My Mormon.org profile, again

By Mister Curie

So I haven't been able to figure out how to link to my facebook account, so I disabled that functionality with my mormon.org profile and have been waiting to see if anything would happen.

I finally got a response on my homosexuality question that "the statement is to (sic) harsh for the audience it would go to. thus it is not cleared."  I am pleased that President Kimball's statements on homosexuality are no longer deemed appropriate, but I am a little disturbed by the qualifier of "for the audience it would go to."  Is this an attempt to placate me so that I don't think they are questioning my answer, or is this an attempt to give good PR to church, giving me a wink that they agree with me but we don't want to come across as harsh to investigators?  If the later, isn't this just the continuation of dishonesty and double-speak that has plagued the church since its beginning?

So I have edited my answer on the question of homosexuality down to: "The Mormon church is firm in the conviction that homosexual behavior is offensive to God and actively works to support legislation against same-sex marriage."

I guess we'll see if that gets accepted.  My answer on the Holy Ghost is still "Pending Review."

My Mormon.org profile, reprise

By Mister Curie

As some people have noticed, my Mormon.org profile has been taken down.  I was not given any warning or reason for my profile's removal.  In fact, the profile was initially completely deleted from my account.  I wrote to technical services for an explanation, but they have not responded.

After getting the profile initially approved, I was making minor changes to see what types of things could be done to a Mormon.org profile.  When you complete your profile, it tells you: "Thank you for completing your profile. You can update your profile at anytime. If parts of your profile below show "Pending Review," that means they are being reviewed before appearing on Mormon.org. We will notify you through email as soon as your profile changes are approved." (Although I must note that I never got an email telling me my profile was approved or needed revisions or anything.  I guess that functionality of the cobbage wasn't completed.) I had every intention of posting some follow-up posts about what could be changed once a profile was approved, how the process worked, and how long it took.  First, I deleted one of my more faithful answers, although I still had more than the minimum number of questions answered.  The approved profile and the deleted question remained posted for several days until the profile was finally updated with the question removed.  Because the original profile remained posted, I figured that as long as I kept all the minimum requirements I could make some larger changes.  I tried linking my facebook account to the Mormon.org profile, an optional functionality.  I changed my demographic data so that my "previous religious background" was agnostic/atheist. I also tried tweaking my answer to the question on homosexuality that had never been approved, as I previously noted.  My new answer read:

When I was young, one of our highest leaders, the prophet, then President Spencer W. Kimball, taught about homosexuality: “This perversion is defined as the sexual desire for those of the same sex or sexual relations between individuals of the same sex, whether men or women. It is the sin of the ages.” And later he uses these adjectives to describe homosexuality: repugnant, deviant, unnatural, abominable, evil, ugly, and curable.  Today the church uses less charged language but remains firm in the conviction that homosexual behavior is offensive to God and actively works to support legislation against same-sex marriage.

I also answered a new question:  What do Mormons believe about the Holy Ghost? Who is the Holy Ghost?  My answer was:

The Holy Ghost is the third member of the Godhead and His job is to testify of truth. We experience the Holy Ghost as feelings of conviction, sincerity, and a feeling of comfort and warmth (sometimes referred to as a "burning in the bosom.") These feelings direct us in times of uncertainty and difficulty as we are seeking God's will for our life. Such firm emotional manifestations are a way to understand God's will and free us from being tied to the changing ideas and whims of the world.

I suppose I was trying to change too many things at once, but I was impatient.  I suppose that any of those things may have gotten my profile pulled.  Or perhaps so many changes caused warning flags and they looked at my profile a little more carefully.  Or perhaps a TBM friend reported my profile.  I don't have any answers.

Before publishing this post, I checked my account again and my profile has returned to my account with a note saying that I need to revise the link to my facebook account.  As far as I can tell, the link should work.  The link is: http://facebook.com/turgenev13. I would be grateful for someone who is not my facebook friend to check this link to make sure it works.  Or perhaps David Baker would like to give me some advice on how he got his mormon.org profile linked to his facebook account.

My changes to the homosexuality question and the new answer to the Holy Ghost question are still "pending review".

I will keep working to get my profile back up.

In the meantime, I've gotten several requests for the screenshots I saved of my profile.  So here they are, just in case my profile is eternally in outer darkness.

 I apologize in advance for the quality, but I hope it is legible.

 

Church Drama

By Mister Curie
So Madame Curie recently published a rather lengthy and comprehensive account of recent Church drama on her blog.  If you are interested in knowing the details, feel free to check out her blog at http://sapphicsoliloquies.blogspot.com/.

Largely, this relates to points 12 and 13 from my "Update" post from a couple of days ago.

Basically, what it boils down to is this:

After being stalked by the missionaries and then having a visit with the Bishop and First Counselor of the ward, Madame Curie noticed some blog traffic from the Philadelphia area.  We are now watching carefully for visits to our blogs from the Philadelphia area (including suburbs).  So, if this refers to you, dear reader, please email or post in the comments to let Madame Curie know who you are, particularly if you think we know you. If we don't know you, please at least anonymously comment and tell us we have nothing to fear from you (we recognize there are valid reasons to want to be anonymous beyond gathering juicy tidbits of information for excommunication proceedings). Currently Madame Curie cannot rest peacefully at night due to worrying, please alleviate her fears. We will happily respond to any requests for more information from you in public or in private.

Update

By Mister Curie

After coming out to my immediate family about no longer believing in the church and also about being attracted to men, I have noticed some interesting changes in my life. Many of these changes are due to the relatively positive response I received from my family when I came out.  First, coming out has created some space in my life to be myself  without worrying about the response of others and that has removed a good deal of angst and urgency, both of which were contributing to my need to blog. Second, I have been able to work on decompartmentalizing much of my life and thus have been posting more on facebook, broadcasting my lack of Mormon beliefs and interest in LGBT themes in a non-anonymous fashion.  Third, with outing myself to those that matter most in my life, gay  and Mormon issues have taken a backseat in my life as of late and other aspects of my life that I was ignoring have demanded attention after their long neglect (essentially, I had a meeting with my PhD thesis committee and they feel I am ready to graduate, which means I need to finish up my research ASAP and write hundreds of pages for my thesis before May. My research has also become very interesting lately with obtaining some  knock-out mice of the gene I am studying and having multiple avenues of my research all beginning to converge).  Things are going well and my list of topics to blog about keeps getting longer and longer, but I have not had the time to address them in an adequate manner.  As I often found when I regularly kept a journal, right when there are things to write about, I am doing so many things that I don't have time to write about them.

Thus, I am happy to have a place to blog to process through things and I am not going away, but I can't guarantee that blog posts will be regular and/or frequent.  If you  would like more frequent updates on my life, I encourage you to 'friend' me on facebook.  I have added a facebook widget on the sidebar. Also, rather than holding on to the list of things I have done that each deserve a blog post waiting for enough time to do each one justice, I will list them in this update and perhaps future blog posts will expand on some of them, although I am sure there will be future things to blog about in addition, so no guarantees.

In chronological order, some important events since coming out to my family:

1. One of  my younger brothers came to visit and we took a trip to NYC, where we saw Wicked, had an enjoyable dinner with Horizon, and stayed overnight at his apartment.
2. Summer trip to Rehoboth, an LGBT-friendly area, and took a stroll down  to the gay  beach
3. Family trip to the Catholic Marianist retreat center which further confirmed my agnostic/atheist belief system
4. MoHo East party at Horizon's apartment over Labor Day weekend, where I first met David Baker, Clark,  Michael, and several other MoHos.
5. Watched some of Clark's YouTube videos. I want to watch more.
6. Also watched some of the MorMen videos.  Again,  there are more of these that I'd love to watch.
7. OutFest 2010 party in Philadelphia, National Coming Out Day
8. General Conference - Boyd K. Packer, need I say more?
9. Read several LGBT nonfiction books from the University library,definitely want to do some book reviews on my blog.
10. Trip to Washington DC, where I spent more time with David Baker and also met Sean.
11.  Bollywood parties at our place - Some of the Indian  boys in those movies are so cute!
12.  Missionaries in the area are persistent, so we share our church concerns with them, dumping it all on them without filtering for their sake.  Missionaries sit dumbfounded with deer in headlights look on their faces, not knowing how to respond.  As I go off on church history concerns, missionaries no doubt confuse cognitive dissonance for "spirit of Satan" and suddenly need to leave for "another appointment".
13. Bishop and First Counselor pay a visit to our home.  We anticipated a visit expressing concern for our eternal welfare, instead they do not express any interest in our concerns or in attempting to resolve them, but rather wish to "protect the good name of the church".  They just want to make sure we aren't part of an organized anti-Mormon group trying to take down the church.  We feel  they certainly overestimate our influence and they leave reassured that we aren't systematically trying to take the church down.  We feel emboldened and empowered after the visit, realizing how little power the church has over us now.
14. Thanksgiving - stayed in Philadelphia, but some minor family drama in Idaho when one of my younger brothers outed me to all the extended family and forced my mom to make a family-wide announcement
15. In response to #11, I emailed the letter I wrote for my parents to all the adults on that side of the family so they  would know I am not ashamed and to let them know I am up for a dialogue on the topic.
16. Hanukkah - Jewish boys can be so cute.

Came out to my family - short version

By Mister Curie

Just wanted to let everyone know that we came out to my family last night and it went better than expected. Madame Curie and I met together with my parents first and told them in person, then gave them the letter and an autographed copy of "No More Goodbyes" and "Now That You Know". Then I met individually with each of my siblings and told them. The whole process took about 5 hours. I think the church disaffection is the hardest aspect for my mom. The gay thing is hardest for each of my brothers. But each conversation ended with expressions of love on both sides and hugs. Everyone seemed grateful that we wanted to be honest and open, which I think made it easier. I know there is a lot of processing that will need to go on for each person now, but I'm really grateful that their initial reaction was they ability to look beyond their Mormon mindset and see us as the people they have always known us to be and to express their love.

Thanks everyone for your support. It made it much easier knowing you were all rooting for us.  I read the blog comments on my previous post several times throughout the day to give me the courage to tell them. And the personal texts from some of you were also very encouraging.

I'll write up a longer version at some point, but I wanted to let you know it went well.

D Day

By Mister Curie

So, the plan is to come out to my family sometime today about being disaffected from the church and being gay, in person.  Wish me luck!

I'll return and report.

Coming Out to My Family Revisted, Again

By Mister Curie

The disaffection coming out approach I previously proposed in my post "Coming Out to My Family Revisted" was given a trial run with the arrival of my aunt and uncle, as I described in the post "Hiding", this is actually the approach we took in our own home when some relatives came to visit for a couple of days. I think that having experienced this type of approach, we didn't find that it actually worked that well for us. We felt uncomfortable wondering when/if they were going to notice our lack of orthodoxy or orthopraxy. Ultimately we don't think they noticed anything, but that is also part of the problem if we view this as a step toward coming out. Most recently we have decided to announce to my family before we arrive that we are no longer believing and while I trend toward avoiding challenging the orthopraxy, having had this uncomfortable experience the last couple of days, it may be best to drop all pretenses.  Returning to the closet about disaffection was not a pleasant experience and I'm not sure that I want to do it again with regards to disaffection or being gay when we go out to visit. With the energy of outing myself regarding my disaffection and the relief I feel at being able to be open and honest, I think I will probably out myself regarding being gay at the same time to try and get it all out in the open.  I have worked on a letter that I intend to email them shortly before we go out to visit.  I would love to receive any comments and suggestions from others.  I will also admit that I have taken some particularly clever phrases from Chris because his statements resonated so well with me.   What do you think?  Is it too much to drop it all at once on my parents?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Mom and Dad,

First and foremost, I want to thank you for all of the love and support you have given me. I appreciate your efforts to raise me properly and teach me correct principles, such as honesty, integrity, love, service to my fellow man, etc. I have many wonderful memories from my childhood and your efforts have helped me to become the man I am today.  I know that you did your best in your parenting efforts and sacrificed much on my behalf.  Being a parent now myself, I am beginning to understand the great challenge of being a parent, with all of its joys, triumphs, difficulties, and heartbreaks.

Writing this letter is one of the most difficult things I have ever done.  I wanted to write so that I could get the wording perfect, but still I struggle to find the right words to convey my thoughts and feelings in the spirit of love and respect that they are intended.  I suspect that this letter ranks high on the list of letters that parents want least to receive.  In writing this letter I am attempting to exemplify the principles of honesty and integrity that you instilled in me.  I am not sure if you have noticed the increasing sense of separation between us over the past year.  Our phone calls have become less frequent and I have been more and more at a loss as to what to say during the conversations we have had.  I have been on a personal journey that I wasn’t sure you wanted to know about.  However, I am accustomed to being honest with you and so I am compelled to share these parts of myself with you, despite the pain I fear it may cause.  I hope that sharing this will lead to further understanding and love between us.

The past year has been a challenging one for Madame Curie and me in many ways. Circumstances and our scientific minds have compelled us to begin questioning all of our previous assumptions about life. I think that such a process is a natural part of growing up and taking responsibility. Madame Curie and I have been on separate, but similar journeys that have been both fascinating and overwhelming.  You may recall some of the beginnings of Madame Curie’s journey as she blogged her questions on her “_______________” blog. Our questioning led us doubt the very foundation of our testimonies.

Speaking for myself, I had always believed the church was true. I assumed it was true. I had always trusted my leaders and friends that the church was true. I felt wonderful, positive feelings that I had been taught were the Holy Ghost that confirmed to me the church was true. In fact, I thought that I knew the church was true and I lived my life accordingly, exhibiting all seriousness and diligence in attempting to serve the Lord. Because so much of what I am was wrapped up in the church, I assure you that I have not taken my questioning lightly. I have always believed the Prophet Joseph Smith’s statement that “Mormonism is truth; and every man who embraces it feels himself at liberty to embrace every truth” and I moved forward believing that all truths I discovered could only strengthen my testimony.

We do feel like our questioning has drawn us closer to truth, but we admit that it has pulled us away from the church. Many of the prior inconsistencies we struggled with disappeared and made more sense when we no longer assumed the church was true. Additionally, much of what we have found in our questioning has been inconsistent with what we believed about the church. We would be happy to continue living the life we had as believing members of the church, a life which has brought us a lot of joy, if we could still believe in the church we thought we were members of, but we cannot. Currently Madame Curie and I are not in the same place as regards faith, but we are patiently working through those differences.  We continue to question our prior and current assumptions. I assume it is a journey that we will travel for the rest of our lives, hoping to draw ever closer to truth. In many ways it is exciting and liberating to no longer think I (or even necessarily anyone else) have all the answers, if such answers even exist. I think that is part of the scientist in me.

Our changes in belief do not change who we are at our cores.  This does not change our love for you, each other, Le Petite Curie, or any other members of the family.   We do not wish to hurt anyone else’s relationship with the church and we do not intend to do anything to try and hurt the church.  We intend to raise Le Petite Curie and instill in him the same core principles of goodness that you raised me with.  We believe the church is largely a force of goodness in the world and that its members are sincere in their beliefs and righteous desires, although we no longer hold those same beliefs.

Our journey has been further complicated by the fact that as I was able to let go of my belief in the church, I have finally been able to accept that I am physically attracted to men.  I am gay.  In retrospect, I realize that I have experienced these feelings for the same gender since childhood. There are many reasons why it has taken me so long to acknowledge them, however. On one hand, the feelings came so naturally that there didn’t seem to be anything to notice or acknowledge, much like we rarely notice when we are breathing. On the other hand, the things I heard about homosexuality in church were in direct contradiction to what I experienced. President Spencer W. Kimball wrote in his book, The Miracle of Forgiveness, about homosexuality: “This perversion is defined as the sexual desire for those of the same sex or sexual relations between individuals of the same sex, whether men or women. It is the sin of the ages.” And later he uses these adjectives to describe homosexuality: repugnant, deviant, unnatural, abominable, evil, ugly, and curable. I did not feel that those statements could possibly apply to me, so I obviously couldn’t be homosexual. I was also taught that homosexuality was a choice, and I knew that I had not consciously chosen to have these feelings. In Junior High I began to notice a disparity between my own and my friends’ interests in girls. I had also begun to internalize the messages from church about homosexuals and so I labeled my growing attractions to the male body as temptations from Satan, thus externalizing the experience. I regularly prayed long, tearful prayers, asking Heavenly Father to help me overcome these temptations and to forgive me for them.  I strove to live the gospel with exactness so that I could qualify for God’ help in overcoming these attractions.

It was only upon questioning my prior assumptions that I was able to acknowledge that my feelings of attraction toward men are not external temptations, but rather that they originate from inside me. They are not something that I believe can or needs to be changed. The exact causes of homosexuality are currently unknown and I think it is fruitless to speculate too long on potential causes.  I do not think that my attractions to men are because of anything you have or have not done.  They were not taught to me or learned from someone else.

Perhaps it is important to dispel some misperceptions at this point.  Admitting that I am gay does not mean that I am promiscuous. It does not mean that I have had physical relationships with men before Madame Curie and I were married or after. It does not mean that I cross-dress. It does not mean that Madame Curie and I are splitting up, or that I love her or Le Petite Curie any less. It does not mean that I am attracted to children or should be considered unsafe around children.  It does not mean that I am any other person than the son that you have known all these years.

This admission of homosexuality naturally raises some questions about my current family. Madame Curie and I are very happy together and love each other very much. As I’m sure you have noticed, we are made for each other. We connect on many levels, including intellectually and emotionally. Our marriage is (and has been) an expression of our sincere love for each other and has not been false in any way. Even without infidelities, acknowledging my homosexuality naturally introduces some challenges into our relationship and we are working through those with the help of a qualified therapist. Additionally, we have found a support network among other gay and married couples (many of whom are LDS). And with our intellectual inclinations, we are also delving into the scientific literature. We have every intention of staying together and making our marriage work. Many marriages face difficult challenges, this one just happens to be one such challenge that our marriage faces.

I know this information may be overwhelming and come as a surprise and a shock. I understand all too well that it may be painful. I hope that it will lead to further understanding and love between us. I am sure you have a lot of questions.  We are happy to answer any questions that you may have.  I am sure that you will have new questions in the future.  I will always be happy to try and answer them to help facilitate understanding between us.  I am the same person that I was before, but now I am sharing another part of myself with you. I am also bringing some books for you that I hope will be helpful. I hope you will read them and discuss them with me.

I love you very much and I look forward to our visit!

Love,

Mister Curie

Coming Out to Family Revisited

By Mister Curie

I previously blogged about coming out to my family about my disaffection and/or my homosexuality.  Horizon?  We are now scheduled to visit my family at the end of the month, so the questions of whether or not to come out and whether to come out about both or a single issue (and which, if just a single issue) are looming larger.  Reading over my pros and cons from the first time I blogged about this question, it is a bit humorous to see some of my thoughts.  I think I have gotten somewhat more comfortable about both my disaffection and my homosexuality, although I'm sure there is still room to go.  I think the main reason for coming out is so that we can be ourselves without worrying about someone finding out our secrets.  We want to be able to not hide who we are.  Of course, we also want to be accepted for where we are on our journey, but its much harder to ensure acceptance when coming out.  And, as I recently posted, there is fear that we will lose support and love from those we love most.

We have gone back and forth over the different scenarios and options, considering everything from completely closeting ourselves and putting back on our garments for the visit to straight-forwardly announcing the news of our disaffection and homosexuality.  I think we have decided on a middle-ground and will view this trip as laying the groundwork for a future "coming out".  The current plan is to remain true to ourselves, but without attempting to challenge their belief system.  So we will not be putting back on our garments, but we will wear temple-garment compatible clothing in their presence (this one is hardest for Madame Curie who would love to enjoy the summer visit in a tank-top and is loathe to put on a regular T-shirt).  We will also avoid Word of Wisdom infractions in their presence, although I suspect there will be several clandestine visits to Starbucks while we are there.  However, if we are questioned about our underwear or our unorthodoxy, we will admit to current questions and struggles.  If we are asked a direct question, we will respond with as direct an answer.  They also know that Madame Curie is planning on attending the Sunstone conference, but we aren't sure if they know what Sunstone is or not.  Thus, we do not have plans to formally come out about our disaffection, but recognize that it is a distinct possibility that we may be questioned while we are there.  It is less likely that there will be any questioning as to my sexual orientation, but as our marital relationship remains intact, there isn't a pressing need for them to know about it.

What do you think?  Are we kidding ourselves and should be more formally prepared for a coming out about our disaffection during the visit?  Are we just delaying the inevitable and making things worse?  Do you think we are just chickening out because the visit is getting so close and we are responding to our fear of potential loss? 

Hiding

By Mister Curie

My aunt and uncle are coming to visit for a couple of days. They will be here this afternoon. I was up last night trying to rid the house of evidence of our lack of orthopraxy. I'm leaving the Mormon History books on the shelves (but I took off the LGBT-themed ones), and I've boxed up the coffee machine and the espresso maker, as well as the boxes of tea. This morning I remembered that the user's manuals for the coffee maker were in the utensil drawer, and I moved those too, but now I feel nervous that there is some other "evidence" lying around that I've missed. This feels wrong. It has been very freeing to be on the East Coast far away from family to allow my "apostasy" to flourish and to stop worrying so much what others think. It doesn't feel right to be forcing myself back into the closet in my own home. I shouldn't feel such social pressure to conform. Yet, I'm not sure what to do. I don't think I want my parents finding out about my loss of faith through my aunt and uncle. I want to find a more appropriate way for them to find out. This is frustrating.


I feel like I'm in one of those dramatic scenes of a movie when the protagonist suddenly has an "aha!" moment and realizes that this is really messed up (cue epiphany music). That, or I'm in a comedy and I'm going to be nervously grabbing offending materials trying to hide it as they visit us in our home, inevitably leading to a huge blow-up once they make the discovery, hopefully there is a "feel good" ending.

God's Vast Eternal Plan

By Mister Curie

Inspired by our trip to the Musical, "Fiddler on the Roof", earlier this week, a quote by Elder Oaks:

I love the musical and motion picture Fiddler on the Roof. There a wonderful Jewish father sings “If I Were a Rich Man.” His memorable prayer concludes with this pleading question:

Lord, who made the lion and the lamb,
You decreed I should be what I am;
Would it spoil some vast eternal plan,
If I were a wealthy man?
(Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick [1964])

Yes, Tevye, it might. Let us give thanks for what we are and for the circumstances God has given us for our personal journey through mortality.

Yes, Elder Oaks, and its awfully easy to sit in the Church Office Building and demand that Tevye keep paying his measely kopeks to pad your lifestyle as a church celebrity, refusing to provide him with "eternal ordinances" if he doesn't pay those kopeks, telling him he will lose his family for eternity. Here is another example of the church encouraging complacency with life, rather than trying to change things for the better.

Traditions

By Mister Curie

"Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as... as a fiddler on the roof!" - Tevye

Madame Curie and I went to watch "Fiddler on the Roof" for our weekly date night.  The company did a great job and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.  I have seen "Fiddler on the Roof" several times, but I came with a very different perspective this time.  In many ways I am a "traditions" person, as well as a "truth" person.  Since becoming disaffected with the church, I feel like I have lost a lot of my traditions, and life often feels very shaky.  It is a very precarious position when you are a traditions person and a truth person.  I wobble back and forth, when I seek to observe the traditions, the truth side of me reminds me of the futility of the traditions.  When I follow where truth leads, I  long for the traditions of my youth.

But it was also obvious in the play, that while traditions provide a sense of stability and comfort, they can also be harmful.  I think of Tevye disowning his daughter because she married outside of the faith.  And I think of the things I did sincerely believing they were the right thing, but which were wrong, harmful, and judgmental.  I see many ways in which our religious traditions lead to harmful behavior.

I also thought about how life is a journey that continues throughout our life.  Often it seems that the church's Plan of Happiness (TM) ends at parenthood.  Everything in the church leads toward the temple, marriage, and having children.  But once you start having kids, everything focuses on the children and the parents are largely left to stagnate.  However, that isn't how life works, it keeps throwing stuff at you.  I think of Tevye and his family with their challenges.  And I think of my parents and how learning of their kids' disaffection will be a challenge to them, and how it will be a challenge for them to learn that they have a gay son.

I thought about how Le Petite Curie is sure to throw some curve balls our way and challenge us.  And I thought about how the big challenges right now seem to be adjusting to my disaffection, accepting that I am gay, and figuring out how to make my MOM work.  While it feels like these are huge challenges and that I just need to endure and get through them, there are sure to be additional challenges on the other side of them.  Life is like that.

Filling in the Gaps

By Mister Curie

Madame Curie and I listed to another excellent installment of Mormon Stories Podcast last night and it really filled in a lot of the gaps.  The podcast guest was Daymon Smith, who did his Anthropology PhD at the University of Pennsylvania (where I currently attend school) on the subject of the  LDS church correlation program.  It was an absolutely fascinating podcast that I highly recommend.  Learning real church history, not the stuff they teach at church, largely led to my disaffection.  It became obvious after doing a minimal amount of research that we do not learn a lot of the real church history because it has been sanitized out of the curriculum by the correlation program.  The question I have had since becoming disaffected from Mormonism is wondering how we went from the crazy 19th century church founded by Joseph Smith that was filled with charismatic gifts and alternative lifestyles (polygamy) with a definite anti-American government bend to the organized and decidedly American religion we have today.  In studying church history, it seemed to me that there was a shift in things around the turn of the 20th century, right around the time that Utah was obtaining statehood and polygamy was being banned.  But it was more than just banning polygamy, so that didn't explain everything.  Daymon Smith researched this exact time period of the church and has some fascinating  insights.

I was raised as a "Correlated Mormon" with the false world view that the church correlation program provides.  The church correlation program gives the impression that the LDS church is the receptacle of eternal truths that have always been present throughout history because they come from an Eternal God.  This gives the impression that modern inventions, such as the Temple Endowment, were originally instituted with Adam and Eve and have been repeated in all dispensations of the world, such that a temple endowment was performed in the Jewish tabernacle and temples (such as Solomon's temple), and that Christ gave his apostles the endowment (but evil and designing men removed reference to it from our scriptures), and that even BoM peoples had the temple endowment.  Such correlation reinforces processes that Joseph Smith initiated with his translation of the Bible and the Book of Mormon.  Correlation presents the image that if the Bible had been translated properly and not altered by evil men, it would largely read like the Book of Mormon with its testimonies of Christ, as if Old Testaments prophets (and you could group Lehi, Nephi, and the Brother of Jared into people from the same time period as Old Testament prophets) knew and bore testimony of Christ.  Once you strip away the correlated world view, it becomes obvious that the Book of Mormon is a 19th century religious commentary that doesn't even match our own correlated doctrine.  Abinidi's sermon to King Noah is not an exposition of the Godhead (where the role of the Holy Ghost wasn't cannonized until the early 20th century largely through the efforts of James E. Talmage), but rather a 19th century trinitarian exposition.  The "fullness of the Gospel" with Priesthood ordination, temple endowment, and Eternal marriage are not in the Book of Mormon.  In fact, the current structure of the church that we "Correlated Mormons" know and love has only been in existence since the early 1980's.

My favorite quote from the podcast is: "Through the institutionalization of what is called correlation, you can explain away every error of correlation as an error of faith, but you can credit everything that happens in the church as a result of correlation."  To me, this quote explains how you can find perfectly documented historical information from church history that is simultaneously historically true and "eternally" false. 

I highly recommend the podcast, you can listen to it here:
Daymon Smith

Church and Choice

By Mister Curie

A couple of acquaintances have suggested that my church disaffection and discovery of my homosexuality are so closely tied together that perhaps I would be better served by focusing on one before the other, suggesting that my struggles with the church are inhibiting my acceptance of homosexuality.  Invariably they have suggested that I focus on my church disaffection first and that once I work through that, I will be better positioned to accept my homosexuality.

I think I have pretty well worked through my disaffection.  Although I still attend church, I do not believe in its doctrinal foundations.  I do not believe Joseph Smith was called to be a prophet, that there was a Divine Restoration, that the Book of Mormon is a historical document translated by the power of God, or that we are led by a Prophet today.  That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?  Perhaps not quite - I don't believe that Christ was the literal Son of God, that he founded a church, that he atoned for our sins, or that he was resurrected.  I'm still on the fence about God, I'm still trying to decide if I think there is substantial physical evidence that God does not exist or that God's non-existence cannot be proved by physical evidence.  But I do not believe in an anthropomorphic God who lives on/near Kolob with plural wives and gazillions of kids.  I do not believe in a God that intervenes in the world to help me find my car keys so I'm not inconvenienced, but allows immense pain and suffering in the world.  The world makes much more sense when I stop trying to superimpose Mormon theology on it.  So what more is there to work through?  When you stop believing entirely in the church, there just isn't much left.

Or is there?  There is one aspect of my disaffection that I have not worked through, and it is intricately tied in with my discovery of my homosexuality.  My wife hinted at this aspect of my disaffection in her recent post about feminism and choice.  We are taught that free agency is the greatest gift God has given us and that we must use it wisely (in fact that was yesterday's Priesthood lesson in my ward), but I feel that psychologically the church trapped me into making the choices it dictated.  Madame Curie wrote about how women don't really have a choice in whether to be stay-at-home moms because they are taught that it is a divine requirement.  For the true believer, the choice is whether to please God or disappoint Him. In the church, it is all very black and white.

Similarly, in many of my life decisions, the church gave me a black and white choice where one option was clearly God's will and the other option was sinful self-indulgence.  There really was no choice involved for the true believer.  Such was the case with homosexuality: either you choose to obey God's will to honor your natural affections for a woman or you chose be a sinful, degenerate faggot.

I have not yet intellectually plumbed the depths to which the church controlled my life and dictated my decisions.  The church dictated to me as a true believer how to spend countless hours of my week, what food to eat, clothes to wear, words to use, entertainment to watch, music to listen to, who to spend time with, etc.  You can argue there was a choice and that I chose what the church said, but to me there was no choice other than to please God or to choose misery.

My life's path was largely dictated by the church: go to BYU, go on a mission, get married, have a kid.  I was following "God's plan for me".  I admit that I was too dependent on the church, too quick to succeed my agency to what it dictated was right.  I'm afraid to confront how much of my life was chosen based on what the church said, rather than on what I really wanted.

If the church said it was what I wanted, then I believed it.  Take for example my experience in the temple. The first time I went through for endowments, I was shocked (and this was after the temple was toned down to remove the ritualized physical punishments, etc.)  I was not prepared for the temple experience.  And I don't think that there is anything in the church that will properly prepare you for the temple, certainly not the worthless temple preparation courses.  I left the temple being reminded more about Gadianton robbers than anything else.  I've heard my experience was not unique.  But I had been told that in the temple we found the crowning ordinances of the Gospel, that it is God's house on earth, and that it is the most spiritual place we will ever be.  And so I convinced myself that it was.  I attended the temple weekly and acclimated to the weird worship pattern.  I came to love temple worship, so much in fact that I served as an ordinance worker in the Provo temple for several years while at BYU.  The church told me the temple was the pinnacle of spirituality, and so it became for me.  So much, in fact, that I came to see Sunday worship was essentially meaningless without the temple experience.


The same pattern was repeated with my mission.  I think back fondly on my two years as a servant of the Lord (and not just when I remember my cute companions).  The church told me my mission should be the best two years of my life up to that point, and so it was in my mind.  A review of my mission journal tells a different story.  Most days I was miserable.  My introverted nature was not designed for engaging strangers in gospel discussions.  I worked hard, but failed to become an effective proselytizing missionary.  But my role as a missionary was to do God' will (as determined and dictated by the church) and to go and do what the Lord wanted me to do.

I have not yet come to grips with which decisions I have made because the church told me that I must in order to be truly happy.  For the true believer, there was only the choice between pleasing God and eternal woe.  I tried to choose to please God every time.  And so I wonder, how much of my life path was determined by what the church wanted and how much was determined by what I wanted.  Surely some of the time those priorities aligned and I don't want to throw out everything the church taught just because it said it.  On the other hand, my life has been great and I think I'm generally happy with where I am at.

Unfortunately, prayer isn't very helpful in this struggle because I have already proven to myself that the answers I have received to prayer in the past are largely manifestations of the complex psychological interplay between what I want and what I believe God wants (typically the church's stance), and typically the church's stance won out. But that is how the church teaches it should be.  In the Bible Dictionary we learn that "The object of prayer is not to change the will of God. . . Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other."  Now that I no longer believe the church has insight into God's will for me, I'm not sure where to turn to determine the best path for me.

So what is it that I actually want and how do I get my life on that path?  Or am I already on that path?