Stand Ye in Holy Places

Stand Ye in Holy Places

                By now those of you who have read the papers that I have written for my English class know that I a member of the Latter-day Saint church (LDS) aka I’m Mormon who experiences same sex attractions, or to put it simply I’m a Gay Mormon. Being a member of the LDS church is so wonderful and I know it to be the true church of Jesus Christ restored on the earth and is a true blessing. At the same time I have come to see my attractions as a blessing as well. Ok, so I know you are probably now thinking “Is he crazy” or “He must not really believe in the LDS church” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I say that I see my attractions as a blessing after a ton of prayer and talking with/listening to the stories of others that are in exactly the same place as I am, and finally being honest with myself and those around me about who I am. To quote a peace of revelation received by another like I while feeling guilty about his attractions is this. “So you have 20/20 vision and see men as beautiful as Heavenly Father does”. NO THIS IS NOT SAYING THAT GOD IS GAY!! This is merely stating that we’ve been blessed to see the beauty that exists in men and not just women.  Sorry for the attitude but we all know that there are those out there who wish to twist and corrupt anything and everything they can and this is something that needed to be made perfectly clear.

                For the longest time now I have been wanting to find a romantic platonic, non-sexual, relationship with another guy. Some would might say “Ok, so what’s the big deal?” others might say “Ewe” but if you’re like me and wanting to keep the standards of the LDS church or know about the standards of the church you know that we believe that sexual relationships are only to be had between a man and a woman that are legally married. So what’s the problem if it’s a platonic relationship? The following come to my mind: romantic love typically results in these feelings being expressed through kissing on the lips and some times more; I plan on getting married in a LDS temple to a woman and having kids—if I were to get involved in a romantic relationship with a man this would be rather counterproductive of that goal; and lastly for this list but certainly not the least is that I have a different definition to the word “friend”, to me someone that you talk to every once in a while about mundane everyday things is more of an acquaintance especially if it’s not on a regular bases. To me a friend is someone that you talk to regularly and many times talk about things that are very personal not just the mundane. That being said about how I define a “friend” I tend to get deeply attached to those I love to the point that the word “family” in more applicable than the word “friend”, so If I were to “date” a guy that relationship would become very deep and intense very quickly which would be a very dangerous situation.

                So why am I writing about this? Several weeks ago, on our first nice warm day in Utah Valley before the church’s April General Conference, I was talking to a friend who also has these attractions about this. As a result of that conversation he showed me a BYU devotional video that was shown to him, to keep is simple and quick the main point of the devotional talk was To Stay Where You Are and to Keep At It, Don’t Give Up. I watched this video the same day that he showed it to me and from that time on I keep hearing that same answer/message. Stay Where You Are, Just Keep At It, Don’t Give Up. I’ve been hearing this everywhere, The General Conference talks, songs that come on randomly on the radio and my phone, other talks in church, other friends and church leaders, and even on TV shows. I am just millimeters away from going out there to find someone to date and Heavenly Father knows this, by me keep hearing this same message again and again He’s telling me that He knows me, He is listening to my prayers, those that I consciously pray and those that I only dare to hold ever so deeply within my heart. I know that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ  not only know of my pain but that they truly know it through and through.

                Lately I’ve been watching a YouTube campaign/channel called “The It Gets Better Project”, it’s a series of videos from people that are also gay, gay allies, business, and schools that have come together on an international bases to show their support to the “non-heterosexual”(there’re too many politically correct terms used so I use this) community. In each of these videos stories are shared, hope and love are shown, and most of all, the message that no-matter where you may be in life, It Gets Better. Why do I bring this up? Because I and so many like me have at one point or another reached the point of being ready to give up and commit suicide. This hope of It Gets Better is something that I want to believe and hold onto and it’s something that I want to share with others. I know that Heavenly Father/God, or whomever your deity may be, is there and hears our prayers—and if He’s there—then it must be true that It Gets Better.

A New Hope fore Families

Another English paper.

A New Hope for Families

                In the past years there has been a lot of dispute over the rights of people in homosexual relationships. These disputes range from taxes, home ownership, legal medical rights, and even parental and adoption rights. This last dispute of parental and adoption rights has been the source of much heated debate with many literally fearing that such parenting would lead to more homosexuals in the world. This also brings to my mind the question of what is all of this doing to kids that are caught in the middle of this debate.

This is of course an extreme, but none the less what some people believe. This has led me to ask the question, What are the effects of having gay parents on children?

Going into this paper I knew that I would be hard pressed to find good resources especially ‘peer reviewed scholarly’ articles, that being the case I started interviewing a few semi close friends that are gay but in heterosexual marriages with children. I first started with Lucas Jones, a father of 4 kids that came to the realization of his homosexuality after having been married for several years and already having become a father. This put him and his wife in a difficult position. He was then faced with the decision of staying with his family and figuring things out together or leaving them for a homosexual life. They chose to stay together and as time passed of course their children grew as all children do; with this came the decision to tell them of his attractions or to not disclose this to their children. After discussing the matter, they decided that it was the right thing for their family that their kids know. This is the story of what happened as things were explained to their oldest child.

I asked him to come join me on the couch while playing his video game—it’s easier to talk to someone with some kind of slight distraction he said. I explained to him how much I love him and his mom. I talked to him about attractions and how some guys are attracted to other guys. I then told him that these attractions are something that I experience, that I have attractions towards other guys. I was panicking at this point and afraid that he would hate me and not love or want me anymore. But instead, he said “I love you” and hugged me.

                This led me to ask if this has been the outcome in other situations. I decided to ask another friend Kerry Harding who came out to his kids much later in their lives.

My kids didn’t take is so well—they were extremely upset with me and felt that they had been betrayed and lied to. They said that they thought I was perfect making it seem impossible to talk to me about problems that they were having in their lives. They believed I was perfect and had never struggled with anything in my entire life. I regret not having a more open relationship with them when they were younger; thankfully however our relationship has become much deeper and filled with much more love and respect for one another.

                This made me reflect quite a bit on the relationship that I have with my own parents and how open and honest I feel that I can be with them. And between these two stories alone, I have decided to be as open as I can with not only my future wife, but also my future kids about my own homosexual attractions.

                The Gay and Bisexual Dads and Diversity: Fathers in the Work, Love, Play study, shows both positive and negative effects that some children go through. Sadly the negative is shown almost perfectly in one unnamed man’s response when he said “My family rejected me because I am gay and wanted to be a parent. They felt that being gay, I should not have parental responsibilities. My father no longer talks to me and does not want to see my daughter”. After I read this I thought and asked myself how could anybody react in such a way and what must this poor girl now think of herself and/or her dad, what fears of rejection does she now have and what fears will she face in the future leading to countless psychological problems. As a peace of hope found in the story just before this on the very same page from another unnamed man reads, “I think it made our relationship with our families closer as it made it clear to them that we are normal people in a normal relationship with normal responsibilities. We spend more quality time with them all now as they love the new addition to the family”. Both of these men live in Australia and are with-in ten years of age from one another—however the contrast shown between the stories of these two men is heartbreakingly and joyously obvious.

As I spoke with a psychologist by the name of Ty Mansfield, the topic of divorce came about and how the parent(s) with homosexual attractions many times disconnects him/herself from not only their spouse, but also from their children. Such disconnection can lead to great emotional voids and psychological issues throughout the spouse’s and child’s lives. I, though not for reasons of homosexuality, have both witnessed and experienced many of these issues on a first hand bases and from my own personal experiences know just how intense these issues can become. For example many children whose parents divorce for one reason or another often think themselves to be the blame for their parents splitting apart, become torn if given the choice to life with their mom or dad, and many children whose parents divorce often disconnect themselves from everything and everyone they once loved.

                When it comes adoption there has been much heated debate from those for and those against Gays and Lesbians being able to adopt. One article entitled ‘Can Gay and Lesbian Parents Promote Healthy Development in High-Risk Children Adopted From Foster Care?’ has given much light as to the outcome of such adoptions. The study included in this article spans across a two year period with cognitive and psychological developmental testing done at intervals of two months after child placement, twelve months, and twenty-four months. These tests were done on eighty-two high-risk children adopted by heterosexual, gay, and lesbian parents.

                On a positive side this study reportedly shows how high-risk children whether adopted by heterosexual, gay, or lesbian couples equally progress and have better long-term success in life than children left within the foster care system. It also shows that successful interracial adoptions where neither of the adoptive parents is of the same ethnical background are more common among gay and lesbian couples. However—on a more negative side—this article also reports that while there are around “107,000 children awaiting adoption within the foster care system”, ”approximately two million gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals interested in adopting”, and “the supply of adoptive families has not met more than forty percent of the need”. This study reports that even though there are so many non-heterosexual parents interested in adoption many do not do to a lack of legal challenges and a lack of support from the child welfare system. Given the findings of this study and others I personally find this to be a tragedy that need not exist; a tragedy that we have the power to change and need to change without delay! This study continues on and reports the following.

Adoption has long been seen as beneficial for abused and neglected children’s long-term development, but questions remain regarding whether children adopted from foster care by gay and lesbian parents achieve similar positive outcomes to their peers in heterosexual households. Using three assessments of cognitive development, internalizing problems, and esternalizing problems from a sample of high-risk children adopted from foster care in Los Angles County, we found virtually no differences between children from heterosexual and gay and lesbian households in these domains at 2, 12, or 24 months post-placement. Further, regardless of the sexual orientation of their adoptive parents, children exhibited similar patterns of change in these variables over time: On average, children in both household types showed siginigicant gains of approximately 10 IQ points in their cognitive development and maintained stable levels of behavior problems that were not clinically significant. These similarities across household types were especially notable given that the children adopted by gay and lesbian parents had significantly higher levels of background risk and were more likely to be of a different ethnicity than their adoptive parents compared with children in heterosexual households.

                My original purpose in doing this research was the question that if should children with parents in a heterosexual relationship know if one or both of the parents had homosexual attractions, and if so, at what age should they be told, and what would this knowledge do to them on a short and long-term scale. However after beginning my initial research I realized that a broader question needed to be asked. That question being  if any differences exist at all between having heterosexual parents or non-heterosexual parents?

 Based off of what I have found I would have to say that many positive effects exist when it comes to children and parents having an open relationship in such cases where a heterosexual relationship is had even though one or both parents may experience homosexual attractions. And in such cases where the parents are in some form of a homosexual relationship the children are just as successful in life as children with heterosexual parents; in fact going off of the results of the last mentioned study one might conclude that homosexual parents are better apt to help higher-risk/more problematic children, that is not to say however that heterosexual parents are not capable of helping such children as in fact each child is different. I say this including my personal opinion of having gone through added trials surrounding their homosexuality may be a key factor of having a more open mind, more patients, and potentially being able to connect on a more personal level with some children due to personal background history.

Which Road to Follow?

The following is a problematic essay from my English class, it is intense but it's nothing but the truth.

Which Road to Follow?

            Life is like taking a road-trip; the roads we take depend on where we want to go. For me--and others like me--being a “Gay Mormon” has come up as an unexpected detour. Choosing which road to follow in this detour is no easy task and has left me in complete torment and being torn between my desires and my beliefs. I have just started on my personal journey of self-discovery and am constantly bombarded on a daily basis by the wants and the needs of this conflict. Do I follow what I have known and have believed in for most of my life and not give in to my desires? Or do I live a double life full of secrecy? Or do I give in and go after my desires leaving my behind beliefs without a second thought? Or after all the torment that I’ve gone through and continue to go through, do I just decide to take my life and just finally end it all? Each road has its own pros and cons, all of which weigh heavily and have various supporters and opponents.

            The first option I have is remaining an active member of the LDS church “holding true” to what I have been raised and come to believe in for most of my life. Holding true would mean never having anything more than a platonic (non-sexual) relationship with another man and never being able to fully expressing my love or feelings towards another man no matter how intense the attraction and desire to do so might be. It may or may not mean living a completely celibate life holding to the LDS church’s stance on chastity “that no sexual relationship is to be had outside the bonds of marriage” marriage defined as a relationship between a man and a woman. Living such a life other than not getting married obviously means not having a wife, not having any kids, never being a dad, never hearing the words “I love you daddy!” or “I love you honey!”, never getting a Father’s Day card from your own son or daughter, never celebrating a wedding anniversary, and potentially never finding someone to love who loves me for who I am.

            The second option I have is to live a double life. This is something that I’ve done before--pretending to be something I’m not, lying about and hiding who and what I truly am, what I want, and what I feel. Having lived like this before, I know that this leads to many arguments, sleepless nights, bad decisions, and extreme loneliness. While it is possible for a time to live like this, most people that do can only do so for a short while, two to three years max. With this lifestyle, things normally end in a big blowup or cause suicidal thoughts, actions, attempts and successes, and an overall disaster. Most agree that this temporary option really is not an option at all.

            The third option I have is to give up my entire life as I’ve known it and live a fully and openly “gay” life. This is what most people in this position decide to do: They give it all up and “embrace” their new life as fully and as quickly as possible. Many who experience homosexual feelings and/or attractions lead-out a gay lifestyle for the rest of their life. This leads to both communal support and rejection depending on the local culture and level of acceptance; for example Provo, Utah vs. San Francisco, California are almost completely extreme opposites in terms of accepting those not only with homosexual attractions but those who are living gay lives. Living a gay lifestyle would also mean finding the love and relationship that I so deeply yearn for and often dream of. It would mean having a relationship like many others do and enjoy, and it would mean potentially finding someone to love who loves me for who I am.

            The fourth and final option that I have is to commit suicide. As a sad truth many people, especially members of the LDS faith who believe that they cannot be faithful members of the church simply because they have such feelings and attractions, feel they have no other option and make the sad and drastic decision to take their own life. I and many like me have often prayed long and hard to have these feelings taken away and/or as I have done, prayed that those I love will be protected from me.  After reaching such intense levels of pain, depression, fear, loneliness, self-loathing, feelings of inadequacy, and overall darkness I have come to this very conclusion a few times over and thought to take my own life.  After all of this, it is hard to see that other options even have the slimmest possibility of existing, leaving suicide as the only option to finally have peace and end all the pain and torment.

            No two people are exactly the same. Thus no two people will come to a decision in the same way or the same amount of time. With much hope, the decision to commit suicide will come up as little as possible. With friends, family, and others in positions to give counsel hopefully such a sad ending will not come about as often as it has. Thankfully, many do find and receive the needed help and support and many lives are spared giving suicidal people to think clearly, find reason, and to be listened to. I am still wrestling to find balance and peace while at times fighting off the thoughts of suicide. While I thankfully have people to turn to for support, when the darkness takes over, it is hard to think of them. The struggle just to reach out for help brings unbearable pain and shame, making it unbearable to think that help is at hand.

Now the question which brings about so much torment and pain: Do I stay “true” to and follow what I’ve believed in for most of my life? Or do I leave it all behind to live a gay life? Or do I live a double life? Or the next time the darkness comes, do I give in letting it take over and finally decide to take my life? Do I end all the pain and torment that at times may ease up but never actually goes away allowing me to find peace in my life? There is no “one size fits all” answer; we’re all different, and find peace and happiness in different ways. The question is how do I find it for myself?