By Their Fruits

If anyone is curious how the LDS Church's "love the sinner, hate the sin" approach to homosexuality plays out on the ground among the lay members of the church, you need only look to the  CBS Survivor blog for your answer.  This season's Survivor features a "gay Mormon" named Todd.  Apparently, many true believing Mormons think the term "gay Mormon" is not only oxymoronic but downright offensive. Read the comments left at the Survivor blog here  to see ignorance and hate--based on religious dogma--in all their glory.

Oh, and for the ultimate result of the LDS Church's incessant preaching about the "evils" of homosexuality, see this thread at the New Order Mormon site.  How many people have to die before the Brethren dial back the hateful rhetoric?

Comments

[Jordan F.]

Ironically, I do not hear so much "hateful rhetoric" from the "brethren" as I do from ignorant members of the LDS church who for some reason don't seem to know any better. All I have heard from the "brethren" since I started listening have been messages that we need to be tolerant to those who struggle with such feelings, regardless of whether they are inborn or acquired.

[Mayan Elephant]

Jordan,

i want to point out two parts to your comment that stand out for me. First, you defend the leaders and give them credit for something that one may hope they say, but ignores most of what they actually say. there is something in the church culture that prevents members from saying the truth, or perhaps there is something keeping them from knowing the truth.

the second point i want to make is that the leaders are homosexist and not one bit tolerant, as indicated by recent comments and publications.

the efforts of the church regarding gay marriage is not one of tolerance, and that came from the first presidency. the recent pamphlet, God Loveth His Children, was published by the first presidency, and it says to not choose homosexuals as friends. Oaks suggests that parents should not host gay children in their homes or join them in public.

i guess another point is that the brethren do not suggest tolerance of homosexuals at all, rather, they insist on tolerance by homosexuals for the mormon standards, regardless of consequences, including death.

[dpc]

Equality, it’s easy to point the finger and say, “Aha, bad religious dogma coupled with the guilt induced by that dogma leads to suicide.” I think that approach is wrong; suicide is a much deeper, darker experience that can’t easily be explained away by religious dogma. One of my good friends from high school (who was neither Mormon, nor gay, so maybe these comments are inapposite) committed suicide several years ago. After his funeral and much soul-searching, I thought that I could have been a better friend and that I could have tried harder to prevent this tragedy from happening. And you can go crazy trying to figure out what you could have done differently. To this day, we’re unsure why he didn’t reach out to us to help. Maybe we were too self-absorbed and missed the calls for help. But a decision to end your life isn’t based on one thing: there a myriad of factors. There are other factors involved that other people have no control over.

That being said, I would be interested in knowing the statistics of gay Mormons who commit suicide compared to the national rate and the rate among non-gay Mormons.

Plus I feel you committed a hasty generalization. Most of the hateful comments on the comment post appeared to be coming from one individual. And several Mormons appeared to call him out for his prejudice. I’m not sure how the comments of one misguided individual translates into a denomination-wide intolerance of homosexuals.

Mayan Elephant: The cardinal sin of discussing a topic on which reasonable minds can disagree is to label the position of your opponent as intolerant. Some of my homosexual friends were opposed to gay marriage as they saw it as a selling out to “hetero-values.” Were they intolerant of homosexuals? Of course, this was in Canada where a year-long conjugal relationship (regardless of the gender of the parties) was enough to confer almost all the benefits of marriage. But the statistics seem to bear this out. Of all the homosexual relationships counted in the last Canadian census, a minority of those couples were married, despite it being legal and despite it carrying little, if any, social stigma.

Although I disagree with homosexual marriage on legal grounds (because I feel it opens the door, philosophically speaking, up to polygamy and group marriage), and because I have concerns about the impact that a non-traditional family may have on children (and I mean the structure, not the sexuality of the parents), I feel that opposing homosexual marriage is a waste of time and money because such a minority of people will be affected. We're looking at maybe 75,000 homosexual married couples. (I'm extrapolating from Canadian statistics. Please see:
http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/070912/d070912a.htm )

[Equality]

dpc,

I do not think that Mormon homosexism was the sole contributing factor in this young man's suicide (I don't know all the facts, obviously). But that Mormon homosexism is a contributing factor to suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and to other mental health issues, among gay Mormons has, I think, so much evidence to support it that I need not spend time defending the idea here. Click on the links I have in my left sidebar under Support for Equal Rights for more information on that score. I agree that the reasons people commit suicide are, generally, variegated. While Mormon doctrine and culture may not have been 100% responsible for this young man's suicide, I think it likely that it was a significant contributing factor.

I, too, would like to see the suicide rates for gay Mormons compared to straight Mormons, and for gay Mormons versus, say, gay Episcopalians. Not sure such stats are available, though.

"Plus I feel you committed a hasty generalization. Most of the hateful comments on the comment post appeared to be coming from one individual. And several Mormons appeared to call him out for his prejudice. I’m not sure how the comments of one misguided individual translates into a denomination-wide intolerance of homosexuals."

I think your argument would have more weight if the person making those comments was wholly unrepresentative of the demographic he is representing. Unfortunately, I think his attitudes and opinions are shared by at least a large plurality of Latter-day Saints, and maybe a majority. If the leaders of the LDS Church made active efforts to stamp out homosexist attitudes, again, I could see your point. But unfortunately, the guy making those hateful comments toward Todd on the Survivor blog is simply echoing similar sentiments voiced by men in the highest quorum of the church, namely Boyd Packer and Dallin Oaks. The members take their cues from their leaders.

BTW, thanks for commenting. I enjoy engaging in civil dialog with you.

[JV]

I note that the first comment by "hbsurvivor" on the Survivor Todd thread--apparently the one that started the controversy--has been deleted. Can anybody post what he wrote?

-JV