Growing up
I grew up in the 80’s and early 90’s when the world was about to end; the Second Coming of Jesus was about to happen any day. I remember lessons in church about how Earth was going to be cleansed with fire and all the wicked people would be burned; but as long as you paid your tithing, you’d be safely lifted up into the sky. However, even if you were a full tithe payer, you still had to strive for perfection every day because nobody knew exactly when Jesus would come again, and you didn’t want to be left to burn. I remember Family Home Evening lessons about the Last Days when we’d all have to live off our year-supply of food storage, about nuclear war and earthquakes and all sorts of scary scenes from the book of Revelation. Those who didn’t obey the commandments always ended up dead. I was constantly afraid that I’d mess up and be left to burn while everyone else that I loved was safe.
I remember lessons about building the New Jerusalem and how the righteous would have to walk back Jackson County, Missouri, because for some reason no cars, trains, or airplanes would work. And I remember the Sunday School lesson about the boy who skipped church to go fishing one Sunday, only to find on the walk home that his whole town had been translated for their righteousness except for him; as if missing one day of church was enough to damn you for eternity. I also remember the lesson on Eternal Marriage where the teacher brought two bottles of preserved peaches to class: one with a sealed lid, and one with a broken seal. She taught us that marriage was like those bottles of peaches. If your marriage has been properly sealed in the temple, it will be just like the bottle whose peaches were preserved. But if you didn’t get sealed in the temple, your marriage would end up like the bottle of rotting peaches.
Throughout my childhood I learned that I was special…so special, in fact, that I was one of those noble spirits mention in the Pearl of Great Price whom God promised to make his rulers, and, having fought off Satan and his minions with my superior testimony, I was held in reserve for the Last Days to fight for righteousness. I was taught that this war had carried over into this world. So, when someone disagreed with our religion, they were an enemy of the Church; it seemed that the outside world was always out to get us. Every contradictory thing the Gentiles did was an attack on the One True Church.
But along with all of these lessons, I also remember the ones from my dad about the importance of something called Free Agency. It was these lessons that would ultimately stick with me. It was Satan’s plan to force people to do things against their will, he said, and it was just as evil to force someone to do something good as it was to force them to do something bad.
Up until I was fourteen I was more or less like everyone else my age. It wasn’t until I entered the seminary program that I began to take my religion very seriously. I started reading my scriptures everyday, sometimes even in school, and especially before I went to bed every night. I began reading The Work and the Glory series and was fascinated by the level of commitment the early church members had and the miracles that followed. And I resolved to always follow the prophet no matter what.
I ended up being the kid who always answered questions in church and seminary. I constantly volunteered to say prayers and the read scriptures out loud. I was all about making sure that everyone knew I was a righteous person. When I turned sixteen I entered the Priests Quorum where my older brother and his friends were all getting ready to go on missions. I continued being the kid with all the right answers, and before long, the Priests Quorum teacher began referring to me as the “spiritual fag” in front of the class. I was totally humiliated but I laughed at the funny joke just like everyone else. To his credit, the teacher apologized to me on the day of my mission farewell.
But my parents were very proud of me, of course, because I was their golden child who never got into trouble and always did what was expected. I never had a curfew in high school because I always came home before midnight—when the Holy Ghost went to bed. I never dated before I was sixteen, always went on group dates, and made it clear that I was not interested in having a girlfriend because the prophet counseled to avoid serious relationships before a mission. I didn’t swear, watch R-rated movies, or drink soft drinks with caffeine. I was the apple of my parents’ eye.
I had three brothers who went on missions before me and I couldn’t wait to go on mine. I just knew that I would be called to serve in some foreign country, speaking a foreign language, and come home with stories about eating strange, foreign food. It would be the best two years of my life, just like everyone said!
The Mission
After having submitted my mission papers, the day finally came when the mailman delivered a big, white envelope addressed to me. I tore it open and read that I had been called to serve in Columbus, Ohio…speaking English. Inwardly, I was incredibly disappointed but I convinced everybody that I was excited. I entered the MTC in October of 1999 and began to realize that a mission was very different than what I had been led to believe.
I absolutely hated the MTC. There was a rule for every ridiculous minute of every day. I had virtually nothing in common with any of the other missionaries, and on our P-days I would walk around the grassy field across the street with another missionary, talking about how long it would take us to walk home. I felt trapped. But I convinced myself that once I got out into the mission field everything would be different.
It turns out that I was wrong.
From the very first day I arrived in Ohio, I was extremely homesick. We were told that it was likely we’d be a little homesick at the beginning, but if we lost ourselves in the work of the Lord and kept the rules, it would go away. Well, it never did go away and I was beginning to feel more and more depressed. I hated everything from bugging people about something they didn’t want to hear to the never-ending guilt trips. I would pray for hours, telling God that I hated it there, repenting for my homesickness and asking him to take it away…later on saying that I wanted to go home and praying for a way to make it happen…and eventually asking him to just let me die so I didn’t have to deal with it any longer.
To go home for any other reason than serious injury or being violently ill is to be a shame and an embarrassment to your family and ward. And even if you’re sent home for a legitimate reason, others generally speculate that you must have broken the rules; otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten sick or badly hurt in the first place. And everyone knows that all the girls only want to marry returned missionaries because somehow all others are less-than human. I told myself the pioneers had been through a lot worse and that I had made sacred temple covenants to consecrate all that I possessed, including my own life, to the church. I knew there was no way to go home. It reminds me now of the followers in Jonestown who wanted so badly to escape but never could, even though it seemed the door was wide open. I’ve learned that sometimes the worst prisons are the ones without any walls at all and whose wardens claim that the inmates are free to leave whenever they choose.
I resolved to stay on my mission no matter the cost, although I secretly wished I’d be injured by a passing car, or get sick enough to be sent home. I began to realize that there were major inconsistencies with what the Mission President and Area Authorities were telling us. We were all told that keeping the rules would bring in converts. It didn’t make sense to me how my keeping the rules would override a person’s agency so that they’d want to join the church. I couldn’t force the gospel on someone who didn’t want to hear it, no matter how obedient I was. I also noticed that those who broke the rules baptized just as many people as those who kept them. I began to be a little slack with the hundreds regulations because I just didn’t care anymore; none of it made any sense. But it had been pounded into each of our heads that when you are disobedient, you may negatively effect the salvation of others. We were told to imagine a scene in the Spirit World after this life when another person comes up to you and says: “You promised me before we were born that you’d find me and bring me the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why didn’t you?” It was two full years of constant guilt trips and emotional manipulation.
Returning Home
The day finally came when I got to go home, but I went home a very different person. Now, I was much more relaxed on the outside because I had begun to take life less seriously, but very depressed on the inside. I felt like I was never good enough and I not only continued to want to die but began to have thoughts of killing myself. I felt like I was somehow different from everyone else but never understood how, and I felt that somehow made me worse.
I began going to school in Orem, Utah, and soon became the Elders Quorum President of my student ward. I felt so relieved after having been offered this calling because I felt like God had forgiven me…lately, I had noticed that I had less interest in the girls around me and more interest in the guys. I had been browsing the internet for other guys with whom I had more in common and had secretly been chatting with them. I felt very guilty about it and hoped that being called as the Elders Quorum President was a sign that God had forgiven me. Ironically, when I chose my counselors, I felt “inspired” to choose two of the best looking guys in the ward.
It wasn’t long before I was living a double life. To everyone in my ward I was the spiritual Elders Quorum President. On the other hand, I was chatting with and meeting new friends who were also dealing with the same “problem” I was. It really wasn’t too hard juggling the two lives but I felt extremely guilty. I was praying for God to make it all go away. And then one night I slipped up and found myself in a compromising situation with another guy. I was terrified because I knew that I had to tell the Bishop.
Confession
Given the details of the situation, I knew my punishment would be harsh. So I decided that when I confessed my indiscretion to the bishop, I would simply leave out the minor detail of the other person’s gender. Obviously, I knew I was being dishonest, but having been raised a Mormon my whole life, I knew how to justify anything. I simply told myself that it was the Bishop’s fault if he assumed I had messed around with a girl instead of a guy.
When I made my confession, the Bishop was very disappointed and at a loss for what to do so he immediately took me to the Stake President’s office where I had to confess the whole thing to him, too. Since the Power of Discernment failed him, he also assumed I had stepped over the bounds of virtue with a girl. He told me not to take the Sacrament for two weeks, and then I should be fine. It amazed me how easily I got off the hook because I had an important church calling. In fact, the Stake President was more concerned that I had let the hair on my chin grow out a little, making me promise to shave it—which I never did.
Over the next few weeks, I refrained from taking the Sacrament but was continuing to get phone calls from the Bishop about how disappointed he was with my actions. At that point my self-esteem was just shot. I had thought that since I had done the right thing and confessed my sin that God would make this problem called “same-gender attraction” go away. I tried not to think about it and tried not to talk to my gay friends anymore, but the more I tried, the worse it got. I was very quickly heading toward making it all go away myself by making plans for suicide just in case I decided that enough was enough.
I wrote the Bishop a letter ending my position in the Elders Quorum, and I avoided all opportunities to talk to anyone from my ward. I pretended to go to my parents’ ward back home, but there was no way I could tell them what I had done. My roommate, on the other hand, felt it was his responsibility to let my parents know that I had quit my calling and stopped going to church, so he called them up.
The Blessing
One day, my parents took me into their room and confronted me about it. I broke down and told them that I was very depressed and needed help. They kept asking me if there was anything else I wanted to tell them but I couldn’t bare the shame and embarrassment. My mom had always told me that you can tell when the world is getting really evil when it starts accepting homosexuality. I later found out that my dad had been suspecting at that point that I was gay. He then gave me a blessing to make me feel better, telling me that in the Premortal Life I had been aware of all the struggles I would face in mortality and that I had agreed to them. And, just like every other blessing I had received since returning home from my mission, he told me that God was preparing a very special girl at that moment to be my bride.
I had very mixed feelings about what had just happened. I was glad that I would finally be getting some counseling, but I believed I had just been told that God knew I would suffer with same-gender attraction and that I had agreed to it. It was all my fault after all! From that point on, I became very bitter toward God. How could a loving Heavenly Father send me to Earth with this problem, refuse to help me no matter how much I prayed and how many commandments I kept, and then ultimately damn me for it if I didn’t “endure to the end?” I definitely didn’t want to spend eternity in the presence of someone so sadistic and mean, and I didn’t want to spend my life alone with no one to love. I refused to marry a girl because I would only end up hurting her and no girl deserves to go through that. Half of me gladly opted for one of the lower kingdoms of glory, while the other half hoped that the God I had been raised to believe in was loving and kind and forgiving—although I knew very well what the church taught about God’s feelings on the subject.
In desperation to find an escape from my guilt, I looked up articles about homosexuality on the church’s website and read what the prophets of God had to say. To no one’s surprise, homosexuality was always considered an “abomination” that was lumped with other “evils of the day” like murder, rape, and abuse. In fact, I had learned at church that to have any kind of sexual relations outside of marriage was next in seriousness to murder. I read articles where prophets like Spencer W. Kimball counseled that it’s a rationalization and excuse for perversion to claim that “God made me that way.” He said, “This is blasphemy. Is man not made in the image of God, and does he think God to be ‘that way?’” (Spencer W. Kimball, “President Kimball Speaks Out on Morality,” New Era, Nov. 1980, 39)
And Dallin H. Oaks noted “that the words homosexual, lesbian, and gay are adjectives to describe particular thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. We should refrain from using these words as nouns to identify particular conditions or specific persons.” (Dallin H. Oaks, “Same-Gender Attraction,” Ensign, Oct. 1995, 7)
I figured that I was one of these people that Elder Oaks was describing. I was always taught that people were gay because they were deceived by Satan to choose that way of life. I certainly didn’t consider myself deceived because I had dedicated so much of my life to doing everything right. I couldn’t be gay! I mean, I still thought girls were pretty! I was just one of those heterosexuals who suffered from something called same-gender attraction. Even though I had begun dating other guys, I still expected one day to take that special girl to the temple, have kids, and live the typical Mormon dream, just like my Patriarchal Blessing predicted. There just wasn’t any other option. If I was going to be considered a good person, that’s what I had to do.
Spiraling Down
Since I was raised a devout Mormon, my sense of self-worth was directly connected to my faithfulness as a member of the One True Church. I had broken the law of chastity, quit my calling, stopped attending church, and took off my garments. I felt like I was broken; that I had a problem which needed fixing; a disease that needed to be cured. I knew that I wasn’t attracted to other guys because I chose to be. I wanted to be just like everybody else! But I knew that God wasn’t going to help me out because I had apparently agreed to be this way before I was born. Death was the only way out of my personal hell so I just wanted to die. Even if I went to the Telestial Kingdom, I had been taught that it was so wonderful there that, if they were allowed to see it, people would kill themselves to get there.
But no matter how much I wanted to end my own life, I just couldn’t do it. I had a mother who loved me. I felt guilty for the misery I would cause her if I went through with my plans of suicide. But if she realized the problems that her son had, she would be so disappointed.
In the meantime, I was talking to my gay friends about their experiences with coming out. As they described their feelings and their life experiences I was struck with the realization that the life they were describing was my own! And I had this moment of “Oh, so that’s what gay is?!” It was the first of two “oh, shit” moments that I would have.
This, of course, scared me to death because it meant that I had a much more serious problem than I realized. But I also began to see that all those Ensign articles and all those talks I had read were completely wrong. The prophets didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, and I didn’t understand how that could be! However, this still didn’t lead me to question the truthfulness of the church because I was always taught that if something didn’t seem right, it was simply because I didn’t understand it.
I was so afraid of anyone finding out about me. I thought I would lose all my family and friends because they’d think I was disgusting and evil. But I knew I had to tell someone my secre. If I didn’t, I was going to do something very drastic. At this point it was literally life-or-death.
Falling Out
My parents were coming home from vacation one night so I wrote a letter to my mom, apologizing for who I really was. I left it for her to find on her bed and left the house, knowing that if I didn’t leave, I’d talk myself out of it. I turned off my cell phone and stayed the night with some friends. I knew my parents would come looking for me, but I wasn’t ready to face them. I’m sure I scared them to death.
The next morning I found my mom at her computer looking up articles for me to read from the church website—all of which I had already read. When she saw me, she started to cry, hugged me tightly, and then one of the first things she said was “Steve, what have you done?” I don’t really remember many of the details of the conversation but part of it included that I needed to go talk to the bishop. I was emotionally and physically exhausted so I lied down when my dad came into the room to talk to me. The only thing I remember about our conversation is that he said there are two paths in life—one to heaven and one to hell—and that I had to make an immediate decision about which path I was going to take.
Salt in the Wound
The next few weeks were awful. I couldn’t be alone in the same room as my mom without being lectured. I worked for my dad so I couldn’t get away from his lectures either. I was asked not to tell anyone else in our family that I was gay because my parents were afraid it would tear our family apart. I was told that I probably wouldn’t be welcome around some of my nephews anymore for fear that I’d molest them.
On one morning I apologized to my dad for not coming to work the previous day since I had been so depressed that I couldn’t get out of bed. He responded by telling me the reason I was so depressed that day was because my unborn children in the Premortal World had just realized that I wouldn’t be their father anymore as I had promised them. He also said that he could tell the Holy Ghost had left me because the light of the Spirit had gone out of my eyes.
My parents tried to reassure me that I could fight my homosexuality and that everyone would help me. I told them no, that I was done trying. I refused to do anything more about something that would never go away, and I wouldn’t talk to the bishop about it. They were very nervous because my younger brother was getting married in about a month and they didn’t know what to tell everyone when I didn’t show up to the temple ceremony. I told my mom to tell them the truth because I just didn’t care. She eventually did, and I got all kinds of sympathy from my brothers and sisters. But I foolishly mistook sympathy for support. Out of my four brothers and two sisters, only my oldest sister has ever fully accepted and supported me.
My family instantly went from being very nosy about my personal life, to avoiding the subject completely.
Waking Up
I moved from Orem to back to Salt Lake because I couldn’t stand to be in Utah County anymore. I still fought thoughts of suicide for quite a while and even came close to attempting it. It took about a year after coming out and still wishing I was straight before I finally started to love myself for who I was. I still wasn’t questioning the church’s validity, but I was happy to have nothing to do with it. Deep down, on some level, I still believed it was true. It just never occurred to me that it might be false.
My second “oh shit” moment happened accidentally. One night in the Spring of 2006 I was looking up quotations from Mormon prophets about homosexuality for one reason or another when I came across www.MormonCurtain.com. It had some interesting information that I had never heard before and I noticed a lot of hypocrisy in what the church preached. On the web site, there is a column of topics that run all along the left side of the screen. One topic that caught my eye was the Book of Abraham. I wasn’t stupid, I knew what kind of website I was on, but I thought to myself, “What would anyone have against the Book of Abraham?” So I clicked on it.
I suddenly found the rug being pulled out from under me. On my mission I had studied the Book of Abraham and its beginnings in church history. Many times I had looked at its mysterious pictures and tried to figure out what they meant. I had read descriptions of the papyrus and learned that they had most likely burned in the Great Chicago Fire. Never had I ever heard anything about the church actually having the original text. In fact, I was taught that Joseph Smith didn’t translate the Book of Joseph from the papyrus because the world wasn’t ready for what it had to say, but that one day it would miraculously come forth when we were ready to receive it. I found an online version of the book By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus and read for hours, learning for the first time that the papyri had been discovered in the 60’s, experts had examined and translated them, and had proven that they had nothing to do with Abraham. Joseph Smith’s translation of the text was simply made up; the papyri was just an excerpt from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, copied down for the mummy with which it was found. I felt empty inside. I couldn’t sleep that night because for the first time I was entertaining the thought “What if the church isn’t true?”
I tried to read an apologetic view of the Book of Abraham fiasco but it made absolutely no sense. The stuff on the Internet that I was reading, however, were simple and logical. I tried to make up excuses in my mind about how it was all just a big misunderstanding. But then I stopped myself and said, “I’m tired of making excuses for God.” I wondered what else the church had been hiding and I went back to the Internet to find out. I had no idea what I was getting into.
One subject snowballed into another and I found myself spending a large amount of money on books about almost every subject. I read for hours and hours, day after day, for about six months. Finally, one day I put down the book I was reading and said, “I’m done.” I wanted out. I had all the proof I needed to know that the Mormon church was not what it claimed to be. And suddenly it seemed so completely obvious that I couldn’t believe I had ever fallen for it.
I wanted so badly to tell my family all about the things I had read but I knew it was useless. Mormonism is everything to them. They would never believe a word I said. The one time that I actually contradicted them about church matters, they all got very defensive, saing all the ridiculous clichés that they had been taught to say. From that point on, I quickly lost all credibility with my family.
I felt so alone. I wanted someone to talk to about all I had learned but there was no one to listen. I was so sick of it all. I wanted nothing to do with the Mormon church anymore. So after a family party on the 24th of July I went home and typed up my resignation letter. And since August 16, 2006, I am officially not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.