"can i help you, sir?"

I’ll be honest. I was reluctant to see this film, and this was for a couple of reasons. First, I was a little afraid of finding out just how big of a role the LDS church played in passing Prop 8. And b, I was a little worried, after seeing the trailer, that the movie was going to make the church out to be a bunch of villains. I know those two things don’t really make sense when sitting there side by side. Welcome to my world – a walking contradiction.

The truth is, the movie does show how pivotal the LDS church’s support was in getting Prop 8 passed. It’s undeniable. And I appreciated that the film placed most of the responsibility on the church as an organization, as well as its leaders, and not on its members. Trying to navigate the role of the people is a little murkier, in my opinion; people do crazy things for their religious beliefs. And in my case, trying to assign culpability to Mormons gets tricky because of my background of growing up in that religion; because my immediate and the vast majority of my extended family is LDS, it feels a little like standing guard at the gate and asking them, “Friend or foe?” I don’t know where they stand, and I don’t know their level of support or involvement. I think I’d rather keep it that way, at least for now.

I’m not going to review the entire movie or give away spoilers. I’ll tell you right now that it put me through the wringer, dragging me all over the emotional map. It was hopeful. Chilling. Unbelievable. Inspiring. I did happen to jot down a few thoughts as I watched in an effort to capture my feelings about the whole thing.

• Parents who support their gay children break my heart, in good ways and bad. I feel so sad that I haven’t had that experience, and I’m so glad that some people have. I know it seems like a no-brainer to want your kids to be happy, but there’s a tremendous amount of pressure on Mormon parents to make sure their children are doing the “right” thing. There’s not a lot of room for someone like me to deviate from the rules by coming out, but at least I could leave the church. There’s less room, in my opinion, for the Mormon parent of a gay child to support their child and still remain in good standing (either officially or unofficially. I’ve heard stories of supportive parents being shunned).
• The movie showed Bambara, the Hotel Monaco bar! That’s one of my favorites in Salt Lake! Oh man, that Othello cocktail is something else. Stoli Blueberry Vodka, Chateau Pomari, lemonade, Sprite, fresh lime … it is heaven. Well, probably not Mormon heaven, but I digress.
• “The face of sin today often wears the mask of tolerance.” [This (and future quotes in this post) are from a broadcast from LDS leaders to their faithful in California, in reference to Prop 8.] Talking points like this scare the hell out of me. I worry that my more accepting Mormon family members and friends will hear this and think they are doing the wrong thing by loving and supporting me as I am.
• “Do not be deceived; behind the facade is heartache, unhappiness and pain.” This is an age-old premise used in church teachings. Their point is that someone couldn’t possibly be truly happy if they’re not following LDS church doctrine. So although I could feel happy with my life, my Mormon family believes it’s not real joy. As my dad has often told me, “Wickedness never was happiness.”
• “This is not a matter of civil rights. It is a matter of morality.” That is the root of the difference between most religions and those of us who believe that equal rights are a civil issue. If they make it an issue of morality, then it’s somewhat easier for church members to believe in what they’re doing to oppress others.
• I can’t believe that this church, with its history so rooted in discrimination, violence and persecution could so easily forget that and actively seek to take away the rights of another group. Mormons were killed and driven out of Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, in large part  because their neighbors didn’t like the Mormons’ take on traditional marriage. Huh.
• I just want to hug the mother of one of the men who is featured in the film. I remember seeing her on the news, and my heart goes out to her.
• There’s a family shown in the film that cashed out the college fund for its five small kids and donated the money to help Prop 8 pass. That makes me heartsick. One day, those parents get to tell their kids that they spent their future in an effort to take away the rights of others.
• Mormons make up 2% of the CA population, but accounted for 71% of the funding. I’ve wondered how my brother and his wife voted and whether they donated money to the cause. They know I’m gay, but we’ve never talked about it.

It’s terrifying what some people will do out of blind obedience and fear. Watching the news clips in this film brings back all the memories and emotions from that period of time. I was at those marches and protests in Salt Lake City. I was horrified by the behavior of some (I had a co-worker go on camera and announce that Prop 8 wasn’t taking anyone’s rights away) and reassured by the actions of others, and this film reminded me of that. In issues like this, you truly see the best and worst of humanity.

When I told my BFF (who is also Formerly Known as LDS) that I was watching 8, she asked why I do that to myself.  Besides my insatiable need to learn and be informed, I sometimes need the very clear reminder of where I (and all of my fellow gays) stand with the LDS church. My relatives tend to sugarcoat the church’s involvement, so it’s good for me to see the lack of honesty and integrity in its actions.

I’ve been thinking a lot about family history lately, and that got me thinking about my grandma. She is really the only grandparent I had a relationship with; both of my grandfathers died before I was born, and my maternal grandmother passed when I was three. That left my father’s mother, and believe me when I say this: she was amazing.

She was born in a small town in southern Utah, and she lived in that part of the state for most of her life. She raised a bunch of kids – both her own and various neighborhood kids – through The Great Depression. She and my grandpa were hard core, doing everything themselves: hunting, gardening, sewing, canning, etc. She did a lot of that on her own while my grandpa was off working, too. She was a believer in hard work, kept promises and baseball.

She is the reason I am a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan today; she watched the Cubs back in the day when the Cubs and the Braves were the only baseball teams on television (because Chicago and Atlanta had their own television networks). Up until the day she went into the hospital, she watched any game she could find. I can’t tell you how many times the family would be gathered around, eating or talking, and my grandma would get up and announce: “I have a game to watch.” With that, she’d go to her room, turn on the television, close the blinds, and shut the door. We could still go in – we just couldn’t interrupt the game.

She passed away when she was 96, just over ten years ago. Continue reading

I was sitting in the chair getting my hair cut last weekend, when I heard someone yell, “G!” (And yes, I have many friends who actually call me that.) I looked up, and it was my friend K, who has been my friend since my freshman year in college, a.k.a. a LONG time ago. She came over for a few moments to say hi, then left to chaperon her young daughter’s hair cut.

When my stylist asked me who she was, it took me a minute to really answer. Yes, that’s K, we were teammates when I was a freshman and she was a sophomore, but she is also the first REAL LIVE lesbian I ever met.

Going to a mostly Mormon high school didn’t help that. There was the One Lesbian in school that everyone knew about, and there were coaches I suspected were gay, but I didn’t really know any until I met K. And honestly? She scared the hell out of me, mostly because she was so … unfamiliar. I had to room with her on my very first road trip, and I didn’t know what to expect. Was she going to hit on me? Watch me dress? Factor in the religious part where I’d been warned about people like her, and you have a whole mess going on in my head. Not to mention plenty of my own internal homophobic thoughts, but that’s another post altogether.

As our basketball season went on, I got to know her better, and you know what? I just loved her. She was smart, charismatic, and funny. We would cut up during practice, on road trips, team meetings, or any other time we had the opportunity. One of my favorite moments happened after one of our games, when she cracked us all up by telling a teammate, “Tonya, I saw your boyfriend, and he is CUTE for a guy!”

She became K the good friend, not K the Lesbian, and that was huge for me because I was having my own issues as I questioned my life and sexuality. I began to see that she was a normal person who had normal highs and lows, which was such an eye-opener. I was so sad at the end of that year when she left, but in a time when I was feeling so much guilt, the lesson learned was valuable: I was okay, just the way I was.

I saw her a few years later at the gay bar, and she flipped out. She couldn’t believe that a) I was gay and b) that I didn’t come out until AFTER we played ball, because as she said, “We could have had so much fun together!” I got back in touch with her when I moved back to Utah; I was running into a coffee shop, and she was sitting there with her partner on the patio. She hasn’t aged a DAY, so I recognized her immediately. I look a lot different than the last time she saw me, so it took her a minute. But since then we’ve gone out to dinner, played tennis, and kept in touch.

I stopped on the way out of the salon to give her a hug and plan our next get-together. I realized not just how much she means to me, but what she represents to me. She cleared the path for me in a lot of ways, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.

Are there any people in your life who paved the way for you? Did you have any gay mentors, so to speak?

Dear Dad,

I know, I know. I wrote a nice post about Mom for Mother’s Day, explaining the things I love about her in spite of our misunderstandings. But I’m not there with you, at least not yet, so you get a letter.

You see, Mom is a little different. She and I certainly don’t see eye to eye on matters, especially religion and my personal life, but I believe that she’s actually trying. She does ask me questions every once in a while, and I think most of her confusion comes from a generation gap and being raised in a religion that doesn’t look kindly upon differences. But if I look at it in its present form, I believe she is trying to make sense of something that makes no sense at all to her.

But Dad, you’ve taken a more active and almost combative role in separating from me in recent years. It’s hard to be around you because I don’t trust you. I really want to, but in my mind and heart are the things you’ve done in past years that have hurt. Just as hurtful is the fact that you’ve never talked about these things, never apologized, never tried to understand, even when I’ve brought them up to let you know how they made me feel.

Still fresh in my mind is that blank Q&A book that I sent you a few years ago for Father’s Day, do you remember? I’d found it at a bookstore, and it was full of short answer essay questions and fill-in-the-blanks about your life as a kid, a teenager and as an adult. I thought it would be a great way to get to know more about your life. But then you took every opportunity you had to discuss religion/my sins – even if it didn’t even answer the question. You then added your own essay at the end to tell me you’d tailored your answers to address my wicked and sinful lifestyle instead of just answering them. I couldn’t even look through the book, and it would be a few years until I could bring myself to throw it away.

You’ve told members of our family (and who knows who else) that my decisions and my life go against absolutely everything you’ve ever taught me. But then when I visit you, you tell me how much you love it, and that you want me to come by more often. But you can see why I don’t, right? The way you’ve acted feels two-faced to me, and that makes me sad. I know I didn’t end up the way you wanted me to (and sorry Dad, but I couldn’t be more THRILLED about that), but I’m still your kid, you know? We’re still family.

I’ve stopped hoping you’ll come around even just a little bit, and now I’m focusing on letting go, for my sake. I’ve been working on that for a while now. The thing that really hurts is that you were my hero. You were always the one who encouraged me to learn and grow and not fit into that role of the little girl, like Mom wanted. You taught me how to drive a stick, shoot a gun, and chop down a tree. You loved that I played sports, even when Mom didn’t, and told anyone who would listen about my latest highlight. I always felt closer to you than I did to Mom, so this is a bigger loss for me.

I want to stop taking all of this personally. I want to see you the same way I see Mom; maybe misguided, but honestly trying. But I can’t yet, not when nothing has changed and you still act the same. You’re 78 now, so I don’t really anticipate you changing anytime soon; I inherited that same stubborn streak from you that you inherited from your mom, so I get it.

I love you, Dad. It’s just going to take a little time before it doesn’t sting.

Love, G

My family has a website, like a family version of Facebook. I check in on it here and there, but I’m not a faithful fan of it since every so often I encounter some kind of landmine from family members who forget that not everyone in the family is conservative, Mormon and straight.

[Several years ago, my college-aged nephew commented on a thread about Survivor to say that he and his roommate were "sick" to find out that a contestant they liked was gay. I just made a snarky comment about how he was right, the gays ruin EVERYTHING. But I seethed about that for a while and still don't look at that nephew the same.]

I won’t go into detail about what was said on the site the other day, but I’ll just say that there were a couple of things that got under my skin. One was a thread that got political, and the other was a thread about Memorial Day/military service that mentioned two of my uncles and brother, but not me. So I left smartass comments on them both, natch.

Then I got what I expected: a text from my brother, M:

M: Whoa, your trip to Moab emboldened you.

G: I know, I’m expected to be quiet.  I don’t want to be silent anymore about anything.

M: Good. I’m glad you’re finally saying it out loud.

G: I’m not shutting up anymore. I put myself in this place, I’ll get myself out.

M: Be outspoken and you won’t have to feel angry on the inside.

Be outspoken and you won’t have to feel angry on the inside.

Now, I know those words might not mean as much to others as they do to me. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t even know how much they meant to me until I saw them. Just reading that version of affirmation completely choked me up. I’ve buried this shit so deep inside of me, and I’m so used to just swallowing it, that I forget this: I am angry. Continue reading