Brody's Scribbles... Unintended Consequences: How Prop 8 Pushed A Gay Mormon Boy Out Of The Closet And Made Him An Activist

By Rob Donaldson (San Diego, California) June 10 | Alice fell down the rabbit hole. Bottom was transformed into an ass one midsummer's night. Kafka woke up as a cockroach. And one letter read from one pulpit on one otherwise ordinary Sunday transformed this questioning but relatively complacent Mormon boy into The Enemy Within.

As a closeted gay Mormon husband and father, I'd spent a lifetime trying to contort my heart and mind into what the LDS Church said I had to be in order to be good enough for heaven, good enough for God. My Mormon resume was rock-solid, gold-plated. But the charade wasn't working, and inside I was miserable but determined, resigned to believing that was my destiny: keep the mask on, play the part of a faithful straight guy even if it cost me a lifetime of unhappiness. On stage 24/7, never free. I knew how the Church and its members treated The Gays and was sure I just couldn't endure that.

The Mormon Church isn't just a religious denomination. It's a complete way of life, a world view. The cultural current carries you along and if you do what you're told, you don't have to think much. Being an active Mormon can occupy almost every waking moment outside work if you let it. No bandwidth left for non-Mormon pursuits or questioning anything about the Church. Sometimes I've wondered if that's not by design.

But the Law of Unintended Consequences sometimes surprises even big corporations. And when my bishop, a good and kind man, stood in church to read the letter which opened the floodgates of Mormon money and muscle that turned the tide to put Prop 8 over the top, somebody else was caught up in the flood too. Me. Only the current carried me in a completely new direction.

I had done legal work for the Church and knew the strict rules against using Church property or assets for political purposes. Don't do it, we were told, you could put the Church's tax-exempt status at risk. Yet suddenly, for this issue, week after week of worship time was transformed into political training meetings. Sign-up sheets were passed around to schedule neighborhood walks, ostensibly just to "talk with our neighbors about marriage and find out what they think."  Precinct captains were selected.  Donations were strongly urged, week after week, with amounts "suggested" based on tithing records.  Training was given on how to make the pitch.  We were admonished time and again never to argue, no matter what. We must be nice. We must never disrespect others. Don't wear white shirts or ties, we don't want to look like the regular missionaries, it'll send the wrong message. We don't want people to know we're Mormons engaging in politics. But the message was clear, and everybody knew it. The preparation training was consistent, detailed, and relentless, with all the massive precision and focus of which the Mormon Church is capable when The Prophet speaks.

As the campaign got underway, church time on Sundays began to include reports back on these neighborhood walks and campaign activity. Stories were shared of persuading the undecided that children had to be protected from the militant gay agenda that would be forced on them in schools if Prop 8 didn't pass. We could be sued and forced to open our sacred temples' doors to perform gay marriages which would mock everything holy. The Church could lose its tax exempt-status if it refused to perform gay marriages. On and on. No one was outwardly hysterical, but everybody seemed to believe all of that and more. It was a siege mentality, and my fellow Mormons saw themselves as rising up in response to the call from God's Prophet to defend truth and righteousness.

And there I sat, a closeted gay Mormon boy, stunned into silence by the ignorance and prejudice that the prophet's letter had now legitimized for expression. Who were these people that professed to be my friends yet had such incredible fear and distaste not for what I did--because I hadn't done anything--but simply for who I was? I had never felt more alone in my life, more disconnected from the faith I was raised in.

One Sunday as the planning and scheduling and horror stories flowed freely, a young woman raised her hand. 

" I'm a high school English teacher, she said, and I work with gay kids all the time. I have to say that Proposition 8 is scaring them to death. They are already insecure and frightened and vulnerable, and to see our church and others put millions of dollars into this campaign scares them even more. They are more afraid than ever that Prop 8 will legitimize more bigotry and hate.  They fear the beatings and mockery will increase.  They fear never being able to just live peacefully with someone they love. This campaign is making their lives even worse than it was before. You all in this room may not see that, she said, but I do. So I'm afraid that the best I can do in response to the prophet's letter is to simply not openly oppose Proposition 8. Because I see what it's doing to these kids."

She finished. The room was silent for a brief moment. The presiding authority muttered a brief, pro forma "thank you" and called on someone else, who began hyperventilating over how a friend told her they'd heard from a lawyer who said the church could be forced to marry gay people in the temple if Proposition 8 didn't pass and she was so scared of the temples being thus desecrated that she was going to do all she could to pass the proposition. And so it went.

The English teacher was ignored. And there I sat, disgusted with myself for not having the strength to speak up. Because as a lawyer, I'd studied all the arguments and stories and rumors and warnings of doom if Prop 8 failed, all the myths that everyone around me seemed to swallow without a second thought, and I knew they were completely bogus. I had never been more ashamed of myself.

And looking back, that's when it started. That was my tipping point. When the meeting ended, I went and found that high school English teacher in the hall and said Thank you for sticking up for those kids and for raising a voice of reason amidst all that fear and prejudice. Trust me, you're not alone. She almost started to cry from relief and said Oh I am SO glad someone else gets it! Thank you for telling me!

That day I went home, permanently changed. Soon after, I came out. I started blogging. Reaching out to other gay Mormons, growing stronger myself as I share time and experiences with others like me.  There is a remarkable community of gay Mormons nationwide which has blessed my life immeasurably, and in many ways I have never been happier. Our stories are all remarkably similar. We are caught in an impossible situation between what our hearts and minds tell us about ourselves and the way we know God created us, and what the institutional Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says we must do in order to qualify for the privileges of eternal life which it alone can bestow. The way the Church currently defines these, there is no way they can be reconciled. One or the other must give way.

It's no wonder that the great majority of gay Mormons end up leaving a church which basically tells them that in order to qualify for God's greatest blessings in eternity, they must lock their hearts for their entire lives, stay strictly celibate, and never allow themselves to experience the love and companionship and opportunity to build a family of their own which the Mormon Church so aggressively urges its straight members to pursue. And all of that for a reason and reward which the Church itself can't really define, but can only guess at.

So where does that leave me? Well, it's ironic that my church's zealous "defense of traditional marriage" prodded me to finally come out, assert publicly who I've always been, and become just as vigorous a proponent of marriage equality. How do I reconcile my faith with my orientation? It's not been easy. But I believe in Jesus' words that "by their fruits ye shall know them." Much of the fruit of Mormon teaching about Jesus and His gospel is good, and I hold to that. I've seen it in my own life. To me, the basics of Christian theology make sense: the commands to love God and our neighbor, do justly, love mercy, be humble, forgiving, patient, caring for others. The world is brutal enough and would be far worse without the Christian faith to inspire such behavior. 

Just because my own church is fumbling around in the dark about how to treat God's gay children doesn't mean I have to abandon everything it teaches about everything else. I will judge it as I judge anything, by its results. When I see the hurtful and damaging results of Prop 8, I can't accept that the Mormon effort to pass it was inspired of God. But when I see my fellow Mormons, or anyone else, reaching out to strengthen and serve, to care for others as Jesus did, I have hope that fairness and justice will eventually correct the Prop 8 error that began that Sunday, with that letter that changed this Mormon boy's life.