Category Archives: Essays

Posts that take me more than 2 minutes to write.

Baptism

I flipped through the songs on my iPhone until I found one by Blink 182.  I belted out the words as I drove on Interstate 20 towards Atlanta.  I was returning from my nephew’s baptism in a surprisingly good mood.

For the past few years, every time that I had attended a family event, I returned feeling stressed and depressed.  I was frustrated with this because I loved my family and couldn’t explain the feeling of isolation and sadness I felt when I was around them.  I usually returned home with a lessened desire to keep the commandments.  Christmas alone usually caused a month’s worth of emotional turmoil.

But as I flipped the next song, I found that I wasn’t experiencing those feelings this time.  I thought about what was different.  The main difference was that it was the first family gathering since I came out.  I came out because I finally accepted myself for who I was and I had a renewed confidence that I hadn’t experienced for a long time.

My family treated me the same as they always had (which was a good thing) and I enjoyed playing with the kids and talking with the grown-ups.  Not long before I left, one of my brothers came up to me and said with a grin, “nice purse you got there.”  He motioned down to the small bag that held my mother’s digital camera that I had borrowed.

“What?” I said, looking down at the bag.  “Oh, it’s mom’s camera.”

“Looks like a purse to me,” he said, grin widening.

“Whatever,” I said, mildly annoyed.

“It’s really small and cute,” he continued.  My irritation flared.  What was the deal?

In an instant I realized why I was annoyed.  When I was around my family in the past, I found myself slipping into the attitude that I had during high school: I must always project an image of straight masculinity.  My annoyance had nothing to do with my brother.  In fact, whether intentional or not, the message he was sending to me was, “just because you are gay doesn’t mean you are immune from my teasing.”

I smiled.  “This is nothing.  The man-purse I normally carry is way bigger.”

He laughed.  He didn’t care about the bag at all.  He was my brother and I was his.

I switched the song to “Hysteria” by Muse and started singing at the top of my lungs to keep myself awake as I drove through the dark.  Soon I would crest the hill and see the Atlanta skyline glowing ahead in the distance.  My family was behind me.

Just like they’ve always been.

A Matter of “Principle”

I have a few rules with respect to this blog.  One is that I don’t update it more than a two times a week.  Posts generally take me an hour or two to write (including research, links, etc.).  I don’t feel like devoting more time than that to writing about how I’m the sort of fellow that spends at least half an hour (more like 45 minutes) determining what cut of jeans he is going to buy at Target.  Another rule is that I don’t write when I am emotionally down.  When I write in a funk, my writing isn’t very funny and is often, well, depressing.

But today I am breaking that rule.

I’ve been down for a couple of days now.  It started when I went to the temple.  A lot of people enjoy going to the temple because they find it to be spiritually uplifting or at the very least get a since of service out of attendance.  On my mission I was the same way, but then again, my mission was kind of a spiritual “Twilight Zone” that doesn’t seem to have a close relationship to my spiritual life in the real world.  Point being, temple attendance since my mission has been problematic at best.  Instead of feeling lifted up by going, I often left feeling depressed, miserable, and emotionally drained.  The temple seemed to represent everything that had gone wrong in my life and intensified whatever emotional issue I was having at the moment.  Faced with that every time I went, my frequency decreased until I hadn’t gone for quite a while.

But things change, right?

I decided to go to the temple again this week with my close friend.  It had been a long time, but I had faced a lot of my emotional issues head on and felt I was ready to go again.  Shortly after entering, however, I realized I was in for a rough evening.  It was as if I was under constant spiritual attack – so much so that I was completely taken off guard.  I had expected it to be difficult, of course, the level was almost unbearable.  Compounding the situation was the number of people assuming that my friend (a woman and engaged to another friend of mine) and I were a couple.  Someone spoke to me referring to her as my wife.

“We aren’t married,” I said.

“Ah, your girlfriend then,” he continued.

“No. Just friends,” I said quickly.

“Okay, you just look like a couple,” he said.

“Maybe something will blossom there,” a woman in the corner said.

Why wouldn’t they just shut up?  No, we were not a couple.  No, nothing would “blossom there”.  I knew they didn’t mean anything by it and it wasn’t the first time this friend and I were confused for being a couple, but my anxiety was already high and caused me to become really distressed over the exchange.

As the session continued, I was flooded by all the anger, doubt, and worry that had plagued me on previous visits to the temple.  I felt powerless against it.  I sat there trying to keep myself from passing out because of the inundation of negative emotion.  Even old self-disgust reared its ugly head again.  “You’re sick,” came the thought, “You’re a perverted, sick freak.”  I immediately knew the source and knew that it wasn’t me.

“Don’t you dare!” I yelled back in my mind, “DON’T YOU F****NG DARE! Don’t you even start with that bull***t!  That is NOT TRUE!”

I said it was intense.

That line of thought immediately died, but the rest of the confusion and worry continued.  Later as I sat praying much of the intensity had subsided, which left me exhausted.  In a spark of thought I realized my worst fear.  I realized that my worst fear wasn’t to live my life alone.  While a life of general solitude wasn’t what I wanted, I realize what I was more scared that the Lord would tell me that I should get married…to a woman.

Afterward I was talking to my Mom on the phone while pacing around the temple grounds in tears.

“I don’t think He’ll require that of you,” she said.

“He’s done weirder things,” I replied.

She paused.

“I guess this is like Brigham Young and polygamy,” she finally said.

I realized she was right.  While my mind recoiled at the thought of the Lord asking me to pursue heterosexual marriage, it’s not like he hadn’t done something very similar before.  When presented with “The Principle”, Brigham Young responded:

I was not desirous of shrinking from any duty, nor of failing in the least to do as I was commanded, but it was the first time in my life that I had desired the grave, and I could hardly get over it for a long time. And when I saw a funeral, I felt to envy the corpse its situation, and to regret that I was not in the coffin.  (Journal of Discourses, 3:266)

Plural marriage went against his very core, yet he had a desire to be obedient.  He went from wishing for death at the very thought of marrying a second wife to eventually having more than fifty.  The thought of me marrying a woman goes against my very core.  The thought of me eventually even becoming a champion for mixed-orientation marriage I find deeply distasteful.

I don’t believe that I received a command from the Lord to pursue heterosexual relationships.  I don’t see what I felt to even be a heads up that such a command is going to happen down the road.  Maybe it will.  Maybe it won’t.  Whatever happens, the Lord made it clear that He requires that I be willing to give Him everything.  Everything.

And that scares the hell out of me.

“I’d Like To Bear My Testimony”: Why I Came Out To My Entire Ward

You know there is always that one testimony every month that makes everyone feel really awkward, avoid eye contact and makes everyone shift uncomfortably in their seat?  Well, I decided to get that one out of the way early this month.

I just wanted to let everyone know why I am here.

My entire life, I’ve on some level known that I was gay.  Growing up gay in the church was really hard.  Living gay and active in the church can be really hard.

But no matter what I want to be true, no matter what I hope to be true, no matter what I think to be true, I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true.  It’s a knowledge that is impossible to take away from me.  (I’ve tried.)  I know President Monson is a prophet of God.  I know the Book of Mormon is true.

I don’t say all this to solicit pity (although I do enjoy a good pity party), guilt, or to shock.  I say this because no matter what our individual situations, the church is amazingly, frustratingly, inconveniently, wonderfully true…so what else matters?

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I walked passed the bishopric and the stake president (of course he would happen to be there) and down the aisle to my seat back in the chair section.  A third of the way there, I realized that I was looking down.  “Hold your head up!” I forcefully told myself, “You are not ashamed!”  I held my head up as I walked back to my seat.  When I slid into my chair, one friend put his arm around my shoulders, another smiled at me through teary eyes, and another turned around and gave me a smile and a thumbs-up.

So why did I out myself to my entire ward yesterday?

  1. To let other gay Mormons know that they aren’t alone.
    I don’t know if there are other gay members of my ward, but if there are, I wanted them to know that there are other gay members out there, doing our best to live the gospel.  Loneliness and isolation are the kryptonite of the gay Mormon.
  2. To help remove some of the stigma associated with homosexuality.
    I didn’t plan on it, but I was asked to help bless the sacrament yesterday.  I wanted to be the first one to bear my testimony (rip off the band-aid) and before I went up, I realized the significance of what was going to happen.  I was going to stand up from behind the sacrament table and, in front of the bishopric, the stake president, and my ward, reveal that I was gay.  I wanted to help dispel the myths that if you are gay you are a sinner (well, no more than anyone else at least) and unworthy of participation in the church.  I wanted to show that gay people aren’t disgusting pervs.   I wanted everyone to know that you shouldn’t be ashamed, and I am not ashamed, of being gay.
  3. To raise awareness.
    I’ve had people tell me that they thought I might be gay but dismissed the idea because I was active in the church.  I wanted people to know that gay Mormons are out there.  It’s a lot harder to hate a group of people when one of them is sitting next to you in Elders Quorum.
  4. To bear my testimony.
    I wanted to come out in testimony meeting because I wanted everyone to know what I believe.  Plus, a lot of my testimony was built while I was sorting out my sexuality.  It is a part of my testimony like my mission, youth classes, and everything else in my life.

Oh, and by the way, my real name is Clint.

My Name Is Cliff and I Am A Racist

I stumbled across an article today online that featured my high school.  It was written several years ago while I was on my mission.  The article was shocking for many reasons (the first being that it featured the tiny school at all).  Mostly, I was surprised by what the article revealed about myself.

I went to a small all-white private school in the rural south.  It was founded in the late sixties when the public school system integrated.  I always knew that the school (and several others scattered about the area) was founded because white parents didn’t want their kids going to school with the black kids who were in the majority.  Part of me always thought that, while the school may have been started based on racist fears: that was a long time ago.  There were several at the school, of course, which still went there because of racist motivations, but most everyone went there to get a higher quality of education than the public school provided.  If a black family wanted to send there kids to my school, they were welcome to, but they just didn’t want to.  Like the churches in the area, the two groups fundamentally didn’t want to mix, so they didn’t.

Most of the racist rhetoric from my youth I’ve since rejected, but one thing I always thought until today was that if a black family did come to our school, they would have been enrolled – their money was just as good as anyone else’s, after all.   It didn’t happen because, like the white parents, the black parents didn’t feel comfortable with their kids being the minority in school.

The article interviewed a man who had served on the board of our school.  I knew him.  At the time of the article, the school had been closed down for about a year due to lack of enrollment.  The man sadly talked about the broken windows and vandalism that had befallen the school since it closed its doors.  I saw a picture of a room that I had passed every day that I went to school there, from kindergarten to the 12th grade.  Once a break room, I had helped to turn it into a computer lab using (of course) outdated equipment.  The interviewer asked the man about race at the school and pointed out that if the school had encourage black families to enroll their kids, then the school might still be open.  The man admitted that it was probably true, but there were several on the board that were dead set against it.  I don’t know if any black families tried to enroll their kids at my school, but I realized that if there had been, they would likely have been turned away.  I was genuinely shocked.

I was naïve.  I always assumed that if it came down to it, people would have done the right thing and allowed black kids to enroll.  It was a shock to realize that people would have rather seen the school closed due to lack of numbers than open its doors to black families.

I often say that I hated high school and well, I mostly did.  Growing up gay in the rural south can really, really suck.  Crap, growing up in the rural south can really suck.  I acknowledge that there were a lot of people at my school that were really good people.  But a lot of those really good people were upholding a racist society because they were afraid to change.  Including me.  I didn’t clamor to be sent to a public school.  To this day I’ve never had a close friend who was black or even talked at length with a black person that wasn’t a coworker or college professor (In America.  Strangely enough I served my mission in a country with a large black population without any hesitation whatsoever).  This is coming from someone who has lived in the south (where white people are generally in the minority) his whole life.  Lack of familiarity has caused me to not be completely comfortable around black people.  I am, in effect, a racist.

But I want to change.

There was a time that I was very uncomfortable around gay people.  If a guy was effeminate, it was even worse.  But I don’t anymore.  The change happened when I became friends with several actively gay men.  I realized that, just like any other group of people, you have gay guys that are shady, untrustworthy, and cruel, but you also have gay guys that are genuine, honest, and extremely kind.  Now, simply being gay, itself, is no longer a factor for me in choosing people to be around.   I want it to be the same for me with black people.

By admitting that I am a racist, I don’t want anyone to think that I look negatively on black people or wish anyone harm, nor do I go out of my way to avoid black people.  I took African American literature courses in college and watched black-directed films in an effort to understand African-American culture.  I know that black people are the same as other people – I simply don’t have enough personal experience to make me 100% comfortable.  In order for that to happen, I have to leave my comfort zone and make an effort to get to know black people on a personal level.

I have a strong knee-jerk reaction against a lot of the anti-gay rhetoric out there.  A lot of it I find offensive because, well, I am gay and I my personal experience screams to the contrary of much of it.  But a lot of the propaganda I have heard before while growing up.  But instead of “gay person” being the subject, I heard “black person”.  For example, I heard in my youth that black people weakened society because they had weak families and were inherently promiscuous.

Hmm…that one sounds familiar.

There were parts about high school that I loved.  A couple of years ago, I was visiting my parents and drove past the site where my school stood.  It had been torn down and I felt a pang of nostalgia for the friends and experiences I had there.  (It’s not like we were marching around with torches and white robes.)  But even as I type this and even as I feel that same nostalgia, I am glad that the school no longer exists.  It was fundamentally a holdout in a racist system that really needs to be abolished.  True, the students that went there just migrated to the neighboring all-white private schools in the area.  No change really happened and the rural south will continue to die culturally unless we realize that we are strengthened by our differences, not weakened by them.  I can’t change other people, but I can change me.

I want to be kind to everyone,
For that is right, you see.
So I say to myself,
“Remember this:
Kindness begins with me.”

“Kindness Begins With Me” Children’s Songbook, 145.

What If It’s All Not True?

Today, the LA Times featured an article about former LDS film director, Richard Dutcher.  The article, which corresponds with the release of Dutcher’s latest film, Falling, talks about Dutcher’s leaving the LDS Church.  Disillusioned with the Church, he speaks of the moment in which he lost his faith:

“One day in prayer, all by myself, I asked myself the question: What if it’s all not true?” Dutcher recalled. “It was an earth-shaking moment of spiritual terror, such a profound experience. It was such a sense of loss. I felt my faith leaving me and never coming back.”

I found that paragraph interesting because it was the inverse of that question that started the growth of my own testimony.  I was sitting in the atrium of the MTC (I didn’t go to Provo) reading the Doctrine and Covenants and I had the thought, “what if it all is true?”  I then pondered the possibilities of a world in which the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the true Church of God on this earth and I had the feeling (which didn’t originate from within me) that it was in fact true.  That was the beginning of a testimony that has been strengthened by personal experiences, trials, and the exercising of faith.

That being said, I’ve shared Dutcher’s thought as well.  Usually when I am feeling very alone and my sexuality is very much an issue is when the thought comes, “what if it’s all not true?”  What if I’m condemning myself to a lifetime of loneliness for no reason?  What if all the frustration, pain, and doubt is for nothing?  I’ve had moments when I’ve felt my faith leave me…but it has never left completely.  I always felt it hanging on for dear life.  Because I don’t believe it’s a lie.  I don’t believe that the way I’ve chosen to live my life (however alone I may feel sometimes) is for nothing.  I don’t believe my faith is misplaced.

But even if it were….

Even if I come to the end of my life and the prophet of the Church stands up and says, “Sike!”  Even if it turns out that Joseph Smith found the Book of Mormon in a trashcan behind the local livery stable.  Even if it turns out that everything that I have believed in for my entire life turns out to be a fantasy, I will be proud in knowing that I stood by my faith.  I believed in something, truly believed in something, and I didn’t abandon it whenever things got really hard.  I didn’t put aside my faith because I was lonely, scared, or in pain.  I believed.

I don’t blame Dutcher for leaving the Church.  It can be maddening to be a part of the entertainment industry and LDS.  I don’t blame those gay Mormons who finally decided that they just can’t do it anymore and walk out of the ward doors for the last time.  I wish them happiness.  I really do.  But I’m still here.

I still believe.

Loneliness and Peach Cobbler

Could you bring a dessert for dinner tomorrow night, if you can attend?  :-) We are going to grill out.
(text sent 8:49pm)

Can do.
(text sent 8:49pm)

You’re the best.
(text sent 8:50pm)

Well, yeah. :-)
(text sent 8:50pm)

I opened the door to my building and stepped outside into the humid August night.  The club next door was prepping for their guests for the evening and a few early arrivers could be heard laughing inside.

I was walking to the grocery store a few blocks away to buy peaches.  After a couple of quick Google searches, I decided I was going to make cobbler for the Sunday night dinner that my friends and I had almost every week.

I passed another club whose red and black theme looked like it must have been inspired by the Suicide Girls.  Again, a couple of people who had decided to start their bar-hopping early were laughing inside.  I thought about how different our evenings would be.  They would be surrounded by people.  Drinking.  Laughing.  My Saturday night would be spent alone making a peach cobbler from a internet recipe of questionable quality.

And I was cool with it.

Months ago, I realized that if I was going to live my life as a celibate gay Mormon, I was going to need to get comfortable with being alone.  The thought of spending a weekend night alone used to cause me anxiety and even depression.  What did it say about me?  What did it say about my friends?  Did I even have any friends?  Faced with romantic relationshiplessness, I knew that continuing with such attitudes would be impossible.  I decided that I wanted to be able to be comfortable with being alone.  Heck, I wanted to enjoy it.  Whenever I felt the anxiety or depression, which came when I was alone, instead of desperately grasping at something, anything to stave off those emotions, I stopped and allowed myself to feel them.  I stopped running from my loneliness and embraced it.  I felt my way though it, trying to discover the source of my feelings.  I then discovered something.

Loneliness is boring.

Once I stopped running from my loneliness and allowed myself to feel it and explore it, it became extremely dull.  I was then motivated to find things to do with my time that I enjoyed.  I started running and biking again.  I fixed my DVR and started recording crappy horror movies that aired on AMC on Friday nights.  I even decided to learn to cook, which is why I was walking the streets on a Saturday night in search of fresh peaches.

I passed the gay bar next to the grocery store.  They were apparently having an election-themed drag show based on the red, white, and blue balloon arch at the front door.

It was true that I was much more comfortable in my skin.  It was true that I no longer feared Saturday nights alone.  But I still felt lonely at times.  There were still times that I wanted someone to spend my life with.  Someone that I was attracted to.  Someone that was attracted to me.

I knew that I would never be able to rid myself of loneliness completely – nor did I want to.  If I completely killed my feelings of loneliness, then I was either suppressing my emotions (something that I already knew did more harm for me than good) or I had gotten at the point where I didn’t want to be around people at all (another situation that I didn’t want to be in).  Loneliness didn’t need to be omnipresent in my life, but it would never go away completely.

I bought the peaches and a couple of sticks of butter and started back home.  The next evening, I would be surrounded by good friends.  We would grill out, talk, maybe play video games, and generally have a good time.  Eventually, however, our lives would take different paths.  We would get different jobs, move away, they would get married, have kids.  We would always be friends, but life has a way of, well, getting in the way.  Whatever friends came into my life, whatever friends left, I knew that I was becoming someone that I didn’t mind spending time with.

I decided that the next Saturday evening I would make strawberry tarts.