Love the People, Hate the Policy

Thoughts from an apostate on the Mormon Church’s same-sex marriage rules

As I reached my row on the crowded airplane on Saturday, I sighed when I saw my seatmate, an older woman with a pleasant face and a bright, welcoming smile. At that exact moment, my Facebook feed was filled with stories of pain and heartache, reactions to the harsh news from the Mormon Brethren in Salt Lake that defined same-sex marriage as apostasy, and worse, denied children of gay married couples any access to saving ordinances until they turned 18 and renounced their parents.

And now I would have to spend two hours sitting next to a Mormon grandmother. I steeled myself for the worst.

I am a Mormon apostate. In 2008, when my marriage ended, I was going through an even more painful faith transition that tore apart everything I had ever believed about life. With the help of a kind LDS therapist, I learned about cognitive dissonance, and I was slowly able to accept that I was not broken, even though my progressive values did not align with the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I later joined the Catholic Church, an act defined in the Mormon Church’s Handbook as grounds for excommunication, though I was never summoned to a church disciplinary court.

I formally resigned from the LDS Church in 2014, and now I attend a Unitarian Universalist congregation, though I still identify theologically, for the most part, as Catholic (like many Catholics, I’ve embraced the cafeteria approach to religious teachings). The Unitarians have long provided a haven of humanistic grace for those seeking to escape the harmful effects of soul-damaging dogma. I expect many righteous Mormon saints who were personally affected by the same-sex marriage policy may find a home there, a place where they can cherish their heritage while distancing themselves from this most recent painful enforcement of The Proclamation on the (White, Heterosexual, Affluent) Family.

I’m not going to write about why the Church Handbook changes are viewed by so many as divisive, hateful, and contrary to Christ’s teachings. That subject has been thoroughly covered in numerous blog posts that exploded onto the Internet after the changes were leaked.  Nor am I going to expound on the disturbing fact that so many faithful LDS members flinched when they learned about this policy (we call that reaction “the still small voice” in Mormon-speak), then turned away from their initial response and worked very hard to justify the church’s hateful words as something born of “love.”

Instead, I want to share what my faithful Mormon American Airlines seatmate reminded me of during the course of our flight.

Though this policy is hateful, many (if not most) Mormons are in fact filled with love.

As an acknowledged apostate, I have felt that love over and over again since I left the church. Two of my children are being raised LDS because I agreed to it after my divorce. Their leaders have always included me (an apostate) in their activities. Relief Society sisters have frequently brought me (an apostate) meals; one former visiting teacher even cleaned my kitchen while I was at work and left me freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

When I lost my job, my sons’ bishop took me (an apostate) aside and said, “I know you’re not a member anymore, but we still love you. If you need anything at all, come to us. We will help.” And I knew he meant it. Another Relief Society President stopped by with flowers and a card, “just because.” Some of my children’s ward members came to celebrate Midnight Mass with me (an apostate) one Christmas, and I am still regularly invited by Mormon directors to participate in interfaith choirs each holiday season.

These loving Mormons understand and respect that I no longer share their faith. And they love me anyway, not in a “love the sinner, hate the sin,” way, but in a genuine, Christ-like “love one another” way.

A song I learned as a child in Primary (Mormon Sunday School) has helped me to understand (though I cannot support) where the new Handbook policy is coming from. Here are some of the lyrics: “Keep the commandments, keep the commandments. In this, there is safety. In this, there is peace.” The Proclamation on the Family, supported now by the new church policies on apostasy and same-sex marriage, helps conservative, traditional LDS families to feel safe and at peace. Many identify this very issue as their “freedom of religion,” and they see that “freedom” attacked on all sides by the “world.”

But I prefer Mormons—and I know plenty of them, including the woman who so serendipitously sat beside me on my flight—who sing a different Primary tune: “Jesus said love everyone, treat them kindly too. When your heart is filled with love, others will love you.”

Policies may set the rules, however harsh and unforgiving.  But people determine how those rules are interpreted and applied. If my LDS friends are any indication, creative leaders and ward members will continue to find ways to embrace people who don’t fit the narrow standard defined by the Proclamation on the Family. I hate this Mormon policy. But I still love my Mormon people.

Family Values

Lessons from two very different flags

Our family is complicated. Like many other Americans, my second husband Ed and I are both divorced from our first spouses. Ed has no children of his own and thinks that “our” four (plus our very lively cat) are more than enough. My children’s father has also remarried, so my children have step-siblings and a half-sibling to add to their postmodern family tree. We are all white and middle class, and we live in one of the most politically conservative and the least racially diverse states in the nation: Idaho.

One of the biggest challenges of raising children after a divorce is navigating the space between very different sets of parental values. My younger two children are being raised in a faith tradition that historically discriminated against blacks and that continues to prescribe rigid gender roles.  I support their father’s decision to take them to the Mormon church because I don’t think religion is worth fighting about, and because my own Latter-day Saint parents managed to raise children who were respectful and tolerant of others. But I cannot remain silent about my values, even when they conflict with what my children learn in church.

In light of a landmark week for gay rights and racial discrimination, I asked my children what they knew about two very different flags. “A flag is a symbol,” my 11 year old told me. “It represents a country or an organization.” As we talked about the Confederate flag, I asked them what it symbolized. “Isn’t it the Civil War or something?” my 10 year old daughter said. I explained that for many people, the flag was associated with slavery and oppression.

“But didn’t Dr. Martin Luther King fix all that?” my daughter said. “I thought he made it so that black people and white people were equal.”

White people say things like this all the time. They say, “Oh, we have a black president now, so we can’t be a racist country,” or “Oh, we have affirmative action policies, so white males are actually the victims of discrimination” (Yes, I have actually heard this phrase come out of more than one white man’s mouth).

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over and over again these past few years, from the Trayvon Martin shooting to the tragedy in Charleston, it’s that Americans are decidedly not “over” racial discrimination. As a parent of white children, it’s my duty to teach them to use their privilege to be allies to those who do not share that privilege. My children were shocked as I explained to them how black mothers and fathers were afraid for their teenage sons, because they could actually be shot and killed, just for being teenagers.  “That’s not fair,” my son said. “That’s not right.” Exactly.

Then we talked about another flag: the rainbow flag that symbolizes the LGBT pride movement.  The Mormon church, along with many other conservative Christian churches, has been and continues to be a vocal opponent of gay marriage.  I actually do feel some empathy for people who fear that their deeply held religious convictions are being challenged by last week’s Supreme Court ruling supporting gay marriage. But in listening to some of my conservative Christian friends, I think there’s a basic misunderstanding of what the ruling really means. No church is going to have to marry gay people. The decision does not at all impact their religious freedom, any more than the long overdue imminent removal of the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s state capitol impacts individual freedom of speech.

I told my children that I think the First Amendment is one of the things that makes America a great country. Every person who wants to display the Confederate flag on his or her front lawn or white Chevy pickup truck should unequivocally have the right to do so. But any person who wants to fly the rainbow flag should and must have that same right. The government should not sanction discrimination of any kind. And as a parent, I have the power to teach my children tolerance and respect for differences and to encourage them to speak up for those who are oppressed.

That’s one thing I have learned from my conservative Christian friends: We shouldn’t be afraid to share our values. In the end, no matter what your family looks like—black, white, gay, straight, or some combination of all of these—the love you share is what matters. Love wins.

Dear Mormons: Count Me Out!

I'm a Mormon.

Views from the Diaspora on the LDS Ordain Women Movement 

On April 5, 2014, a group of brave, dedicated, faithful women, some of them personal friends, tried to attend a semi-annual conference that has traditionally had a large “No Girls Allowed” sign on its front door—and has no plans to change its exclusionary and hurtful practices any time soon. Of course, my friends were turned away. These women are part of the Ordain Women movement in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Today, the New York Times reported that Ordain Women founder and human rights attorney Kate Kelly had been summoned to a disciplinary hearing, where she may be excommunicated from the church she has fought so hard to change. Mormon Stories podcaster and gay rights advocate John Dehlin, a husband, father, and fifth-generation Latter-day Saint, was also summoned to a church disciplinary court in what Flunking Sainthood’s always insightful Jana Riess has predicted may signal the beginning of a new Mormon purge. 

I’m no longer a practicing member of the Church. But like many of my friends who have stopped attending Sunday meetings, I still consider myself culturally Mormon. When Facebook asks me for my religious views, the best thing I can say is, “It’s complicated.” So I’ve watched from the sidelines as my feminist friends who are still faithful Latter-day Saints agitate for change, cheering my girlfriends on, but believing that it’s not my fight. My suspicions, rooted in historical fact, are that no one ever got anywhere by walking up to the doors of the patriarchy, knocking politely, and asking to be let in.

I haven’t weighed in on Ordain Women until now because frankly, I felt like my voice didn’t count, that it wasn’t my fight. After all, I left on my own. I’m not like Kelly, who told Buzzfeed’s Laura Marostica “I never considered leaving the church. That was never on the table for me. I’m more of a person who’s like, ‘Well, I’m in an institution and I can see it needs to be improved. It needs to change; I don’t need to leave.’” Talk about the faith to move mountains!

In response to OW’s plans to attend the Priesthood Session in April, the church’s PR spokesperson Jessica Moody attempted to minimize and marginalize the efforts of my faithful friends: "Women in the church, by a very large majority, do not share your advocacy for priesthood ordination for women and consider that position to be extreme," she told Ordain Women, saying that 1,300 women who signed the OW petition were not significant in a worldwide church of 15 million members.

Well, if you’re going to count them, maybe it’s time to count me.

Because here’s the thing. When the Church says that it has 15,000,000 members, they are counting me, and lots of women like me. They’ve never formally kicked me out, at least not to my knowledge, though I’m WAY more apostate than Kate Kelley or John Dehlin. In fact, I’m so apostate that I actually went to the Dark Side, joining the Roman Catholic Church, which former Mormon General Authority called “the great and abominable church” in his first edition of Mormon Doctrine (a statement which, to be fair, was repudiated by other Mormon leaders).  Sorry, Mormons, but #OurPopeBeatsYourProphet.

Unlike many of my post-Mormon friends, I’ve never formally asked to leave. It wasn’t that big a deal to me. I still get monthly newsletters from my Relief Society visiting teachers and the occasional much appreciated plate of brownies or other home-made treat.

But if I count as a member, then I should count as a woman who left the church because I felt marginalized by policies that relegated me to the position of a second-class citizen. Motherhood does not equal priesthood, or even womanhood, for that matter. And nothing I know about Jesus leads me to believe that is God’s plan for me, or for any other woman I know.

Some of us who are still counted as members simply lacked the patience or just plain perseverance to continue to fight from within. So we drifted away, one by one, feeling, as I did, increasingly marginalized and irrelevant in a culture that emphasizes and celebrates two-parent, so-called traditional families as the pinnacle of righteous living (and hey, girls, as a carrot at the end of life’s stick, women can be “Heavenly Mothers” to millions of spirit children. No thanks—I didn’t like being pregnant in this life, so I’ll pass on that in the next one).

I can’t give you any hard and fast numbers. But everyone knows the Mormon Church is losing members fast, as both new converts and the long-time faithful grapple with cognitive dissonance, discovering less-sanitized views of their religion’s formerly white-washed (I chose that term deliberately) history.

After I expressed support for my OW friends on Facebook, one of my friends, a woman I deeply respect who is still an active member, messaged me to say that she just didn’t feel like she needed the Priesthood, since she always had access to its blessings. I remember feeling that exact same way when I was married. But after my divorce, I realized that in fact, I did not have access to those blessings in the same way married women did.  

Indeed, the issue of gender inequity affects both my former (cultural) faith and my new (spiritual) faith, as Chris Henrichsen noted in his article, “We Are Already Seeing an Exodus of the Faithful.” He quoted BYU Professor and Catholic Damon Linker’s oddly prescient observation: “in both Catholicism and Mormonism, there’s often nowhere else to go. It’s either love it or leave it.”

It seems a lot like the Pharisees’ approach to Jesus’s radical notion: “Love thy neighbor.” It's not “judge thy neighbor.” Not “expel thy neighbor.” But “Love thy neighbor.”

To John, Kate, and all my friends who are fighting for love within the religion they have chosen, I wish you every bit of luck on your spiritual quest. They would be silly and short-sighted to lose you. But to the people whose interpretation of love is to close doors and shut windows, to those “faithful” church members, I say #MormonsCountMeOut.