Dr. Gary Watts Calls on LDS Church to Send Out Rescue Party
Speech given by Dr. Gary Watts on November 4, 2009 at This Is the Place Monument. It was given one year after Proposition 8 passed in California and one day following a voter mandate overturning of same sex marriage rights in Maine.
Millie and I have two gay children who are no longer members of the Mormon Church. Our oldest son was kicked out of the church for having a gay partner while living in Japan. Our gay daughter left the church voluntarily rather than face potential disciplinary action if she were to choose a relationship with someone she could love. Our daughter has done what many church members have advocated. If you don’t like church policy, leave.
Craig’s excommunication from the church was traumatic and painful. The church was his safety net and major social support group while living alone and studying Japanese. He was attending church regularly and thought of himself as a faithful member. His disciplinary council was called by “a letter of the law” Branch President when Craig had the courage to be truthful about his homosexuality. I don’t think the possibility of being excommunicated had even occurred to him.
We’ll quote from his journal entry on that date: “It’s early Sunday morning. I can’t sleep. I’m n tears again for the third or fourth time since yesterday afternoon – some of the most painful, confused tears I’ve ever cried. And I’m alone. I feel so alone. I thought of suicide again for the first time in a long time. My sister’s line is busy, my parents are in Hawaii, there’s no answer at a friends home in Salt Lake City. Meanwhile, I’m alone in Kyoto, Japan. So far away from home. I need to talk to people from home, but talking on the telephone will be difficult. I’ll cry. I’ll say I can’t believe they’ve done this to me. I’ll ask when the torment coming from all sides ends. I’ll say my ancestors crossed the Plains and they can’t tell me I’m not a Mormon. I’ll make my family worry about me—something I’ve already done too much of. How much can I ask?
We listened carefully to his story and asked what we could do. His answer, “just tell my story. Don’t let this happen to anyone else.” We’ve been telling that story now for 17 years and counting.
Lori’s transition out of the church was done thoughtfully but not without significant trauma. A decision to leave a faith-based tradition supported by most of her friends and associates is tough. Where do you turn? Almost all gay people and many of their family members harbor some resentment to their new found status of exclusion. Some try drugs and alcohol, others try promiscuity. Some try heterosexual marriage and some try suicide.
This group has chosen the metaphor of the Willy and Martin handcart companies to help others see the plight of their gay brothers and sisters once they discover their same sex attraction and begin to figure out how they are going to deal with it.
Our children are not unlike most other gay Mormons. They have failed the test presented to them by the church. Testing is an interesting science. In education leaders are constantly evaluating tests to be sure they are fair and not discriminatory. If professors are devising tests that result in a failure rate of even 25%, there is a uproar from the students and administrators will usually step in and require adjustments.
What about a test that results in a 95% failure rate? That is what we are witnessing in the church as it relates to gay policy. The letter sent to this group by the Public Relations Department of the Church proudly states that “a doctrinal imperative rests on marriage as a divine institution uniting a man and a woman and teaches that sexual relationships outside marriage are not acceptable to God.”
That letter does not acknowledge the fact that the doctrinal imperative results in the loss of virtually every gay member and many of their friends and family from the church. Oh sure, the church can point to an occasional example of a gay person who has supposedly changed and is happy in a heterosexual marriage or those who are even fewer in number who have remained celibate. The great majority of gay members have been left out on the plains without adequate resources and left to their own devices to survive. It is way past time to send out the rescue party and bring them back into the fold.
We call on LDS leaders to figure out an accommodation that enfranchises, not disenfranchises. The current model was built on the false premise that homosexuality is chosen and changeable. It is not. Homosexuality is experienced honestly and involuntarily by those affected. We must do a better job of serving this group.
I’ll close with these lines from a recent letter from our gay son.
“I hear from my parents about the official Mormon campaign against gay marriage in California and feel confused. When the gay community moves in the moral directions you would think the church would encourage (that is, committed relationships manifested in marriage) the Church raises the rhetoric against us to new heights. They not only say they want us on the outside, but by denying us marriage, they seem to want to push us to slide deeper in non-Church directions.
Some might see as a threat the dawning realization that gay people are no less morally responsible in their choices than they themselves are. But after nearly two decades on the outside, I still have hope that my Mormon community will take this opportunity to reach across the barrier that the church is building and demolish it with an embrace of welcome.
No matter how we currently draw lines in the sand, we are all in this together and for the duration. The Church is us; it is no better or no worse than we are (and that includes “you” and me) for the church is what we make it.
