Mormon Beards – Exploring the Issues: The Challenge

Comments (164)

1. @Alex:

   Kimball was not perfect. I do agree that what he said has hurt people. Only Christ was perfect. Yes, ideally he should have rephrased it in such a way that what he said wouldn’t have been misinterpreted 30 years down the road even if the vocabulary he used was drastically altered. That would have been ideal, but that would be a next to impossible feat. Reading his other works in context, I can see what he was trying to say, and being alive in today’s society, I can see where people get the opposite interpretation.

   I had a similar experience. I fought against ever coming out. I too felt it was okay to be gay, but then a very strong rebuke against same-sex relationships. It is incredibly difficult to be gay in this world, and I don’t for a second look down on people who choose to be in a same-sex relationship, because asking them to learn to overcome their sexuality is tough. I am sure God will judge everyone according to their understanding and capabilities.

   At the same time, I know that one of Satan’s greatest tools is to mix scripture with the philosophies of men. Quotes from general authorities can do the greatest harm when they are misinterpreted. That is why I worry so much when people misquote Elder Packer.

   Why do tendencies only have to do with homosexuality? Yes, we have tendencies towards the impure and unnatural, but so do straight people. Everyone has them, but as Kimball and Packer has said, the difference is whether we overcome them, or we give in to them.

   The man in the example had a heterosexual tendency towards pornography, and he did not learn to overcome it. It applies just as much to him as to us. Did the man need to change his sexual orientation? No, so why do you think we do? Why make a special case for homosexuals. Packer included us and treated us like heterosexuals. He made no distinction for us. Why do you want to make a distinction for us?

   Did you read the link I provided? It had several quotes from other places talking about the need to overcome. It isn’t just gay people who need to overcome. We all need to overcome our sexual desires.

   http://en.fairmormon.org/Mormonism_and_gender_issues/Same-sex_attraction/Boyd_K._Packer_October_2010_conference_talk

   Elder Packer has said that same-sex attractions “may be a struggle from which you will not be free in this life.” Why would you think he is now saying that we can free ourselves from this struggle?

   The widespread misinterpretation of Elder Packer will do more to increase gay suicide than anything Elder Packer could have said or done.

2. @Alex – Thank you for sharing your very personal thoughts and experiences.

   I agree with your observations in #150. Some of the things you touch on are subjects that I want to cover in more depth later in this series, the title of which I chose carefully: I really do hope this can be an exercise in exploring the issues. As I’ve said many, many times on my blog, EACH MoMoM is different, the dynamics are different, the people are different, everything is different. Probably the only similarity they share in common is their complexity. Every couple has to work things out in a way that works for them.

   As to dear President Packer, well, some people’s minds just simply are not going to be changed. Such people even refuse to believe that thousands of people could come to the same conclusion as to the import of his remarks. To such people, such conclusion is invalid. So be it. It doesn’t change the facts one iota, however. As has been commented, perception IS reality in this case.

   What bothered me as much as or more than his actual comments, which were hastily edited after an early Monday morning meeting with President Monson (so word on the street has it), was the outpouring of “support” for him on FB pages, etc. I was sickened by the many, many anti-gay homophobic comments that were left on these sites. Regardless of what Packer meant or didn’t mean, that incident unveiled the ugly truth about many members of the Church. I found it extremely upsetting, and it is one of the factors that led to me saying “enough is enough.”

3. Alan — I’m glad to see that you’re feeling more welcome here, and that you’re contributing constructively to this discussion.

   Since I specifically asked Holly to lay off you, and since she has been considerate enough to comply, I feel I should reply personally to this point where you’re commenting on some of Holly’s remarks:

   Since every person is different, every marriage has two orientations in it.

   If we start to think about how every marriage has two orientations, then well stop trying to suggest that the answer to educating people about the pitfalls of MoMs is as simple as suggesting, asking or requiring people to be more forthcoming sexuality-wise prior to marriage.

   Sure, perhaps no two orientations are identical. But claiming that spouses should feel no responsibility to be forthcoming to each other about their sexuality (including but not limited to orientation) doesn’t follow from that. And no one suggested that encouraging people to be more forthcoming sexuality-wise prior to marriage is the complete, simple answer to educating people about the pitfalls of MoMs.

4. I’m late to this thread, but I have gone through the post and the comments. I have only a couple of points to add.

   I don’t want to spend time reconstructing what we think Elder (later President) Kimball’s understanding of homosexuality was, except to say that he was born in 1895 and was known to have views that were consistent with his era, his rural background and the most socially conservative positions of his time. It was between 25 and 40 years ago when President Kimball’s teachings on the subject of homosexuality were the official LDS positions on the subject. In recent decades those views have been repudiated by the Church in several important ways, and it’s not helpful to deny that this change has taken place.

   I can tell you from first-hand knowledge that the LDS conception of homosexuality during the Kimball era was very, very different than today’s official stance (but, oddly, not different from what LDS hardliners continue to believe). From 1976 through the mid-eighties, you could be excommunicated for a mere admission of same-sex orientation. Sexual orientation was otherwise NOT acknowledged to be real. Instead, you had “tendencies” that could be diminished with “normal” sexual relations or at least managed. To this day, I still recoil at the word tendencies. It is a word that I find to be be misleading and oppressive. My innermost, most fundamental ability to love another person is not comparable in any way to alcoholism or kleptomania or adultery. If that’s your position, the conversation is over before it starts.

   It was the policy of the Church when I was young to encourage gay people to enter mixed-orientation marriages. This policy had disastrous results, and the Church has backed away from it. I remember in 1988 when my father, distraught over my pending divorce, went to Church headquarters and met with a member of the Quorum of the Twelve whom he knew. The Apostle nearly barked my father out of the room as he shouted, “I can’t believe how much trouble this causes!” At the end of the interview my father left disillusioned and absolutely empty handed. The Brethren are aware of the misery caused by the institution of mixed-orientation marriage and they no longer prescribe it as a cure.

   I like Carol Lynn Pearson’s perspective. She counsels against entering into mixed-orientation marriages, saying that in her experience and those of the many couples she knows, the risk is just too great. I agree with her, and I would never advise a young couple to go into a mixed-orientation marriage, eyes open or no. You think you understand the risks, but you don’t. I fully disclosed my orientation to my future wife when we had been dating only two months. That disclosure did nothing to prevent the train wreck that was our subsequent marriage. We thought we were going in with our eyes open. We had no idea of what lay ahead.

   Even if we can agree that the formation of new mixed-orientation marriages is ill-advised, couples in mixed-orientation marriages deserve our support. I’ve written about this subject here. It’s like teenage marriage– we wouldn’t ever advise two 16 year olds to get married (or ask them to pray about it), but if we meet a couple who happened to marry young we would only wish them well, whether or not they were having troubles that were caused by their underage marriage.

   As a reader, I appreciate it when thread comments are respectful and free of personal attack and any presumption of bad faith on the part of other commenters. All of the comments on this thread don’t meet this ideal, but I still want to thank Invictus for starting a useful discussion.

5. A final thought:

   Contemplating a mixed-orientation marriage is like planning a day hike that goes wrong. You get out your sandals and day pack and make some sandwiches. What you encounter later on, however, are the Himalayas.

   I find the fact that gender matters as much as it does in the formation of pair bonds to be one of the most intriguing (and inconvenient) mysteries of the human condition.

6. this is heartbreaking to me and only reminds me of the privilege i experience as a straight male. mixed-orientation marriage is such a delusional construct, so profoundly disrespectful of both parties and of the truth of human sexuality. it is as barbaric as the arranged marriages practiced in some parts of the world. my heart tears for the gay people who closeted in shame and fear, and i also feel for the humiliated straight women trapped in sexless marriages (while the men are def getting some somewhere, I have enuf gay friends to know that)

   heartbreak.

7. (while the men are def getting some somewhere, I have enuf gay friends to know that)

   This is a bit of a stereotype. Some gay men in MOMs do cheat (and cultural attitudes tend towards the idea that a sexually unsatisfied married man is justified in cheating), but that doesn’t mean all gay men in MOMs cheat sexually.

8. Chanson @153: — what would be the parameters of being “responsible” and “forthcoming” when it comes to the process of coming out of the closet? Shouldn’t it be an individual matter?

   Think about a queer kid. Everyone knows he’s “gay” except for himself. If asked if he’s gay, he says, upset: “I’m not gay!”

   Now, is it his fault he lacks the “responsibility” and “forthcoming” to “be who he is?” Or is it society’s fault for putting him into a position in which he feels he has to conceal (and, in many cases, have already revealed indirectly) some “truth” about himself?

   Holly has no qualms taking a route that the queer kid lacks “integrity” if his upsetness makes another person upset, if there’s some “greater” evil afoot: patriarchy. The queer kid, if now a man thinking he should marry a woman, needs to pull himself up by the bootstraps, stop his sniveling, and think about someone other than himself, because as she says @20, if gay men “know about their sexuality at the time theyre courting straight women, and fail to tell those women, are engaging in patriarchy and misogyny.”

   Her logic @ 107 is telling:

   I suppose this is as good a time as any to point out that patriarchy and misogyny have more victims than heterosexism. There are far more women in the world than there are members of the LGBT community. Furthermore, as you point of repeatedly, Craig, gay people dont have to tell others about their gayness. But women cant avoid announcing their womenness, just by moving through the world.

   She plays a game called “Who is More Oppressed ” in order to determine what the most important battle is, and where the integrity should lie, who should be more “selfless” so that someone else can get to be “selfish” for a change.

   But of course “Who is More Oppressed ” was a terrible game to begin with. It is liable to cause more injustice in the world, which I see her as causing. Are there more women in the world, or people of color? Since the answer is the latter, does that mean racism is more important than patriarchy?

   Any woman of color will tell you sometimes racism is more important; sometimes patriarchy is. Taken together, they’re both important. The same is true for heterosexism and patriarchy. It is senseless to treat these concepts as monoliths and then deal out prescriptions to everyone, as if all women experience patriarchy the same way, which is indeed what Holly implies when she calls closeted gay men who don’t come out to their potential wives “misogynists.” That’s just not helpful at all.

9. Alan @158 — OK, that’s about what I thought you thought on the subject. Thanks for summing it up in one single, concise comment.

   Now, I would like to invite Holly to make one single, concise rebuttal to this (if she so desires). Then — since it appears the sides will not be reconciled — I hope that we can wrap up the discussion and trust that readers can read the two positions and evaluate them for themselves.

10. Oh, and Invictus & Alex, my article is here. I warn you, it’s somewhat dense.

11. Alan @158:

    Think about a queer kid. Everyone knows he’s “gay” except for himself. If asked if he’s gay, he says, upset: “I’m not gay!”

    Now, is it his fault he lacks the “responsibility” and “forthcoming” to “be who he is?” Or is it society’s fault for putting him into a position in which he feels he has to conceal (and, in many cases, have already revealed indirectly) some “truth” about himself?

    Holly has no qualms taking a route that the queer kid lacks “integrity” if his upsetness makes another person upset, if there’s some “greater” evil afoot: patriarchy.

    Not automatically. I have no problem at all with “that queer kid” refusing to say one single thing about his sexuality to anyone he is not planning to sleep with, as evidence by my statement @42:

    I don’t feel that anyone at all is required to tell me anything at all about their sexuality-unless they want to sleep with me. In that case, I feel a fair amount of disclosure is due to me

    back to Alan @158:

    The queer kid, if now a man thinking he should marry a woman, needs to pull himself up by the bootstraps, stop his sniveling, and think about someone other than himself, because as she says @20, if gay men “know about their sexuality at the time they’re courting straight women, and fail to tell those women, are engaging in patriarchy and misogyny.”

    I suppose that is a reasonable paraphrase of me, in a Sunstone article, quoted @2:

    I know it can take a while to figure out one’s sexual identity, and that people who eschew sexual behavior during their teens only to marry in their early twenties might not have a firm handle on their sexual orientation. I’ve known both women and men who figure out after a decade or two of heterosexual marriage that maybe they’re not straight after all. I know from watching friends go through it that it’s profoundly painful. I also accept that some people are bisexual, and some spouses don’t want or require monogamy.

    But I also think from observing various marriages and divorces that there’s something different happening when men who know ahead of time that they are gay marry women they know are straight, particularly in Mormondom. I submit that patriarchy endows men with a sense of entitlement–witness Christensen’s resentment that marrying women and fathering children in a traditional family with a mother and father is still the “exclusive territory of straight men”–that blinds them to the real cost of their actions. Schow quotes a recently divorced gay man who states that “I think a lot of gay men contemplating heterosexual marriage underestimate the impact that their actions have on their future spouse.”9 Whereas women are trained, through doctrines like the new and everlasting covenant, to accept, however grudgingly, that they will not have the exclusive regard or affection of their husbands, that indeed their feelings about their marriage are of secondary importance to the patriarch’s wielding of authority.

    I stand by that position as reasonable and sound, particularly in light of statements like this from Invictus Pilgrim in a recent post on his blog:

    I would try to tell myself that I was the one making the sacrifice, I was the one who had had to overcome, I was the one who was denying himself in order to “do the right thing.” I was the one who was suffering. But the effort to play my role, to keep up the act, to “do the right thing” was so all-consuming that I was blind to what it was doing to my wife and to my children, and for that – both what I did and the fact that I was blind to it – I feel very deep regret and sorrow.

    Indeed, my position is so reasonable and sound that Alan himself writes @48

    Holly seems to be of the opinion that we should heap tons of blame on gay men for not thinking about the women they marry. I want to note that I actually have no problem with that.

    I suppose since we are dropping this matter after this comment I won’t get an answer, but I do wonder why Alan insists on arguing positions he does not actually hold, why he condemns me for holding a position he actually agrees with.

    Me @107

    I suppose this is as good a time as any to point out that patriarchy and misogyny have more victims than heterosexism. There are far more women in the world than there are members of the LGBT community. Furthermore, as you point of repeatedly, Craig, gay people don’t have to tell others about their gayness. But women can’t avoid announcing their womenness, just by moving through the world.

    And there are also enough gay men in the world who admit, either readily or when pressed, that they enjoy all sorts of privileges that women do not, and that they’re actually better off than most if not all women of their same class. Many gay men who identify as feminists feel that women’s rights are a much more pressing issue than gay rights, but they also recognize that it’s likely that gay men will achieve equality and parity before women of any category do-precisely because gay men start from a position of greater power and privilege.

    Alan @158

    She plays a game called “Who is More Oppressed ” in order to determine what the most important battle is, and where the integrity should lie, who should be more “selfless” so that someone else can get to be “selfish” for a change.

    But of course “Who is More Oppressed ” was a terrible game to begin with. It is liable to cause more injustice in the world, which I see her as causing. Are there more women in the world, or people of color? Since the answer is the latter, does that mean racism is more important than patriarchy?

    Any woman of color will tell you sometimes racism is more important; sometimes patriarchy is.

    If these women of color tell you this, are they playing ‘a game called “Who is More Oppressed ,'” or are they simply acknowledging something true about the world?

    Taken together, they’re both important. The same is true for heterosexism and patriarchy. It is senseless to treat these concepts as monoliths and then deal out prescriptions to everyone, as if all women experience patriarchy the same way, which is indeed what Holly implies when she calls closeted gay men who don’t come out to their potential wives “misogynists.” That’s just not helpful at all.

    It might not be helpful to YOU, Alan. But it has been helpful to other gay men, to some gay women, and to some straight women.

    I would point out that if it is “senseless to treat these concepts as monoliths and then deal out prescriptions to everyone,” then you should not write @24

    It is not appropriate to blame him for not “coming out” (even if it it toward a potential future wife).

    that is a prescription, Alan, for what women should be able to expect from men who court them, borne of your treating heterosexism as a monolith.

    I will go back to your discussion of racism and misogyny: I don’t think it’s OK to tell a white woman, “Look, it’s OK for to you hold off striving for more awareness, generosity, compassion and ‘integrity’ [provided it’s not in the sense of ‘knowing how to work the system’] in how you deal with people of color until you yourself suffer less under patriarchy.” But that’s essentially what you are saying to gay men about how they should treat women they marry. It’s neither helpful nor logical, as you well know since you wrote @48

    Holly seems to be of the opinion that we should heap tons of blame on gay men for not thinking about the women they marry. I want to note that I actually have no problem with that.

    I really don’t understand why you are continuing to argue a position you have already renounced. I suppose you don’t understand it either.

    I would also call attention to Leslie’s recent post on lesbian-straight-guy MoMOMs. Among other things, she writes:

    A gay man who subverts his sexuality to remain favored in a traditional culture at least gets to keep the power bestowed upon him from that patriarchal culture simply because he is male. But a lesbian who gives up her identity as a gay woman also gives up a great deal of personal power in entering into these traditional and unequal marriages.

    My right to sexual satisfaction is diminished. Everyone knows men are sexual. But women? Ha, noooooo, of course we’re not that filthy thing called sexual. At least, that is still a strong undercurrent running through the fundamentally conservative environment I have lived most of my life in. If a gay man is sexually unhappy in a MOM, people understand that, and give him credit for that loss. But a lesbian sexually unhappy in a MOM? Oh, come on, half of straight women are sexually unhappy in heterosexual marriages! Why are you complaining?

    Here is evidence, Alan (and there is more in the full post), of how patriarchy benefits queer men in MOMs in ways it does not benefit queer women in MOMs, and hurts queer women in MOMs in ways it does not hurt queer men in MOMs. I do not think that by pointing out this imbalance, Leslie is “playing the game of who is more oppressed,” and I hope you would be decent enough not to assert that she is.

    Finally, I want to address this:

    Alan @116

    Making MSP a safer and more welcoming space seems evermore a daunting task.

    Saying to women, “It’s OK for men like me to lie to people like you, even if it hurts you, as long as it protects us, and how DARE you suggest that patriarchy has a hand in how men choose to treat their wives” does not create a safe and welcoming space. Neither does arguing vociferously a position you do not actually hold, and demanding that people take seriously a position you have already renounced.

    I must conclude that this is yet another example of Alan taking a position he does not really hold. He clearly thinks it’s fine to sacrifice safety and welcoming-ness at MSP if it serves his own agenda.

12. OK, I hope we can now agree that these two positions are now clear, and don’t require further clarification.

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