Those of you who are familiar with me are probably also familiar with the phrase I use to describe myself in my social media profiles: radical left queer Mormon.
To the average person who has only a tangential understanding of the Mormon church, this phrase may seem off, or even jarring or oxymoronic.
My intent with this post is to discuss what it’s like to sit at the intersection of these three identities—radical left, queer, and Mormon—and how these identities have become intertwined. I don’t segment these identities. I am all of them at once.
Apolitical
I didn’t grow up in a political home. I have very few memories about my parents talking about politics. I knew they voted in elections, but they refused to ever say who they voted for. They felt sharing who you voted for violated some sort of moral principle. I haven’t lived at home in nearly 30 years, and I still don’t know who they vote for or where they sit on the political spectrum. I think my mum is pretty centrist and my dad a bit further to the right, but that’s all conjecture and based only on a handful of things I’ve heard or seen them say over the years.
As a result, I grew up pretty apolitical. I have very few memories about politics. My first memory about politics was related to my first elementary school, which I attended for Kindergarten and grades one and two while my family and I lived in the Uplands neighbourhood of Regina, Saskatchewan. Even then, it wasn’t so much a memory per se, but a connection to politics.
You see, my school was named after James Coldwell. He was a democratic socialist politician in Saskatchewan, who served on Regina’s city council. He also was national secretary for the federal Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party and later became its national chairman and eventually went on to lead the party between 1942 and 1960. This party later became the New Democratic Party, after much work between the CCF and the Canadian Labour Congress. Partly due to his efforts while in office, Canada ended up introducing unemployment insurance, Old Age Security, and child benefits. Of course, I never knew any of that at the time, but it interests me that I ended up moving left politically as I aged, and Coldwell was pretty left as a politician.
The first actual memory of politics I remember is from when I was attending Grade 6 at Peart Elementary School in Regina’s Gladmer Park neighbourhood. It was around the time of the 1984 federal election, and our school was being used a polling station. My class and I were on our way to recess, and we had to pass by the gym, where the polling was being held. As we marched by the open doors, one of my classmates started chanting, “NDP! NDP! NDP!” I had no idea what it meant at the time, and I didn’t realize until years later what he was trying to do.
Speaking of the CCF and the NDP, let me briefly mention my Grandpa Siever, who was farmed on the homestead his parents settled in southwestern Saskatchewan just before the First World War. I don’t remember him talking politics ever. He died in 1996. Years later, however, when discussing him with one of his daughters, my aunt, I discovered that he had been an avid NDP supporter, and the CCF prior to that. He voted CCF from the first time he could vote until they became the NDP, then continued on in that vein until then. Despite my inability to remember him talking politics, he was very politically minded, according to my aunt and one of her brother-in-laws. Apparently, he always had something to say on a topic, and he was willing to stubbornly argue about what he said with anyone who disagreed with him. In fact, my aunt told me that “if ever you saw him passionate about something, it was politics.” Maybe I don’t remember much because whenever I was on the farm, I was always outside exploring with my uncles, who were close to my age. When my mum was pregnant with my little sister, we lived with my grandparents for a little. According to my mum, if Grandpa Siever heard me stirring in my crib in the early morning, he’d come get me, dress me up in my little snowsuit, and take me to the barn. He’d sit me in a large galvanised bucket with some kittens where he could keep an eye on me. He’d chat with me while he milked his cows, using my toddler babbling as his discussion prompts. Maybe my tendency toward leftist politics is genetic. Maybe my stubbornness, too.
Despite these three scenarios and their connection to the NDP, I was never really an NDP supporter. In fact, I didn’t really have any party affiliation. Over the years, I had voted for conservative, liberal, NDP, Canadian Action, and Green party candidates.
But that all started to change in 2011.
My journey to communism
Content warning: This section discusses domestic violence and suicide.
Late in the evening of 14 December 2011, a 21-year-old Lethbridge man was at a local pub with his friends when he came across his ex-girlfriend, who was there with a coworker, as well as the co-worker’s boyfriend, and another man. Even though the 21-year-old and his ex-girlfriend split up a month and a half before, they still shared a basement suite because of the lease they had co-signed together. He confronted her, yelling at her, and even pushed her out of the chair, according to one witness. He then left the pub, shortly after midnight, claiming that he was going home to finish packing for his trip to Edmonton, to finish his last exam to become a paramedic.
Over the next 3 hours or so, however, he reportedly phoned his ex-girlfriend repeatedly, at one point even saying, “This night’s not going to end well for you. I hope you know that.” Then around 3:00 in the morning of the 15th, the ex-boyfriend rammed into the coworker’s car on Highway 2, just outside of the small town of Claresholm, which is about 80 kilometres west of Lethbridge. The two women were driving the boyfriend and his friend to Calgary to catch a flight back home to PEI, where they planned to spend Christmas with family.
The coworker stopped her vehicle and exited it, in an attempt to confront the other driver, oblivious to the fact that it was her coworker’s ex-boyfriend who ran into her car. He also exited his vehicle, pointed a gun registered in his name at her, and shot her three times. Then he walked over to her vehicle and shot into it several times, killing his ex-girlfriend and the driver’s boyfriend instantly. The other man, who was also shot, managed to escape the vehicle but died during transport to a Calgary hospital later. After firing into the vehicle, the 21-year-old turned the gun on himself and took his own life. The first person who had been shot miraculously survived and was able to eventually make a full recovery through surgery and treatment.
When I first heard about this event later that day, the news article I saw spelled the name wrong of the person who shot everyone. I’d known him for about a decade, and this wasn’t something that I’d ever thought he could do, so I assumed it was someone else with a similar name. I attended church with his family, and I was even his youth leader when he was a deacon, between the ages of 12 and 13. At one point, he was the deacons quorum president, and as his advisor, I had developed a close relationship with him. I had always known him as a quiet but friendly guy, who was always willing to lend a hand and got along with everyone.
So when I discovered that the media outlet, whose story I had read, actually got his name wrong and it was indeed him, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that he was able to do something like this. Every word I heard him say and every act I saw him do were antithetical to what he did this time. I was numb. I couldn’t make sense of any of it, and I wrestled for a long time with what he had done and what it meant about what I knew about people. This event completely and drastically changed my sense of morality.
In the months and years immediately following this event, I became repulsed by the portrayal of violence in the media—the news, television shows, film, video games, and so on. I grew sick inside every time I saw someone killing someone else on the screen. I would get nauseous every time I saw someone getting kills on the screen. So, I banned violent video games and films from our home.
In addition to fostering a sense of abhorrence toward violence within me, it convinced me that we, the public, are too quick to judge a person based on a single act of theirs. If the media report that someone committed a theft, we label them a thief. If they report that someone had lied, we label them a liar. If they report that someone had killed, we label them a killer.
Pigeonholing people allows us to forget a person’s history, goals, family, personality, talents, accomplishments, and a host of other aspects that go into what makes a person—a person. Reducing someone to a superficial representation makes it easier to judge the person and to distance ourselves from the reality of how close we are to being able to commit wrongful acts. Those two ideas—our culture’s obsession with violence and its tendency to judge others—began to influence my worldview over the next four years.
About a year later, I became a seminary teacher. Over the next two school years. I taught early morning religion classes to high school age Mormons. A year after I finished teaching seminary, I became a Sunday school teacher at my church. Through these two positions, as part of the curriculum I was to teach, I studied the life and teachings of Jesus more deeply than I ever had previously.
What became clear to me is that Jesus taught us to abhor violence and to not judge others. He admonished us to love everyone, no matter who they were or what they had done.
Take Matthew 5—the opening of the Sermon on the Mount—for example:
“Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment . . . Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. . . . Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (vv. 21–22, 38–39, 43–44)
Or his response to the Pharisees when asked what the greatest commandment was:
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. (Matt 22:37–39)
Or the new commandment he gave to his apostles during the last supper to love one another as he had loved them (see John 13:34).
These teaching experiences underscored the feelings I’d been experiencing, and I found myself drawn toward pacifism. I grew more disgusted with war, racism, and sexism. I had become convinced that, as a Christian, I was duty bound to embrace love and equality and reject anything in opposition to that.
My feelings toward the importance of increasing our love toward others and decreasing our hatred toward others continued to grow. As it did, I became disenchanted with the partisanship of the political parties in the provincial and federal elections of 2015.
I have long considered myself a non-partisan voter, not finding a party I could closely identify with. As candidates became more partisan in those elections, and bitterness and rhetoric intensified, I distanced myself even more from the main parties. So I began researching some of the lesser known parties.
One party I came across was the Communist Party of Canada. As I reviewed their platform, I was surprised at how much of it resonated with me, far more than the platforms of any other party ever had.
It completely changed my understanding on what the Communist Party stood for, and made me wonder why people were so opposed to them.
This experience prompted me to read The Communist Manifesto. I had studied it cursorily for an undergraduate paper I wrote on the effect Soviet Russia had on Russian theatre. Prior to that, I was only superficially familiar with communism. This second time through the document, so much stuck out to me. Given Marx’s insistence on revolution to bring power to the proletariat, however, I didn’t see myself as a Marxist. Even so, several of his points resonated with me.
As I mulled over what I came across on the party website and in The Communist Manifesto, I started to realize how my recent paradigm shift regarding pacifism, violence, and religion, aligned with general communist principles.
At this point, I must highlight that what the typical person thinks is communism isn’t. China isn’t communist. Cuba isn’t communist. North Korea isn’t communist. Soviet Russia wasn’t communist. East Germany wasn’t communist.
In fact, technically speaking, “communist government” is an oxymoron. In a communist society, there is no government. Everyone has everything in common, and there’s no need for the government to equalize anything.
I knew that revealing that I was a communist would be met with eye rolling, misunderstanding, and even derision, so I put it off for a few weeks. I used that time to reconcile my political and religious beliefs.
As I compared principles of Mormonism and principles of communism, I noticed some similarities.
For example, there is a utopian people described toward the end of the Book of Mormon. They are a casteless society in which no one was poor or rich and no one was bond or free (4 Nephi 1:3); in which they lived in peace (v. 4); in which, despite there being no hierarchy, they still managed to produce, such as through building cities (v. 7); in which there was no contention (v. 13); and in which love dwelled in the hearts of everyone (v. 15). In fact, it wasn’t until this people no longer had common substance (v. 25) and had reintroduced castes (v. 26) that this communal society began to fall apart.
This communal society had parallels in early Christianity, as seen in Acts 2:44–45:
And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
and Acts 4:32–35
And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that bought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. . . . Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.
Elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, readers learn:
ye should impart of your substance to the poor, every [one] according to that which [they have], such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spiritually and temporally, according to their wants. (Mosiah 4)
At their core, I think the lifestyle Jesus envisioned and the society idealized in the Book of Mormon parallel communism in its strictest sense. After weeks of introspection, I concluded that it isn’t incongruous to be Mormon and communist. In fact, I think being communist is more in line with Mormonism than capitalism or conservatism are.
I no longer identify as communist, however.
In the more than a decade since first publicly declaring that I was a communist and also briefly identifying as an anarchist, I’ve found it difficult to reconcile all my beliefs with a strict ideology. I found that identifying explicitly with communism was just too limiting. While much of it resonated with me, I wanted flexibility and independence with what I believed. I didn’t want to have to strain all my beliefs through an ideological filter before determining whether I was allowed to accept it.
And so now I just use “radical left”. It allows that flexibility while also giving people a general idea where I fit on the political spectrum.
How I realized I was queer
Before I get into my own queer awakening, I think I should probably mention the queer pioneers in my life: my three children. We have six children in total, and four of them have come out to us and represent a variety of orientations and gender identities. Four of them came out years before I did, before I even realized I was queer.
Our oldest came out to us—well, actually, they never got a chance to come out to us—in the spring of 2015, after Mary got a phone call from a fellow Mormon, who lived in our stake. Our child was friends with their oldest child, who was trans. At one point, this church member mentioned that she was going through her child’s phone and noticed a text conversation our two children were having with each other. At the time, our child had mentioned that they were bisexual. This mother felt that it was something we should know.
We weren’t upset about it. Honestly, I had suspected for some time that our child was queer. This bit of information didn’t change anything about how we felt about our child. We knew that the love we had for our children was unconditional. Being queer wouldn’t change any of that. Looking back now, what we should have done was absolutely nothing. We should’ve kept that information to ourselves—and told the church member that the sexual orientation of our child was neither any of their business nor ours and that she just robbed them of the privilege of choosing if and when to come out to us—and just waited until our child felt comfortable coming out to us. If we were disappointed, it wasn’t in our child being queer. It was in our child not telling us. In retrospect, however, we should’ve taken stock of why they didn’t feel comfortable coming out to us and find ways to nurture an environment where they were confident that coming out to us would be a positive experience.
Instead, when our child returned home from an outing with friends, we asked them to come into our bedroom, that we wanted to talk to them about something. We told them that we got a phone call from their friend’s mum and asked if there was something they wanted to share with us. They said no, but we kept pressuring them to share with us. This went on for quite a few minutes, and our child was crying. They eventually did tell us, and we assured them that it was totally fine that they weren’t straight, that it made no difference to how we would treat them. But in hindsight, that had to have been traumatic for them. They were robbed from having the experience of coming out to their parents, and we played a role in that. Even if we already knew, they didn’t have to know that we knew, and they still could’ve had that experience of deciding if and when to come out to us. We’ve reconciled with our child since then for the role we played in that experience, but it still hurts me to write it all out like this.
We learned our lesson, and we were sure not to repeat this with any other children. Our other children were free to choose when they came out to us. Our third child came out to us a little more than two years later, a few months before they turned 12. They didn’t sit us down to reveal it. They came out to us separately. I was actually hanging laundry on the line when they told me, and it was just a matter of fact. They told us they were going to be trying they/them pronouns to see how they felt. I tried to be as affirming as I could. Not long after that, while I was on a cross country road trip with our second oldest, our third oldest told us that they were changing their name, and it was a bit clumsy at first, trying to get used to pronouns and a new name, but we eventually got into a groove.
Our fourth child came out just the following year, when they were nine years old. It was a similar experience as with their older sibling, they came out to each of us separately, and we tried to affirm this new aspect of their identity.
With these three having come out to us, I think it prepared me for my own coming out, which brings me to my own queer journey. Until March 2020, I thought I was straight. For most of my life, I thought I was the default. I was what everyone told me I was: straight and cisgender. I liked girls, I was teased about girls, I talked about girls with my friends, and most of my sexual/physical/romantic experiences were with girls. But not all of them. A handful of those experiences didn’t involve girls. They involved boys.
Even then. I never saw myself as gay. After all, I liked girls. A lot. There was no mistaking that. Heck, I’m not sure, looking back now, that I really understood what gay even meant. I don’t think I knew any gay people growing up. As time went on and I grasped what gay meant, I still never saw myself as gay—as I said—because I was still very much attracted to women. To me, it was very much a binary: you were either straight or you were gay. But those sexual experiences I had with other boys occasionally surfaced as memories, requiring me to rationalize them somehow, while still being true to the performance that society, religion, and family expected of me. And the only explanation I could ever concoct was that they were nothing more than experimentation: youthful frolicking. Each time the memories returned, I swept them under the rug, justifying them as undefining experiments. Yet until recently, I never gave thought as to why I thought that the experiences I had with boys were experiments but not the ones I had with girls.
I was 21 when I got married, so I never had sexual experiences as an adult with men. My sexual experiences as an adult have been almost exclusively with my spouse, who’s a straight, cisgender woman, and so those experiences have been heterosexual. Which made it easy for me to continue dismissing some of the experiences of my youth. I’ve been in what I thought was a straight relationship for over 30 years, and that relationship has defined my own sexuality significantly. Who I am sexually today is so intertwined with my relationship with Mary. After all, I’ve been married to her for most of my life. And what awareness I had of my own sexuality prior to my marriage was only a few short years. Less than a decade.
Today, I try to exercise fidelity to Mary. As part of that, I try to control how I look at other women, trying to avoid seeing them as someone to be attracted to. And while occasionally, I’ve had to do the same thing with men, it was never actually the same. If attractive men crossed my path, I never found their presence a threat to my fidelity to Mary, but rather a threat to my sexuality. I shook off the attractions not to protect my devotion to my marriage, but to protect the sexual role I had been assigned by my society, church, and family. And since they rarely occurred, I rarely thought much about them.
As someone who’s interested in strength training, I’ve watched a lot of weight lifting videos over the years. And plenty of times, I looked longingly at the bodies of the men in those videos. But I always thought it was an admiration I felt. Their bodies were what I wanted mine to be like, how I wanted to look. But now, I wonder if that admiration wasn’t actually admiration after all, but something more.
In early 2020, for some reason, all of this had been weighing on my mind. The experiences of my youth, the occasional attractive man, the weightlifting videos, and all the other ways—as infrequent as they were—that men had interacted with my sexual self. All of it.
I found myself reflecting on them over and over while walking my dog at the start of the pandemic, when I finally realized that the experiences of my youth weren’t fleeting experiments. They were foundational experiences. Both experiences I had with girls and experiences I had with boys. I finally realized that these weren’t experiments; they were expressions. In all cases, I was expressing my sexuality. And once I came to this realization, I fully accepted and embraced my queerness. I told my spouse the next morning while we were lying in bed, before we started the day, and I texted my parents and siblings that afternoon. And shortly after texting my family, I posted publicly on social media for the world to see. Ironically, I never came out to our children.
The response from my family varied. It was a lot for everyone to take in, I think. Mary has been supportive since I came out. Mary and I had been married for almost 25 years. We had been through a lot. We’ve worked through a lot of trials and challenges—much harder than trying to navigate a mixed-orientation marriage—so I was pretty confident that this wouldn’t be a stumbling block for our relationship, despite the new complexity it potentially could introduce. And I was right.
My mum responded to my text with, “Thank you for letting me know.” I had told my parents that I wasn’t straight. My dad responded by asking what I mean by straight, and when I told him, he replied with, “Thank you for letting me know your definition of straight. I want to let you know we love you and will always love you.” My sister said, “We are all here to support you! Thank you for telling us. It must feel like a huge weight off of your shoulders. And I know Mary and your children will stand behind you 100%. Love you lots!” I have yet to hear from my three brothers.
Coming out to my family was important to me. I knew that ultimately, it would make things easier. Otherwise, I would have felt as though I was hiding it, and I didn’t want to feel as though I was holding onto a secret. It would’ve made things more stressful: I would’ve been stressed around my family, and that stress would’ve manifested in ways that would’ve been confusing for them.
I didn’t go through the period of stress and grief and worry that so many queer people experience as they contemplate how and to whom to come out. I just did it, like ripping off a bandaid. I didn’t want to overthink it too much and talk myself out of it. The response I got ranged from enthusiastically supportive to complete silence. No one was outrightly rude or antagonistic.
This realization came with some new challenges. Since I’m still very much attracted to women, nothing changed for my marriage. I’m still attracted to Mary physically, romantically, sexually. Like I said, so much of my sexual self is intertwined with my life with her. I’m more attracted to her today than I was 28 years ago.
On the other hand, how do I, as a queer person, confront the homophobia of my past? How do I deal with the ways I internally dismissed attraction to other men with disgust rather than fears of infidelity? Now that I finally acknowledge my complex sexuality, how do I accept it? How do I embrace it? How do, I, as someone who came out late in life, who is committed to his marriage, explore my sexuality in a meaningful way? I don’t know what that looks like or how long it will take, but it’s a challenge trying to understand what my queerness really is like, what the limits, boundaries, extent, scope, and broadness of it really is, while also trying to be faithful to my marriage. Not just physically, romantically, and sexually, but in every capacity. These were all questions that emerged with my coming out three years ago, and I’m not sure I’ve found answers to them yet. But one thing I have gained perspective on is how I experienced homophobia and how that homophobia kept me in the closet for decades.
Internalized homophobia
A little over a year after my queer awakening, I had an experience that helped me to understand, as a religious person, that whenever my queerness emerged, it wasn’t the devil trying to tempt me, but my queerness trying to break through years of repression. At that time, I was participating in an online book club hosted by the Beyond the Block Podcast, where we were discussing Blaire Ostler’s book Queer Mormon Theology. At one point, someone made a comment, which I no longer remember but which triggered a realization in me. These moments in my life where my queerness was trying to emerge weren’t temptations; they were the Holy Spirit trying to help me realize that I’m queer, that it was something I could accept and make a part of my life.
A year after I came out, I started to recognize how pervasive my homophobia had become while I was growing up.
For most of my life, society had convinced me I was straight. Heck I had convinced myself I was straight. Not even gay sexual experiences in my youth deterred me from that; I simply dismissed them as experimenting.
But as I came of age, that forced straightness led to embracing masculinity in ways that changed who I was. For example, when I was younger, my favourite colour was pink. But as I entered my teens, that was seen as too girly, and so I replaced it with a more masculine blue, and I refused to let my oldest son be dressed in yellows and pinks as a baby.
When I was younger, my favourite animal was the flamingo, but that wasn’t masculine enough, so I replaced it with the dog. The stories I wrote as a child about gigantic easter eggs and hatchling rabbits were replaced by stories of fast cars and espionage. The pop music I loved in my early teens was replaced with heavy metal, rap, and classic rock in my late teens and early twenties. I went from wanting an earring as a tween to feeling dirty and anxious the first time I put on nail polish as an adult in my forties. I also started deepening my voice when I was on the phone, or on the radio, or even doing YouTube videos. When I started singing in the ward choir as a teenager, I picked bass because it allowed me to deepen my voice. As well, I remember telling a friend, as a young teenager, that I hoped I would mature to be 6ʹ5ʺ tall and weight 250 lbs. I saw size as a sign of masculinity. And as each year in my teens passed by and stayed at 150 lbs and 6ʹ1ʺ, no matter how much I ate or what kind of exercise I did, it created a sense of insecurity in me, that my body wasn’t masculine enough. I had no muscle and clothes basically hung off me. This was further complicated by my having gynecomastia throughout my teen years, as well as being a later bloomer when it came to body hair. I don’t think I ever had to shave until after I graduated high school, and even then it was only Sunday and was so I wouldn’t have a few stray hairs sticking out. I couldn’t grow a full beard until I was in my 30s, and I didn’t get chest hair until after I was married. Having a super skinny body with excess breast tissue and very little body hair really led to me overcompensating for what I perceived as a lack of masculinity.
Over the last 6 years, very little of this had changed. Blue is still my favourite colour, dogs were still my favourite animal, and I still deepen my voice and sing bass. But at least I recognize it now. I do have earrings, however.
Some forms of homophobia are pretty obvious. Others are subtle, especially when they’re internal and personal. But coming out and starting the process of embracing who I am has allowed me to notice things I hadn’t noticed before. To see how I was brainwashed by society to turn myself into someone else, someone it wanted me to be.
Speaking of getting earrings, I got my ears pierced in June 2022. Back in the 1980s, it was trendy for men to get a single piercing. As a 12-year-old boy, of course, I wanted one, too. I was strongly discouraged from getting one though, with people telling me that others might think I’m gay. Well, I figured that since I’m out anyhow now, and as a way to deal with some of that internalized homophobia I still harboured, I got my ears pierced. I’m not sure if it alleviated any of that homophobia or helped me to better embrace by blossoming queerness, but I hope it has.
Embracing the term “queer”
When I came out, everything was new to me. It was something I had realized only the day before, and so I hadn’t taken much time to consider the complexities and intersections of my queerness.
When I came out, I framed it as “I’m kind of straight. Mostly straight. But not just straight.” I picked this phrasing because nothing else seemed to fit me. Neither bisexual or pansexual really felt right. And I couldn’t find a word that accurately communicated my sexual orientation.
Since I came out, my queerness has taken a more prominent role in my life. It’s one of the many qualifiers I use to describe who I am. It’s something I contemplate. I volunteered for a queer advocacy and education nonprofit in Lethbridge for 5 years.
As such, I’ve given it a lot of thought.
I’ve realized that the reason bisexual and pansexual don’t really feel as though they fit for me is that they generally describe being attracted to more than one gender (although that has changed somewhat recently for pansexual). While that sort of applies to me, it doesn’t really capture my sexuality accurately. I’m not strictly attracted to particular genders. In fact, gender isn’t a factor at all for me when it comes to attraction. A person’s gender is irrelevant.
And to my knowledge, there didn’t seem to be a word that described that. So, I ended up just settling on the word queer.
It’s a former slur that’s under reclamation. Mostly, it’s used as an umbrella term and a synonym of the 2SLGBTQIA+ acronym (and its numerous variants). But some people in the community use it as a label for complexities in gender and sexuality.
Honestly, it just feels right. It gives me flexibility and allows for nuance as my sexuality matures and evolves. Given that I abandoned communist and anarchist for radical left for similar reasons, maybe there’s just something about having terms with some breathing room.
Growing up Mormon
I wasn’t born Mormon. I actually was born into a long line of Catholics on both sides of my family and was baptized Catholic as a baby. But when I was in elementary school in Regina, my mum and stepdad converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I was raised in the religion.
I wouldn’t really say that the church played a huge role in my life growing up. I mean, we went to church pretty much every week, but we didn’t have daily scripture study and prayer, as the typical Mormon family does. We also didn’t do the weekly family home evening that is also typical.
I was baptized when I was eight and was ordained as a deacon when I was 12, which were also pretty typical. Oh, and when I was 9, my parents took me and my 4 siblings on a road trip to Salt Lake City, where we got sealed as a family in the Salt Lake City Temple. I remember being in awe at being inside, filled with a sense of reverence, which was a lot for a squirmy little boy. Everything seemed so quiet and peaceful both in the hall while we were waiting and in the sealing room kneeling across the altar from one another. I didn’t fully grasp what the ceremony meant, but I understood what “Families are forever” meant, which was a popular phrase in the church in the 1980s, and the feeling of reverence and awe I felt during the experience attached itself in my memory to the concept of family sealings. That’s not an experience most Mormons get to have who grow up in the church. This may have been the first experience I had with the mystical and esoteric.
But that was pretty much the extent of it. Although, I do remember doing one or two weekend trips to Cardston from Regina to do baptisms for the dead, and I remember feeling that same sense of awe and reverence. I remember my leaders explaining some of the symbolism of the architecture in the Cardston baptistry and thinking that it was pretty cool to see hidden means, like it was a secret code they just me a decoder for.
I have very few memories of Mormonism in my life outside of what I’ve already outlined, and by the time I was in my late teens, my attitude toward religion was pretty similar to my attitude toward politics: I was pretty apathetic to both. I had planned to stop attending once I finished high school and moved out on my own.
But then I met a girl.
I hung out with a group of other Mormons at my high school in Abbotsford, and they had convinced me to attend a church dance, where I met a girl from White Rock. We hit it off right away, and we started dating after I graduated and my parents moved to Surrey, which isn’t even a half hour drive from White Rock.
It turns out that she had converted to Mormonism less than a year earlier, and as someone who had converted in her late teens, she took the religion more seriously than I did, as someone who grew up with it and took it for granted. Her zeal for our shared religion rubbed off on me, and it wasn’t long before I had become committed to Mormonism as a religion. In fact, I believe she was directly responsible for my serving a mission.
About a year before I left on my mission, I requested that the bishop call me as a Primary teacher. He was more than willing, and I was assigned to teach the children turning eight. It was a good experience; it solidified basic gospel ideas in my mind, supplemented my own scripture study, and gave me many opportunities to attend baptisms.
Being a missionary
I took out my temple endowment in the Salt Lake Temple, just the day before I entered the Missionary Training Centre in Provo. This temple was special to me. Even though I could’ve been endowed in the Seattle Washington Temple, we chose this one because it’s where my siblings and I were sealed to my parents. My dad couldn’t be there, so he couldn’t escort me through the ceremony. Instead, I got special permission to have two escorts: the two missionaries who taught and baptized my parents. They lived in the Wasatch Front area. The initiatory and endowment ceremonies itself were interesting experiences. I don’t remember feeling that same sense of awe and reverence that I did when I was sealed to my parents or did proxy baptisms. I found it overwhelming, uncomfortable, and unusual. In fact, I wrote in my journal that night that the Lord likes keeping me on my toes. It was foreshadowing in a way.
The three weeks I spent at the Missionary Training Centre was like a whirlwind. It went by so fast and I learned so much, yet I felt so inadequate when I got into the field. I did get to attend the Provo Utah Temple, which was across the street from the MTC. Our mission president also allowed us to attend the temple quarterly, so I attended it another seven or eight times while I was out. Attending as often as I did helped mitigate some of the apprehension I had when I attended the first time.
I was with my first companion for two weeks before he was transferred to be a zone leader somewhere. My next companion was an amateur scholar. He had a subscription to Sunstone and told me stories about him correcting his seminary teacher in class. Going to discussions was a treat with him. I learned many things from him that I had never heard before. Things like Jesus speaking as if He were God. This companion whetted my appetite for the unknown; he set me on the road for a new stage of gospel understanding, especially considering I came into the mission pretty spiritually illiterate. I remembered hardly anything from church classes or seminary. Most of what I came into the mission I learned while teaching Primary during the year leading up to iot. Throughout my mission, I speculated with other missionaries on concepts and principles, using scriptures and publications to support my ideas. It was a good experience and I learned a lot. I never served in leadership positions on my mission, but I felt it was still a successful accomplishment. It was a faith-strengthening experience and helped me develop patience.
My mission also had practical benefits in my life. For the longest time, I was a socially awkward kid. It didn’t help that my parents—for various reasons—moved us to a new neighbourhood, and thus a new school, every two years. I had few friends, and I was regularly made fun of for my looks, my clothes, and my name. Having orthodontic braces, glasses, and a back brace at various (and sometimes concurrent times) didn’t improve things for sure. I was always an outsider, never a popular kid. The fact I had ADHD and possibly autism all that time, leading me to say stupid things impulsively probably made things worse (like that time I celebrated the death of Lucille Ball, for no apparent reason, while the mother of a friend was driving us to school—or the time I said that all people who smoke should get cancer, while the father of a different friend, whose dad died of cancer, was driving us home from a play rehearsal). Honestly, I often struggled socially. Even the relationships I had were with people who showed interest in me and I just latched onto them like a lamprey. Serving in the Utah Provo Mission helped modulate a lot of that social awkwardness. Living with someone 24 hours a day, who would correct me on impulsive comments I made that were unkind or inappropriate taught me to recognize inappropriate things before I ended up saying them.
A mission also helped me with my social skills. The Mormon church had a process at the time called The Commitment Pattern, which missionaries used to get to know people, teach them, and help them overcome concerns they had with Mormon doctrines. The Commitment Pattern taught such skills as building relationships of trust, becoming acquainted with others, building on common beliefs, show empathy, share experiences, present your message clearly, listening, asking questions, maintaining eye contact, and so on. These are all skills I have been able to draw on throughout my life since, which has been super handy as an autistic person interacting with a neurotypical world.
With such high concentrations of Mormons in Utah, it was tough to proselytize door-to-door, which I didn’t mind at all. I tried to do it with missionaries in Vancouver for a weekend about a year before my own mission, and I sucked at it. Most of the people we taught on my mission were introduced to us by friends of theirs who were members, which made the transition super easy for me. Plus, the MTC taught me how to build relationships of trust with people by becoming acquainted with them, building on common beliefs, showing empathy, listening, asking quotations, following up, and making eye contact, all abilities I had lacked up to that point. After some time, I became pretty adept at them, they mitigated the social anxiety I experienced when interacting with strangers, and I still use these skills today.
Another thing about serving a mission in Utah is that you get assigned to multiple wards instead of just one ward. In fact, other than just a month or two, I covered at least one entire stake, and in one area, my companions and I were covering 6 stakes at once. Covering that many wards meant we received a lot of invitations to speak in sacrament meetings. As a result, I gained a lot of public speaking experience. While it didn’t stop my knees from knocking and my hands from shaking when I spoke, it encouraged me to work through my fear. It also helped me improve my public speaking, both in preparation and in presentation.
Related to that, we taught a lot of discussions on my mission, and I meant a lot. I saw over 50 people get baptized, so that’s at least 300 lessons right there. That’s a discussion every other two or three days. But we also gave who-knows-how-many first discussions that went nowhere and second discussions that never resulted in baptismal commitments. A side effect of all that teaching experience was that I was being able to hone my ability to explain gospel principles, as well as answer questions using the scriptures.
Getting married
By the time I finished my two-year mission in Utah (of all places) between November 1992 and November 1994, my girlfriend and I had broken up, but I had become even more attached to the religion. Things were great following my mission as far as the church was concerned. I was able to go to the temple regularly (including being able to perform ordinance on behalf of my maternal grandfather), I was married within six months, and I was called to the elders quorum presidency within the year. Mary and I were able to attend the temple with friends before we started dating, and at least once before we were married. In fact, one of the temple officiators assumed we were married and asked us to be the witness couple, where we’d stand in for the characters of Adam and Eve during the part of the ceremony where the attendees make their covenants. Getting sealed as a couple in May 1995 brought back all those memories from 12 years early. There were a lot more people in attendance though, with family and friends, both our friends and friends of our parents. This time, I was old enough to grasp the symbolism of the parallel mirrored walls, reflecting copies of us into infinity as we held each other’s hands and pledged devotion and fidelity.
Within a year, we faced our first major trial. We had tried for months to get pregnant, both of us having dreams of raising a large family. After testing and trial, we finally were expecting in early 1996. However, in just a few weeks, Mary miscarried, and we were devastated. Mary had such a hard time with it, and I struggled as a 22-year-old to know how to comfort her and fx something I couldn’t. And that struggle—for both of us—continued for the next two years, before Mary could get pregnant again. It didn’t shake my faith, but I felt heartbroken and as though all my dreams of the future had been dashed.
Serving in the elders quorum presidency (two years as president) was an amazing spiritual experience. Many of the brethren came to me — despite my being the youngest in the quorum — for advice and blessings. I grew spiritually in that time.
About two years after my mission, I was introduced to the Internet and subsequently the LDS world of cyberspace. I found mailing lists like Scripture-L, JOSEPH, LDS-Phil, Eyring-L and others. A whole new world opened up to me, and I found many paradigms shifting.
Three years after we married, in June 1998, Mary and I decided to move to Southern Alberta. We were expecting our first child, and given that we wanted to have a strong Mormon family, we thought moving to Canada’s highest concentration of Mormons would give us the best chance of doing that.
Originally, we had planned to move to Cardston, but I was going to be attending the University of Lethbridge, and there was no bus service between the two communities and we had no car. So, we ended up in Lethbridge instead.
Lethbridge is only about 10% Mormon, which is pretty much opposite of Cardston. But it seems more Mormon than it actually is, even though it was never founded by Mormons and there are more atheists living there than there are Mormons. It might be because we’re surrounded by towns that were founded by Mormons and we came from a city where the Mormon population is less than 1%.
Ironically, however, in just a few months, I experienced my first faith crisis, which is when a religious person experiences intense feelings of spiritual doubt or loss.
My first faith crisis
When Mary and I moved to Lethbridge, I was going to the University of Lethbridge. We were in our 20s, and we didn’t plan much for the move. We were living in on-campus housing, so we didn’t have to worry about having a place to live. But neither of us had a job, we didn’t have a vehicle, and Mary was two months pregnant.
It wasn’t too bad at first. I still had a paycheque from my job in Vancouver, and we knew student loans would be coming in. I got a job as a gas jockey at a gas station within just a few days of arriving in Lethbridge. I’d worked a few times as a gas jockey or a cashier four other times, both before and after my mission, so I knew it was something I could do. But after I got my first paycheque and saw that it was barely over $100, I knew I wouldn’t be able to support Mary and me on that, let alone a growing family. I managed to get a job with a carpet cleaning company a few days later, which paid much more.
But then school came. I had to drop down to part-time hours at work, and then I discovered that we got far less for student loans than we had anticipated. It turns out that because we hadn’t lived in Alberta for very long, the Alberta government didn’t consider us Alberta residents, so they denied us provincial student loans. The British Columbia government also rejected our application for student loans because we weren’t attending a specialized programme in Alberta—I was pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree with a French major, and that was available in multiple institutions throughout BC. As a result, we ended up with only around $5000 in federal loans, and that had to last for the entire school year, not just one semester. That’s barely $400 a month, and we were paying $550 a month in rent alone.
Once the U of L paid for my tuition and my rent for the autumn semester, I was left with much less than $5000, and I had no idea how we were going to survive financially. My part-time job was less than $1000 a month. Even with that, it still wouldn’t be enough to survive on. So I dropped out of school.
In order to survive the summer, we delayed paying some of our bills. We had several debts we owed from previous financing purchases, and we were behind several payments for all of them. Some of them had even gone to collections. In fact, one of the creditors had even taken us to small claims court to get money from us that we didn’t have.
It was a tough time for us. I wasn’t in school anymore and I was working full-time, but the pay wasn’t great, and we were getting a lot of pressure from these creditors to pay our outstanding bills. I remember one time, searching the couch cushions and drawers and other nooks and crannies for loose change so we’d have enough money to buy a single bag of fruit, just so Mary could have something to eat other than rice and margarine. She was about 6 months pregnant by this point. I also remember, shortly after our baby was born standing in a story aisle trying to decide whether to spend our last $20 on groceries or diapers.
We got so desperate for food. I made an appointment with the bishop of our ward to request a food order. He was very generous and made it a very easy process. We were able to get quite a bit of food, and it lasted for a while. That made a huge difference. When that food got low, I went to him a second time to request a food order, and my experience was much different. He asked me if I had done everything I could to get money. If I had borrowed money from my parents or Mary’s parents. Neither of us came from well-off families. I left that meeting feeling guilty and ashamed, and I vowed I would never request a food order from a bishop ever again.
I ended up doing the only thing left I could think of at this point: pray. I was praying frequently and fervently for the Lord’s intervention. I prayed several times every day and fasted every Sunday. Some weeks I fasted Sunday and Monday. I was extremely desperate for the Lord to intervene in this situation because nothing I tried was making a difference. And every week that went by felt more and more urgent, and we felt more and more desperate.
After several weeks, if not months, of not seeing any change in the situation, I began questioning why I was not receiving an answer to my prayers. I took inventory of my life thinking that perhaps I was living unworthily and that my sins were holding back the mercy of God. I couldn’t find anything in my life that would’ve been significant for the Lord to withhold blessings. As I kept searching for answers, a question came to my mind that I honestly never thought ever would. I started to wonder if perhaps the reason I wasn’t receiving an answer from God was because God did not exist.
My entire life was filled with teachings that told me if I ever needed anything from God, I simply had to ask. Here I was, having asked every day for several weeks, even unusually fasting frequently, and those promised answers had not come.
It was ironic in a way. I had been exposed to all sorts of odd practices, teachings and historical happenings in the early church and none of them had ever prompted me to question the Church. In fact, even at this point, it was not the church I was questioning.
As my questioning of God’s existence continued, I started questioning the futility of attending church, or reading scriptures, or even praying.
One of the hardest things I ever had to do was tell Mary of what was going on in my mind. She was supportive and never critical. She encouraged me to keep going. At one point, during what at the time may have been the lowest I had ever felt spiritually, I had an epiphany, which left me with a feeling of assurance and comfort.
At the time, we were attending an Institute class. We had a good instructor, and we were discussing church history. Actually, we were specifically studying Liberty Jail. In the course of the class, we discussed D&C 121:1–2.
O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place? How long shall thy hand be stayed, and thine eye, yea thy pure eye, behold from the eternal heavens the wrongs of thy people and of thy servants, and thine ear be penetrated with their cries?
My ears perked up. Joseph Smith—the first prophet of the restoration, one who had seen God, one who had been ministered by angels—was asking the same question I had: where was God?
Immediately to my mind came Matt 27:46:
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Even Jesus, the saviour of the world, was asking the same question that had entered my mind several times. The progenitor of our faith and the source of our faith both put forth the same question to God that I had. Both felt alone. And both came through triumphant.
At that point, the Spirit entered into me with such a force that I knew I had never felt such a thing in my entire life. My heart was touched, and enlightenment came to my mind. I knew that if Joseph Smith, who underwent many trials and tribulations, and Jesus, who descended below all men, could feel alone and abandoned then I was in good company. And if they could come out triumphant, then so could I.
The situation didn’t improve for a long time, but I managed to find resources to help me manage through it. It was a very hard time and a very difficult experience. Sometimes it seemed as if I barely made it through.
It was a turning point in my life. My faith was restored and actually strengthened to the point where it was likely stronger than at any other point in my life.
The feeling also started me on a new journey in Mormonism. I became less performative, less transactional, less concerned with the roteness. My spiritual practice began to slowly re-centre itself less around obedience to cultural expectations and commandments and more around trying to follow the oft-heard cliché: what would Jesus do. It was a very hard and depressing experience I went through. However, I was very grateful for it. The experience had really solidified my faith and I had become stronger as a result. Because of this, odd events and doctrines that would normally offend or shake someone’s faith no longer phased me. I was now able to question things freely.
This experience was the start of my political and spiritual life becoming intertwined. As I started to become more familiar with Jesus’s teachings, my politics started to shift leftward. It was all gradual and imperceptible at first, but in retrospect, I can see the transition now. And by the time the friend I mentioned earlier had killed himself and those 3 other people, I had already become more progressive in both my political leanings and my approach to religion.
Mormonism had become less a checklist on how to live my life and more a guideline on how I should relate to others and the physical world.
Intertwining
I consider myself a spiritual person, someone who sees value in the mystical and supernatural. But I am also concerned with the material conditions of those around me. And I find that Mormonism—at least at a foundational, canonical level—allows me to do both. For me, it provides answers to supernatural questions but also provides guidance on how to treat others at a material level. Mormon scripture chastises us for judging the panhandler (Mosiah 4:16–18) and encourages us to aim for a classless society, free from poverty and racism (Mosiah 18:27–29; 4 Nephi). It counsels us to use the earth‘s resources but to not exploit them (D&C 59:18–20), to use them to raise up the poor and bring down the rich (D&C 104:14–18). It criticizes the accumulation and hoarding of wealth (2 Nephi 9:30). It admonishes us to hate less and love more (3 Ne 12:43–44).
But in conflict with these tenets that align with my leftist politics is this underlying and pervasive conservative culture. Somewhere over the last 200 years, Mormonism went from being an anticapitalist religion enshrouded in mysticism and esotericism to what seems like a global corporation upholding capitalism and concerned with its public image. A lot of that is rooted in a decades-long struggle of trying to seem American enough in a country that wanted to drive them out and even eradicate them.
As I’ve learned the antiestablishment teachings of Jesus and the inherent message within Mormon teachings that can empower the marginalized, I’ve felt a sense of loss to see these things absent in the popular teachings of the Mormon church today and how typical Mormons approach politics. This sense of loss has been amplified each time a progressive Mormon I know announced that they were stepping away from the church. As progressive Mormons leave, the concentration of conservative Mormons increases, perpetuating this stereotypical conservative image so many people have of the church.
With that sense of loss also comes a sense of loneliness and seclusion, and as my politics became more radical and public, that loneliness and seclusion increased as we received fewer and fewer invitations to socialize with other fellow Mormons. Here are four specific examples.
First, someone we know told us, long after she left our ward, that when had just moved in, her visiting teachers had told her to make sure she avoided our family. Second, another former member of our ward told us about a time when they were still in the ward and had been invited to an activity for young married couples. At the activity, at least two of the couples there were gossiping about us, saying we were living off welfare, we had a crappy house, and other disparaging things.
Third, several years ago, Mary and I had come to meet with our bishop at the time to renew our temple recommends, which grant us access to ceremonies in the temples. During my interview, when the bishop asked if I support the top leaders of the church as prophets, seers, and revelators, I said yes. Every other time I’ve answered this question during my time in the church, the bishop goes on to the next question. This time, however, the bishop questioned my honesty in answering the question. I had recently written a blog post about how the sacrament ordinance isn’t a renewal of baptismal covenants. Someone in the blog’s comments disagreed with me, and I responded, “I fully realize it has been taught from the pulpit. I quoted from a church publication after all. It’s still wrong. Or at the very least, unsupported by scripture.” At least two people in the ward reported both the post and that specific comment to the bishop, and he then interpreted that to mean that I was saying not that the teaching was wrong, but the church leaders were wrong, and as a result, I couldn’t possibly be sustaining them as prophets, seers, and revelators. As a result, he postponed renewing my recommend until the following week. I didn’t have the blog or my comment handy at the time, so I was ill-prepared to respond, but I took that week to review what I said in both and was prepared when we met again. Ultimately, he chose to renew it, but it was a discouraging experience knowing that there were ward members who were reporting me to the bishop and that my bishop was on the verge of disciplining me based on a misinterpretation.
Finally, once when I was waiting at the end of church for my family, the stake president at the time asked to speak to me. Back then, I was in the practice of addressing both Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother in my prayers, and when I was asked to say a prayer in a recent elders quorum meeting that he was attending, I started the prayer with “Our dear and eternal heavenly parents”. This was why he was calling me into his office. He chided me for the practice, saying we don’t pray to Heavenly Mother, and tried to use scriptures with weak textual support for the prohibition to justify his position. He then gave me an ultimatum: always turn down prayer invitations, explain the situation when asked to pray, and just go back to praying to Heavenly Father only. Then we finished the meeting. I contemplated this for a few hours, then emailed him with further comments I had on the scriptures we had discussed, as well as further scriptures and commentary on the matter, and I told him that I actually had a fourth option.
At first, the first option seemed to be the only feasible option as a way to not give up my principles and morals while also appeasing the demands of my church leaders. After further reflection, I realized that a fourth option existed: to continue as I have been. Naturally, I’m sure you’ll find that option unacceptable; likewise, I find the others unacceptable. That being said, despite how distasteful it seems to you and others, it is indeed an option for me to choose.
Which brings me to my final point. I have reached a period in my spirituality where I am comfortable speaking to our Heavenly Mother. It is a way for me to communicate with her despite her voice being silenced within the scriptures and within the church culturally. I feel her communicating with me, and I cannot in good conscience continue in the practice of institutionally silencing her. I consider our heavenly parents as the ultimate authorities in the universe, above Jesus, above dead prophets, and even above temporal institutions such as the church.
As such, I respectfully decline the three choices you offered me, and will exercise my fourth choice by continuing my practice of addressing both of our heavenly parents equitably. Granted, I am rarely asked to pray, so functionally this changes very little. I fully understand if you instruct stake and ward leaders to not invite me to pray. If they do, however, I will pray to both parents.
He subsequently responded:
Your agency enables you to choose for yourself. It enables you to influence your community. I also have a responsibility to the community, and specifically our stake members. In the circumstances unless I receive direction from the First presidency otherwise I will require all public prayers in our stake to be made to our Father in Heaven, or a scripturally recognized iteration of our Father in Heaven.
I felt like I was given an ultimatum, that if I didn’t follow his requirement, there would be a consequence of some sort. Once again, it seemed that I was being punished—or that I could be punished—for my unorthodox stance and behaviour. These experiences built upon each other and upon all the many ways we have felt increasingly excluded in our ward.
This all came to a head toward the end of 2015.
My second faith crisis
Content warning: This section discusses suicidal thoughts
On Hallowe’en in 2015, I decided to attend the temple. This also happened to be the 23rd anniversary of my leaving for the MTC. I don’t recall if I was going for a specific reason, but I went by myself. It was an interesting experience. I did an endowment session, but the entire time, including when I was done, I felt like I was saying goodbye, as though this might be the last time I attended the temple. I didn’t realize it at the moment, but it might have been foreshadowing.
Just 5 days later, on 5 November 2015, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced what has become known as “The Exclusionary Policy”. The First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles approved changes to the church’s leadership manual that were quietly announced to lower level leaders. These changes included that children of a parent who was married to or cohabitating with someone of the same sex would no longer be allowed to receive baby blessings, be baptized, receive priesthood ordinances, or be recommended for missionary service until they were adults. Even then, those children would have to no longer be living with that parent and would need a special interview with a priesthood leader (such as a bishop or stake president) where they would need to commit to living church commandments and disavow their parent’s marriage. In addition, people in such a relationship would be considered apostate and would be required to undergo a church disciplinary meeting, even though it was only optional for people who had committed sexual abuse or attempted murder.
The policy changes left me with several questions. Why did this policy prevent children of same-sex marriages from being blessed/baptized but not children of parents in same-sex relationships that are non-cohabiting? Why did this policy prevent children of same-sex marriages from being blessed/baptized but not children of different-sex parents who are cohabiting but not married? Why did this policy prevent children of single, divorced parents who has joint custody with a parent in a same-sex marriage from being baptized/blessed? Why was church discipline mandatory for someone in a same-sex marriage but only a possibility for someone who has raped, tried to kill someone, or committed adultery? Why was church discipline mandatory for someone in a same-sex marriage but only a possibility for someone who is having homosexual sex, to use the phrasing from the policy? Why did the the child of gay parents who are entirely supportive of their child growing up in the church need First Presidency approval prior to getting baptized but the child of vehemently anti-Mormon parents didn’t? Why was it okay to be a child of heterosexual parents and support marriage equality but not okay to be a child of homosexual parents and support marriage equality?
This new policy just made no sense. I just couldn’t see the logic in all these inconsistencies. Never mind the fact that this had been a trigger for my mental health (which had been fragile over the last several months), and had resulted in non-stop anxiety, leading to depression the next day. Never mind the fact that this new policy meant that I, potentially, (if our oldest child, who was queer at the time, married someone of the same sex and decided to return to church, which seemed entirely unlikely at that moment) would be unable to bless or baptize my grandchildren. Never mind the fact that this was on the heels of our son, who was a teenager at the time, being hammered in eight church classes the previous week regarding gay marriage. Never mind that I felt lost, confused, sad, angry, depressed, anxious, protective, hopeless, uncomfortable, out-of-place, and doubtful. Never mind the fact that this flew in the face of so many scriptures.
It was ridiculous that the church, with this new policy change, now said that anyone in a same-sex marriage is apostate. It made no sense to me. Gay Mormons can be supportive of the church in every other way (paying tithing, keeping the commandments, serving in a calling, home teaching, living the Word of Wisdom, and so forth), yet if they marry someone of the same sex, somehow that’s considered a turning away. If you’re going to list marriage as a sign of apostasy, why not list living common law as a sign of apostasy? In addition, it was hypocritical to mandate church discipline for marriage when there are far worse things (rape and child abuse, for example) for which church discipline is optional.
Finally, limiting the children of gay parents from fully participating in the church’s sacraments was wholly unfair. The church was not actually concerned with protecting children; it used that as an excuse to punish its gay members who are parents. If the welfare of children was truly important, then things that actually damage children would be addressed. For example, making church discipline mandatory for those who abuse children or labelling child abuse as a sign of apostasy would be a start. By not taking action on things that actually harm children, the church showed us that its stance on protecting children was empty and meaningless.
The so-called clarification letter issued by the church in response to the immediate backlash (where it applied only to children who lived in a home with a same-sex couple and those who’ve already had received ordinances) certainly improved the lives of some children. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that this policy still targeted a group of children in the church: those of gay parents. And the policy clarification changed nothing for our situation. Our child at the time, should they have chosen to marry a woman and have children raised in the church, would still have been a target of the policy. I still never would have been able to bless or baptize those grandchildren.
And that hurt. My church hurt me.
That hit me hard. I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I wasn’t out yet; in fact, I wouldn’t even realize I was queer for another 4 years or so. But it still affected me so deeply, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. The night after the changes were made public through social media and the mainstream media, I was seeing so many Mormon friends comment about it on social media. It amplified the hurt I was feeling. In fact, in a social media post that night, I commented, “Reading all the posts is giving me the shakes.” I was already dealing with anxiety earlier that year, and this experience increased that anxiety. With that increased anxiety came depression.
Part of it was that at the time, it seemed that the church was becoming more supportive of its queer members and moving away from its violently homophobic past. Part of it was that our oldest came out as queer just a few months before, and I was angry at what this might mean for my potential grandchildren. Looking back now, I also wonder if I subconsciously felt that it was targeting my own yet-to-be-revealed queerness.
Either way, it triggered a second faith crisis. This one was much more serious though, as at one point I had even considered taking my own life. The next day I had travelled to the temple again to see if it would provide me with peace and guidance, but I found neither. I felt no better leaving the temple than I did going in. In fact, my endowment session felt like a two-hour stupor of thought. I was so overcome with disappointment, anger, hurt, anxiety, and depression. On top of that, I felt so conflicted. I wasn’t sure whether I should stay in the church or leave. I felt so confused and lost, and I didn’t see an end in sight. Things were pretty bad emotionally for me. I drove away from the temple as lost and depressed as ever—a far cry from the guidance and inspiration I had received the week before. In fact, it was so bad that on the 45-minute drive on the way home from the temple, that multiple times I contemplated crossing into oncoming traffic to ease the pain. Ultimately, I chose to not listen to that voice.
Over the first few days, my Facebook feed was like a firehose regarding reactions to the changes. I tried to read so many thoughts, articles, and blog posts in an effort to help me figure things out. But that didn’t work that well. Instead of direction and guidance, I received anxiety and depression. There were times when I tried to respond to claims or viewpoints that I found myself shaking and had to stop.
A lot of emotions ran through my heart and mind. I’d been upset, confused, hopeless, lost, abandoned, hurt, sad, lonely, disgusted, sick, and so many more. As a parent of a queer child, I struggled to know what to do. Our child left the church earlier that year, but the changes still hit me hard, and I seriously considered throwing in the towel. Before that weekend, I never fully understood what people go through when they wrestle with the decision to leave the church. Something I’d learned by this point is that it’s a complex decision with no easy answer.
In fact, just two years prior, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf addressed this very topic in general conference:
Sometimes we assume it is because they have been offended or lazy or sinful. Actually, it is not that simple. In fact, there is not just one reason that applies to the variety of situations. Some of our dear members struggle for years with the question whether they should separate themselves from the Church.
I can say with frankness that the last paragraph described me at that moment in November 2015. As the church had grown more evangelical and my understanding of the actual Gospel had become more Christ-centred, this growing divide had become problematic for me. But there are aspects of Mormonism I loved and that I could find in few other places: an anthropomorphic God, a feminine divine, the masonic temple rites, seer stones, visiting angels, continuing revelation, and the list goes on. Scriptures like D&C 18:10, D&C 93, Mosiah 4, and 4 Nephi 1 resonate with me.
So I continued on, focusing on what is right. But this policy change and how it could affect my future grandchildren felt like the proverbial last straw that broke the camel’s back. And I found myself once again contemplating leaving. This time, however, it felt so intense. I find parallels even to my first faith crisis story. But even days after the policy change, I hadn’t found it any easier to decide what I was going to do. There were so many factors at play in my head.
The church is like a cherry pie: it tastes so good, but it has pits. Here are some of the things that make it taste so good to me. The symbolism in the church found in baptism, the endowment, the Sacrament, and various other places. The temple. God being a resurrected, glorified man who is our father. Having a mother in heaven. The example and teachings of Jesus (arguably this could easily be found elsewhere). The unique teachings in Mormon scripture, specifically how we should treat others. The brotherhood of a quorum. Continuing revelation. A personal relationship with God.
I’m not going to list out all the pits, but I will say there are many, and some of them are big. Despite the common rhetoric found among its members, the Mormon church is not perfect. So I found myself in the middle of various forces pulling me in these two directions: all the positive trying to keep me in and all the negative trying to push me out.
But there were some other things that were making it difficult to make a decision. I worried about not being able to baptize my three younger children. I worried about not being able to be an escort when my two boys go through the temple. I worried about Mary and the children following me. I worried about leaving Mary to take the role of a single mother at church on Sundays. I worried about never being able to go to the temple again, the one thing remaining that ties us to the esoteric church of 200 years ago. I worried about not completing temple ordinances for my ancestors, something I’d been working on for 25 years. I worried about others having to come to my home to give Mary and our children priesthood blessings. I worried about being the last person in my family to go on a mission despite being the first. I worried about what it would mean to my parents, who were my pioneers. I worried about what it would mean to those I taught and baptized on my mission. I worried about not being able to give my boys the Melchizedek Priesthood, something my dad was never able to do for me. Related to that, I worried about not being able to be ordained a high priest by my dad, the last chance I have to get my priesthood lineage from him. I worried about satisfying those who already expected me to leave.
You see, what I was struggling with wasn’t trying to reconcile my beliefs with the new policy to rationalize it. I knew it was wrong. Period. No, I was struggling with so much more and with something far more complex. And I didn’t know at the time how long it would take before I had my answer, nor what would happen when something like this happens again. What I did know is that it’s not an easy decision for those who decide to leave the church, and we should be careful about judging them when they do.
I struggled for the next week and a half with the question on whether to stay or remain within the church I grew up in. Many progressive Mormons I knew said this was the last straw and they immediately resigned. I wanted to leave. I really did. I almost did. But every time I decided that it was time to go, something kept pulling me back. And it went back and forth this way for a week or so. I’d been reading dozens of blog posts, listening to dozens of podcasts, watching dozens of videos, responding to dozens of private messages, and reviewing hundreds of Facebook comments, and ruminating on it all.
Ultimately, I chose to stay. During that period, Mary said something that reminded me of this. She determined that she’s staying because she won’t let some men decide whether she stays or goes. I stayed because I was exercising my autonomy. I wasn’t staying because I was told to, because I was told I was needed, or because I was told that I couldn’t be Mormon while not attending. I was staying because I chose to.
After much soul searching, I realized that Mormonism is part of my soul now. At least the foundations of it are. My journey into progressive Mormonism was intertwined with my journey into progressive politics, and now that I knew what true Mormonism had at its roots, I knew it had space for me. Even if I had decided to stop attending or even had withdrawn my membership altogether, I’d still have been Mormon. Despite not being born in the church, I consider myself Mormon culturally, not just spiritually. The Mormon sacraments are an important part of my life. The ability I have to participate in them, as not just a recipient but a bestower, allows me to participate in the sacraments of my children, not as a bystander, but as a conduit. Something my Catholic ancestors couldn’t do.
I also knew that my children who still participated in the church would be reaching cultural milestones within Mormonism, and I wanted to be a part of that. When I was 18, my dad was no longer participating in the church. As a result, he couldn’t participate when I was ordained an elder, he couldn’t participate when I was sent on my mission, and he couldn’t participate the first time I went through the temple. I didn’t want my children to have to go through the same thing. Having your dad be a part of these milestones is an important part of a Mormon’s cultural journey.
While I was going through my second faith crisis, I had a lot of fellow Mormons who reached out to me. It became apparent to me during that period that there exists in the church many people who understand and fulfill their baptismal covenants to mourn with and comfort those who grieve, free of judgement and bias. I wanted to be one with them. While it’s a challenge to be unified in building a true egalitarian body in a church that’s so pharisaical, knowing that there are loving, compassionate people in the church makes me want to be part of it. Certainly, I can do that outside of the church, but I believe opportunities exist within the church for me. And the church certainly needs more members on the radical left.
Another reason I chose to stay was because the esoteric aspects of Mormonism appeal to my heart. Deeply. And while I lament that much of the esotericity that was common in the early church of nearly 200 years ago has disappeared or been minimized, I recognize that the temple still contains it. While some might find it odd, I find it satisfying, and it serves as my connection to a time when angels visited the earth, people saw visions with stones, and spiritual fire engulfed entire buildings. By staying, I still have access to the temple. It’s an odd circumstance. The Mormon church is one of the few Christian churches that puts restrictions on who can enter religious facilities, which forces me to follow their rules if I want to use those facilities. I stay, completely aware of this.
One more thing I realized was that if I left, my voice would diminish. If I stayed, my voice would remain. Although I hadn’t been in a leadership position for nearly 7 years when this policy came out, I still had opportunities to speak my mind. I’d been a teacher for over 4 years at that point, which allowed me to control the rhetoric. Even though I often feel alone, I still have hope that I can change dialogue, and new dialogue leads to new values, priorities, and paradigms. If I leave, all I have left for a voice is online, and the only ones who’ll listen are those who already agree.
If I had left, for example, I wouldn’t have been able to give my sermon in October 2022, when I tore apart the concept of the prosperity gospel, which is basically the teaching that financial blessing and physical well-being are always the will of God, and that as we have more faith, speak more positively, and donate more to religious causes, our material wealth will increase. In other words, the more righteous you are, the more you’ll be materially lessed. Or the sermon I gave in 2019, when I preached about how our religion obligates us to help those who cannot help themselves, who society has abandoned and exiled.
Like I said, when the policy came out, it felt like my church sucker had punched me in the gut. By the time I had chose to stay, those bruises were not gone. I didn’t feel less angry. My decision to stay was not an admission that the policy was right. No, I categorically rejected the policy. It was entirely wrong. I was staying despite the policy.
But, I was staying in the church with some conditions. I vowed that I would not be silent. I’d been a supporter of LGBT rights in the church for at least 12 years, when this policy change came out, but it had mostly been silent support. That summer, when our oldest child had publicly came out, I used it as an opportunity to publicly declare my support for marriage equality, that people should have the right to be in a monogamous, loving relationship raising children in a stable, nurturing home regardless of the sex of their spouse.
I determined that if I were staying, I’d be a much more vocal advocate for queer Mormons. I vowed to remain a strong supporter of queer rights in the church. Queer Mormons need safe places to practise their religion. Queer youth need support and encouragement, not rejection and being told by their leaders and parents that they disgust them and that there’s no place for them in heaven. It’s bad enough that our society rejects queer people. Followers of Jesus shouldn’t reject them, too.
I spoke up in meetings and classes whenever homophobic comments or teachings came up. I also got the church to designate a washroom in our building as an all-gender washroom.
Finding love in Pride
In fact, the following June, I marched in my first Pride Parade. I still wasn’t out and had no idea I was queer, so I approached it as an ally. I organized a bunch of fellow progressive Mormons and we submitted an entry under the “Mormons Building Bridges” banner. The Lethbridge Pride Fest committee approved our request, and before I knew it, there I was in my mohawk, my kilt, and my shirt and tie marching with my friends, spouse, children, and mother-in-law as “allies” sandwiched between groups of queer people of all sorts of shapes and sizes and outfits.
My reasons for marching were varied. Our child had publicly come out the previous summer. The church had released their divisive and damaging policy update just months before. I thought it might be an act of solidarity to show the local queer community that some Mormons wanted to be supportive. I also considered that marching openly as a Mormon was an act of protest, co-opting “Mormon” from the church and redefining what it meant to be Mormon.
At the time, from the perspective of an ally, I felt so overwhelmed by the experience afterward. I had a difficult time processing my emotions that day. What I realized, however, was that above all else, I felt love.
Love from the Lethbridge Pride Fest organizers for letting us be guests in the Pride Parade. Love from everyone who supported and encouraged me as I organized the first Mormons Building Bridges event outside of the United States. Love from all the Mormons who marched with me that day. Love from the Mormons who didn’t march but who came out to watch the parade and attend the Pride Fest. Love from the paradegoers for their cheering when we walked by. Love from all those who were happy to see Mormons marching in the parade with messages of love. Love from the queer community for being welcoming and inclusive, even if they didn’t agree with our lifestyle. Love from the gay couple who marched with us because one of them still considered himself Mormon. Love from the woman who high fived us and enthusiastically exclaimed that it was about time. Love from everyone who hugged us. Love from everyone who wished us “Happy Pride.” Love from everyone who said, “Thank you”.
I honestly cannot remember any day in the previous 43 years where I had felt so much love. Certainly not at church. I literally felt suffocated by love.
I was so thankful. Thankful to everyone who let us walk, who welcomed us, who encouraged us, who supported us, and who loved us.
I didn’t march again for 3 more years. I had planned to march again in 2017. I was even organizing a group of Mormons. Then I had a discussion with some friends of mine (who have Mormon ties and were members of the local queer community). I learned that for them, seeing Mormons dressed in “official” attire and under the “Mormon” banner brought pain, reminding them of the hurt the church laid on them in previous years. After some reflection, I cancelled the group’s organizing.
I admit that I took it personally. I felt hurt and sidelined. But after the hurt subsided, I realized that being called on my actions was an opportunity for me to reevaluate my role as a queer ally. I took a couple of months to do some research and some introspection, and I realized a few things.
First, Pride is an act of protest. The first parades (if they can be called that) were held in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco on 28 June 1970, as a way to commemorate the Stonewall Riots the year before. Anyone watching a Pride parade today would have trouble finding that connection. Pride today has been commercialized, overrun with floats from companies, politicians, political parties, and other non-LGBTQ organizations.
If you ask anyone attending Pride what Pride is about, you’ll invariably hear the word “inclusion”. But why must Pride include everyone? Why must the event include companies that used to fire employees for being queer? Why must it include the political parties that used to oppose marriage equality? Why must it include the same institution that used to (and still does) arrest and imprison them for just being who they are? Why must it include the churches that used to (and often still do) excommunicate, ostracize, and even encourage violence toward their queer members?
As well, Pride is an LGBTQ space. It always has been, and it always should be. Too many people are trying to co-opt it. I’ve literally seen organizations handing out branded rainbow flags during the parade. One longtime Liberal Party candidate had the gall to say that the Liberal-branded rainbow flag was a better flag than the generic flag we had already received from organizers. I realized then that my marching under the Mormons Building Bridges banner took space away from the queer community. I was trying to appropriate Pride to make a political point. And that was wrong.
If straight and cisgender Mormons (or anyone for that matter) want to show support to the queer community through Pride, they should do so in collaboration with the community. They should be willing to participate in the floats and marches of queer-specific organizations, arm in arm and hand in hand. Show them that they are willing to be supportive without being selfish.
I haven’t marched under the Mormons Building Bridges banner anymore and still have no intention to. But to be clear, this wasn’t really about Mormons Building Bridges. I feel exactly the same regarding similar organizations, such as Mormons for Equality. It’s not the specific organization; it’s the message we’re sending when we want to be allies while still remaining in our comfort zone.
So, in 2017 and 2018, I attended as a paradegoer, watching and supporting our queer teenagers and preteens as they marched and found community. The following year—mere months before my own queer awakening—our family was invited by OUTreach Southern Alberta, the local queer education and advocacy organization I now am the president of, to march with them, and we did, including our 4-year-old, who wore a unicorn cloak with a rainbow mane, which was a hit with so many people.
However, I took my queer advocacy in a Mormon context to another level in August 2021.
Coming out at church
When I came out in the spring of 2020, it was early in the pandemic and a year after the new Church leadership reversed their exclusionary policy. Church meetings had been cancelled by the provincial government, so unless people at church followed me on social media, they may not have known that I was queer.
In the summer of 2021, following the lifting of government gathering restrictions, our stake went back to in-person services. If you wanted to watch the service from home, you had to get special permission. And since we didn’t feel as though we had extraordinary circumstances (even though we wanted to avoid exposure to the Delta and emerging Omicron variants of the coronavirus), we decided to begin attending in person, albeit masked.
The first mandated in-person service for our ward was the fast Sunday in August 2021.
On the first Sunday of every month, Mormon congregations open up the meeting for people to share their personal stories and beliefs with the rest of the worshippers, rather than focusing on a specific sermon or two.
This was my first Sunday back worshipping in public, and I was going to use it to come out to the congregation, which I did. I knew I wanted to come out to our ward at some point, and I realized that a fast and testimony meeting would be as good a time as any. I was super nervous about it, but I knew it had to be done. And just like I pulled off the bandaid—so to speak—when I came out to my family and online, I did the same thing to my fellow ward members: coming out in person, at the mic, in sacrament meeting, on my first real day back since the start of the pandemic. I told them all that I was bisexual. As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve come to realize since I first came out that my sexuality is more complex than that, it just seemed easier to say that at church than to go into a lecture on introductory queer theory.
I did it for a few reasons. I still intended to be a queer advocate, and this allowed me to do it in a whole new way now. I also knew that there were closeted queer people in the congregation, and I felt that it was important for them to know that they weren’t alone, that there were other people there who understood what they were going through. Queer Mormons often think they’re the only one, that there’s no one else like them in the church. But this just isn’t true.
Take my ward at the time, for example. I knew of at least 12 members who’ve lived in that ward over a seven-year period who are queer, and I told the congregation this as part of my coming out. Most of them, however, weren’t publicly out. And if everyone is closeted, then everyone thinks they’re alone. Just because you don’t know of any queer members in your ward (or stake) doesn’t mean there aren’t any. There are more than you realize.
I also wanted people to realize that it’s possible to be queer and Mormon. I realize that won’t be everyone’s path, but I still think it’s important for people to see that it’s an option if it’s a direction they want to try. Not only that, but I think that by coming out and forcing ward members to realize that there are queer people in their congregation, it will cause some of them—maybe most or all of them—to take inventory of the sort of rhetoric they use in their classes, as both teachers and learners, because they might fear offending my sensibilities. In the process, however, they’re not offending other people’s sensibilities. I have been in situations where people have said things—before I realized I was queer—and I still found those things offensive. They felt comfortable saying those things because they assumed everyone else in that meeting was like them: cisgender and straight.
Now, there might be some pushback that comes with all of that, but I’m willing to, as a grown middle-aged adult, to take those bullets for other people, so they don’t have to. I’m willing to do what it takes to be the experiment so that the youth in our ward don’t have to be the experiment. I’m willing to be that sacrifice, whatever that might entail.
And I have absolutely no regrets in coming out to that ward. I came out because I wanted people to know that there are queer people in this ward. I wanted closeted queer people to know that they’re not alone and straight people to know that there was a specific person hearing what you’re saying.
The reaction was as varied as it was when I first came out, ranging from exuberant support to complete silence. I had several people come up to me after the meeting in person and over email throughout the next few days, and that felt special. About a dozen people had reached out to me in affirming ways (including two members of the bishopric, and a member of the stake presidency, all of whom were on the stand that day), in person at church, over email, and through Facebook Messenger. I wasn’t that surprised actually. We had lived in that ward for nearly 20 years by that point; we were one of the long-timers in the ward by that point. I’d always been a favoured teacher (having taught Gospel Doctrine twice and elders quorum) in the ward; people liked my teaching style. They also liked when I give talks in sacrament meeting. As well, both of us had served in various callings during that time, including several leadership positions, so we had built up a lot of social capital during that time. Coming out at church was easier for me to do than it would’ve been for someone who is brand new in the ward or someone who is young. I was able to exploit the privilege I had to hopefully reframe where I sit but also how discourse occurs in the ward generally around queer issues. Since coming out, I had five specific experiences in that ward that really stuck out to me, confirming that coming out at church was the right thing for me to do.
The first experience occurred shortly after I was called to be the ward Sunday School president. This happened in the spring of 2021, roughly a year after coming out. As one does, I reached out to the previous Sunday School president to coordinate initiatives, see how his teachers are doing, discuss goals he had set, and so on. His response shocked me.
I’m glad the Bishop found someone to fill the seat of such an important calling. I want you to know where I stand on a few things. I believe that the LGBT as an organization and many of its members are immoral, next I also believe socialism is evil. I’m going to find it hard to support anyone who leads his family down these 2 roads. With saying that the Bishop and the Lord sees something in you that I am ignorant of, so I will put away my pride and I will raise my hand to the square on Sunday.
I never had him or his spouse added on social media, and it’d be five more months before I’d come out at church. I don’t think he knew I was queer, but he must have known that we had queer children. It came as a shock. I mean, knowing this person and hearing some of the things he has said in classes, I wasn’t surprised that this was where he stood on queer issues or on socialism. However, to tie his political views to whether he sustains someone seemed unfortunate.
I didn’t feel personally attacked, since it seemed his comments were directed at my political views and not my sexuality. I still couldn’t help being somewhat hurt by it though. Regardless, I responded all Christ-like. I told him I was bisexual (I identify more as just “queer” though, but someone who says “the LGBT” probably isn’t going to understand what “queer” means). I also told him that I hope that my performance as a Christian during the time he’s known me will serve as a testimony that someone can be part of the LGBTQ community and moral simultaneously and that I looked forward to being able to serve the ward members in a new capacity.
I had been out for only a year when this happened. So my advocacy for the queer community up to that point had been from the perspective as an ally. I had never felt like I was personally affected by people who opposed my advocacy. Now, that I’m out, I do. But having responded to that email was the first time I had to perform the emotional labour required of a member of a marginalized community who’s not trying to ruffle any feathers.
I try really hard to never make church political. I always try to focus on the scriptures and bring things back to what Jesus taught. To me, church should be about trying to get us closer to God, trying to become more like Christ, trying to establish Zion. Church should be an equalizing environment, where we can become unified. But when things like this happen, it’s just so hard. Sometimes, it feels as though I am the one who has to play nice? Why do I need to take the higher road? Why do I need to invoke Christ’s name in my message, when I wasn’t the one who brought up morality and evil? I’m not the one with a message of hate, yet I’m expected to be the one with a message of love. It was kind of overwhelming. At the time, I was kind of glad for the pandemic restrictions, so I didn’t have to see him in person for a while.
Anyhow, it wasn’t this email from the previous Sunday School president, obviously, why I was glad I came out at church. For one, I hadn’t even come out at church yet, and this response was hurtful. How could I be grateful for something that hurt me.
No, what I’m grateful for is that just moments after getting this email, I actually received an email from our bishop at the time. You see, the former Sunday School president had, for some reason, decided to carbon copy the bishop on the email he sent in reply to mine. So the bishop saw that response. He must’ve known that I’m queer. I don’t have him added on social media, but I do have his spouse added on Facebook, and it’s possible his wife told him when I came out the previous spring. I also have one of his counsellors added on Facebook, so he also might have said something.
Regardless, he phoned me almost immediately after the email went out, and he wanted to make sure I was okay. He recognized the pain that email could cause, and he wanted to mitigate that damage. After I assured him that I was fine (and honestly, I was hurt, but not too hurt), he told me he’d reach out to the former Sunday School president and discuss what he had done.
So the first reason I’m glad I came out (even though I hadn’t technically come out at church yet) was because it helped me to know that at least one person in our ward leadership recognized that his ward contained queer members who wanted to participate, and he wanted to facilitate that participation.
Related to this, one thing I did as a Sunday school president was to send out a weekly roundup of study helps for people studying the Sunday school curriculum for that week. Shortly after I sent out the first issue of the newsletter, I got this email from the previous Sunday school president:
Thanks for the email. I’ve always loved your lessons as a teacher. Sunday School President is the right calling for you. I’m looking forward for more teaching tips for my family in the coming weeks.
I thought maybe he had a change of heart after the bishop talked to him and I sent out this newsletter, but then around Pride Month of 2022, nearly a year after I came out at church, he pulled me aside at church one Sunday and asked me if I wanted to watch Matt Walsh’s transphobic documentary What is a Woman? with him. I told him I was not at all interested in watching that with him. I guess he hadn’t changed at all. And I was just dumbfounded that he thought I’d want to watch it with him. Like, why would he think I, as a queer person, want to watch a documentary that is anti-queer produced by someone who is anti-queer. I’m not attracted to people of multiple genders just because someone hasn’t done a good enough job of convincing me yet that it’s wrong. That being said, I had noticed that he tries to use language that is a bit more careful and guarded when making comments in elders quorum and Sunday school now, which makes me chuckle. Granted, that’s only when I’m in the room. I have no idea if he’s just as politically correct in his wording when I’m not there.
Even with the change in the language he uses in classes, I wouldn’t say he’s an ally to the queer community. In June 2023, I had another experience with him. At the end of an elders quorum class, he had been asked to say the closing prayer. I don’t recall his exact words, but the first thing he said in his prayer was something like, “During this Pride Month, please help us get rid of pride.” It angered me. So much so, in fact, that I don’t remember what came after that sentence, although I do remember that it was related. As well, I actually got up and left right in the middle of his prayer. Not only did I find the comments in the prayer hurtful, but we had just finished having a lesson on Jesus’s love for others and how we need to love people more. It was a good lesson, and this prayer seemed to suck out the spirit that had been present in the room. Not all was lost, however, as I had two people reach out to me that afternoon to make sure I was okay and to express their disappointment in that prayer. I was grateful for their empathy and their desire to make sure I was fine.
The second reason I’m glad I came out at church was because of an experience I had at church the same day I came out to everyone. After the adult Sunday School let out and people were shuffling around to go home, someone who had been sitting behind me reached out to introduce himself. He was tattooed, had his hair slicked back, and wore a pink Polo shirt. It turns out that he and his spouse weren’t together anymore. They had a child together, but he hadn’t been active for a few years. He promised her at one point that once provincial health protections had been lifted and he could attend church in person, he would take their child to church. And his first day back happened to be my first day back, when I bore my testimony and came out at church. He told me, “I really appreciated your testimony. This is my first Sunday back in a long time and I’m queer, too.” He had been concerned about coming back to church as a queer person. He knew all that was entailed in coming to church as a queer person, but then with all that baggage, unexpectedly hearing someone at the front coming out as a queer person in that ward. Hearing me coming out so publicly helped him know that he wasn’t alone, and he wanted to tell me how much he appreciated that.
The third reason was that right after the Sacrament meeting when I came out, one of the older women in our ward—who was old enough to be my mother—motioned me to come over to her, and she asked me what the “Q” in “LGBTQ” meant. It warmed my heart to have someone like this interested in learning more. But that’s not all. roughly a year after I came out at church, this same person came up to me prior to sacrament service beginning. She came out to me as queer. It’s all so new to her, and she stumbled through trying to communicate clearly her queerness. But it was unmistakable. More importantly, she felt comfortable coming out to me. In fact, it was the first time she had come out to anyone. It makes me wonder about how she’s kept this to herself all these years. My coming out had given her the courage to accept who she was and tell at least one person about it. It feels good that people know they’re not alone.
The fourth reason why I’m glad I came out at church is that the stake presidency had me attend a bishops training meeting in September 2022, where they were providing counsel to the stake’s bishops (and their counsellors, for those who attended) on the importance of creating welcoming space for the queer members who were living in their wards, even if they had no idea they were there. It was an opportunity for me to share my experiences, to answer questions from these bishops, and to dispel some myths. I’m not sure how that meeting would’ve gone if I hadn’t been there, and I was there because I had come out and the stake presidency knew that I’m queer. The stake presidency also asked for advice and guidance on things the stake can do to create a more affirming and inclusive space for queer members, which I gave him. It remains to be seen how much of those recommendations will end up being implemented.
The final reason why I’m glad I came out at church actually involves two incidents both close together. The first occurred in June 2023, during Pride Month. At the end of our elders quorum lesson, the former Sunday School president, who I had mentioned earlier in this chapter, was asked to give the closing prayer. In his prayer, he said something like, “And please bless us to not have pride during this Pride Month”. I’m not sure what he said after that because I got up and left in the middle of the prayer. Later that day, two people reached out to me about the experience. The first was someone I used to home teach and who was sitting beside me in the class. The second was another member of the quorum. Both of them expressed empathy toward me and offered words of comfort and solace, which I appreciated.
The second experience occurred two months later in August 2023. I was attending a leadership session of stake conference, and I had just come back from a trip to Fort Macleod, where I had spent four hours tabling for OUTreach at the town’s Pride festival. We had a visiting general authority, and he was the final speaker. At one point in his remarks, he said something along the lines of, “Marriage is between a man and a woman. It has always been that way and God will never change it”. He had prefaced it by mentioning how Canada and the United States had passed marriage equality laws, and that was following remarks from a member of the stake presidency who had used dog whistling rhetoric that could be referring to queer issues, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt since his comments were so vague. I got up and left the meeting. It was pretty noticeable, as well, since I had been sitting in the middle section just 3 rows from the front of the chapel, so I had to pretty much pass everyone. It’s ironic, too, because he had planned to do a question and answer period and I had intended on asking a question on what we as leaders could do to help queer youth feel welcome at church. After the meeting, our bishop (who is a different person than the bishop I mentioned earlier in one of my other experiences) texted me to see how I was doing. I told him that I was feeling better now that I had a chance to cool down. I said that I still felt hurt, but that I was no longer angry. He then phoned me and we chatted a bit. He expressed empathy for my situation. I was grateful to all three of these men who reached out to me during that summer.
But there’s something that must be noted here.
Even though I had a few people offer encouraging words of support when I came out and a handful of people offer empathy when I have abruptly left meetings, there were a lot of people in that ward who were silent in those instances. I have no idea where those people sat regarding my existence as a queer person in that ward or regarding the church’s stance on queer people. Certainly, I have seen very few people speaking out in meetings in support of queer people. Granted, I don’t attend every meeting. That being said, I have heard more things in opposition to queer people than I have seen in support of queer people. And even when people have reached out in support, it has almost always been after I have done something (coming out in sacrament meeting or leaving meetings, for example) and always in private. I have never had anyone reach out in support when homophobic and transphobic things have been mentioned, either implicitly or explicitly, in meetings I had not attended. That leaves me with the impression that they might think I find such comments hurtful only when I react in disruptive ways. While I am grateful for those who have reached out in support, I wish that support was triggered by their own awareness of anti-queer rhetoric within the church and not by me having to constantly do the labour of raising awareness of the harm of that rhetoric.
Mormon vs. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
During the October 2018 semiannual general conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the newly installed church president Russell M. Nelson, in one of his addresses that weekend, spoke about a new effort of the church to distance itself from the Mormon label and more zealously embrace its official name. His justification that doing so would centre the name of Jesus Christ in reference to the church, something that LDS Church and Mormon Church left out. At one point he reminds those watching and listening (and later reading) his remarks that “In the early days of the restored Church, terms such as Mormon Church and Mormons were often used as epithets—as cruel terms, abusive terms—designed to obliterate God’s hand in restoring the Church of Jesus Christ in these latter days.”
I didn’t agree with this move. I still embrace the term Mormon. Maybe it’s for the same reason I embrace queer, which itself was once used as a cruel and abusive term by those who oppressed queer people. Queer no longer holds the same trauma and violence it once did. Similarly, the trauma and violence behind the original usage of Mormon have long lost their sting. There’s some value in embracing terms in affirming and empowering ways to disarm one’s enemies.
But I also like Mormon as a cultural qualifier. I consider myself to be culturally Mormon. Despite not being born in the church, Mormonism is a part of me. Its theology is in my soul and its liturgy speaks to me. There’s still something about the symbolism found in its ordinances, how they bridge the human and the divine, the known and the unknown, the observed and the mysterious.
Anyone who has been following my poetry can probably tell that the esoteric is meaningful to me. Angels, and heaven, and gods, and afterlife, and visions, and stones, and plates, they all fascinate me. And, sure, I realize I don’t need to attend to believe in the esoteric. Heck, some of my most spiritual experiences have been in nature and not in a building. But even attending a building that feels empty still keeps me connected to those bridging ordinances.
Speaking of bridges, another cultural aspect is my ability, through the priesthood, to be a conduit with heaven. Even though I don’t have frequent opportunities anymore to use my priesthood to petition heaven on another’s behalf, the potential still has meaning for me. Related to ordinances and priesthood is the idea of cultural milestones. Beyond the spiritual aspects, I find value in seeing my children hit the cultural milestones of baby blessings, baptism, graduating primary, completing seminary, serving missions, receiving endowments, and marrying in the temple. Especially when I can be a part of the process. And not necessarily because I think they have to complete them, but I see them in the same way Catholics see first communion or confirmation or Jewish people see bar/bat mitzvahs.
I find that Mormon feels more welcoming and inclusive, compared to member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The latter focuses on membership, which itself comes with gatekeeping and requirements. The former feels, to me, to be less so, opening acceptance to a broader group of people. People can be Mormon if they are stalwart members who come from pioneer stock going back nearly 200 years. People can be Mormon if they come from pioneer stock but also from a family that hasn’t been to church in three generations. People can be Mormon who are single, who are queer, who are atheist, who are childless, or who don’t fit the stereotype in other ways. People can be Mormon who follow the communalist and anti-capitalist origins of the religion found in its most sacred text. Mormon also can include all those whose church traces its beginnings back to Joseph Smith, such as the Community of Christ, not just those who follow the global church headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
I see Mormon in a similar way as I do radical left and queer. I see it as an open identifier that gives me breathing room and embraces the nuance of my religiosity. It appeals to me as a qualifier that can include me as someone who is his ward’s temple and family history leader but can also include me if I decide to turn in my temple recommend and never set foot in another chapel again.
Conclusion
One thing you might have noticed as you followed along is that even though I split it into 3 journeys, there was a lot of overlap. There was overlap between my political and religious journeys. My religious journey influenced my queer journey. It parallels my life.
You see, I’m not three people. I’m someone whose politics lie on the far left of the political spectrum, and someone who is queer, and a Mormon. I’m someone who is radically left, queer, and Mormon. It’s not three identities: it’s one identity that has three aspects, or facets, or components. But even those three aspects, facets, or components aren’t quite accurate because they suggest three separate aspects, three separate facets, and three separate components. For me, though, they’re not separate. They are intertwined.
If I’m sitting in a sacrament meeting or a Sunday school class, for example, I’m not just listening as a Mormon to what is being shared. I’m also listening to it as a queer person, and I’m listening to it through my leftist political lens. I’m not translating what I hear through my Mormon lens, then my queer lens, then my radical left lens. I have just one lens, but that lens has been shaped by these three parts of my identity.
When I look at something someone says to me on social media, I don’t just look at it as someone who sympathizes with communism and anarchism. I also look at it through my queerness and my Mormoness. How will my politics shape my response? How will my queerness shape my response? How will my desire to be like Christ shape my response? More specifically, how do all three, acting simultaneously with symbiotic collaboration, affect my response?
I regularly get questions asking me how I, as a leftist, can be part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or how I as a queer person can still be a member. But that framing assumes that being leftist and Mormon are separate things, that being queer and Mormon are separate things. It also assumes that being Mormon is equivalent to having a membership in the church. But I can’t choose.
Choosing being leftist, queer, and Mormon, for me, isn’t the same thing as separating all of one’s Skittles by colour than just eating the green ones. It’s more like trying to separate the butter and sour cream from a freshly baked batch of funeral potatoes.
Being Mormon is part of who I am.
Even if I stopped attending meetings and rescinded my membership, I’d still be Mormon. Being Mormon, for me, isn’t about which rules I keep or whether I agree with the leaders of the church. It has to do with the type of person I am (or rather hope to be).
As someone who straddles the worlds of the supernatural and the material, Mormonism is the way of life that best speaks to me. And it, together with my queerness and my leftist politics, gives me a framework to reject the rightwing politics that has crept into church policies and practices over the last several decades and inspire me to advocate for the true Mormon gospel of love and equality.
And that’s where I sit today: a radical left queer Mormon. In a queer house. With a queer family. And at the centre of both my religious beliefs and my political advocacy is the concept of egalitarianism.
