sense, if someone kills a white man because he is white, that is still a hate crime.
And as for God being the foundation of a nation... Whether or not God is at the foundation of the country is irrelevant. To protect its religious impartiality, the state cannot officially or forcefully acknowledge a role of God. As for the free exercise of religion in public, it is a matter of individual and group freedom, and not a blank check to legislate theology. Even when you do believe in something, you have to be mindful of the many fellow citizens who believe many different things. Even by sheer number of individuals without the involvement of an entire organized church, to deny en masse certain recognitions of other people in their own domain simply because the voter was wants to turn the state into something that more closely resembles his own church at the expense of other ideas, is majoritarian at best, and dominionist at worst, and may constitute a serious denial of another's fundamental human rights. If free agency is so important, we need to respect it in other people, even and especially those who peacefully disagree with ourselves, and fully defend their right to do so as if their ideas were our own, because we only have those rights (including the right to institutions we believe in) we can successfully protect.
Ultimately, the continued civil marriage treated as if it was religious in all cases is creating an ever-growing conflict of interest. People have to address, "is marriage necessarily religious or not?" If it's not necessarily solely religious, then marriage must be extended equally to gay and straight couples alike. But if marriage is necessarily religious, then civil marriage must be banned, marriage left to the exclusive domain of individual belief, and the state be involved solely in civil union registrations for all.
Because any even tenuous religious establishment in the state only furthers this conflict of interest, and ultimately subjugates the state to religious interests, which causes those religious interests to become subjugated to the obligations it formed by exerting influence on the state, and since thence you won't be able to please every good citizen on a theological level when you're so involved in state business (different religions often have very conflicting theological goals), it only serves to erode the very religious liberties you want to protect in the first place. Therefore, even if God in actuality is in the state, the machine must officially remain indifferent to God to remain fair to all adherents of religion (or lack thereof) and avoid a very damaging religious establishment. And God himself would have been wise enough to see why this was so important—it's not simply a vehicle to eventually opportunistically usher in a mortal temporal theocracy in this imperfect world, but a means of continuing to protect free conscience for all in a world where the free will of all individuals (including to disagree and live their lives and have their lives legally recognized as equal to anyone else's) as inherently and inviolably sacrosanct.
My mind won't be easily changed on this issue. The vast majority of my friends and most of the people I know in this life, are gay. And they keep living their lives hoping for the best for their lives. So many of them are ethical people of true good character. And they think about marriage just like anyone else does, and some have relationships they have long called marriages too. If you go up to them and tell them that their relationships are socially inferior; that they're not truly marriage; you might end up losing some teeth. If you speak to them using quotes and euphemisms and treat them like heteronormativity is the only valid approach, you will only make them feel persecuted, insulted and denigrated, and you're not going to do anything to convince them of what you say, especially if they take their right to equal civil marriage (as "marriage" or equivilent to the highest civil registration for straight couples) as a given, as many of us have for years in fighting for the right to have it recognized for our common good. Instead, you will only have spat on their fundamental sense of identity, and will alienate both them and their straight allies. All this cultural war over a fear in change of social values that has already happened in the gay world and in broad swaths of society. The awareness is aroused, and the dye is cast, and my Mormon family accepts me and this principle that my rights as a self-respecting gay man are inalienable. Never again can I allow myself to be bullied by someone else's fear, anxiety or dogmatism in opposition to this cause, because if I did, I would have no conscience at all.
And yes, I've long known all about Lilburn Boggs and the Extermination Order in Missouri. I also know that it was later rescinded, and universally acknowledged to have been a grave human rights violation no less serious than the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia or the numerous pogroms against Jews in the history of Europe and the Middle East. Bad things happen, and those bad things (whether acknowledged then or after) are called crimes. And when crimes happen, a redress of some sort is called for, whether or not it's immediate legal/police action or a belated retraction more than a century later. Yes, bad things happen to good people, and just because they happen it doesn't make it right, and doesn't mean it will forever be judged right by history. To be honest, it doesn't make much of a difference to me. I'd rather die free as who I am, than live in constant fear of attack. I have a right to life, but if my life is taken away against my will, it will not mean that who I am died with me. I would have died free, and it would have soiled the hands of the one who killed me. I would pity them for the burden they would have to live with.