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April 2022 - Telling my parents

Having heard many stories now of people transitioning out of faith, the experience of telling their still believing family members, particularly parents, was always one of the hardest things. 

My wife and kids and I flew to have a holiday with my family in NZ and we felt this was a good time to share our decision. When I told them, my mum (who made church her whole life through her difficult experiences and helped me dad convert before they got married, which is the totally normal thing to pursue in Mormon culture) went, “Mmm interesting. Your dad and I have been thinking the same thing.”

I was both astonished and relieved! This opened up a range of things to talk about and unpack. We shared a diminished connection to attend and participate in church, and how that might look moving forward. My parents shared the coldness they often felt in their ward in New Zealand and how little they got from attending. I never thought my parents would arrive at this stage, but here it was happening!

We watched a documentary called “Believer” by the lead singer of Imagine Dragons, which discussed the problem of the increasing suicide rates of LGBT+ teens in Utah, particularly in Mormon families, and how he made a music festival to raise awareness. I remember just thinking back to when I found out about my friend and his coming out, and watching this and having this issue brought to my attention in this context reinforced my alliance with the LGBT+ community. Why are these teens killing themselves? It’s the culture that that orientation is a condition, not natural, not part of God’s plan. Imagine if it was the other way round, and being heterosexual was the sin? And I was made to be gay in order to be accepted? 

There needs to be more love and acceptance of how people love and receive love, and this high horse of “that’s not the right way to love” needs to be put down! But I get that the logical thinking as derived from the church doctrine is that the gay orientation contradicts the great plan of salvation, especially when you begin to unpack what that looks like. 

So let’s unpack it a little…

The church teaches that God created everything by commanding his son Jesus and Michael the archangel later known as Adam to organise existing material to create an earth for his spirit children (Abraham 3:22-26). So far, we existed before this world in a spirit form. The plan was for us to come down, receive a body and experience life, seeing if we would be true and faithful to God, as in living by every word that proceeds out of his mouth (Deut 8:3). 

And so, Adam Eve came down, Eve ate the fruit and carried the blame even though Adam also ate. Mormon doctrine praises Adam and Eve for eating because otherwise nothing would’ve died and they wouldn’t have know how to have children because they were innocent (2 Nephi 2:22-25). This has a range of problems but for another time. 

So, we are here and wandering around trying to live life with a set of commandments from God as handed down by the various prophets of the ages. Some of those commandments included two specific ones that I want to highlight for the purpose of this discourse: have kids (Genesis 1:28), and don’t have gay relations (Leviticus 18:22 just to name one of many). Growing up, and hearing and reading this, the two passages became at odds with each other and the idea of being gay as ok grew naturally to be a bad thing. Then the church clarified that being gay was ok, just don’t act on it. In fact, we praise you for choosing celibacy. 



While many Christians are changing their viewpoints in a healthy way to give space for the LGBT+ community, I do not believe the Mormon church, given its exact obedience approach can make room for this in the way it deserves i.e. especially now that gay marriage is legal, recognising all couples and granting them the same space as would be done for heterosexual couples. So when you see a homosexual couple in church, arms around each other, we give them the same treatment as you would a heterosexual couple. That they hold callings and responsibilities and temple recommends etc. But I do not believe the church can do this, due to its own culture, policies and doctrines. 

And that’s a shame. It really is. 

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