THT: Next Time, I'll Stand Up

Last night I was thinking of the many times I sat in church during particularly abusive comments and kept my eyes fixated on something away from the speaker and my mouth shut. I sat in countless meetings while people around me blamed me, my friends, and the LGBT community at large for destroying families, bringing destruction upon the nation, and lying about not choosing our orientation. I sat while I was condemned, pitied, accused, excluded, and feared by those who have known me for years.

Of course, they didn't know they were talking about me. And I was too much of a coward I guess to stand up and say something. Even if I took a broad "we shouldn't judge" approach, people would suspect... and then what would they say about my family? I feel like I was ready to handle the personal repercussions, but I didn't want to throw my family to the dogs. My family is already a topic of gossip... no need to add a gay son into the mix.

But next time, I am standing up. What will I say? I suppose I'd say something like this:

My name is Jonathan Adamson. I grew up in this ward. Many of you taught me as a child. I am friends with many of your children. I have grown up in your neighborhoods under your watch. I have looked to you for guidance and love. I learned about God and about my relationship with him through you. You know me and the kind of person that I am. What you could never have guessed is that I grew up hating myself and believing that God had no love for me because deep down, I knew I was gay, though I would not accept it for many painful years.

I advanced in the priesthood, served a mission, I went to BYU, and still I was cursed. Enough lessons at church had taught me that much- it was a curse... a dirty, evil, abominable thing that held no place in the sight of God. When the prayers and service and counseling and fasting and bargaining with God failed to cure me, I came to the conclusion that based on what I heard about gays in church, it would be better to die than to be gay. It is impossible to convey the extent of the agony I felt over this issue, and still you believe I have chosen this.

Today I am happy to report that my life is full of joy. Happiness I never imagined I could experience. I found it because I finally embraced my whole self and allowed myself to love and to be loved. But your misinformed words continue to he heard by children like me. Chances are there is at least one other gay man or woman in this room and at least five in this ward. I can bare testimony to you, with no sense of fear or shame or guilt, that God loves his gay children and that the love they feel, while it may not be inline with your gender preference, is real and is good and that your fear and judgment is causing good faithful youth to grow up denying themselves that love. And when love is gone, hate sets in- and hate smothers the life and light out of the eyes of these children of God. Love is unconditional and equal. EQUAL. I am an equal in the eyes of God.

Of course, it probably would never come out like that. I'd probably get emotional and loose my train of thought and any eloquence that I might be able to muster in a normal setting would be destroyed by my fear of judgement. But, I'd stand up. I'd speak. I wouldn't sit quietly like a coward while fire burned my insides.... but I may have lost my chance. I hardly go home... and my words wouldn't have the same effect upon strangers in a random ward.

PE: The One in Sunday School

I was visiting my family this weekend and went to church with them, fully knowing that somewhere in the time I spent there, something would be said about those pesky homosexuals. There is pretty much a 90% chance that it will come up any given Sunday. If the lesson mentions sin, family, false prophets, satan, the last days, or any other number of topics, it is bound to work its way into discussion.

Well, sure enough, in Sunday School the teacher brought up false prophets. "Are there false prophets today?" he asked. The first one to elaborate on the fact that there was immediately went into homosexuals. Gays are the false prophets of our day, proselytizing their evil lifestyle as truth. They are the destroyers of our families, the demise of society. So on and so forth. All I could do was close my eyes and focus on breathing while I waited in silence for the lashings to stop. My mom noticed of course and put her arm around me.

I know that these words come from ignorance. I know that these people are not intentionally attacking me personally. But it is so hard to feel like going to church when that is what I have to sit through week after week. You try feeling uplifted, try feeling the spirit when people you love and respect nail you to the wall as their scapegoat for all the evils in the world as they throw things at you. Try and feel love in that situation. Please, PLEASE think about what you are saying in church. There may be someone within the reach of your voice who is crumpling inside in their silent struggle.

My life is no different from the people in that room. And that is proven by the fact that they have no idea that one of the people they are talking about is sitting right next to them entertaining their cute little kid, reading the same passages they are, and pondering the lesson. Please don't blame me for all the problems in the world.

And lastly, is the world really so bad that we can't think of anything good to talk about? I get so tired of hearing everyone talk about the end of the world and the downfall of society. I find that there is so much good in the world. There are so many good people doing good things. There is so much beauty to enjoy, life to be lived. Why do we have to focus on all the bad in the world? Doesn't the local news do enough of that for us? In the last couple months, due to finally being comfortable in my own skin, I have started to meet and talk to people like never before. You know what I found? A bunch of good-hearted, interesting, beautiful people who were doing the best they could in life. Not at all the evil, cold-hearted, devilish people we talk about who dwell outside the walls of church building on Sunday.

Yikes, we have made ourselves so peculiar and unique that we start to assume anyone else must be wretched, miserable, dishonest people. Is the only joy you find in life anymore that of knowing that you are one of the few righteous in the world? If so, perhaps there is something wrong.