Foxx

It would be uncharacteristic for me to not comment on something that is so Moho related.

Although it did escape me for a few days, I am clearly not the only one riled up about Elder Packer’s comments in regards to gays and gay marriage. The funny thing is that it echoes his words from almost 40 years ago when he gave a talk called “To the One.”

His comments should surprise no one who is familiar with Elder Packer. There are two things, however, that I would like to comment on, without invoking the souls of the recently deceased.

Brother Packer, in your Sunday morning conference address, you said, “As if a vote would somehow alter the designs of God’s laws and Nature. A law against Nature would be impossible to enforce, for instance, what good would a vote against the law of gravity do?”

You make the argument that in the same way a secular law against gravity would not change the physical law, a secular law could not change a moral law.

Upon this premise, would you contribute the resources of your members to lobby against the anti-gravity law? Would you financially support ad campaigns that are based on fear and half-truths to get the voters to see your side and vote down the Proposition? I don’t suppose that you would, because regardless of what the law of the land states, it cannot change gravity. However, this is exactly what you have done in the past. If it makes no change to the moral law, “irrevocably decreed before the foundation of the world,” what possible reason could you have to advocate a strong stance against a law that, in the end, makes no difference?

I guess I’m making the same point others have made: the law does not apply to you, yet for some reason, you feel so strongly about it that you donate your resources to fighting its passing. Should gays be allowed to marry, you can go on believing what you believe and allow people who believe otherwise practice their beliefs “how, where, or what they may.”

My second point has to do with your reasoning as to why homosexuality could not be considered anything but a choice. “Some suppose that they were preset, and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and the unnatural. Not so. Why would Heavenly Father do that to anyone? Remember, He is our Father.”

You argue that based on the Plan of Salvation, which includes opposite-sex marriage for the purpose of procreation, God could not create something outside of His own design, therefore those that call themselves homosexuals do not exist as such, and can change. I ask the same question, based on an alternate premise. I do not believe that a Heavenly Father would create one of his children who was born without choice to fail his Plan. From my experience, and the experience of countless millions, it is a fact by experience that these feelings are in every way as natural as the feelings that heterosexuals feel for those of the opposite sex. Because of this fact and the question, “Why would [He] do that…” I have to believe that the Plan as we know it is incomplete, and we have not yet seen the fullness of the Plan of Salvation. Gays exist, therefore they have to be part of that plan – if the Church is true.

Thousands of gay Mormons hope daily for a revelation of their part in God’s plan. They commit themselves faithfully to the building up of the Kingdom of God knowing that they cannot change, but hoping that the core principles of the Church with regards to Latter-Day revelation will someday show them how they can be loved by God and included in his Plan.

However, as long as the teachings about homosexuality continue in the way that they are, and cannot be changed, you will continue to see them fall away, lose contact with their families, and follow their hearts to find some modicum of hapiness that they are denied within your walls.

When you can finally stop focusing on dogma and turn your sights upward to who Heavenly Father is and what he ultimately wants for his children, you will see that He would not create gays if they did not somehow play a part in His ultimate design. It is not the current design that is flawless, it is the designer. The flaw is in your shortsightedness, your stubbornness, and in your unwillingness to see what is plain before you.

And finally, stop the nonsense! People are killing themselves over not being able to live up to your impossible standards! Does that not make you weep? Do you realize that as a gay member of the Church you have only three choices: to live a life of celibacy and disparity (or marry heterosexually which is no longer encouraged), to reject the church and find acceptance within the gay community, or to die? Your teachings are taken to heart! When gays understand that they cannot have any hope of romance, love, or companionship with someone they choose until after this life, sometimes it looks better to get on with it and get to the next life. Is that what you want? That’s what you teach, and that’s how it is interpreted.

If you value your gay members, then you need to reach out to them with support and openness. All they want is someone to understand and to talk with them, to guide them through the tough life ahead. To tell them that they matter and that the need not hide themselves away.

With the words that you spoke, you told the gay kids that they don’t matter and that they should hide their feelings. This is psychological death and a recipe for suicide unless they find the courage to escape.

It would be strange to me if I didn’t at least comment on the overturning of Proposition 8 in California on August 4, 2010. And while it is a great victory for equal rights for the GLBTQ community, it certainly brings the naysayers out of the woodwork. This causes me some stress, and I start to review my beliefs on the matter yet again.

From all of the Facebook chatter on the subject, there have been a few points that I’d like to address for my own sanity, and in my own space. First, the argument that the government revoked the voting rights of seven million people shows that this country’s system of power is corrupt and imbalanced, and, Second, that here we go arguing over the definition of marriage again. These two points irk me especially much, and have caused me much thought.

So, while I was waiting for the decision to be released, I was watching some videos of the two attorneys who spearheaded this case with the California State Supreme Court. They reviewed the legal history of marriage in the United States and some notable Supreme Court cases that had to do with marriage, and were answering questions in a interview about overturning the voters decisions. They remarked that this was how the Judicial system was set up – to overturn laws passed that were not constitutionally sound. They said that if we had left it up to the people to vote on it at the time, the laws the prohibited interracial marriage likely would have never been confounded. They also said that public opinion followed the results of that law, eventually, and they expected the same to happen here.

After the decision was published, I found a comment from, unsurprisingly, one of my old missionary companions that said he thought this was not the way a government for the people, of the people, and by the people was supposed to be run and that this is not what the USA was all about, and how dare they revoke the rights of millions of voters their constitutional right to vote for laws they agree with.

On this, I cannot believe the twisty-turns of the brain to make it all right to prevent equal rights of millions of people by passing laws that are based on fear and misinformation, but not all right to overturn that law when it breaks the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution!

Okay, and the second point has me more involved, really. It really tried to boil down the issue into a changing the definition of marriage question. And while the definition he is referring to is the man/woman definition, I just wanted to say a few things. Firstly, that is not the only, age-old, definition of marriage. Marriage has been defined in quite a few different ways across cultures and across time. And I think that what same-sex couples want is more than the title of marriage for equality sake. There is a lot more to marriage than a certificate and a package of legal rights that are currently unavailable to same-sex couples in most states.

I read through the Wikipedia entry on Matrimony, and interestingly enough, it and other dictionary definitions do not define marriage as being between a man and a woman. That definition was primarily contemporary in nature and religious in origin. I would like to present marriage as an idea, a word with connotation, and an experience that can and should be shared with all men.

Some notable quotes about marriage from the Wikipedia entry, which incorporates cross-cultural definitions:

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between individuals that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found.

People marry for many reasons, including one or more of the following: legal, social, emotional, economical, spiritual, and religious. These might include arranged marriages, family obligations, the legal establishment of a nuclear family unit, the legal protection of children and public declaration of commitment.

Marriage practices are very diverse across cultures, may take many forms, and are often formalized by a wedding. The act of marriage usually creates normative or legal obligations between the individuals involved. Almost all cultures that recognize marriage also recognize adultery as a violation of the terms of marriage.

Marriage is usually recognized by the state, a religious authority, or both. It is often viewed as a contract. Civil marriage is the legal concept of marriage as a governmental institution irrespective of religious affiliation, in accordance with marriage laws of the jurisdiction. If recognized by the state, by the religion(s) to which the parties belong or by society in general, the act of marriage changes the personal and social status of the individuals who enter into it.

Specifically, I would like to focus on the social aspects of marriage. I keep asking myself this question: What does marriage mean to us as a society? If I can say that I’m married, what personal and social status is inferred by that statement? If I meet someone who talks about his wife, what do I infer about their commitment, their relationship, over some other title such as partner?

I think it’s important to acknowledge that for something that most people take for granted, marriage is a lot more than a social and legal contract. It is a social prestige class. And to those who can’t get it even if they wanted to, it’s an elite group to which they are not entitled, legally, through no fault of their own, and are therefore left feeling like a lower class. Like they are not good enough to be accepted by society in that way, no matter how much they try. They don’t qualify, and can never take on those terms of respect: marriage, husband, wife, spouse, ceremony, matrimony, wedding. They are left with these: living together, partner, civil union, boyfriend, domestic partner, roommate, friend. Linguistically, the connotations of these words and phrases are definitely less than those associated with matrimony. I feel that pain, I really do.

So it makes a lot of sense to me that even if, as some have said, in California, I can have a domestic partnership with all of the same legal rights as a state marriage, it is still not the same thing by a long shot. Besides, if there are two equivalent (read separate but equal) institutions which provide the same benefits to different groups of people, should it not also be named the same thing? Math says so: if a=b and b=c, then a=c.

So why is there such protectiveness against the name? Why is it so important to keep the gays out of marriage? The standard homophobic responses aside, I found something else in the Wikipedia entry that caught my attention. This may be one unconscious reason for it:

Many of the world’s major religions look with disfavor on sexual relations outside of marriage. Sexual relations by a married person with someone other than his/her spouse is known as adultery and is also frequently disapproved by the major world religions (some calling it a sin). Adultery is considered in many jurisdictions to be a crime and grounds for divorce.

In other words, marriage is religion’s way to sanction sexual activity. If homosexuals are allowed to marry, and I think this gets to the “destroying marriage” argument, then by association, gay sex is legitimized. Legally legitimized. Made equal to heterosexuality.

Heterosexuality cannot and must not be equal to homosexuality, it never has. This is their silent mantra.

If marriage is their last bastion of power and same-sex couples infiltrate it, their grounds for discrimination are legally stripped. Their power and authority over the “sexual deviants” and miscreants become unjustified, and they will have to find a way to live in a world where we are as respected as they, and in the same ways. But they do not look forward, and they do not remember the foundation on which this country was built:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

If we are indeed created, then there can be no difference between them and us. We are one diverse race, one country, and one human family. Segregation and discrimination will fail, with time, as the world comes to believe this truth. My love and my feelings are as natural and as primal as yours, and my wish is for that sameness to be as recognized and as celebrated as your own.

So it’s not very often that I have yet another coming out experience, but today was interesting if brief.

It’s my first day off since the vacation, and I wanted to do a few things around the yard. Matt and I had picked up some replacement heads for our sprinklers, and I was in the process of messing with one of them when I hear from behind me, “Hey! Hey!” I turned around and there were two young men carrying hula hoops. The one of them asks if I’m gay.

That’s a peculiar question for anyone to start with, especially with someone they don’t know, and I was far from prepared to discuss my sexuality with anyone in the neighborhood, but the penchant for direct honesty won out and I replied in the affirmative. The two boys went on their way up our street and I went about my sprinkler fixing.

Two things about this experience strike me as odd. First, being asked by someone you don’t know if you’re gay, and secondly, what I could have said to make the dialogue more impactful. Who walks up to you and asks you that question? I assume there has been some wondering about us around the neighborhood, what with us not going to church and there being no women about or children in a family community. It must have been the only thing they wanted to know about me. My response, which was a simple yes, could have been something like, “Yeah, so what?” or “Yep, but who cares?” I could have responded with a question of my own like “That’s an interesting question. Who do YOU sleep with?” Eh, regardless, what’s done is done, and hopefully the consequences are only positive.