In May 1984, a closeted gay man in a small town in southeastern North Carolina went to see the pastor of his United Methodist congregation. The man Adam was upset and announced that he was leaving the church. When the pastor asked why, Adam replied that he could no longer…
Category: Testimony
Symbolic beliefs can counter cognitive dissonance, but at a cost
“We do not need more members who question every detail.”
Spending too much time on Facebook, as usual, and a friend shared this link from the page LDS General Conference, a quote from M. Russell Ballard from October 1995 General Conference: We do not need more members who question every detail; we need members who have felt with their hearts,…
Preserving Mixed Faith Relationships
Reposting from my blog:http://www.lifeaftermormonism.net/profiles/blogs/preserving-mixed-faith Introduction When you first arrive to the other side of faith, or at least to an opposing side to one or more of your family, friends or acquaintances, there are a few pitfalls in which one could accidentallysabotagean otherwise desirable relationship and fellowship with them. Hopefully…
Celestial Glory Shall Be Mine
Celestial glory shall be mine if I can but endure. One of the very first songs a Mormon child learns to sing is I Am a Child of God, a very sweet little song that contains within its simple melody and honeyed phrases the essence of Mormon theology. At a…
Masks: Lesbians and Landing Gay Side Up
This post features a Mormon lesbian’s “struggle to be free” and a discussion of Orson Scott Card’s comments on homosexuality. Both accounts originated in comments left on a MetaFilter post. For the last couple of days, I have written about how pleased I was to discover that some of my…
Beards, Masks and MetaFilter: New Perspectives
The use of Mormon Beard or beard perpetuates a second class status to ALL straight wives married to gay men, and denotes an ugliness. So wrote a commenter to a post I published last Friday, which was the fifth in a series of posts whose titles began with the words,…
To Young Men Only: The Gay Version
This post is inserted as a sort of intermission into the series on issues relating to mixed-orientation marriages that I started last week. A substantially similar version of this essay was first published on my blog in late December of last year, following a series of posts addressing issuesrelating toMormon…
Mormon Beards Exploring the Issues: Turn It Off
This is the fifth in a series of posts addressing issues relating to gay Mormon men marrying heterosexual women. As I have previously explained, beard (as used here) refers to a slang term for the heterosexual spouse of a gay Mormon who is effectively used to conceal the husbands sexual…
Observations on MOMs from a Rambling Lesbian
I am new here. But I was invited to write this blog post because people wanted to hearthe viewpoint of a lesbian in a Mormon mixed-orientation marriage. I am not sure exactly what kind of perspective that gives me, but I will share what I have observed and learned over…
Me, My Inner Catholic Boy and Coming out
I moved out of the family home two months ago. Since then, I have not been to an LDS Church except to watch Priesthood Session of April Conference with my son. I have no immediate plans to attend sacrament meeting anytime soon, and I certainly have no plans to attend…