It’s traumatizing to have sex you don’t want to have. It’s even more traumatizing when you’re forcing yourself to cooperate with the sex, with a heaping helping of self-hatred and wondering what’s wrong with you.
There. I said it.
I’ve recently started listening to the Latter Gay Stories podcast, which is excellent and I highly recommend it. So far, the stories from mixed orientation marriages that I’ve listened to involve a gay husband and a straight wife. Usually, the wife knew the husband was gay before they got married. A scenario that I haven’t heard yet is a mixed orientation marriage in which a lesbian wife married a straight husband, and the husband knew she was a lesbian before they got married. (I’ve only listened to a couple dozen stories from the back catalog so maybe I just haven’t run across it yet [fn 1]).
When someone (a man) comes out of the closet, announces he’s gay, and that he and his wife are getting a divorce, the homophobes holler about selfishness and condemn him for wanting to “live the gay lifestyle.” The underlying idea is that it’s selfish to want to have sex that you enjoy. But what about the corollary? Is it selfish to NOT want to have sex that you DON’T enjoy?
The stories that I haven’t heard told publicly (except for mine because I’m telling it now) involve a wife who was so deeply closeted when she got married that she didn’t even know she was a lesbian or an asexual, and she divorced a straight husband. And friends, those divorces are not about a lesbian wanting to live a wanton and sex-filled life. Those divorces are about trauma. Years of forcing yourself to cooperate with sex you don’t want to have creates so much trauma that it takes years to recover.
Gay people divorcing straight spouses may include needing space to recover from sexual trauma. I’ve got a lot in common with sexual trauma survivors, even though my sexual trauma was self-inflicted and consensual. I had a conversation with a lesbian about my age (50ish) who had recently divorced a man she’d been married to for more than 20 years and seeing signs of a panic attack that she tried to cover up while we talked through our stories of divorce. I’m not the only one with PTSD from being in a straight marriage. I know I’m not. But we’re all so very quiet. I don’t know if mental health professionals have published anything about the effects of spending years voluntarily having unwanted sex, but if someone knows of a source, please let me know in the comments.
Wikipedia has an entire article about LGBT suicides connected to Mormonism. It’s sobering reading – terrifying, actually. Some of those people who committed suicide were in mixed orientation marriages. I heard about a faithful LDS wife and mother in my stake who, seemingly out of nowhere, tried to die by suicide. I admit my first thought was to wonder if she was a lesbian or asexual, trying to escape her marriage in a way that is more socially acceptable than announcing that she can’t deal with procreative sex and filing for divorce. I don’t know. I don’t know if she was. I just know how I felt, when I was deeply closeted and trying so desperately hard to make a straight marriage work. I remember holding the knife to my wrist and thinking that if I died before my children were old enough to remember me, it wouldn’t cause them as many problems as having an LGBTQ mother. This Church, and homophobic rhetoric, screwed up my thinking that much.
Religious Trauma
I am SO ANGRY at the Church’s teachings that we don’t have bodily autonomy. God created our bodies, teaches the Church, and so God can tell us what to do with our bodies.
What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. [1 Corinthians 6:19-20]
What this means in practice is that men, who claim to speak for God, make the decisions about women’s bodies. That includes minor decisions like how many ear piercings to have, to major decisions like living the law of chastity – which not only means no sex before marriage, but plenty of procreative sex after marriage to make babies.
My issue with being in a straight marriage was my sexual orientation. But heterosexual women who are pressured to marry men they aren’t attracted to would have a similar issue. If marriage is necessary for social acceptance and economic security, some women will have unwanted sex in exchange for social standing and a place to live. Plenty of heterosexual married women have a good sex life and are very happy – I’m talking about a minority of people, but we matter too.
Women’s rights and gay rights are first and foremost about bodily autonomy – the ability to live a full life without being pressured to be in a straight marriage that presumably includes sex.
Why I Published This
I wasn’t going to publish this essay. The post about being asexual was plenty personal, and this one is even more so. But then I saw the reports in the Salt Lake Tribune about how Utah’s elected representatives are trying to make the LGBTQ+ community shut up and go away, like we’re somehow icky. “We live in Utah, we shouldn’t have to deal with this stuff.” On the national stage, the Supreme Court is rolling back anti-discrimination laws.
The fight for gay rights has rightly focused on the right to marriage equality and equal treatment under the laws. Gays should not face discrimination, ridicule and bullying. Love is love. Marry someone you’re attracted to. Don’t be afraid to love. And so on and so forth.
My fight for gay rights is the flip side of all that “love is love” rhetoric. Gay rights are also about the right to NOT have sex if you don’t want it. Gay rights mean that society doesn’t pressure women (or men) into straight marriages in search of social standing and economic security. Gay rights and women’s rights mean that a single queer woman can hold the same job a straight married man holds, and make the same salary. Gay rights and women’s rights mean I can qualify for a home mortgage on my own. Gay rights mean that I can marry my queerplatonic best friend so we get all the benefits of marriage, and no one is quizzing us on what our sex life is like. Gay rights mean that a woman or man (or non-binary person) can decide they aren’t interested in having sex at all and it’s no big deal. Gay rights mean that no one tries to pass as straight because they want to avoid the bullying and harm of admitting they’re gay.
Here’s my asexual opinion: Have sex that makes your body feel good. The only thing that really matters is respect for your partner and full and enthusiastic consent. [fn 2]
[fn 1] I listened to the Sunny and Joe Smart episode but neither the husband nor the wife knew the wife was a lesbian before they got married.
[fn 2] I want to yell this at those smug, straight Republican legislators: I HATE YOUR SEX AS MUCH AS YOU HATE QUEER SEX. I also suspect that they are all lousy in bed. Homophobia is based on the idea that no one can have different sexual feelings. Therefore, homophobic men probably don’t know or care if their wives enjoy sex. I am petty enough that when someone says gay sex is unnatural and icky, I automatically assume that he’s so selfish in bed that his wife is secretly hoping that he will come down with an untreatable case of erectile dysfunction.
Questions for discussion
- How about we allow bodily autonomy for everyone on every issue?
- Why don’t homophobes understand that sex is a matter of personal preference and their orgasms aren’t inherently superior to gay orgasms?
- Why are homophobes so insecure that they feel their entire way of life is threatened if someone doesn’t have the same feelings about sex that they do?
Wheat & Tares 
Thank you Janey for posting something so vulnerable. I’m sorry for your experience and acknowledge that the only way this improves in the future is if we share these stories.
I too appreciate the Latter Gay Stories podcast. Have you viewed the Hulu documentary Mormon No More?
It’s my understanding that the preferred language is to say that someone attempted to die by suicide rather than attempting to commit suicide. It’s possible I’m not quite up to date and I appreciate if you have more current information.
To your questions, a resounding yes to #1! For questions 2 and 3, I’m personally not interested in trying to understand the answers to these questions anymore.
Chadwick – thank you. I also edited the post to fix the language about suicide. I appreciate you pointing that out.
Janey,
I am glad you are in a place you can speak up and share your thoughts. Thank you for bravely sharing them.
It was interesting for me to ponder the things I have in common with you as well as the differences. For some reason this takes me all the way back to my grandparents experiences (as remembered by my mother) under Joseph F. Smith. At that time the hot button issue was birth control. The church was against it. It was a question your bishop might ask you. President Smith made the pronouncement that sex was only for procreation and that men shouldn’t be inconveniencing their wives with sex after they were through having babies. At that point my grandmother ended the sexual relationship between her and my grandfather. It impacted the entire family in such a negative way that my mother remembered it.
I can’t help but wonder now, was she asexual? Or maybe it was just the bad effects of menopause on her enjoyment? Or was it purity culture?
My mother says her mom was a “prude”. She was determined not to be the same way. Yet she had painful sex daily for 10 years without telling my father it hurt, because she wanted children. After her last baby she begged the doctor not to sew up her apesiotomy because she believed she was too tight. He didn’t see her up and sex was better afterwards.
She talked about sex with me because she didn’t want me to be a prude like her mother and damage her marriage. She taught me birth control was a private decision I could make according to what the Spirit said to me regardless of what church leaders have to say. In many ways I have her to thank for teaching me to use my own spiritual authority.
My husband and I were virgins when we married. I was like an unopened package. My husband thought I was a lesbian because we couldn’t make it work for a month after our marriage because I was so tense.
Honestly, we have had a good sex life, but it certainly got better for me with time and age. I probably didn’t really know I was truly heterosexual until I had been married 10 years. It just wasn’t something I was thinking about.
However I have suffered PTSD in my marriage, but never about sex. We have argued and had conflict constantly. Our counselor told us he had never met a couple more in agreement with each other but insisted on arguing about it anyway.
I eventually have come to understand that our conflicts have to do with patriarchy. My parents had an equal relationship and I approach marriage expecting to be a full partner. My husband wants to have a partnership with me but he acts as was modeled by his parents. His mother deferred to his father. So he unconsciously expects me to defer to him and when I don’t he feels disrespected.
It took us years and years to figure this out.
So did church teachings affect my marriage negatively? Yes, I think so in some ways.
I think believe as you do about bodily autonomy. The church is changing gradually in a positive direction I hope. I wonder how they could best change to accommodate people like us? I found the emphasis on marriage and family so so painful during the many years of our marital conflict. Church should be a comfort to people in a variety of circumstances instead of presenting a perfect image and making people who don’t fit it feel sinful, damaged and lesser. Our current politics are very scary right now for our family as well.
I dream of a time of harmony when people who are different are accepted openly and equally.
Spell check (sew not see)
1 “How about we allow bodily autonomy for everyone on every issue?”
Since bodily autonomy is one of the most common ways to segregate and classify humans socially, I don’t think we will ever be able to do so (not without a lot of desperation and creativity). To me, this question is the equivalent of “how about we as humans switch from breathing oxygen to any-other-gas-like-carbon?” – I just don’t see it innately happening. I agree (for a lot of reasons) that society will be better off if we allow at least the scope of bodily autonomy under Roe vs Wade – though I think it should go beyond that.
2. We don’t speak the same language when we talk about “sex” from any gender – I don’t know what that language is, but there are vast differences between “sex as procreation”, “sex as recreation”, “sex as commitment recognition”, “sex as power”, “sex as connection”, “sex as sensation” that we are just starting to find cultural values/symbols/words for (on some level).
3. A lot of people get their values from the group and/or need to have their personal values drive any conversation on what is “valuable”. It kinda sorta helps you feel “comfortable” and “valuable” if people like you have been calling the shots on what the group gets to “value” for a very long time. It makes sense that homophobes would be most “comfortable” and “feel valued” because they have been calling the shots on what people their class level and below have “valued” (at least in theory) for a very long time. The “conversation” as it were is equally about “bodily autonomy rights” as it is taking percieved power/authority from a powerful group and transferring it to other groups of people. Much like the Civil War was both about “Slavery” and “The Southern Way of Life” – Gay Rights is about “Body Autonomy” and “A Way of Life De-Empowering groups of people from hving the final say”.
@Janey
Thank you for posting. I don’t know what to say than than I’m sorry to you and all LGBTQ folks for the things I said about this topic when I was Mormon. I wish I had possessed the foresight and courage to think for myself.
I too would like to thank you for posting this honest depiction of your feelings and experiences, for you and others. I represent the flip side of this coin…the folks you no doubt would judge and condemn as instigators of your victimhood. Your words and sentiments perfectly reflect the modern American culture — a culture, I might add, that your side won long ago, even if remnants of my side continue to haunt your values. What you describe so well is “personal autonomy.” Among all of your values, especially those values that concern society (i.e., how your values complement or conflict with people around you), you value personal autonomy greater than any other value. You say it so well in so many places, such as, “Women’s rights and gay rights are first and foremost about bodily autonomy…” and “Here’s my asexual opinion: Have sex that makes your body feel good.”
Personal autonomy is your epitome of how you define what it means to be a human being. My side has — I have– a different meaning. What comprises being a human being to me are central characteristics such as human dignity, human potential, and human happiness. I suppose you would not disagree with those characteristics as you define them, except to say, probably, that my side does NOT believe in those values and homophobia is Exhibit A or any number of concerns your have stated. I stipulate to you on that perception, often warranted. I also don’t doubt you believe in those values.
The difference between us, if I may be so bold to predict, is that of all the values you prioritize personal autonomy is above all others. I imagine you want everyone to feel human dignity and to reach their human potential and to live a life of human happiness. BUT…when you are forced to prioritize, you would choose personal autonomy (i.e., as John Stuart Mill spelled out, “Do what you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone.”) I realize that you believe that “patriarchy,” or what I would call “the natural family,” is inherently harmful, even if millennia of human experiences have proven otherwise. But even as your harsh criticisms of “traditional institutions” burden your thoughts, I think…just an intelligent guess…that you would ultimately say, “Live your life as long as you don’t hurt anybody.” IOW, you would prioritize “personal autonomy.” — everyone’s right to define what it means to be a human being.
Not to belabor this response, I do not prioritize personal autonomy. I believe deeply that being a human being means foremost the qualities of human dignity, human potential, and human happiness. And, for your edification, I believe, as do so many orthodox people of faith and otherwise traditional conservatives, that personal autonomy has NOTHING to do with any of those three qualities. The merits of those three qualities transcend personal autonomy or said as, when I’m feeling less charitable, “selfish individualism.”
On my side of the culture war, seven billion human beings should not be in search of THEIR truth, but in search of THE truth. I realize everything I have mentioned here has been the subject of philosophers for millennia. But what I am describing is the modern America culture war, and all I am really saying to you is…not to worry, your side won, you might not like certain human behaviors but the IDEA has been settled in favor of personal autonomy. So, care for those you worry about but find peace in the reality that your preeminent value, personal autonomy, has been the clear winner. Remnants of push back from my side are meaningless. All of the genies let out of the personal-autonomy bottle will never be put back. That’s how you know your side has won the culture war.
I agree with the idea that nobody should be pressured into marriage or sex they don’t want. I think that on paper, according to current church policy, the church agrees with that. They no longer recommend anyone get into a heterosexual marriage in an attempt to change their non-heterosexual orientation. Except that written policy and culture frequently diverge. In practice we have David Archuleta reporting that whichever senior apostle he’s been talking to thinks he just needs to “find the right girl” or somesuch, and we have Oaks preaching to the under-30 crowd that they aren’t having babies soon enough. The culture frequently lags policy because of the church’s unwillingness to publicly contradict things said or done in the past.
I have appreciated reading about your experience in this and your previous post. I have a teenage kid who believes she may be asexual, which I admit is hard for me to comprehend. Reading about others’ experiences is helpful.
Thank you for sharing this, Janey. Stories like these are so often untold, but are absolutely valuable to people who are otherwise far removed from these experiences, like me.
In the LDS Church, we carry the baggage of many of our founders and early pioneers, who were sex maniacs, for lack of a better term. Literally, they were egomaniacal men who believed that the key to securing power and glory (both in mortality and beyond) was to accumulate as many wives as possible, and then prodigiously propagate their genetic material with zero regard for the best interests of their wives, children, communities, federal laws, and pretty much everyone and everything but themselves and their screwed up religious beliefs. The continued survival of the FLDS and other Mormon-heritage polygamy groups, though abhorrent, serve as reminders to the world that it never really went away. Warped, limiting LDS views on sex, sexuality, individual agency and bodily autonomy are here for the foreseeable future, sadly.
Thank you Janey for being willing to share your thoughts and experience. I really appreciated what you said about bodily autonomy and how the church teaches that we don’t own our own bodies. Sure, God with a lot of help from my mother, created my body, but that does not mean that God, let alone the church owns or controls my body. I wish that I had had the words to express this idea to my bishops back in the days when I was trying to be active. But I didn’t know how to explain that as a sexual abuse survivor, I needed control and ownership of my body, and that temple garments to me were symbolic of God’s ownership of my body. My attempts to say they caused flashbacks to the abuse, which was making my sexual relationship with my husband into hell were incomprehensible to them. They were under some stupid assumption that flashbacks were no big deal and that if I wanted to wear garments, then I could. No, the garments left me suicidal, but bishops didn’t seem to even care. I had covenanted to wear them and if I didn’t I wasn’t worthy. It took me going inactive several times and returning to therapy when I attempted to be active, and failing once again to be able to wear them to be able to tell myself that no loving God would require that of me. Period. The last time I went inactive it was with a private vow to never never return to church. If me trying my best isn’t good enough for the church then why should I even bother.
So, thank you for pointing out how the church teaches that we don’t even own our bodies or have any right to decide how we live in those bodies. My body/my choice applies to garments too.
Paul Mero: I don’t understand how “human dignity, human potential, and human happiness” can be achieved without autonomy, particularly bodily autonomy. I don’t want to derail Janey’s excellent post, but this simply doesn’t make sense to me any more than the idea that patriarchy (what you call “the natural family”) has worked well for thousands of years. It may have worked well for wealthy, white cis-hetero men, but it’s only been in the last 100 years that maternal mortality rates have finally dropped; pregnancy was a huge gamble for the majority of those years. To the point of Janey’s very personal post, marital rape wasn’t even illegal in the US until 1973 and not illegal nationally until 1993. You may call those relationships “successful,” but hopefully you can see why many women do not agree. Personally, I wouldn’t want to live 5 minutes earlier than I have had to because things have, on the whole (aside from the current reactionary trend since 2016) been improving for women and marginalized people over time.
Janey: Thanks so much for your post and putting yourself out there. Not sure if you are a Glennon Doyle fan (the author and podcaster), but if not, you might enjoy her work. She was an Evangelical who wrote a book on marriage after her husband cheated on her (and she forgave him), then discovered she was a lesbian.
Thank you Janey. I always appreciate your perspective. The irony in my opinion is that if God really did create our bodies then the anti-LGBTQIA+ crowd has a lot of pain coming when they get to feel all they hurt they’ve contributed to. On the flip side if God didn’t create our bodies then they get to regret that they were discriminatory for no reason at all. I’ve felt that regret myself and wish I had more courage now and in the past to honor and respect myself and others simply for who they are. Keep shouting it from the rooftops!
Body autonomy should extend to the choice to be vaccinated, or not. I was shunned AT CHURCH for not getting a covid vaxx. I no longer attend, and will not go back.
Angela – thank you for that response to Paul Mero. I don’t see how human dignity, human potential and human happiness are possible without bodily autonomy. My guess is that Mero has never had his bodily autonomy threatened, so he takes it for granted.
All – thanks for your kind words. I kind of chewed my fingernails off about posting this, and now that Pride month is over, I’ll go back to more typical posts, and thank you again for being kind.
Jack – I deleted your comment. You’ve been told to stay off my posts. Stay off.
Excellent post as always, Janey. (I used to belong to an LDS forum where one of the members had that moniker. Every time I see your name, I wonder if you’re her.)
“I don’t know if mental health professionals have published anything about the effects of spending years voluntarily having unwanted sex, but if someone knows of a source, please let me know in the comments.”
The sources I have are about heterosexual women having unwanted sex, so I imagine the outcomes would be catastrophically worse for gay/asexual women. But you nailed it exactly: when women have unwanted sex for a long time, they experience trauma.
Dr. Cami Hurst just did her doctoral thesis on the effects on women having unwanted sex and 70% showed signs of PTSD. (The other 30% had responsive desire, which seems to be a protective factor.) One of the sobering results is that this is the result even when the husband is not pressuring/nagging/whining/pouting for sex. A women who is consenting to sex because she believes its her wifely duty, or if she doesn’t her husband will look at porn or have an affair, or any number of awful reasons, and her husband doesn’t even realize this is what she’s thinking and assumes she’s into it when he initiates, she will still experience trauma. So it’s very possible that LWS’ grandma lost all desire for sex because she was having unwanted sex.
Here are two podcasts where Dr. Hurst discusses her research:
https://amandalouder.com/podcast/253
Sheila Gregoire is a sociologist who did the largest, peer-reviewed study ever of the effects of different evangelical marriage book advice on women. And it turns out when you survey 20,000 women on how their marriages fare when they believe they should never, ever, ever, say no to their husbands, you get horrific results about sexual pain and vaginismus, a huge orgasm gap and unhappy marriages. She wrote a book called “The Great Sex Rescue.”
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/september-web-only/sheila-gregoire-great-sex-rescue-survey-evangelical-women.html
I am a huge fan of the work of Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, who studied with Dr. David Schnarch, one of the most influential therapists in the realm of marriage and sex therapy. She consistently teaches – as did Dr. Schnarch – that you CANNOT really say yes if there is no possibility of a no. And nothing tanks desire for women like removing their choice. The deep irony is that church teachings about agency are absolutely correct. The most important gift we have been given is the right to choose. Full stop. The problem is, to quote Susan and Cynthia of “At Last She Said It”: we don’t believe our own stuff.
You know, I used to be okay with patriarchy. Then I started looking for help with my own marriage and found online spaces where religious people who are struggling with sexual problems have gone for help. There is so much damage and pain caused by purity culture for both men and women. I am done with patriarchy. By their fruits you shall know them.
Such good work you’re doing, Janey. You illuminate an idea that I’ve never given much thought— this flip side, that everyone has an inherent right to not have sex they don’t want, and this applies as well to consensual sex, quietly endured for any reason. I love learning things from you.
I find it telling that those who downplay the necessity of bodily autonomy have never experienced the lack of it in the very common ways that a woman or non-binary person does.
I also think anyone who cannot muster the creativity and courage, and sheer love in their hearts, to resolve the individual problems that arise as obstacles to sexual and bodily autonomy, or encourage others to do so, and instead rely on rigidly prescribed standards and rigidly applied practices— these folks resemble to me nothing so much as an algorithm who can only follow a flow chart, but has no connection to a loving heart, understanding of principles, or the guiding light of empathy. Seriously, if you don’t have enough of it in the right way, bodily autonomy is a need that will assert with a lot more importance than you may-sayers are giving it.
Janey, I have sources for information on how women are harmed by having unwanted sex, but I think it got caught in the spam filter because of the links.
I fished your comment out of the spam filter, Margot, and I’m looking forward to reading the sources you recommended. Thank you!
MDearest, thank you. The more I read from the bodily autonomy naysayers, the more I’m convinced that they lack empathy.
Janey (@ 8:58PM)- I think a lack of empathy is at the root of so much that is wrong right now. I had a training at work from someone whose motto is “empathy is the answer” and the more I think about it, the more I agree. For example, I have a cousin who is a libertarian and against regulations, taxes, etc. Except for building regulations. See, that is his field. He has seen what corners some folks will cut to increase their profits, and knows that people will die without some deterrence. However, he cannot extend that understanding to any other area where he hasn’t had the same close, behind-the-scenes experience. It is very frustrating!
We all have blind spots, but I think the world would be a better place if we were better at recognizing the validity of other people’s experiences, even if very different from ours.
Thank you so much for sharing Janey.
I have loved your posts Janey, and thank you. Finally caught up on my likes! Logging in to do so is complicated on my phone, and not compatible on the device I normally use to read (too old). But in this case I definitely needed to do it.
For a church that, at least when I was growing up, had so much to say about agency, it ought to be far more in favour of a person’s right of self-determination than appears to be the case. Or was the agency they preached nothing more than smoke and mirrors…
I am finding the current strain of authoritarianism both depressing and alarming, and I worry for my own kids, both now adults, one declared non binary and the other leaning that way also.
I really think your posts are a great addition to the blog. One of the things that I think is so much better about now than when I grew up in the 80/90s is there is language and openness to figure these things out where as a farm kid from rural eastern Idaho we just didn’t have a way to understand sexuality besides the heteronormative Mormon family we were taught.
Dogs are happy. And long before me, people had things to say about satisfied pigs and acquiring wives. Just who gets to decide what happiness is? Songwriters, scriptorians, sophists? There’s a hypothesis that when animals began to be bred, then people became property. And if you can’t be a big tyrant like Imperious Dickus, then be a little one. And if I go singing, “You don’t own me”, somebody might be a wee bit concerned I’m threatening their little power. Then blah, blah, blah… the collapse of civilization.
Janey, I am glad you posted this article and so sorry you had so much anxiety about doing so.
Too many of us female members have had one kind of misery or another pushed on us for what ever reason.
And I am sure males have some of their own misery to tell.
A sexual one or some kind of stereotype lifestyle ( women should not work out side the home) that impacts our choices as to who we feel we really are.
The LDS Church does not have a nice sweet histroy when it comes to how women are treated within it.
The church historians have sanatized much of the polygamy stuff, but the truth of the darkness and the ugliness is there.
Articles like yours which makes points I have never thought and brings out comments from readers that I never thought about concerning suicide from female members.
I could go on and on with my comment but I will not, I hope we do hear more from you.
These things must no longer be swept under the church carpet by grinning LDS leaders telling us all is well in Zion twice a year at General Conference.
Janey, thank you so much. I’ve learned so much from you. It saddens me that our shared faith tradition is unsafe and unhealthy for so many of our queer siblings, and that learning like this can’t take place there.
What a terrible shame.
Thank you for teaching us here. Your eloquence and courage inspire me.
Thank you for sharing this brave and powerful post, Janey!
Could I make the point that coming out is far more about loving the person you want than about having the sex you want?