Happy Pride Month Eve! The purpose of this post is to point out how the fear about gay marriage was overblown and quickly forgotten, and then to compare that to the current climate of transphobia.
Gay Marriage
The Church issued The Family: A Proclamation to the World just 29 years ago, in September, 1995, to proclaim that marriage should only be between a man and a woman and that “the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.”
What spurred this? Either revelation or because someone was paying attention to current events. Gay marriage was already being litigated in Hawaii. The test case was filed in 1991 and the question about whether the state could refuse to allow gay people to marry was bouncing back and forth between courts. In 1996, the court in Hawaii said the state did not have a right to discriminate against gay couples. For the first time in the United States, gay marriage was legal.
The backlash was intense and swift. The “full faith and credit” clause of the U.S. Constitution meant that if a gay couple married in Hawaii, every other state would have to recognize that marriage as valid. Both the Hawaiian legislature and the U.S. Congress responded by passing laws to ban gay marriage. In the same year that the ruling was handed down, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), putting the purposes right into the bill itself:
“H.R. 3396, the Defense of Marriage Act, has two primary purposes. The first is to defend the institution of traditional heterosexual marriage. The second is to protect the right of the States to formulate their own public policy regarding the legal recognition of same-sex unions, free from any federal constitutional implications that might attend the recognition by one State of the right for homosexual couples to acquire marriage licenses.” Congressional Report on H.R. 3396.
Utah’s entire Congressional delegation voted in favor of DOMA. States rushed to defend marriage. Between 1996 and 2003, at least two dozen states amended their constitutions to define marriage as between a man and a woman. Utah was one of these states.
In 2008, the Church got heavily involved in passing Proposition 8 in California to prevent same sex marriages from becoming legal. While the Church was initially successful, the fallout from the Church’s campaign has been a well-documented disaster. Many Wheat and Tares readers and bloggers have personal experiences with the Proposition 8 campaign; that was only 16 years ago.
It’s difficult to summarize why people were so against gay marriage. It boiled down to religious beliefs, and an attempt to create some secular concerns, none of which were very convincing.
On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court decided the Obergefell v. Hodges case in favor of marriage equality. Same sex couples could now marry; gay love was validated.
After some pearl-clutching about the demise of marriage as an institution, the entire campaign against gay marriage mostly fizzled. Allowing gay couples to marry didn’t harm heterosexual couples. Legalizing gay marriage and reducing the stigma of homosexuality removed some terrible obstacles from straight marriages — the pressure for queer people to marry straight people in an attempt to “fix” themselves. Mixed orientation marriages are hard and they frequently fail. An open dialogue about sexual orientation and sexual desire benefitted every orientation.
In fact, when the country started to worry that the current Supreme Court, with its conservative super-majority, might overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, Congress rushed to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, which repealed the Defense of Marriage Act, ensuring that equal rights for same-sex couples would continue even if Obergefell was overruled. In 2022, three out of Utah’s four Congressmen, and one Utah Senator, voted in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act.
That’s about 25 years for religious conservatives to realize that they can co-exist just fine with gays and their marriages. I watched the whole saga unfold during my adulthood. My views changed right along with the rest of the country. Raised in the Church, I initially adopted the teachings that marriage had to be confined to people who could make babies together. And even if someone was sterile/infertile, or too old to have children, at least the man-woman thing preserved the proper appearance. For some reason, that was important. I forget why.
My own experience with being in a mixed-orientation marriage hit hard. I posted about being asexual last year during Pride month. Oddly, even after I filed for divorce because I couldn’t handle ever having sex again, I was still on the fence about gay marriage rights. Truth be told, I was bitter and wondered why anyone would want marriage rights. As I healed, my first reason for supporting gay rights was based on the conviction that no one should be pressured into having sex they don’t enjoy. My views expanded from there.
Trans Rights
The culture war has (largely) moved on. Now, the big threat to some undefined ideal society is trans rights. Conservatives have spread lies, exaggerated problems, and generally tried to whip up unfounded fears among the general population. I blogged about Utah’s anti-trans bathroom bill.
Is the tide turning? Have the majority of people who want the government to leave trans people alone finally made their voices heard? Or is the tide of transphobic legislation subsiding because the damage has already been done?
At the end of April, the governor in Kansas vetoed a bill that would have banned gender affirming care for minors. The Kansas legislature failed to override the veto. Parents, children, and their doctors can make their own decisions about gender affirming care. The override failed, in part, because four Republicans flipped their votes after input from their constituents.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis centered his bid for the Republican presidential candidacy on pushing back against woke culture. Florida has some of the harshest laws in the country on LGBTQ issues. But this year, of the 22 anti-LGBTQ bills proposed in Florida, only one passed. The proposed bills that would classify changing gender on a driver’s license as criminal fraud, that would encourage student clubs to discriminate against trans kids, that would make calling someone a transphobe a defamatory statement and the speaker could be sued, that would end the legal recognition of trans people in Florida, all those bills were left on the table when the Florida legislature adjourned.
Ohio, which has some of the strictest bans on gender-affirming care for youth, attempted to also restrict gender-affirming care for adults. The Ohio governor backed off in response to the public outcry. While the youth restrictions are still in place, at least they weren’t expanded to adults.
The federal government is taking action. Title IX, also known as the Patsy Takemoto Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, was passed in 1972. It’s most well-known for its impact on equality in athletics. Schools that receive federal funding have to offer women’s sports, basically, and they can’t racially discriminate in sports. President Biden’s administration issued a new set of Title IX rules, and one of the new areas addressed is discrimination against students based on gender identity. That’s a new category. After sorting through 240,000 public comments, the Biden administration concluded that transgender kids are more likely to be bullied, harassed, and hurt by cisgender kids than vice versa. Thus, protections for transgender kids are put in place.
The new rules take effect in August. Perhaps, maybe, possibly, a nationwide policy of non-discrimination and non-harassment against transgender school kids will work the same way the Obergefell decision did for gay marriage. All the overblown fears will evaporate into the total nothingburger they’ve always been. The culture war against trans kids and trans individuals will be exposed as nothing more than unnecessary and superfluous religious beliefs (as opposed to important religious beliefs like believing Christ is the Savior). Don’t use your religious beliefs to hurt other people. That’s just not cool.
- Do you think conservatives are gradually softening on the issue of trans rights?
- Do you hear any pushback against gay marriage anymore? From anyone who isn’t a religious conservative, I mean. I can’t think of any secular reasons to attack gay marriage rights.
- Have your views on gay marriage and/or trans rights changed over the years? Please feel free to share your story.
Wheat & Tares 
I would also add that the Church was heavily involved in 2000 in Prop 22. After the state supreme court, in 2008, invalidated it in In re Marriage cases, the same Prop 22 clowns(politest term I can think of) came up with Prop 8. I would also add, those clowns tried to use prop 22 to get rid of domestic partnerships
I have shared my story at least a few times here of my very rapid transition from believing the Church’s position on LGBTQ issues, so I won’t repeat it here. Suffice it to say that having meaningful relationships with gay people, and then realizing I had had a bunch of other relationships with more gay people that weren’t out of the closet when I was younger, combined with a bit of effort to educate myself caused me to change my thinking.
And, I think that’s a big part of why things have been slower for trans people. There just aren’t as many trans people around. I’m not a super social person, but even I have had relationships with a number of people that are gay. However, I don’t have a relationship of any sort with anyone that I know is trans. I know *of* people that are trans, who I could recognize by face if I saw them in public, but I don’t know them personally. You have to be living under a rock to not personally know anyone who is gay, but I think there are probably a number of people like me who have never had a trans friend. I think gay rights moved along so rapidly because so many people had realized that they had meaningful relationships with gay people, once these gay people finally felt safe enough to come out of the closet, that they just couldn’t understand why these people couldn’t be married and treated equally just like straight people. Because not as many people have trans friends, I think progress is slower for them. That’s one factor, anyway.
This is complete speculation, and I could be completely wrong, but I do suspect that there are members of the Q15 who would like to make things significantly better in the Church for LGBTQ people. The problem is–besides the fact that Dallin Oaks’ 91-year-old heart continues to beat–that Church sponsored efforts to enlist membership to spend time and money to support Prop 8, which as the OP noted was only 16 years ago) as well as the near canonization of The Family Proclamation make it very difficult for the Church to quickly pivot on this issue. If you thought the whiplash reaction the Church experienced from the unannounced, but now apparently approved roles of women as stated in Camille Johnson’s recent talk, was strong, wait until you see the reaction from its members who spent many hours and a bunch of money alienating their neighbors campaigning for Prop 8 or whose gay kid committed suicide after being rejected by their own family because of The Family Proclamation if the Church suddenly saw the light and welcomed LGBTQ people. I mean, it’s the absolutelyh the right thing to do, and I suspect at least some top Church leaders know it, but I wonder if some leaders feel that they have to let more time pass while they remain mostly silent on these topics and allow institutional memory to fade, before feel they can take substantive action without alienating too many members who suffered due to the Church’s current positions.
Another thing holding up change on LGBTQ issues in the Church is the apparent requirement for unanimity amongst a body of 15 very conservative men who were all born before the year 1960. I mean, who knows when it will be possible to get all 15 of these men to unanimously to reverse themselves on what the Family Proclamation says about LGBTQ people, especially when they just pick people who think just like they do when they need a new member.
<warning: deeply pessimistic comment incoming>
I think there are some folks that are softening, but from the outside looking in, the anti-gender movement (as it’s called in scholarly circles) sees transphobia as a means of reinforcing gender and sex-based essentialism- including sexuality -as well as using it as a wedge to divide the LGBTQ+ populations and their allies.
It isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s getting worse.
Check out Project 25 of the Heritage Foundation. The recently updated policy platform of the Texas state Republican Party.
Has support for gay marriage gone up in the past 2-3 years- or gone down?
We are amidst a wave of conservative retrenchment and while I think it too will pass, I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of this phase’s worst atrocities yet. Speaking of both the US and Canada, there are just too many domestic and international actors that are incentivized to ride this bull farther into the scaffolding of liberal democratic institutions.
I am afraid.
oof! shoulda proofread that first paragraph better.
Comfort and steady your loved ones. This next election cycle of yours is gonna be rough!
My ideas have been changing over time. I avoided all political news for lots of years because if I talked about politics it caused conflict in my marriage, even when we were in agreement and totally Republican. When the pandemic came I started following the news desperately because there are three asthmatics in my home, and one of my children’s problems are so serious he has a pulmonologist and has been admitted to the hospital with pneumonia repeatedly.
I was watching when Trump suggested people inject themselves with bleach to treat covid. I knew my family’s lives were in danger with him in the Whitehouse. I knew I had no choice but to oppose him. So I started really researching politics and religion to try to understand if it would be ethically wrong to vote Democrat. I joined Mormon Women for Ethical Government. I met LGBTQ people and their families online and heard about politics in a way I never had before. I started listening to all kinds of podcasts on religious and political topics, and hearing about all kinds of experiences.
I started posting on FB about COVID, hoping my conservative friends, family, neighbors and ward members would take pity on my family and take precautions. Didn’t work, but I broke the ice of trying to fit in and people please, and now I say anything I want totally publicly about politics or religion. I make lots of people uncomfortable (though they mostly don’t dare say anything). If you don’t like it block me. I do not exist to make you comfortable. I matter too.
One day I was sharing with someone I love about a podcast I was listening to about an LDS mom who advocates for her gay son, and other LGBTQ people. I raised my fist in the air and said “It’s my church too, not just President Nelson’s. I am not going anywhere and I won’t shut up and pretend things are right that are wrong.”
It was a couple weeks later that this person came out to me about being transgender. They still are not out publicly and do not feel safe to come out as long as Trump may yet win. After they came out I understood, it’s not us and them, it’s all us. In my conservative community, in every space you are in, there are LGBTQ people and their families who haven’t dared tell you. Since I started posting pro LGBTQ things on FB, other people in my ward have quietly shared their own LGBTQ convictions and connections. I am so grateful to God for leading me to faith expansion. My transgender loved one needed my support and couldn’t get it until I expanded my faith.
Canadian Dude, we are afraid too. But sitting in silence isn’t going to help. I know lots of people love me that are conservative. Let them feel guilty when they scroll past a pic of me wearing a t shirt that says “Fight like a mother for trans rights!” I hope they find they have to think a little about how their vote may hurt me. I hang on to hope, at least for the long run.
I agree the fight is not yet won or lost. And Canadian Dude is right that trans issues are being used to advance gender essentialism. As I understand it, gender essentialism is the idea that women are naturally more nurturing and want to bear children, while men are naturally more whatever that gets power and money. I dunno. I tune out that stuff as much as I can. I’m cis and gender non-conforming – masculine hairstyle, no makeup, naturally flat chested, taller than the average woman. I’m (kind of) looking forward to being mistaken for trans in the ladies room someday, so I can make a big fuss about how stupid that law is.
The same arguments used by transphobes will be used to attack gay rights and women’s rights. I hope that message is getting out there too. Even someone who is on the fence about trans rights can see how quickly attacks on trans people spread to attacks on gay rights and women’s rights. It’s all human rights. People can be tricked into thinking you can oppress one class and still have rights for another class, but the message is spreading that it doesn’t work that way.
I just put a pride flag in my yard for the first time ever. I’ve been nervous for a long time. I like my TBM conservative neighbors, and I worried about how my sons would handle it if their friends rag them about it. This year, I followed lws329’s example and finally am visible to people who know me offline too.
About a week ago a lady in my ward asked me why my wife and I don’t come to church anymore. I said you know I have a gay daughter who’s married and has two children, who I dearly love. I then said I’m tired of having to defend them everytime I go to church and listen to all the antigay, antitrans, rhetoric in the halls. She nodded her head and it appeared to understand.
Are conservatives getting softer on the issue? Maybe some are starting to see what’s happening to the church and it’s members because of the hard stands but others are hardening and broadening their views to “judge” other groups starting with Trans but going on from there.
I still hear pushback because people don’t care unless it’s someone in their family and even then it’s the classic “yes, but” answers that completely gaslight their loved ones.
My story is realizing that love at home is broader than just loving my “good” kids but truly loving and trying to understand those who choose alternative lifestyles and recognizing their bravery and intelligence. I’ve been able to enrich my life by getting to know and love their friends as well. The sad thing is when I talked in church about loving your family or trying to love you fellow humans like the scriptures say it feel on either deaf ears for the “yes/but” explanations that allow us to justify our beliefs with no real thought.
It has been sad to not have the “fellowship” of my ward neighbors on a weekly basis but it’s been better not to have anxiety every Saturday night about what someone would say to me or how they judged me.
Great analysis, Janey. Here are some very anecdotal observations from my corner of the world:
I went to high school in a very progressive part of the U.S., but back then (1990s) it was still socially acceptable for boys to lob homophobic insults at each other, even tolerated as good-natured ribbing in the locker room. I didn’t know any gay classmates at the time, though I knew several who came out later in life. My own positions evolved slowly over time, especially after I watched the aftermath of Prop 8 up close, and discovered that the earth did not completely unravel as Church leaders had predicted. Now, I have a teenage daughter who has many people in her social circles who identify as queer or non-binary, and it’s almost a non-issue. My daughter treats them like regular people, because to her generation, those identities have no stigma associated with them, just different ways of being. When I try to explain how different things were for LGBTQ people when I was her age, she finds it baffling, like it doesn’t compute. And she finds it just as baffling when conservative politicians like DeSantis make news for pushing anti-LGBTQ agendas in their states. It gives me some hope for the future. She and her peers aren’t old enough to vote yet, but they will be in 2028, and more of the old guard will have died off by then.
I remember learning about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement while growing up in school, and I simply could not fathom how massive, state-sponsored discrimination could happen, especially living in a diverse area with classmates of many ethnic backgrounds, and I didn’t think much of it at all. Meanwhile, my boomer parents, who had vivid memories of the 1960s (and certainly remembered 1978) just gave knowing looks whenever I pointed out the absurdity of American racism. I imagine that’s similar to what I’m experiencing now as my daughter takes for LGBTQ acceptance for granted.
A few months ago, one of the beloved older members of my ward (80+, former bishop, current full-time temple worker) made a comment in EQ disparaging the growing acceptance of LGBTQ identities, going full DHO in his rhetoric. He explained that this very issue is currently driving a wedge between him and one of his adult daughters (I happen to know that 4 of his 5 adult children are completely out of the Church), but that we will be blessed for “holding fast to the truth”. I’m very sad for this man, especially as this issue is needlessly estranging him from his children and grandchildren. He is willing to die to defend a ridiculous man-made set of policies, rather partake in the joy of learning Christlike love for others. So yes, these attitudes persist in the Church, but their days are numbered.
I’m all for gay marriage rights and for trans folks to declare who they are and expect us to respect that. We should do everything we can to accept everyone.
I would also like to see us (the country) continue to stand up for women. For example, let’s not allow a redefinition of Title IX to allow for trans women (men who transitioned to women) to play girls’ / women’s sports.
I’m ashamed to admit that during AZ’s response to prop 8, I was asked to hold a sign outside of the polling location. I selected 6am so nobody would see me but at the time I didnt have the courage to tell the church “no.” I was trying to have it both ways. Now I go to church twice a year and I wear an ally flag on my shirt.
I completely support LBGT rights but at risk of getting flamed here the one area I don’t grasp yet is trans women in women’s sports. The girl with the size 14 shoes will win most of the time. I tend to think ideas around that are still evolving.
My mind changed when I was a bishop and spoke with several youth who faced crushing depression knowing they may never have a romantic companion. Once I told a YW that she’d eventually have to choose between the church and mental health. It wasn’t an ultimatum but rather a statement of fact. Her parents were furious…
I like to follow the example of Christ and one of his true believers, Mr Rogers. Everyone was his neighbor and he sang a song “Everybody’s Fancy” to teach people the truth.
@lws329
I commend your spirit and I agree, silence and fatalism isn’t the answer.
My comment was only to help manage expectations. This wave of hate has likely a decade of life in it still.
It’s been incrementally getting worse since 2016 or longer. My gut feeling is that there’s something different about our current information and sociopolitical environment that sustains these panics better than we appreciated.
Had you asked me 10 yrs ago I would have guessed that our fast-paced, social media environment hinders rather than helps hate movements remain relevant.
And I’d have been wrong.
Grifters can now connect better to whatever audiences are most motivated to maintain them. Disinformation is actually cheaper now to produce than to counter. Barring stupidity (I.e. taking selfies maskless while trespassing on government property), I actually think it’s easier now for people to participate In hate groups than it was in the past. It’s also become normalized sadly.
So yes, fight. But fight with the knowledge that this going to get worse, and last longer than the current Republican nominee’s immediate relevance.
Post-Trump, the people that supported/enabled the former president will still remain kingmakers in the Republican Party. The former-president himself will also likely be a kingmaker. As in they nigh-literally want a king.
I am confident that democracy and human decency can and will prevail, but upon reading the blog post, I felt it important to still emphasize that this anti-gender movement will probably be longer-lived than its predecessors.
I’m a little younger than OP and a straight dude, but I followed largely the same trajectory: dutifully defending bans on gay marriage as a teen in the ‘90s and BYUI student in the ‘00s because I’d been taught to at church, for reasons that sure seemed important at the time but can’t remember anymore.
I do remember giving defenses of the church’s involvement in Prop 8 to my grad school friends in 2008, but even then my heart wasn’t in it. Certainly by the time the POX fiasco went down in ‘15, I wasn’t even pretending to defend the Church’s position on gay marriage. GK Chesterton once said that those who’ve lost their charity have also lost their logic, and even to a slow straight dude like me, there was self-evidently neither charity nor logic in preventing gay people from marrying.
In any case, once all the anti-Trans panic began a few years ago, I very matter-of-factly recognized it as all the exact same anti-Gay marriage rhetoric (it’s just a phase! These kids don’t know themselves! It’s unnatural! It’s unscientific! They’re pedophiles! We have to ban it for the good of society! Won’t someone think of the children!) in only a slightly different context, and just as unconvincing. Fool me once and all that.
Someone once said that conservatism’s central philosophy is simply that there must be an in-group whom the law protects but not binds, and an out-group whom the law bids but not protects. I used to think that was overly simplistic, but now I suspect that the panic about Trans people is just the hunt for another out-group after losing the gay marriage fight.
Happy Pride, Janey, and anybody else out there celebrating!
As a teen, I participated in the Church’s support-but-keep-it-quiet campaign for Prop 22. I was sure it was the right thing: my parents said so, beloved ward leaders said so. I was baffled as to why we had to keep it on the DL and have since realized Hinckley was way savvier than anybody who’s held the reins since. After my time at BYU, I came back to CA for my PhD. I’d had plenty of gay friends and was sharing an office with another grad student who had a domestic partnership with her girlfriend. They were observant Jews and wanted very much to get married. By the time the Church threw its whole institutional weight behind Prop 8, I knew I had to vote no. Church was miserable for me. I left early, cried in my car—my faith transition was already underway but this accelerated it beyond anything I could’ve predicted. What the Church was doing and compelling its members to do was so clearly wrong, so opposed to the teachings of Jesus as I understood them, so cruel. I tried to speak up when and where I thought it might help. I volunteered to drive people to the polls because I believe in the right to vote, but I refused to be involved in any other way. My “no” vote at the age of twenty-six was a defining moment for me. I knew from then on I wouldn’t and couldn’t be the kind of Mormon my parents raised me to be, the only kind our leadership seems to want. It was a painful moment, but a proud one.
As for trans rights, they are literal lifesavers. I do have people in my life who are trans, and I admire them deeply. They and their families have gone through a lot. To those who say they don’t know many trans folks: you may have trans people in your life and not be aware. Two of the people I know are young men who transitioned in their teens. If I didn’t know them growing up, I wouldn’t know they are trans.
I think that some (though not many) of the questions raised about participation in sports deserve discussion. I also think there are legitimate discussions to have about medical transitioning, age, and standards of care. The sad thing is we’ve come to a place where we seem incapable of evidence-based, affirming discussions on these issues. And who does it hurt most? Our trans siblings, of course.
“The culture war has (largely) moved on. Now, the big threat to some undefined ideal society is trans rights.”
It’s absolutely tragic that so much political energy has been wasted on demonizing natural human differences when there are so many real problems in our society to deal with. When people have to crowdfund their cancer treatments, when both parents have to work to make ends meet, when home prices are out of control, when teachers and nurses are bowing out because they can’t make a living, when you can feel the inflation in your grocery bill, and when the global temperature rises resulting in freakish weather and natural disasters, how can we possibly be this concerned about who marries whom and who gets to play on which sports team?
I second JB’s comment.
Josh h: I can’t speak for all women who play competitive sports. With respect to my daughters and their friends, they could care less if a transgender woman plays sports with them. My daughters are not extremely competitive and are not in the running for any sort of sports scholarships so I think they view sports as a great way to make friends and learn skills and therefore find nothing about a transgender woman joining the team incompatible with their sports experience. I fully recognize YMMV.
I just have to say Janey you are impossible not to like. Someday, I hope to be able to meet you. You are an inspiration not only to me but my children. They know who you are.
I recommend all of you watch the documentary, The Case Against 8. It is illuminating and inspiring. You will see how futile the case for Prop 8 was, and how terribly misguided the church was for supporting it.
I am a professional surveyor by trade. Recently, we conducted a national survey on marriage. Two-thirds of registered voters support gay marriage. When those who used to oppose it were asked why did you change your position, the majority said, “When I paused to think about it, supporting the institution of marriage even among gay citizens just made sense.” Other self-identified conservatives said they believed supporting gay marriage was good for the rule of law. The Church lost and lost big. Ted Olson, George Bush’s solicitor general and father of a gay daughter, joined with David Boies to overturn Prop 8. Their combined efforts would lead to the legalization of gay marriage.
The church could not have taken a more precarious position. So much for their prophetic vision in such matters. Still, leaders like Jeffrey Holland can’t get over it.
BigSky – Thanks! I’ve got an ear-to-ear grin right now. That really just made my day. I would love to meet you too. Say hi to your kids from me! Sometimes I think wistfully about a W&T convention where we can all spend a weekend in a hotel together, wearing nametags with our screen names on them and talking like old friends.
And folks, I’m going to post about the issue of transgender girls and high school sports next week.
As with many issues these days, I see the majority of Americans moving towards being more and more supportive of LGBTQ rights, which makes the most bigoted 10-20% become scared and very vocal. In a dozen years, support in Utah for same sex marriage has gone from 30-something percent to 60-something percent. It will likely keep climbing. The only recent complaining I’ve heard on the topic was last year in stake conference when a visiting 70 blamed pretty much all modern problems on unspecified “issues that weren’t a problem 30 years ago”. I couldn’t figure out what that would mean other than LGBTQ rights. It was a bizarre address straight out of the 1990s.
I went to high school in the 90s, and my path on all things LGBTQ is pretty similar to other commenters. In the 90s, homosexuality seemed wrong and gross. In the 2000s I had come to the conclusion that there was no good reason to impose my morals on other people. Gradually I came to realize that being a good person has to include more than simply not terrorizing a minority group.
It is amazing how many people experience a change of opinion when they realize that they know queer people. When these people are your family and neighbors rather than nebulous “others” it becomes much harder to discriminate against them. Sadly, some still do. To anyone who doesn’t know a trans person, you are either extremely isolated, or the trans people you know haven’t let you know that they are trans. Take a moment to think about why a trans person wouldn’t tell you they are trans.
My son had a trans friend. Her friends knew she was trans, I knew she was trans. Her parents did not know she was trans. When her parents found out she just disappeared. She was unenrolled from school, she is unreachable via phone, text, email, discord or the internet in general. Her friends have resorted to mailing letters to her home address, which go unanswered. People in her ward report that she does not go to church. It is as if she ceased to exist. I can only imagine that most of the trans kids at the high school know this story. And this is the reality of being a trans kid in Mormondom today. Faced with the unknown, kids have to at least entertain the possibility that this is how their parents will react. If you don’t know any LGBTQ people, it is because they do not consider you trustworthy.
We are all, hopefully, learning to love others more perfectly. I believe that includes accepting and loving LGBTQ people for who they are. This is a process that can take time. Finding out that your child is gay, or trans, or non-binary means changing some expectations for the future. It might mean changing what you call them. It takes time for brains to adapt. We should all give grace to those who are trying. My son spent a year or so in the non-binary category before sliding over to the trans category. He’s learning through the process and so are his parents. But my experience is that treating him the way he wants to be treated makes a world of difference for him and for our family. I’ll leave it at that for today. I’m sure this June will have a few more opportunities for me to write too much about all of this.
I kind of hope there’s some other Prop 8-like moment where the church insists on all its members doing their part to canvas, hold signs, get signatures, etc. I want to see who participates and who doesn’t.
I suspect it would not go the church’s way this time, and they know it.
DaveW: “a visiting 70 blamed pretty much all modern problems on unspecified “issues that weren’t a problem 30 years ago”. I couldn’t figure out what that would mean other than LGBTQ rights.”
Hmm, social media? Deglobalization? Putin, Erdogan, Modi, etc.? Climate change? The meth epidemic? Covid? Rick rolling started in 2007, although the song is 20 years older.
DaveW
How disappeared? Have the police done a wellness check? What about Child Protective Services?
I realize parents get to parent, but sending your child to the scarecrow in the cornfield is a little much.