LDS with SSA

in retrospect, i have come to believe that being gay is one of the best things that ever happened to me.

it's hard to explain. i'm a white kid from the suburbs of a blue-collar town in the midwest. racial tension is high on both sides of the issue in my hometown. for example, the ghetto has boundaries.


when i was a kid, there were certain streets that were considered boundaries. the city is laid out on a grid for the most part. greenfield was a north-south street, but the east-west streets were numbered. when i was 13 or 14, if one was walking down greenfield at night, you did not cross 16th street. if you were smart, you stayed up in the 20s. there was a 10 block neutral zone that wasn't great, but it wasn't a guarantee that you were gonna find trouble if you went there.


point is, as a white kid, i grew up hyper aware of gentrification and downward spirals caused by poverty in reagan's america. when one is young, it is easy to make racial connections with ghettos, poverty and crime rates. in fact, i will admit to myself that there are biases that i still have based on the way i grew up. the difference between being human and being a racist is that i choose not to let my internal issues affect the way that i deal with people. people suck in general, but it's foolish to throw away the baby and the bathwater together.


the reason that i say that i think that being gay was a great thing for me, personally, is that it taught me to see from other perspectives. in college, i read a book called Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration. (1991). by an artist named david wojnarowicz. he was a gay man living w/ HIV in ed koch's NY and reagan's america (a scary place, by the sounds of it). wojnarowicz talks about being born into a civilization with rules that don't really apply to him b/c they don't take into account his existence. to wit; "If I die it is because a handful of people in power, in organized religions and political institutions, believe that I am expendable". like any good artist, he sees society from the outside, a condition that is compounded by his homosexuality and then further compounded by his HIV status (this is the late 80s).


in close to the knives, DW is tired of being on the fringes and angry. really angry. one of my favourite quotes i cannot find in detail, but i can sum it up; "i am ten feet of rage stuffed into a 6 foot frame."


i ran into DW at a time when i had finally started to stop fighting so hard against my attraction to other guys. i had fought hard, with prayer and with will and found that i was weak. we all grow up in a society that is built for heterosexual white guys and i came close to the mark. i came close enough to the mark w/out hitting it that i believed that there was something wrong with me b/c i wasn't like everyone else on the inside. there was a part that i hid, a part that i was ashamed of, a part that i did not address for many years. around 19 or 20, i finally got tired of fighting it. there are so many other things that consume your energy during any given day in modern life that it seemed like a waste. maybe that's not the right way to say that. i think that one day i woke up and decided that maybe there was a reason that i was this way.


i have always had a strong belief in G-d. that having been said, we don't talk a lot. the fault is mine, but i don't have a single doubt in my head that there is a G-d. sometimes i wish that i did. i believe that if you can quiet your heart and your mind enough, you can hear him.

there was a greek philosopher named Pythagoras who believed in what he called "the music of the spheres". Pythagoras was the first to believe that math was the universal language of the universe. he also believed that music was a direct extention of mathmatics, hence, there is a perfect harmony that keeps the universe together and it is called the music of the spheres. (of course, it is a metaphor)


maybe G-d's voice is that harmony, just white noise in the background. like a fridge that you didn't realize was running until it cycles down for a few minutes.


back on track.....


it was when i read a great book that took what the bible said about homosexuality and really examined it in detail that i was able to concede that this part of me may be part of G-d's plan for me. while following that rationale, i have realized that i have become a far more tolerant and empathetic individual.


maybe it's some kind of mutual courtesy? a live and let live thing?


dunno.


what i do know is that i have one prejudice that i cannot let go, as much as i may try. that is my loathing of mormons.


i have never been able to figure out what it is about mormons that makes them different in their belief structure from regular "christians".


i find it ironic that the LDS sends out missionaries around the country (and maybe the world), but they require a membership card to enter their temple. you have to meet their exacting standards to enter.


by all means, they certainly don't hold the monopoly on trying to make their religion an exclusionary experience. i would submit that they fall in the same vein as the extremist (read terrorist) muslims and the hasidic jews. i consider myself a jew, but i'm not really a fan of the hasids. the great thing about hasids, though is that they treasure learning, wit, and tradition. in fact, learning and wit are part of the jewish tradition. hasids are, however, less likely to blow up a bus full of school children (israel aside).


if you nose around the internet, you find sites about ex LDS folk and what they describe is kinda scary (though i will admit, i have a thing about mormon underwear; it's kinda hot. i know it's weird. don't ask me why).
here
are
some
links.
here's another interesting link.


what got me out of my morning daze, and moved me to action was this blog that i was reading. i happen to find a really interesting blog called "attempting the path". it is the blog of this really cute and interesting kid with what he calls his struggles with SSA (that's same-sex attraction-leave it to the mormons to classify it like a disease). in his links list, he has various sympathetic blogs and some that are frighteningly relevant.

there is this blog called savingjohngalt about this guy who is full-blown LDS w/ a wife and 3 kids and on a business trip, he meets this guy in london and they have this whirlwind relationship over a 2 year period. the blog starts in august of 2006 and ends in june of 07.

it is a document of a good guy whose desires conflict with everything he believes about the world around him. been there. except for an incredibly lucky and small percent, anyone who knows that they are gay knows this fight well.

what is heartbreaking is the hell that he puts himself through in his quest to adhere to the things that he believes he should be doing. when he goes to his bishop for help, the man revokes his membership card for 6 months.

i have always thought that it is easy and cruel for people to try and "help" you to change. if you like chicks, it's really easy to believe that you can do it too. don't get me wrong, men can usually have sex with anything. hell, i have even had the urge to sleep with women from time to time, but that was more to do with boredom and frustration with gay sex at a time when i was heavily into drugs and had a voracious appetite.

that blog is a document of suffering that is self-imposed and i can't help but wonder about the cruelty of his family and social surroundings that make his life a living hell.

i have to stop here a moment and add that i feel nothing but sympathy for the wife. when you read about the LDS, the common story seems to be "marry a good woman and you can put it all behind you", which leads to the inevitable crumbling of the marriage years later.

david leavitt wrote a book called the lost language of cranes and in it, the son struggles to come out to his uptight parents, only to find out that his father has been fighting his homosexuality his whole life. the reason that the father has remained distant from his son all of these years is that he believes that lack of contact means that the son won't contract it by osmosis or whichever.

my life is far from perfect and there are some things about being gay that kinda suck.

my greatest regret in this life is that i will most likely never have a child, but i will definitely never know the sensation, the miracle, of watching my/our child grow together in the person that i love the most in the world.

i can only imagine the joy of that experience.

i can't say i have many regrets, though.
i regret my drug use.

actually, that's not entirely true. i don't regret the experiences and lessons that i learned from my time in the seedy underground of LA, i just regret the cost.

i regret not chasing after someone when it was clear that...
i regret taking so long to get my act together.
i don't regret being gay.

i do, however, regret using the validation inherent in relationships to supplant my low self esteem.

i regret that it took so long to get myself back.

back to the matter at hand. i have no idea how long this rambling will be, but what i do know is that i am moved by the story of john galt. i am moved by the sickness that is him fighting what he sees as a sickness.

john's entries end in june of 2007. that is where my involvement in his story ends. i can't say i would be surprised to find out that john galt had killed himself.

john is done writing. i never really knew him. he is, in a way, a fictional construct. he is, like all good characters in fiction, a mirror showing us the joys and pains of life and the caliginous murk that is the human psyche.

thanks for listening