Mormon Stories Podcast

By Mister Curie

I recently listed to a fascinating series of Mormon Stories podcasts.  John Dehlin, who creates the podcasts, is interviewing people with fascinating Mormon stories.  Most recently I listed to a series of podcasts with Peter Danzig about homosexuality.

In a nutshell, Peter Danzig and his wife performed with the Orchestra at Temple  Square and Peter was training to become a social worker.  Peter noticed inconsistencies between the LDS social services approach to homosexuality and what professional organizations were saying should be the approach.  He tried to discuss the issue with supervisors and the Brethren of the church to correct the inconsistencies.  In response to the church attempting to affect legislation regarding gays, Peter wrote a letter to the editor of the Salt Lake Tribune in the mid 2000s.  When church leaders became aware of this letter, he was removed from the Orchestra at Temple Square and threatened with church discipline for vocally supporting gays.

It is an absolutely fascinating story.  The four parts can be found here:
Peter and Mary Danzig Pt. 1 – The Early Years
Peter and Mary Danzig Pt. 2 – Gaining Sympathy for Homosexuals, Losing His Testimony, and Writing a Letter to the Editor
Peter and Mary Danzig Pt. 3 – Removed from the Orchestra at Temple Square, Silenced, Threatened with Discipline, Resigning from the LDS Church
Peter and Mary Danzig Pt. 4 – Rebuilding a Life Without the LDS Church

Hatred under the Guise of Loving God

By Mister Curie

I'd like to thank John Gustav-Wrathall for raising awareness of the current legislation being considered in Uganda. This legislation would make life imprisonment the minimum penalty for gay sex, with some instances necessitating the death penalty. Members of the public who fail to report homosexual activity would face three years in prison, and those who stand up in defense for homosexuals (such as family members) would face seven years in prison. Just as appalling, is that a group of American politicians and Evangelicals are supporting this measures in Uganda, as reported in the New York Times. While reading another article that John provided, one phrase in particular hit me:

promot[ing] hatred under the guise of loving Jesus

I received an email several months ago from a friend who was concerned about my family's public support for gay marriage, "in opposition to sustaining the Prophet." I frequently feel that the LDS church places itself as a mortal proxy for the eternal command to love God. This is reflected in the doctrine that only allows entrance to Celestial Glory for those who have experienced temple ordinances (where admittance to the temple for such "saving" ordinances is dependent on doctrinal orthodoxy, payment of tithing to the church organization, and "following the prophet"). This friend then laid out the by-now-familiar Mormon case against homosexuality, which I will not re-hash here. Essentially, however was the case that I must "follow the Prophet" to show my love for God. Somewhere in these arguments, I found the pernicious promotion of hatred under the guise of loving God.

I responded as a faithful Latter-day Saint, while attempting a rebuttal to the argument that obedience to the Prophet is the highest form of loving God:

I understand why you would be concerned that we are picking and choosing from the prophet's counsel. We have encountered all of your arguments previously and struggled for some time with our decision. We certainly have no desire to go against the Prophet of God or to put ourselves outside of God's guidance. We have made the matter a concern of deep spiritual reflection, pondering, and of course, prayer. We are counseled to obey the prophet, and some have gone so far as to say that "when the prophet has spoken, the thinking is done and the debate is over." On the other hand, we have been taught that God does not want us to be blindly obedient and that we should take all things to the Lord and ask Him for guidance and confirmation. As it says in Moroni, "he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things" (Moroni 10:4-5). I regularly taught the investigators on my mission that they should pray about the Book of Mormon and that they should pray about all the counsel they receive at church.

This matter has been particularly troublesome for us because, as I said, we have close personal friends who are gay, lesbian, and bisexual, most of whom have never been members of the LDS church. We see their pure love for members of the same sex and their sincere desires to share in a marriage relationship. We also know gay members of the church who have felt broken, hated by God, and full of self-loathing due to the stance of the church toward gays. In all cases, their sincerity has convinced us that their "homosexual tendencies" are not a desire to sin or receive a greater "sexual high," but rather they experience attraction not of their own choosing, but which in all respects appears to be the same as the God-given affection shared between a man and a wife. So life is messy and things are not always easily divided into good and evil, or good works and sin. We have made and continue to make this a matter of prayer. We try to keep ourselves open to the influence of the Holy Spirit so that we will not be led astray, recognizing the potentially hazardous ground we may be treading. In all respects, we have felt the influence of the Spirit and have been filled with the love of God toward our gay friends. We feel that we maintain our good standing before God and that he has approved of our actions, both toward our gay friends and toward the legislation that so personally affects them.

We do not feel that we have received Prophetic counsel that we must personally vote against legislature allowing gay marriage or that we must personally condemn the lifestyle of our gay friends. Our gay friends, both inside and outside of the church, do not need our condemnation, they need our love. I am sure that Christ is full of love toward gays and that, if he were here, he would as likely be found loving and forgiving and ministering among the gays as he was found among the "unworthy" classes of people in his own time, the sinners, the poor, and the lowly of heart. We do not feel that our own love, compassion, support of, and attempts at understanding the plights of our gay friends is condemned by the Lord in any way.

You quoted President Hinkley who said, "If they do not act upon these inclinations, then they can go forward as do all other members of the Church. If they violate the law of chastity and the moral standards of the Church, then they are subject to the discipline of the Church, just as others are." You then ask "why shouldn’t the Church today put its foot down when certain wickedness is prevailing in the world?" when the "the Church [is] a Gospel for all the world." As far as church discipline, the church itself has agreed that it only has authority up to being able to excommunicate a member. It can only punish its own members. The Church does not have authority beyond removing non-abiding members and does not have jurisdiction over those outside of its membership. Thus, we feel that as soon as the church attempts to directly influence those who are not members, it has stepped beyond its spiritual authority and has entered the realm of politics. Within the church, we believe the church can issue any statements or proclamations that it feels are necessary, those proclamations and statements can even be directed to the entire world. But we believe it is beyond the authority of the church to attempt to directly influence the lives of those who do not grant the church such authority over their lives through church membership. We do not feel that the proclamations and statements so far given by the church grant us the right nor the responsibility to punish or condemn anyone else, gay or straight, inside or outside the church.

Christ invites all people to come unto Him. We feel that Christ's church should do the same. We feel that God does not want us to be judgmental or unkind toward any of his children. We are convinced that God desires all of us to love one another, to serve one another, and to be kind to everyone. No one can understand the difficulties or temptations of another, and we are convinced that the judgment of God will be far more merciful and just than any in this life can imagine. If God does not feel the need to punish or strike down someone in this life, we do not feel it is in our authority to usurp his judgment or power. If you, like some, feel that God is striking down the gays (some have suggested through AIDS), then we are comfortable leaving that judgment in the hands of God while doing everything in our power to succor them in their infirmities and to lighten their burdens (I am training to be a physician after all and have pledged my life to caring for the sick). We are convinced that our support of gay marriage fulfills the injunction of Christ (and our church leaders) to lighten another's burdens, comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to love all men.

While a response to Evangelicals would need to be couched differently than this response to the Prophet-following Latter-day Saints, I think emulation of Christ's example of love and service would be much more pleasing to God than intolerance and legislating the death penalty.

Friday Movie: Milk

By Mister Curie

This week's movie is the biographical movie "Milk", rated #4 on AfterElton.com and #2 among MoHos. From IMDb:

Upon moving to San Francisco from New York City in 1972, forty year old Harvey Milk gains focus in his life as a gay activist in the city's Castro district. Gay rights activism turns to political activism as Milk decides he can be a more effective voice for the gay community as a politician, elected or not. Through several elections and losses both for a city seat and a state assembly seat, Milk becomes the first openly gay man in the United States to be elected to political office when he wins a San Francisco supervisor seat in 1977. His many political battlefronts include one with the national anti-gay Save the Children crusade, led and fronted by singer Anita Bryant. Closer to home, Milk has a continuing struggle with his fellow supervisor, Dan White, a staunch social conservative.

I learned a lot from this movie, and I got a glimpse of how little I know and how much more there is to learn. (1) I realized that I know practically nothing about the gay rights movement, (2) I learned that the same arguments and battlelines used in Prop 8 were used 30 years previously in the Prop 6 campaign (it was uncannily all familiar sounding), (3) I was reminded that it isn't just Mormonism that had pitted itself against homosexuality, and (4) I learned the value of coming out of the closet to let people know that there is someone close to them, someone they love, who is gay and that gays aren't the evil, degenerate people they believe us to be. Yesterday I posted that I still have some latent homophobia, there's something about the cultural conditioning and the lies that I've been fed all my life that is difficult for me to overcome. This movie made me ashamed of those feelings. If I am struggling with overcoming this bigotry, when I myself am homosexual, how much more difficult must it be for others who are not touched by homosexuality to overcome the bigotry? They need to know that homosexuals are decent and wonderful people.

This quote by Harvey Milk struck me:

I cannot prevent anyone from getting angry, or mad, or frustrated. I can only hope that they'll turn that anger and frustration and madness into something positive, so that two, three, four, five hundred will step forward, so the gay doctors will come out, the gay lawyers, the gay judges, gay bankers, gay architects ... I hope that every professional gay will say 'enough', come forward and tell everybody, wear a sign, let the world know. Maybe that will help.

Unfortunately I had to wait for Netflix to ship the DVD to watch this one, no "Watch it Now" option. But this was absolutely a must see film!

What did you think of it? What did it teach you?

Vote for Equality!!

Cross-posted from Main Street Plaza. Original post by Chino Blanco.
Progressives are closer than ever to a victory on health care reform. As 2009 comes to a close, we’ve also moved forward on other issues. But what’s looming up ahead could be a disappointment. Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009, there will be critical votes on LGBT equality in three states: Washington State, Maine, and Michigan. With so much attention devoted to other issues in the political realm, progressive bloggers are banding together to ensure we don’t forget the ones with a firm deadline next week.
In support of that effort, the Courage Campaign has put together a summary of the who, what, and how of these three contests. If you haven’t heard of these campaigns, and/or haven’t done anything yet to support them, please consider helping out. If you are a blogger please feel free to grab this content whole cloth and use it for your blog posts. Last year, as Obama and Democrats were winning across the country, we lost marriage equality in California. It was a bittersweet victory. Pitch in to make sure 2009 isn’t a bittersweet year. Take action to support LGBT equality TODAY.

Washington
Who we are: Approve Referendum 71 is the campaign to preserve domestic partnerships in Washington State. By voting to approve, voters retain the domestic partnership laws that were passed during this year’s legislative session, including using sick leave to care for a partner, adoption rights, insurance rights, and more.
What we need: We need phone bankers to get our supporters out to vote. Washington is an all mail-in ballot state, and we need to ensure our supporters put their ballots in the mail. Also, youth turnout is a critical component of our campaign, and youth turnout historically drops in off-year elections. So we need a lot of help to turn them out.
How you do it: Sign up here to make remote calls for Approve 71. We’ll then contact you for a training, and you can make GOTV calls.
Maine
Who we are: The No On 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign is working to protect Maine’s recently-passed law legalizing marriage equality for same-sex couples. Our opponents have put the issue on the ballot for Nov 3, 2009. Because of Maine’s early voting election laws, people are already voting at the polls, so we need help immediately to turn out our side at the polls.
What we need: We need you to devote a few hours to Call for Equality. Call for Equality is a virtual phonebank set up so that you can call Maine voters wherever you are. Much of Maine is rural, where canvassing isn’t effective, so we need to reach these voters- along with other supporters- by phone. All you need is a phone and internet connection. No experience required! We’ll provide the training, and all you need is a a few hours to help get a win in Maine.
How you do it: Click here to sign up for a training and your shift. There are lots of times available for your convenience.
Kalamazoo, MI
Who We Are: The Yes on Ordinance 1856 / One Kalamazoo campaign is working in Michigan to support the City Commission of Kalamazoo’s twice approved ordinance for housing, employment, and public accommodation protections for gay and transgender residents. Opponents forced a public referendum on the ordinance so dedicated local volunteers, led by former Stonewall Democrats Executive Director Jon Hoadley, are working to ensure voters say YES to fairness and equality and keep Ordinance 1856.
Why The Urgency: In the final weeks, the opposition has gone all out with aggressive disinformation and misleading red herrings to try to defeat the ordinance. This includes signs that say “No to Discrimination” (even though voting No actually supports continued discrimination of GLBT residents), transphobic door hangers and fliers, and now radio ads that falsely suggest that criminal behavior will become legal when this simply isn’t true. The Yes on Ordinance 1856 supporters are better organized but many voters who want to vote for gay and transgender people are getting confused by the opposition.
How To Help:
1) Help the One Kalamazoo campaign raise a final $10,000 specifically dedicated to fight back against the lies on the local TV and radio airwaves and fully fund the campaign’s final field and GOTV efforts.
Give here: http://www.actblue.com/page/3-2-1-countdown?refcode=courage
2) If you live nearby and can physically volunteer in Kalamazoo sign up here. If you know anyone that lives in Kalamazoo, use the One Kalamazoo campaign’s online canvass tool to remind those voters that they need to vote on November 3rd and vote YES on Ordinance 1856 to support equality for gay and transgender people.
Contact voters: http://www.onekalamazoo.com/tellfriends2