Prayers for Bobby: An Open Letter to Mormon Parents

“He must have seen the large tractor trailer approaching from under the Couch Street overpass and timed the jump. Bobby executed a sudden and effortless back flip and disappeared over the railing. The driver tried to swerve, but there was no time … Robert Warren Griffith, age twenty years and two months, had died instantly of massive internal injuries.” 

~ Prayers for Bobby

I have written about Prayers for Bobby before, some time ago. It is both a nonfiction book written by Leroy Aaron and a movie by the same name. For some reason, I have felt impressed to write about it again; it's message bears repeating.

Mary Griffith, Bobby’s mother, wanted the best for her children – not material things, per se, but a good home environment that was centered on faith and trust in God and living according to the teachings of the Bible. She loved her children and wanted no empty chairs for her family in the life hereafter.

Bobby was a near contemporary of mine, but unlike me, he came out to his parents in his senior year in high school. He was a kind, bright, sensitive young man who had been a devoted member of his parents’ church. Yet, he came to sense that there was something different about him. Something awful. Something he didn’t want, but couldn’t deny: he was attracted to men.

When he came out, his mother undertook an unrelenting campaign to “change” her son. His self-confessed homosexuality ran counter to everything she believed in. She could not accept this in her child. She felt that if she just tried hard enough, prayed hard enough, God would cure her son and everything would be as it was supposed to be. She quoted scripture, assured Bobby that he could change if he really tried, bolstered by the teachings of her church and her understanding of the Bible.  Bobby tried, but came to hate himself more than ever. Eventually, the seemingly irreconcilable conflict within him drove him to suicide. He simply couldn’t live with himself anymore.

"If only we had known ..."

It was only after her son’s death, as she agonized over whether or not Bobby’s suicide had consigned him to hell, that Mary Griffith's grief drove her to deeply examine not only her conscience but the religious teachings that had driven her zealous campaign to “save” her son. She eventually came, after an intense period of self-examination, prayer and study, to the horrifying conclusion that her son had been sacrificed on the altar of her religious fanaticism.

“Looking back,” she wrote, “I realize how depraved it was to instill false guilt in an innocent child’s conscience, causing a distorted image of life, God and self, leaving little if any feeling of personal worth … What a travesty of God’s love, for children to grow up believing themselves to be evil, with only a slight inclination toward goodness, convinced that they will remain undeserving of God’s love from birth to death.”

In a letter to Bobby three years after his death, Mary wrote:

“We were not aware (at first) of the conflict that was slowly breaking your spirit … You were the apple of God’s eye just as you were. If we had only known. Out of the many discussions we had, the one phrase that comes back to me is the age-old chant, ‘You can change if you want to.’ How that must have angered and hurt you. You began to feel like you did not fit into your family anymore. You wanted to believe that you were not the person the Bible had interpreted you to be. You were at the mercy, as we all are, of the false interpretations of the Bible concerning homosexuality …”

A turning point for Mary came as she spoke at a local city council meeting about something as innocuous as approving a resolution calling for a “Gay Freedom Day.” In a scene brilliantly acted by Sigourney Weaver in the movie based on the book (see clip below), Mary made an impassioned plea to the council members and her community:

“Because of my own lack of knowledge, I became dependent upon people in the clergy.  When the clergy condemns a homosexual person to hell and eternal damnation, we the congregation echo, ‘Amen.’ I deeply regret my lack of knowledge concerning gay and lesbian people.  Had I allowed myself to investigate what I now see as Bible bigotry and diabolical dehumanizing slander against our fellow human beings, I would not be looking back with regret for having relinquished my ability to think and reason with other people …  

“God did not heal or cure Bobby as he, our family, and clergy belived he should.  It is obvious to us now why he did not.  God has never been encumbered by his child’s genetically determined sexuality.  God is pleased that bobby had a kind and loving heart.  In God’s eyes, kindess and love are what life is all about.  I did not know that each time I echoed ‘Amen’ to external damnation, each time I referred to Bobby as sick, perverted and a danger to our children, his self-esteem and personal worth were being destroyed.  Finally, his spirit broke beyond repair.  He could no longer rise above the injustice of it all …

“It was not God’s will that bobby jumped over the side of a freeway overpass into the path of an eighteen-wheel truck which killed him instantly.  Bobby’s death was the direct result of his parents’ ignorance and fear of the word gay … There are no words to express the pain and emptiness remaining in our hearts.  We miss Bobby’s kind and gentle ways, his fun-loving spirit, his laughter.  Bobby’s hopes and dreams should not have been taken from him, but they were.  We can’t have Bobby back. 

“There are children like Bobby sitting in your congregations.  Unknown to you, they will be listening to your ‘Amens’ as they silently cry out to God in their hearts.  Their cries will go unnoticed for they cannot be heard above your ‘Amens.”  Your fear and ignorance … will soon silence their cries.  Before you echo ‘Amen’ in your home and place of worship, think and remember.  A child is listening.” 

Returning again to the letter Mary wrote to her son three years after his suicide, Mary lamented: “I believed I was doing right the name of Christ. I did now know my soul; my conscience was in bondage to the people and ministers who stand in God’s stead. I went along in blind allegiance, unwittingly persecuting, oppressing gay and lesbian people – my own son. The scales of ignorance and fear that kept my soul in darkness have [now] fallen from the eyes of my soul, my conscience.  I have been set free to have faith in, trust the dictates of my conscience.”

Mary then wrote these words that never cease to move me, no matter how many times I read them:  

“I would rather be branded a heretic while helping a child of God out of the gutters of this world, where the church and I have thrown them, than to pass by on the other side muttering under our breath, ‘The wages of sin are death.’  Rather this that to look away from the pain and humiliation of a child lying helpless. The heart that hungers and thirsts for God’s love will find it in the Bible. It has been said the eyes are the mirror of one’s soul. When we look into God’s mirror [the Bible] will we see God’s reflection of love gazing back? Or will we see an evil reflection of man’s inhumanity?”

The Empty Chair

I was a member of the LDS Church for almost 30 years of my adult life. I am a parent. I myself was once as Saul, driven by my deep self-hatred, my homophobia, to embrace the teachings of the Church concerning homosexuality. I had bought into them myself and was, to my shame, guilty of bigotry.  Fortunately, the only person I hurt through such acts was myself. Yet, I have experienced, in other situations, the intense pain and regret that has come through putting the Church and its teachings ahead of the welfare of my children. I have repented of such actions and vowed never again to let anything stand between me and my children.   

There is much that could be written on and about this subject; but for now, I would simply implore Mormon parents who know or suspect that they have a son or daughter who is gay (or, if you prefer, struggling with feelings of same-sex attraction) to read Prayers for Bobby and/or watch the movie by the same name and then to open your hearts and minds to its message.  

You may not realize how close your child is, or may have been, to resolving the conflict in their hearts and minds the way in which Bobby Griffith did. You may not fully appreciate the pain in your child’s heart. You may not have ever allowed yourself to question the religious teachings that may have caused a separation between you and your son or your daughter. Please do it now, before it becomes too late and you lose your precious child, either through death or alienation, and you mourn not the empty chair in heaven but the empty chair in your own house where he or she could have been sitting, smiling back at you.

Alma vs. Oaks: Religion in Civil Society

One of the primary arguments of the State of Utah in its recently filed brief with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals focuses on "preserving Utah’s marriage definition [because it] furthers the State’s vital interests in accommodating religious freedom and reducing the potential for civic strife." 

"Protecting" religious "freedom" has become a common theme among certain conservative religious leaders around the country, including members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and members of the LDS Church's hierarchy. Elder Dallin Oaks of the Church's quorum of apostles has been particularly vocal on this issue.

In partial response to Utah's brief, I am republishing the following post which was originally published on my Invictus Pilgrim blog in February 2011. I think it is as timely now as it was then.

*********

At another time in my life, I, like most members of the Church, would read what Elder Oaks has said about religious freedom in modern American life and, given that he had an impressive legal career prior to becoming an apostle, assume that he was making valid points that were not only inspired, but based solidly in American constitutional law and tradition. That was at another time in my life. 

This past Friday, Dallin Oaks gave a speech at the law school of Chapman University in California, entitled “Preserving Religious Freedom," the complete transcript of which (along with a video) is available here.  Though I have a legal background, I am not learned in constitutional law and do not propose to comment on Elder Oaks speech from that perspective. But I do not think one needs to be a constitutional scholar to take issue with the basic points that Oaks makes in his address. (It should be kept in mind that Oaks was not addressing an LDS audience in General Conference, but a non-Mormon audience in a secular environment.)

Since he conveniently summarized them at the conclusion of his remarks, I will use these (set out below in bold) as an outline for my comments, heading various sections with his summary points.

One could respond to Elder Oaks’ speech from a number of different perspectives and in a number of different ways. I have chosen to analyze Oak’s comments within the context of a comparison of Elder Oaks’ views on the role of religion in civil society to those of Alma the Younger. Those familiar with the Book of Mormon will remember that, in the first chapters of the Book of Alma, Alma was serving as both high priest of the church as well as chief judge, thus combining ecclesiastical and political power in one person. Because of growing iniquity in the church, however, he eventually decided that he needed to do something. 

Interestingly, however, Alma did not choose to use his political power to enforce standards of morality among his people. Rather, he resigned as chief judge and devoted himself to preaching to the members of the church, “seeing no way that he might reclaim them save it were in bearing down in pure testimony against them … confin[ing] himself wholly to the high priesthood of the holy order of God, to the testimony of the word, according to the spirit of revelation and prophecy” (Alma 4:19-20).

After discussing Elder Oaks’ comments, I would like to return to Alma’s actions in order to compare the way in which Alma chose to address societal “immorality” and lack of belief, versus the positions that Elder Oaks advocates.

Oaks Point #1: “Religious teachings and religious organizations are valuable and important to our free society and therefore deserving of their special legal protection.”

As support for this proposition, Elder Oaks basically makes the argument that religious organizations do a lot of good work in society and teach people to be moral, which in turn supports a stable society and, hence, government. Because of these services, Oaks argues, religious organizations and teachings deserve special legal (as opposed to simply cultural) protection. Among many other things, implicit in Oaks’ statements is that religious speech (i.e., teachings) deserves special legal protection, above any other kind of speech – an important foundation for the rest of his arguments. 

Oaks treats his proposition as self-evident, needing no basis in law or tradition – which he does not in fact cite. Rather, after treating his point as self-evident, he goes on to decry the deterioration of faith in society and implies that this situation provides even more justification for his position.

But why, in fact, should religious organizations, let alone religious teachings be granted special legal protection in 21st- century American society? This is the question that Oaks does not answer. Given that this assertion is the foundation for the rest of his arguments, it deserves careful and critical scrutiny. I will leave this to others. For the purpose of this post, I will simply contrast this approach to the legal status afforded religion with that described in the first part of the Book of Alma as pertaining to Nephite society. Alma did not seek legal buttressing of his preaching; rather he approached the issue from the opposite perspective:  he viewed his preaching as buttressing the legal framework of society.

Oaks Point #2: “Religious freedom undergirds the origin and existence of this country and is the dominating civil liberty.”

Again this assertion, at least the first half of it, sounds totally reasonable on first hearing. But I find the combination of the historical role of religious freedom with the assertion that it is the “dominating civil liberty” disingenuous and, some might argue, insidious. The acknowledgement of the first half of the assertion is apparently intended to lend credence to rather striking assertion that religious freedom is the “dominant liberty” in the panoply of individual rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

Oaks offers no scholarly support for this assertion. He cites one document, a report prepared in 1999, but does not identify the authors. Once again, he makes an extremely broad assertion with no authority, treating his conclusion as self-evident. He concludes this section of his speech with a statement which strikes me as breathtaking in its scope: “I maintain, that in our nation's founding and in our constitutional order religious freedom and its associated First Amendment freedoms of speech and press are the motivating and dominating civil liberties and civil rights.” 

Once again, I leave it to others to discourse in a more scholarly fashion on the many implications of this statement. I will simply point out that I find this assertion extraordinary and dangerous, if for no other reason that it purports to again hand organized religion a “trump card” that ensures that freedom of religion trumps every other right guaranteed to American citizens under the Constitution.

Oaks Point #3: “The guarantee of free exercise of religion is weakening in its effects and in public esteem.”

The bulk of Oaks’ speech is directed to a discussion of this point. Having established, in his view, that religious teachings and organizations deserve special legal protection and that freedom of religion (including the all-important right to exercise one’s religion) is the “dominant” civil right, Oaks launches into a lengthy discussion of how the right to exercise (whatever that term means) one’s religion is under assault in modern America. I will focus on only a few of Oaks’ comments, particularly those having to do with gay rights. 

Before launching an attack on gay rights advocates, Oaks plainly highlights one of the main themes of his address: “Religion must preserve its preferred status in our pluralistic society in order to make its unique contribution—its recognition and commitment to values that transcend the secular world."  He then refers to comments that Cardinal Francis George made when speaking at BYU in 2010, who spoke of “threats to religious freedom in America that are new to our history and to our tradition,” one of these being “the development of gay rights and the call for same-sex 'marriage.'"

Oaks describes a number of examples of how he feels that religion has been denied its place in the “public square” by gay rights advocates. In the process, he manages to totally distort the entire debate between those who seek equal civil rights for gays and those, such as the LDS Church, who seek to deny, on religious grounds, these civil rights. In addition to his previous assertions that religious organizations and beliefs should enjoy special legal protection and that freedom of religion is the “dominant” civil right, he now claims that the act of those who assert civil rights for gays is an attack on the freedom of religion (and must therefore be quashed).

“Along with many others,” said Oaks, “I see a serious threat to the freedom of religion in the current assertion of a “civil right" of homosexuals to be free from religious preaching against their relationships. Religious leaders of various denominations affirm and preach that sexual relations should only occur between a man and a woman joined together in marriage. One would think that the preaching of such a doctrinal belief would be protected by the constitutional guarantee of the free exercise of religion, to say nothing of the guarantee of free speech. However, we are beginning to see worldwide indications that this may not be so.  Religious preaching of the wrongfulness of homosexual relations is beginning to be threatened with criminal prosecution or actually prosecuted or made the subject of civil penalties.”

Almost all of the examples cited by Oaks of such “prosecution” involve persons who are trying to assert personal religious beliefs in governmental or quasi-governmental environments. In other words, these individuals have been called out by gay rights advocates for trying to use their public positions to espouse their own individual beliefs. So, not only does Oaks apparently believe that freedom of religion can be used as a “sword” (enjoying special legal protection and status) in public debate, it can also be used as a “shield” to protect it from responsibility for its actions and comments in the “public square” (a classic case in point being the Church’s involvement with Proposition 8). 

Oaks Point #4: “This weakening [of religious freedom] is attributable to the ascendancy of moral relativism.”

This point is pretty much self-explanatory: Oakes decries the “rise” of moral relativism and the corresponding decrease of respect for organized religion. He then concludes with this statement:

“The preservation of religious freedom in our nation depends on the value we attach to the teachings of right and wrong in our churches, synagogues and mosques. It is faith in God—however defined—that translates these religious teachings into the moral behavior that benefits the nation. As fewer and fewer citizens believe in God and in the existence of the moral absolutes taught by religious leaders, the importance of religious freedom to the totality of our citizens is diminished. We stand to lose that freedom if many believe that religious leaders, who preach right and wrong, make no unique contribution to society and therefore should have no special legal protection.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sure seems to me that Elder Oaks is essentially saying that the fact that more and more people in society have less and less respect for organized religion militates even more strongly for a special legal protection being given to the “unique contribution” that organized religion makes to society. Nothing seems plainer to me, however, that the intent of the Founders was to ensure that organized religion did not enjoy a privileged place in American society. Rather, religion was to do its thing, and government was to do its thing. Period.

Put another way, Elder Oaks’ assertions appear to put new garb on the age-old practice of trying to legislate morality: rather than simply having the government do organized religion’s bidding, organized religion seeks special protection and status within society to advance its agenda.

Oaks concludes by calling for a “broad coalition” to defend religious liberty, as he sees it: “All that is necessary for unity and a broad coalition along the lines I am suggesting is a common belief that there is a right and wrong in human behavior that has been established by a Supreme Being.” The question, of course, is who decides what that right and wrong is, and how much privilege, deference and protection are religious organizations and beliefs to be accorded in society in advancing “religious” views of right and wrong.

Conclusion

Many, if not most, members of the LDS Church will cheer Elder Oaks’ comments without giving them any serious thought. The bells and whistles, the catch-phrases, the code words are all there, triggering emotional responses that evoke that often-deadly mix within many members of patriotism, faith and blind obedience. 

But I maintain that if thinking members of the Church would step back and consider the lesson of Alma from the Book of Mormon, as well as the ramifications of the central doctrine of the plan of salvation (free agency), they could not help but be deeply troubled by Elder Oaks’ comments. If organized religious organizations would do as Alma did, i.e., confining themselves “wholly to … the testimony of the word, according to the spirit of revelation and prophecy” then they would fulfill the task which Elder Oaks ascribes to them – without needing special status, privilege or protection in civil society.

Tillich: Of Grace, Providence and Cheeseburgers

I grew up in a small town in Southern Illinois called Carmi. Fourteen miles away, just across a rickety toll bridge over the Wabash River, was New Harmony, Indiana - a site of several communal living experiments in the first half of the 19th century. 

Mainly New Harmony was a place one drove through on the way to Evansville - the largest city within easy driving distance of Carmi. My parents would occasionally go there to shop for groceries, and it was here that I went to see a podiatrist who told me that I had the flattest feet in seven counties. When I was in high school, friends and I would occasionally go there to see a new release movie. This is where, for example, I saw the "Exorcist."

The bridge across the Wabash

The toll booth on the Illinois side of the river

I heard recently that this old bridge is going to be torn down. Back in the 70's, I think the toll was 25 cents. There are probably all kinds of stories that could be told about this bridge and toll booth. One that I recall was when Ruth Ann Smith, my employer when I worked as a bus boy at Two Tonys Smorgasbord in Carmi, told us how, instead of paying a quarter (or whatever it was) she handed the toll booth operator a cheeseburger and drove on.

But I digress. When I was a kid, my family occasionally went to New Harmony, and I recall the "Roofless Church" that is pictured in the lead photo. I also vaguely recall a park adjacent to the church dedicated to the memory of the German Lutheran theologian, Paul Tillich. In those days, I had no idea who Paul Tillich was, nor did I know that his ashes are interred in the garden. (Why I don't know - yet.)

I was introduced to Paul Tillich in my freshman year in college at Illinois Wesleyan University. (It's interesting ... I have written before about memory. As I have been thinking about that year at Wesleyan, memories have come back of hallways, of classrooms, of professors - places and people that I haven't thought about in years and thus thought that I had lost my memory of that time of my life. It is so exhilarating to experience the thrill of memory!)

That year really opened my mind to a lot of new ideas and concepts as I took Humanities classes and a religion class called "Man and His Quest for Meaning." It was in the latter that I first heard the terms "Christian existentialist" and "Christian Humanism" and read some writings of Tillich, who was a German Lutheran theologian and one of the most profound religious thinkers of the 20th century.

I was so taken with Tillich's writings that I read more than was assigned in class and even purchased the first volume of Tillich's Systematic Theology to read over the summer. But the following fall, I transferred to the University of Illinois, joined a fraternity and largely abandoned what I had found so exhilarating the previous year. What residual interest I had was extinguished when I joined the Mormon Church at age 24.

It wasn't until I came out three years ago and started on my (rather rapid) journey out of the Mormon Church that I once again encountered these words of Tillich, which resonated deeply:

This is only the last couple of sentences of a passage that speaks of grace and acceptance, both divine and by oneself - a passage that I plan to revisit and perhaps blog about.

In my reading over the past couple of months, I have run into numerous references to Tillich, most recently a couple of days ago in my reading in Catholic Means Universal, by David Richo. In writing about faith, Richo quoted the following passage from Tillich's book, The Shaking of Foundations:

"Faith in divine providence is the faith that nothing can prevent us from fulfilling the ultimate meaning of our existence. Providence does not mean a divine planning by which everything is predetermined ... Providence means that there is a creative and saving possibility implied in every situation, which cannot be destroyed by any event. Providence means that the demonic and destructive forces within ourselves and our world [such as those unleashed during the Second World War] can never have an unbreakable grasp upon us, and that the bond which connects us with the fulfilling love can never be disrupted."

Bust of Tillich in New Harmony, Indiana

Richo added his own thoughts about "providence." "Actually," he writes, "providence means that in the face of suffering, cruelty, death and injustice, we have it in us to go on loving ... It is not that external situations rectify themselves but that interior powers of love remain intact no matter what. Our capacity to love surveys the pain and abuse we have experienced."

This, I think, is a large part of where faith comes in. We, I, need to have the faith that, no matter what,  we have it in us to love, to go on loving, to grow in our capacity to love.

I'm grateful that I have discovered Tillich once again after all these years. This post turned out entirely different than what I had originally contemplated, and it is a grace that, through this post, I have continued to re-establish contact with and embrace who I was before I joined the Mormon Church.

Abuse, Redemption and the Power of Magic

This post was originally published in October-November 2011 as a series of posts on my original blog.

Sometimes deep insights come in the most peculiar places. The other day, I was sitting in the hot tub with Mark, and we were talking about our childhoods. The topic eventually got around to abuse I had suffered as a child and to how various Mormon doctrines of redemption had, over the years, affected how I had “processed” not only the abuse I myself experienced, but also the history of abuse in my family. 

As I was describing these doctrines to Mark, I experienced one of those moments in which I suddenly perceived, with stunning clarity, how doctrines in which I had passionately believed for almost 30 years were not only not true, but were mind-enslaving, soul destroying cancers that had eaten away at my sense of self for most of my life.

Such is the power of magic, the force of myth, carefully constructed. It dispenses the elixir of sanity, bewitches the believer, holds out the promise of transformation and proffers hope ~ but, alas, all is vaporous.  

Act I: Background

As I have written about from time to time on my blog, I experienced physical and emotional abuse when I was a child. Without going into details, suffice it to say that my mother – who was twice hospitalized in psychiatric wards, who suffered from depression and debilitating migraines and who was addicted throughout the first 10-12 years of my life to both prescription diet pills (speed) and sleeping pills (barbiturates) – could be a short-tempered woman who was physically powerful and prone to violence.

The only picture of my dad, my mom and me

My father, for his part, was largely absent during those years. It’s not as though I grew up on the “wrong side of the tracks,” however. We were, by outward appearances, a respectable, middle-class religious (Catholic) family. But appearances were deceiving. My father was absent because his sales job often required him to be out of town and because he was a workaholic; and though he knew about some of the abuse, and probably suspected more, he was happy, I think, to just try to ignore it.  He had his own issues with my mother, and I think he willfully shut his eyes to much of what was going on at home. He may have even been afraid of her.

As I got older, I tried to forget most of what had happened in my childhood. What I didn’t manage to forget, I simply took in stride. To me, it was my “normal.” To the extent I held things against my mother, I justified her behavior in my own mind due to the fact that she had herself been abused as a child: her father was very abusive, as was his father before him. 

Nell

I well remember my grandmother, Nell, talking about my grandfather. Nell divorced him in the depths of the Depression and was turned away by her own mother as a result. Through sheer grit, she managed to make it through the Dirty Thirty’s with my mother and one of her brothers in tow, her older brothers being farmed out to other relatives. Grandma described to me how my grandfather had pistol-whipped her, threatened her with a gun (until the neighbor lady came over, took the gun and threw it down the outdoor toilet), and otherwise abused her. 

Nell also described how mean her former father-in-law had been. “Herman,” she once told me, “was mean,” – her high-pitched nasal voice accentuating the word “mean” as she stared off into the distance, holding a lit Lucky Strike cigarette in her hand – “then,” turning back to look at me and pointing her hand toward me, cigarette dangling, “he turned nice … Then, he died.”  Grandma flicked her cigarette into the ashtray as if to emphasize the finality of death, then turned away again, looking once more down the tunnel into the past.

Grandma

Act II: Joining the Mormon Church

I frankly never thought much about the abuse I had experienced as a boy (and the effect it had had upon me) until I joined the Church.  It was then, upon being confronted with a deeply shameful past and family legacy in the face of what appeared to me to be picture-perfect Mormon families, that I first felt the need and sought ways to whitewash or otherwise excuse my mother’s actions (and my father’s inaction) towards me when I was a boy, as well as my family’s shameful history of abuse.

I think I also believed for a time (again, as a way to cover the shame that I felt when I joined the Mormon Church) that my mother’s abuse – along with my father’s emotional abandonment - was why I had “turned out” gay.  I think I wanted – at least for a time - to believe this.  It was perhaps convenient for me to be able to blame her in this way for a “condition” that I didn’t want.

When I joined the LDS Church, I saw in its doctrines and practices a means of (among other things) redeeming myself from my own homosexuality as well as the deeply shameful family legacy of abuse.

First of all, there were the temple ordinances I could perform for my deceased ancestors.  I strongly believed the LDS doctrine that I could be a “Savior on Mount Zion” (see Obadiah 1:21) for my abusive forebears and be a means of redemption to them.  Furthermore, as Joseph Smith taught, I could in so doing receive blessings myself (D&C 128:18).

This work helped me to feel special – that I was preordained to do this work, that out of all the many members of my extended family spanning generations and numbering into the thousands, I alone had been chosen because of pre-mortal valor to do this work.

It was heady stuff. But it was other-focused.  And it wasn’t healthy.  Many times over the years as I engaged in genealogical research and temple work, I would hear a nagging voice in the back of my mind saying, “You’re just doing this out of a vain attempt to create a sense of family that you never had as a child.  You’re trying to make yourself, and believe yourself to be special, because you were never treated as special when you were a child.”

Whenever I would hear that voice, I would tell myself it was the voice of Satan, trying to deter me from doing my foreordained work.  Under no circumstances could I allow myself to believe that voice, because the emotional and psychological costs of doing so were too great.  I could not allow myself to feel I wasn’t special.  I could not allow myself to examine my motives.  I had to keep the focus off myself.  I had to perpetuate the myth.

As important as this myth was to me, however, an even more important myth (which also arose out of LDS concepts of redemption) focused on other existential issues relating to abuse.  Shortly after I was married, I read the following quote in the Ensign (LDS Church magazine) by LDS psychologist Carlfred Broderick:

“[M]y experience in various church callings and in my profession as a family therapist has convinced me that God actively intervenes in some destructive lineages, assigning a valiant spirit to break the chain of destructiveness in such families. Although these children may suffer innocently as victims of violence, neglect, and exploitation, through the grace of God some find the strength to “metabolize” the poison within themselves, refusing to pass it on to future generations. Before them were generations of destructive pain; after them the line flows clear and pure. Their children and children’s children will call them blessed” [Ensign, August 1986].

The concepts expressed in this quote were new to me and extremely powerful.  Suddenly, I had an answer to one of the most fundamental existential questions that had plagued me since childhood – Why was I abused?  Why did I have such a shameful family history of abuse?  Here was the answer – again magical, powerful, mythical, intoxicating:  I had volunteered for this assignment – to single-handedly take upon myself the sins of my fathers and mothers, to metabolize all the accumulated hurt, pain, anguish and shame that generations of abuse had created and to prevent it from being passed on to another generation.  This both explained my past and charted my future.  It was my responsibility to end the legacy of abuse.

I believed – passionately – in this myth for most of my adult life.  But, the other day in the hot tub, I unexpectedly gained such profound insights into the fallacious and evil nature of this myth that I literally felt like I had received a blow to the chest, opening a well of emotion and understanding (not unlike my reaction to President Packer’s October 2010 Conference address).

Act III: Awakening

What were these insights?

First, I realized that I had allowed myself to believe that I was responsible for atoning for other people’s sins. The fallaciousness of this belief is crystal clear to me now:  even in LDS doctrine, there is only one person who is capable of redeeming others from their sins – and he was able to do so because he is a God and led a sinless life himself. He had no “baggage”: He was not abused as a child and did not carry within him the legacy of a history of abuse. I, on the other hand, was and am a mere mortal, a frightened boy who was himself abused and mistreated. How could I possibly expect myself, or allow others to expect me, to atone for the sins of my abusive forebears? The concept is not only grossly unfair and doctrinally unsound, it is evil.

Second, I had allowed myself to take on the responsibility of “metabolizing” all the hurt, pain, anguish, grief, etc., of previous generations. And what qualified me to be able to shoulder this immense burden?  Absolutely nothing – except the myth that I had been assigned this task by God in the pre-existence because of my valor, righteousness, strength and general all-around “special-ness.” But what loving Father would lay such a task upon a son whom He knew would emerge from childhood permanently crippled by the very thing he was supposed to “metabolize”? Again, the concept is not only grossly unfair and doctrinally unsound, it is evil.

Third, I allowed myself to take on the role of redeemer, or “metabolizer,” to focus on the needs of others while ignoring the legacy of abuse within myself. In this mythical tragedy, I was no more than a tool, a facilitator. My true sense of self was sacrificed to the mythical persona of redeemer, of “special one,” of “metabolizer.” I would lay myself upon the altar of redemption for the sake of those who had come before me and those who would follow, trusting that someday, somehow, some way, somewhere over the rainbow, I myself would be healed and made whole.

Meanwhile, by taking on these roles, I only exposed myself more. When I failed at metabolization, which I inevitably would, I sank into despair and vowed to try harder, only to sink further and make myself a convenient target for others close to me.

These magical doctrines of redemption, these myths of “specialness”, cost me dearly. I now see this.  The belief that one is “special” and can play God places an unhealthy and wholly unrealistic burden upon the self to perform magical, god-like, super-human tasks. It reduces the self to a tool, a means of facilitation. Rather than recognizing the hurt, the shame, and the brokenness (created by abuse) in all its humanity and seeking to honestly and lovingly heal it, these doctrines and beliefs instead impose new, additional layers of guilt, shame and self-hatred. They are debilitating, they are destructive and they are wrong.  Why I would allow myself to believe and be captivated by them for almost three decades of my life, why I could not see until now that “the Emperor is not wearing any clothes” – the answers to these questions would have to wait.

As human beings,

our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world

- that is the myth of the atomic age –

as in being able to remake ourselves.

~ Gandhi

The Abomination Thing

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

Leviticus 18:22

“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; 

they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.”

Leviticus 20:13

This post, previously published in the spring of 2011 on my former blog, describes the insights of Daniel Helminiak (discussed in the previous two posts) into and conclusions regarding the foregoing passages from Leviticus, viewed in the light of a historical-critical approach to their interpretation.  

The Holiness Code

These two passages appear in what scholars refer to as “The Holiness Code” – a list of laws and punishments that spelled out requirements for Israel to remain ‘holy’ in God’s sight. As Professor Helminiak explains in his book, “to remain separate from the Gentiles was to be ‘holy’ – set apart, different, chosen, special, consecrated … Differences or specialness is the core meaning of holiness in the ancient Hebrew understanding.  So, a main concern of The Holiness Code was to keep Israel different from the Gentiles … Homogenital sex is forbidden because it is associated with Gentile identity.  It departs from the Jewish understanding of how things should be.”

“The prohibition of male-male sex,” continued Helminiak, “occurs only in The Holiness Code of Leviticus and nowhere else.  But other prohibitions in The Holiness Code [such as adultery, incest and bestiality] recur in other places in the Bible … The implication is that the only reason for forbidding male-male sex is concern about uncleanness and ‘holiness.’  The argument in Leviticus is religious [i.e., ritualistic], not ethical or moral.  That is to say, no thought is given to whether the sex in itself is right or wrong.  The intent is to keep Jewish identity strong.  The concern is purity.”

  

To better explain what he means when he draws a distinction between religious laws vs. ethical/moral laws, Helminiak uses the example of the prohibition on eating meat in the Catholic Church.  There used to be a church law that forbade Catholics from eating meat on Fridays.  That church law was considered so serious that violation was a mortal (i.e., extremely serious) sin, supposedly punishable by hell.  Yet no one believed that eating meat was something wrong in itself.  The offense was against a religious responsibility. 

This example parallels, in Helminiak’s view, the prohibition of male-male sex in Leviticus.  “Not sex,” he writes, “but violation of Judaism is what was prohibited … [and] the fact that two men shared a sexual experience was really not a problem.  The only problem was when one man penetrated another.  Among the early Israelites, to engage specifically in male-male intercourse was to mix the roles of man and woman.  Such ‘mixing of the kinds’ was an abomination; it was impure … Though the Hebrew Testament certainly did forbid penetrative male-male sex, its reasons for forbidding it have no bearing on today’s discussion of homosexuality.”

And what was behind this Hebrew aversion to penetrative male-male sex?  “Women [was] to be penetrated,” writes Helminiak, “and man is to penetrate.  The very Hebrew word for woman, naqeba, means ‘orifice bearer’ – as if there were no orifices in the male body.  The fundamental image of a woman was someone who was there to serve the man in sexual intercourse.  So for a man to sexually penetrate another man in anal intercourse was to mix and confuse the standards of maleness and femaleness.  It was to use a male in the function of a female.  It was precisely this mixing of kinds, this confusion of accepted gender roles, that Leviticus 18:22 forbade – but not other kinds of male-male sex.  In the ancient Hebrew mind, penetrative sex with another man disrupted the ideal order of things and thus was unclean, taboo, forbidden; it was an abomination.”

In this regard, I am reminded from a scene from the documentary, Trembling Before G-d, which explored homosexuality among orthodox and Hasidic Jewish communities.  In the scene, Steve Greenberg, who is reportedly the first openly gay Orthodox rabbi in the United States, describes visiting with a revered rabbi in Jerusalem and asking him about homosexuality.  The rabbi pointed out that male-male penetrative sex is forbidden by the Torah.  Greenberg replied that there are other ways to express homosexual love, which the revered rabbi admitted he had never considered.

The Word "Abomination"

And now, about that word “abomination.”  In referring to Leviticus 20:25-26, Helminiak explains that “abominable” is just another word for “unclean.”  “An abomination,” he writes, “is a violation of the purity rules that governed Israelite society and kept the Israelites different from other peoples … We do not fully understand the ancient Jewish worldview …  The reasons for the purity laws of Leviticus are lost in history and in layer upon layer of editing … Whatever the rationale was behind the ancient Hebrew purity laws, such thinking certainly has nothing to do with ethics as we understand it.”   

Helminiak also points out that the Hebrew term toevah used in Leviticus, which is commonly translated as abomination, could also be translated as “uncleanness” or “impurity” or “dirtiness” or “taboo”.  The significance of the use of this word becomes clearer when one realizes that another Hebrew term zimah  could have been used, if that was what the authors intended.  Zimah means, not what is objectionable for religious or cultural reasons, but what is wrong in itself.  It means an injustice, a sin.  “Clearly, then,” writes Helminiak, “Leviticus does not say that for man to lie with is a “sin.”  Rather, it is a ritual violation, an uncleanness.

Further textual support is found in the Greek Septuagint, which usually translates the Hebrew word toevah with the Greek word bdelygma, which means a ritual offense.  In some places, it is translated as akatharsia, which means uncleanness.  But, as with the original Hebrew, other Greek words were available, such as anomia, meaning a violation of law or wrong or a sin; or poneria, an evil practice; or asebia, meaning ungodliness.  “These words, “writes Helminiak, could have been used to translate toevah.  In fact, in some cases they were.  In nine places in chapter 16 of Ezekial – where the prophet outright defines the sin of Sodom [see last week’s post on the Sin of Sodom] – toevah is translated as anomia, and the offenses in question are not just ritual impurity but real wrongs, like idolatry, child sacrifice, adultery and basic wickedness.  Anomia also translates toevah in Ezekial 18:12, 13 and 24, where the discussion is about individual moral responsibility.  In Proverbs 26:25, referring to a deceitful and wicked person, poneria is used to translate toevah.  And in Ezekial 14:6, in reference to idolatry, the Greek word asebia is used to translate toevah.”

Concluding Comments

In the last post in this series, I mentioned a book, Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality, by Rev. Rack Rogers, Professor of Theology Emeritus at San Francisco Theological Seminary and former Moderator (President) of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).  In his book, Professor Rogers sums up his comments on these two verses from Leviticus thusly (at pp. 69-70):

“Jesus was concerned with purity of heart.  In Matthew 15 he said to a crowd, ‘Listen and understand:  it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles’ (Matthew 15:10-11).  Later he explained to his disciples:  ‘What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.  For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.  These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile” (Matthew 15:18-20).

“When we see Jesus as the fulfillment of the law, we understand that our challenge is not meticulously to maintain culturally conditioned laws, but rather, with Jesus, to love God and love our neighbor.  When these texts in Leviticus are taken out of their historical and cultural context and applied to faithful, God-worshipping Christians who are homosexual, it does violence to them.  They are being condemned for failing to conform to an ancient culturally conditioned code that is not applicable to them or their circumstances.  Even Louisville Presbyterian Seminary New Testament professor Marion Soards, who opposes homosexuality on other grounds, agrees that ‘it is impossible to declare the necessary relevance of these verses for our world today.’”

What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality: Sodom

I published a series of posts on my former blog a year ago last spring about what the Bible really has to say about homosexuality.  As a follow-on to yesterday's post about Prayers for Bobby, I am going to re-publish those posts over the course of the next couple of weeks.

This post is the first of several that will consider a little book written by Daniel A. Helminiak entitled What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality (Tajique, NM: Alamo Press, 2000).  Helminiak is a former Catholic priest and scholar who has ministered to gays and studied theology and gay issues for over 30 years. Though only 133 pages long, the book has a lot crammed into it, and I recommend it to any gay Mormon or Christian.  

Helminiak grew up in a devout Polish Catholic community in Pittsburgh and entered seminary at age seventeen.  He was ordained in Rome, where he earned a Vatican license to teach theology; he later earned a PhD in Systematic Theology at Andover Newton Theological School and Boston College.  Helminiak came out in 1976 and served for many years as chaplain to Dignity USA, a LGBT Catholic support network.  In the 1980’s, after teaching in a seminary for four years, disillusioned with the institutional church and unable to reconcile his integrity with Vatican expectations, Helminiak enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a PhD in Human Development.  He is now a full professor in the humanistic and transpersonal Department of Psychology at the University of West Georgia.

Background

Helminiak begins his book by presenting a short lesson on the history of how the church has dealt with homosexuality.  “A millennium ago,” he begins, “Western society was rather indifferent to homosexuality and even supportive of it.  A gay subculture thrived.  Clerics and nuns wrote love letters and poetry to one another … Students at the newly founded Christian universities regularly debated the pros and cons of straight versus gay love. And no law codes in Europe (except in Visigoth Spain) included prohibitions on homosexual acts.”

By 1200, however, things had changed:  “Order and uniformity became the rule of the day,” Helminiak writes, “and volumes and volumes of law codes were promulgated.  For the first time in Christian history, Jews and Muslims were persecuted, the poor were regarded as a menace and … ‘heretics’ were put to death.  At the same time, homosexuals began to face violent and open opposition.  Thus began a millennium of Christian condemnation of homosexuality.”

Fast-forwarding to our time, Helminiak points out that “many of those who are homosexual have been raised to believe in the Bible, and they have been told that it condemns homosexuality … It looks as if homosexual people have to give up their religion or else – which seems impossible – give up their sexuality.”

He continues:

“That is no small matter.  Scientific study, along with psychology, has been underway for barely a century.  But it is already clear that sexuality goes to the core of a person.  Sexuality means much more than physical arousal and orgasm.  Attached to a person’s sexuality is the capacity to feel affection, to delight in someone else, to get emotionally close to another person, to be passionately committed to him or her ... To have to be afraid to feel sexual is to restrain that noblest of human possibilities, love.  It is to short-circuit human spontaneity in a whole array of expressions – creativity, motivation, passion, commitment, heroic achievement.  It is to be afraid of part of one’s own deepest self.”

Interpreting the Bible

There is no question but that the Bible has things to say about homosexuality.  Several passages have been used like gigantic clubs which many “Christians” have used to beat up on homosexuals.  Helminiak acknowledges that these passages exist, but challenges the interpretations that are commonly ascribed to these verses.

To preface his comments on these various passages of scripture, Helminiak devotes an entire chapter of his book to describing the two most common approaches to interpretation of the Bible:  a literal reading and an historical-critical reading.  The literal reading claims to take the text simply for what it says, whereas the other approach aims to discover that the text meant to the people who originally wrote it.  In other words, Helminiak explains, “to say what a biblical text teaches us today, you first have to understand the text in its original situation and then apply the meaning to the present situation.”

To illustrate a point that words don’t always mean what they say, he uses the example of the phrase “out in left field.”  To someone centuries in the future who runs across this expression in a text, unless that person understood the game of baseball and how the expression came into common usage, he wouldn’t have a clue as to what the term meant in the context in which it was being used.

As an illustration of this principle applied to Biblical texts, Helminiak uses the example of Jesus’ saying that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.  On its face, this statement implies that no rich person can get to heaven, because it is impossible for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.  On the other hand, scholars have pointed out that in Jerusalem there was a very low and narrow gate through the city wall called “the eye of the needle.”  When a caravan entered through that gate, the camels had to be unloaded, led through the gate crouching down and then reloaded inside the city wall.  With this understanding, we can surmise that what Jesus meant by this saying is that the rich might first have to “unload” their material concerns in order to get into heaven.

Helminiak uses the historical-critical approach to interpret what the Bible has to say about homosexuality.  I will get into specifics in subsequent posts, but as general statements, Helminiak posits that the modern concept of adult homosexual relationships would not have been familiar to the writers of the Bible.  “Specifically,” he points out, “in biblical times there was no elaborated understanding of homosexuality as a sexual orientation … There was only a general awareness of same-sex contacts or same-sex acts.”  Therefore, in order to understand what passages of the Bible concerning homosexuality really mean as applied to modern society, one must understand and appreciate what the mindset was of the writers of such passages.

The Sin of Sodom

Helminiak dates the current widely-held interpretation of the story of Sodom to about the 12th century, which coincided with a major shift in attitude within the church toward homosexuality (discussed in my previous post).  From that point in time, writes Helminiak, “the very word ‘sodomite’ was taken to refer to someone who engages in anal sex, and the sin of Sodom was taken to be male homogential acts (i.e., same-sex sexual acts).”

However, argues Helminiak, in the many biblical references to the sin of Sodom, there is no concern whatsoever about homogenitality, but there is concern about hardheartedness and abuse.  The sins of Sodom, says Helminiak, were abuse and offense against strangers, insult to the traveler, and inhospitality to the needy.  “When male-male rape becomes part of the story,” he explains, “the additional offense was sexual abuse – gross insult and humiliation [by forcing anal sex on the men] in Lot’s time and our own.  The whole story and its culture make clear that the author was not concerned about sex in itself, and it was irrelevant whether the sex was hereto- or homosexual.”

In his discussion, Helminiak points out that in the ancient world, homosexual rape was a traditional way for victors to accentuate the subjection of captive enemies and foes.  In that culture, the most humiliating experience for a man was to be treated like a woman, and raping a man was the most violent such treatment.  As Dale Martin, a professor of religion at Duke University, wrote, “To be penetrated was to be inferior because women were inferior.”

Jack Rogers, Professor of Theology Emeritus at San Francisco Theological Seminary and former Moderator (President) of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), has also written a book (Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality) about homosexuality and the Bible, which I hope to write about in future posts.  With respect to the Biblical account of the strangers in Sodom, Rogers wrote:

“Some writers believe that the statement by the men of Sodom, ‘Bring them out to us, so that we may know them’ (Gen. 19:5), has a homosexual connotation.  That is not necessarily the case.  The Hebrew word ‘yada’, meaning ‘to know,’ appears almost 1,000 times in the Hebrew Scriptures.  It is used to refer to sexual intercourse only ten or eleven times.  In each case the reference is to heterosexual intercourse.  Therefore we should be cautious in attributing any homosexual connotation to it” [pp.189-190n3].

Other passages in the Bible point out that the sin of Sodom was not homosexuality.  Ezekial 16:48-49 states:  “As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, Sodom and her daughters were never as wicked as you and your daughters.  Sodom’s sins were pride, gluttony, and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door.” [New Living Translation]  According to the 19th chapter of Wisdom (the Wisdom of Solomon, which is included in the Catholic bible, but not the King James and other versions), the sin of Sodom was a “bitter hatred of strangers” and “making slaves of guests who were benefactors.”

Jesus himself makes reference to Sodom, but the context is not “sodomy” but rejection of God’s messengers.  In Matthew 10:5-15, Jesus sends out his apostles with the admonition that if they are not received, they should shake off the dust from their feet as they leave a town, saying it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than that town.  This, again, points to the sin of Sodom being the sin of inhospitality.

Despite these clear references to the real sin of Sodom, people continue to cite the story of Sodom to condemn gay and lesbian people, which, Helminiak points out, leads to a bitter irony:

“There is a sad irony about the story of Sodom when understood in its own historical setting.  People oppose and abuse homosexual men and women for being different, odd, strange or, as they say, ‘queer.’  Lesbian women and gay men are just not allowed to fit in.  They are made to be outsiders, foreigners in our society.  They are disowned by their families, separated from their children, fired from their jobs, evicted from apartments and neighborhoods, insulted by public figures, denounced from the pulpit, vilified on religious radio and TV, and then beaten in the schools and killed on the streets and in the backwoods of our nation.  All this is done in the name of religion and supposed Judeo-Christian morality.  Such wickedness is the very sin of which the people of Sodom were guilty.  Such cruelty is what the Bible truly condemns over and over again.  So those who oppress homosexuals … may themselves be the real ‘sodomites,’ as the Bible understands it.”