Ring! Salt Lake Speaking….

Well, you’ll be happy to know that I’m definitely having a better Monday morning than are 12 old men in—presumably—Utah*.

These guys have a problem: the world they knew went away somewhere and came back entirely different. Because, in the past, it was easy: you kept everybody busy and isolated. So if you were in small towns in the American west, you devoted forty to sixty hours to making the desert bloom—which they did—and twenty or thirty hours going to church. That didn’t leave too much time for anything else but sleep. Oh, and since everybody else around you was doing the same thing, there was no possibility of dissent.

So that meant that all of the rest of us could—in spare moments—chuckle snidely at the more preposterous claims. Who can forget Mark Twain, one of the earliest and certainly one of the best critics, on the Book of Mormon?

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the “elect” have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so “slow,” so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason. 

So all of us could sit around and snigger when every other institution in the States had to confront its own racism throughout the sixties and seventies, but the Mormons? Still barring blacks from the priesthood, which is generally given to every male child at age 12, until 1978. And then, as Wikipedia tells us, there came a little problem named Brazil, since it was no problem telling the women from the men. But the blacks from the whites? Right—so Spencer W. Kimball, the leader of the church, went off to his study, and guess what! There God was—in all his white maleness—dishing up a revelation! Wow—all in a day’s work!

But the 70s must seem like the most halcyon of days, since the most potent threat were quaint little things like newspapers and magazines, as well as books, of course. But all of that was easy enough, since it was easy to brand any criticism as that ol’ debil, the Eastern liberal intelligentsia. Oh, and do you think a librarian in Provo, Utah, is going to be putting seditious books on her shelves? Not likely.

So change, when it came, arrived as the gentlest of mists, not as a gale. And then?

Someone invented the Internet.

Which one person described as the gateway drug out of Mormonism, ‘cause how are you going to keep them down on the farm, once they’ve clicked on Google? And there’s another problem: since all the rest of us can fritter away the time with vices like drinking and smoking, the Mormons? They’re grimly, and soberly, sitting in front of their computers, writing blogs.

Yes—it seems that the Mormons are writing blogs to such an extent that a term had to be invented: the bloggernacle. Right, my computer doesn’t know it—nor will I teach it—but Wikipedia does:

The Mormon blogosphere (often referred to as the Bloggernacle) is a segment of the blogosphere focused on Mormon issues.[1] The term "Bloggernacle" was coined by individuals within the LDS blogging community as a play on the name of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; however, not all LDS-themed bloggers like or use the name Bloggernacle, or even consider their blog to be part of it. Furthermore, not all bloggers within the Mormon blogosphere are Mormons themselves.

So on 17 March 2013, Kate Kelly, a lawyer and devout Mormon—she did her year of missionary service in Barcelona, and why does that feel ever so slightly bogus?—created a website, ordainwomen.org.

Hmmm—let’s see: who was it that said there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come?

Answer—Victor Hugo….

Astonishing, really, how all the world’s media has followed this blog’s lead in championing this story! Not just people like me, but little guys like The New York Times, and Yahoo, and even way down south in Australia—anywhere, in fact, where they have Mormons (everywhere) and women (also everywhere). So yesterday, we were all sitting around scratching the collective head: some of us at home, but 200 people or so with Kelly in a vigil in Salt Lake City. Oh, and there were vigils in seventeen other countries—eighteen, if we count little Marc down here in San Juan, Puerto Rico. And why were we all vigiling?

OK—return to your seats, fasten your seat belts and lock your tray tables onto the seat in front of you: it turns out that ordainwomen.org advocates for the—deep breath, here—ordination of women! And that, to the twelve “apostles” of the Mormon Church, is apostasy, another word for which is heresy. So Kelly’s local leaders called her in for a trial yesterday.

Except not—since Kelly is now living in Utah, and had requested that the church transfer her records there.  Here’s what Kelly wrote in the first paragraph of her letter:

I beg of you not to impose any form of discipline during the trial you will hold on Sunday. I also request that you do the right thing and revoke the “informal probation” that was placed upon me and remove the “move restriction” placed on my records so that I can participate in the ward where I currently reside. Please reconsider this punitive process and allow me to continue to worship in peace.

In theory—and Salt Lake is playing this trumpet as loud as Gabriel ever did—discipline is entirely in local hands, and the central hands have nothing, nothing, to do with it.  But it is interesting that the big boys from Salt Lake had visited Kelly’s stake—the words blogging teaches you!—and then, boom! Oh, and the same thing happened to another blogger, John Dehlin. Stay tuned—his trial is next Sunday….

Well, if the French word for a bluffer is bluffeur, am I—on this issue—a scoffeur?  Because of course I know what has to be done. Tom Monson, the current president, needs to be sent to his room, in order to be served up God’s most recent revelation: the Internet, and especially Google, is the work of Satan himself, sent to snare the faithful and lead them to perdition!

Easy for me to laugh—but in one sentence, which of course I can’t find now, Kelly pleads not to be excommunicated and deprived of spending the rest of eternity without her family. Because that, you see, is what she / they / if-not-I believe. When she dies, she will—if in good standing with the church—spend all eternity with her loved ones. If not, not.

The church asked her to take down the site and sit down and be a good girl, and in her letter she makes it clear: no dice. So the trial was yesterday, and then the three judges announced—they were stumped! So they fired off an email—guys, is an electronic transmission an appropriate media to announce loss of eternal life? Shouldn’t the local bishop drop by to break the bad news? Right—the judges announced that they would sleep prayerfully on the matter, and let Kelly know in a day or two.

Why do I think there are a lot of calls to and from Salt Lake this morning?

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*Ever faithful to my bloggerly vocation, I calculated the total years of the twelve, and guess what? It’s 940, or almost halfway back to Jesus himself! Oh, and the average age is 78.3….

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorum_of_the_Twelve_Apostles_%28LDS_Church%29

A Tectonic Shift in the Mormon Church?

So, question of the day: is the Church of Latter Day Saints really changing?

You may know them as an easy group to hate: the Mormons. And yes, we can all laugh at their protective underwear, their beliefs that Joe Smith actually found the tablets in Palmyra, New York, (think that was where), their history of polygamy. They do, however, some things very well. They work damn hard and did make the desert bloom; they respond quickly in natural disasters; they take care of their own.

And their church is their lifeline. They are, in a sense, still living out that trek from New York to Nauvoo, Illinois, (another “think that was where”) to Salt Lake City. Yes, they have arrived, they have made a home, but they haven’t stopped clinging to one another; the desert mentality of each member being crucial in the survival of everybody still lives in their psyche. For others, church is church; for Mormons, church is their life.

Which is what made it such a compelling story in movies, plays, and fiction. There was Joe Pitt in Angels in America, there was the movie Latter Days, and now, there is an upcoming documentary about a Mormon family with a thirteen-year old gay son. And predictably, Mom goes through shock and disbelief and questioning and ends, finally, at some kind of acceptance.

Well, that seemed like something interesting, especially since the mother had gone door to door in California in 2008 campaigning for Proposition 8. And speaking of which, was there any truth to the belief that the church was backing off “defending” traditional marriage?

Having spent 45 minutes on the church’s new website, I can tell you—it’s a definite maybe. Mormons and Gays dot Org is the name, and yes, I’d call it Gays and Mormons, but that’s a quibble. And the church is quite clear in where it stands:

The experience of same-sex attraction is a complex reality for many people. The attraction itself is not a sin, but acting on it is. Even though individuals do not choose to have such attractions, they do choose how to respond to them. With love and understanding, the Church reaches out to all God’s children, including our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.   

In the Catholic Church, which teaches the same thing, this is called the “you can be a bird, but you can’t fly” doctrine. And the site bangs the drum on love, listen, have compassion, have hope, let’s have a dialogue. Just no screwing.

So then I had to listen to the Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Twelve Apostles on “What needs to change.” Oh, and prepare yourself for a jolt—the Elder is:

1.     white

2.     elder and elderly

3.     male

Hey—if you need to lie down to absorb that, it’s perfectly fine.

He looks, in fact, like the worst combination of a mix between my old high school principal and Ike Eisenhower. And his message? Here it is:

Same gender attraction presents many issues and questions in society at large. These include what causes it, whether it is subject to change in kind or degree, and whether, or the extent of which, laws like marriage should accommodate it. Our discussion is limited to two related questions we sometimes hear in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What does our doctrine teach us about how family members and church members should treat one another when one of their members is struggling with some of these issues, and how can we help members of the church who struggle with same-gender attractions, but want to remain active and fully engaged in the church?

This same topic was discussed with all of the general authorities of the church in April of 2012. We will not discuss any of the multitude of other issues and questions. There is so much we don’t understand about this subject, that we’d do well to stay close to what we know from the revealed word of God. What we do know is that the doctrine of the church, that sexual activity should only occur between a man and a woman who are married, has not changed and is not changing. But what is changing and what needs to change is to help our own members and families understand how to deal with same gender attraction.

The church, you see, got slammed over Proposition 8; the public relations were a disaster. What had seemed like a conservative but hardworking group ended up looking like spoilers and haters. And their efforts weren’t inconsiderable: Mother Jones magazine states that at the height of the Proposition 8 campaign, there were 77 people working full time on the issue in Salt Lake City. Oh, and they kicked in 20 million bucks on it, too.

Right, now on to Ty’s story, from the video posted on the website:

Well, it wasn’t an issue for him in high school, because he still had to do his year of missionary work. But after he got home, it was time to get married, start a family. And why was it that he didn‘t want to get close, physically, to any of these girls? Was he gay? He began dating men.

He goes through several spiritual crises, always ended up with a huge and wonderful revelation: God is love. Be with Him, stay in the church, let Him into your life. He keeps struggling and struggling and decides to ask the question, being prepared not to receive a question. And the question? Is there a family in his future? Must he go alone through life alone?

Know where this is going?

We see pictures of his wife; we see pictures of their home; lastly, we see pictures of their adorable baby boy.

You’ll know my reaction. The picture I saw was of a church that had put one of its children through years of unnecessary, almost capricious, spiritual hell. And that through the message of Ty’s story—and he’s utterly sincere, by the way—will put a lot of other gay people through the same ringer.

The Huffington Post reported that the church is making connections, reaching out, rethinking. “There’s been a tectonic shift somewhere,” a church member says. The money—always a good barometer for measuring the social pressure—for defeating marriage equality bills is drying up.

I grew up in a time when homosexuality was illegal, when cops were raiding gay bars, when it was routine to talk trash about fags and queers. I now deliver food periodically to my husband’s mother; she strolls into the plaza and reads names for me. The world has changed. I understand Ty’s longing to have a family, I came to realize how much I had missed only recently, when I saw Raf’s nephew matter-of-factly dawdle his daughter on his knee. I stole away and bawled for the children I’d never known.

I chose a husband and no kids over a wife and kids. But I think all of us—the Catholic and Mormon churches as well—need to get here: you can have a husband and kids.

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