Foundation for
Reconciliation
The Bitter Fruits
of Mormonism
"Throughout my childhood I learned that I
was special…so special, in fact, that I was one of those noble
spirits mentioned in the Pearl of Great Price whom God promised to
make his rulers, and, having fought off Satan and his minions with
my superior testimony, I was held in reserve for the Last Days to
fight for righteousness. I was taught that this war had carried over
into this world and so when someone disagreed with your religion,
they were an enemy of the church; it seemed that the outside world
was always out to get us. Every contradictory thing the Gentiles did
was an attack on the One True Church.
But along with all of these lessons, I also
remember the ones from my dad about the importance of something
called Free Agency. It was these lessons that would ultimately stick
with me. It was the devil’s plan to force people to do things
against their will, he said, and it was just as evil to force
someone to do something good as it was to force them to do something
bad.
Up until I was fourteen I was more or less
like everyone else my age. It wasn’t until I entered the seminary
program that I began to take my religion very seriously. I began
reading my scriptures everyday, sometimes even in school, and
especially before I went to bed every night. I began reading The
Work and the Glory series and was fascinated by the level of
commitment the early church members had and the miracles that
followed. And I resolved to always follow the prophet no matter
what.
I ended up being the kid who always answered
questions in church and seminary. I constantly volunteered to say
prayers and the read scriptures out loud. I was all about making
sure that everyone knew I was a righteous person. When I turned
sixteen I entered the Priests Quorum where my older brother and his
friends were all getting ready to go on missions. I continued being
the kid with all the right answers and before long, the Priests
Quorum teacher began referring to me as the “spiritual fag” in front
of the class. I was totally humiliated but I laughed at the funny
joke because that’s what everyone else was doing. To his credit, the
teacher apologized to me after three years on the day of my mission
farewell.
But my parents were very proud of me, of
course, because I was their golden child who never got into trouble
and always did what was expected. I never had a curfew in high
school because I always came home before midnight—when the Holy
Ghost went to bed. I never dated before I was sixteen, always went
on group dates, and made it clear that I was not interested in
having a girlfriend because the prophet counseled to avoid serious
relationships before a mission. I didn’t swear, watch R-rated
movies, or drink soft drinks with caffeine. I was the apple of my
parents’ eye.
I had three brothers who went on missions
before me and I couldn’t wait to go on mine. I just knew that it
would be the best two years of my life, just like everyone said!
After having submitted my mission papers,
the day finally came when the mailman delivered a big, white
envelope addressed to me. I tore it open and read that I had been
called to serve in Columbus, Ohio. I entered the MTC in October of
1999 and began to realize that a mission was very different than
what I had been led to believe.
I absolutely hated the MTC. There was a rule
for every ridiculous minute of every day. I had virtually nothing in
common with any of the other missionaries, and on our P-days I would
walk around the grassy field across the street with another
missionary, talking about how long it would take us to walk home. I
felt trapped. But I convinced myself that once I got out into the
mission field everything would be different.
It turns out that I was wrong. From the very
first day I arrived in Ohio, I was extremely homesick. We were told
that it was likely we’d be a little homesick at the beginning, but
if we lost ourselves in the work of the Lord and kept the rules, it
would go away. Well, it never did go away and I was beginning to
feel more and more depressed. I hated everything from bugging people
about something they didn’t want to hear to the never-ending guilt
trips. I would pray for hours, telling God that I hated it there,
repenting for my homesickness and asking him to take it away…later
on saying that I wanted to go home and praying for a way to make it
happen…and eventually asking him to just let me die so I didn’t have
to deal with it any longer.
The day finally came when I got to go home,
but I went home a very different person. Now I was much more relaxed
on the outside because I had begun to take life less seriously, but
very depressed on the inside. I felt like I was never good enough
and I not only continued to want to die but began to have thoughts
of killing myself. I felt like I was somehow different from everyone
else but never understood how, and I felt that somehow made me
worse.
I began going to school in Orem, UT and soon became the Elders
Quorum President of my student ward. I felt so relieved after having
been offered this calling because I felt like God had forgiven
me—lately I was noticing that I had less interest in the girls
around me and more interest in the guys. I had begun browsing the
internet for other guys with whom I had more in common and had
secretly been chatting with them. I felt very guilty about it and
hoped that being called as the Elders Quorum President was a sign
that God had forgiven me. Ironically, when I chose my counselors, I
felt “inspired” to choose two of the best looking guys in the ward.
It wasn’t long before I was living a double
life. To everyone in my ward I was the spiritual Elders Quorum
President. On the other hand, I was chatting with and meeting new
friends who were also dealing with the same “problem” I was. It
really wasn’t too hard juggling the two lives but I felt extremely
guilty. I was praying for God to make it all go away. And then one
night I slipped up and found myself in a compromising situation with
another guy. I was terrified because I knew that I had to tell the
bishop. And given the details of the situation, I knew my punishment
would be harsh. So I decided that when I confessed my indiscretion
to the bishop I would simply leave out the minor detail of the other
person’s gender. Obviously I knew I was being dishonest, but having
been raised a Mormon my whole life I knew how to justify anything. I
simply told myself that it was the bishop’s fault if he assumed I
had messed around with a girl instead of a guy.
When I made my confession, the bishop was
very disappointed and at a loss for what to do so he immediately
took me to the Stake President’s office where I had to confess the
whole thing to him too. Since the Power of Discernment failed him,
he also assumed I had stepped over the bounds of virtue with a girl,
and he told me not to take the Sacrament for two weeks and then I
should be fine. It amazed me how easily I got off the hook because I
had an important church calling. In fact, the Stake President was
more concerned that I had let the hair on my chin grow out a little
and made me promise to shave it.
Over the next few weeks, I refrained from
taking the Sacrament but was continuing to get phone calls from the
bishop about how disappointed he was with my actions. At that point
my self-esteem was just shot. I had thought that since I had done
the right thing and confessed my sins that God would make this
problem called “same-gender attraction” go away. I tried not to
think about it and tried not to talk to my gay friends anymore, but
the more I tried the worse it got. I was very quickly heading toward
making it all go away myself by making plans for suicide just in
case I decided that enough was enough.
I wrote my bishop a letter ending my
position in the Elders Quorum and I avoided all opportunities to
talk to anyone from my ward. I pretended to go to my parents’ ward
back home, but there was no way I could tell them what I had done.
One day my parents took me into their room
and confronted me about it when they had discovered I quit my
calling. I broke down and told them that I was very depressed and
needed help. They kept asking me if there was anything else I wanted
to tell them but I couldn’t bare the shame and embarrassment. My mom
had always told me that you can tell when the world is getting
really evil when it starts accepting gay people. I later found out
that my dad had been suspecting at that point that I was gay. He
then gave me a blessing to make me feel better, telling me that in
the Premortal Life I had been aware of all the struggles I would
face in mortality and that I had agreed to them. And just like every
other blessing I had received since returning home from my mission,
he told me that God was preparing a very special girl at that moment
to be my bride.
I had very mixed feelings about what had
just happened. I was glad that I would finally be getting some
counseling, but I believed I had just been told that God knew I
would suffer with same-gender attraction and that I had agreed to
it. It was all my fault after all! From that point on I became very
bitter toward God. How could a loving Heavenly Father send me to
Earth with this problem, refuse to help me no matter how much I
prayed and how many commandments I kept, and then ultimately damn me
for it if I didn’t “endure to the end?” I definitely didn’t want to
spend eternity in the presence of someone so sadistic and mean, and
I didn’t want to spend my life alone with no one to love. I refused
to marry a girl because I would only end up hurting her and no girl
deserves to go through that. Half of me gladly opted for one of the
lower kingdoms of glory while the other half hoped that the God I
had been raised to believe in really was loving and kind and
forgiving, although I knew very well what the church taught about
God’s feelings on the subject.
In desperation to find an escape from my
guilt, I looked up articles about homosexuality on the church
website and read what the prophets of God had to say. To no one’s
surprise, homosexuality was always considered an “abomination” that
was lumped with other “evils of the day” like murder, rape, and
abuse. In fact, I had learned at church that to have any kind of
sexual relations outside of marriage was next in seriousness to
murder. I read articles where prophets like Spencer W. Kimball
counseled that it’s a rationalization and excuse for perversion to
claim that “God made me that way.” He said, “This is blasphemy. Is
man not made in the image of God, and does he think God to be ‘that
way?’”
And Dallin H. Oaks noted “that the words
homosexual, lesbian, and gay are adjectives to describe particular
thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. We should refrain from using these
words as nouns to identify particular conditions or specific
persons.”
I figured that I was one of these people
that Elder Oaks was describing. I was always taught that people were
gay because they were deceived by Satan to choose that way of life.
I certainly didn’t consider myself deceived because I had dedicated
so much of my life to doing everything right, so I couldn’t be gay!
I mean, I still thought girls were pretty! I was just one of those
straight people who suffered from something called same-gender
attraction. Even though I had begun dating other guys, I still
expected one day to take that special girl to the temple, have kids,
and live the typical Mormon Dream just like my patriarchal blessing
said. There just wasn’t any other option. If I was going to be
considered a good person, that’s what I had to do.
Since I was raised a devout Mormon, my sense
of self-worth was directly connected to my faithfulness as a member
of the One True Church. I had broken the law of chastity, quit my
calling, stopped attending church, and took off my garments. I felt
like I was broken; that I had a problem which needed fixing; a
disease that needed to be cured. I knew that I wasn’t attracted to
other guys because I chose to be. I wanted to be just like everybody
else! But I knew that God wasn’t going to help me out because I had
apparently agreed to be this way before I was born. Death was the
only way out of my personal hell so I just wanted to die. Even if I
went to the Telestial Kingdom, I had been taught that it was so
wonderful there that if people were allowed to see it, they would
kill themselves to get there.
But no matter how much I wanted to end my
own life, I just couldn’t do it. I had a mother who loved me. I felt
guilty for the misery I would cause her if I went through with my
plans of suicide. But if she realized the problems that her son had,
she would be so disappointed.
In the meantime, I was talking to my gay
friends about their experiences with coming out. As they described
their feelings and their life experiences I was struck with the
realization that the life they were describing was my own! And I had
this moment of “Oh, so that’s what gay is?!”
This, of course, scared me to death because
it meant that I had a much more serious problem than I realized. But
I also began to see that all those Ensign articles and all those
talks I had read were completely wrong. The prophets didn’t have a
clue what they were talking about and I didn’t understand how that
could be! However, this still didn’t lead me to question the
truthfulness of the church because I was always taught that if
something didn’t seem right, it was simply because I didn’t
understand it.
I
was so afraid of anyone finding out about me. I thought I would lose
all my family and friends because they’d think I was disgusting and
evil. But I knew I had to tell someone my secret because if I
didn’t, I was going to do something very drastic. At this point it
was literally life-or-death. My parents were coming home from
vacation one night so I wrote my mom an apologetic letter about who
I really was. I left it for her to find on her bed and left the
house, knowing that if I didn’t leave, I’d talk myself out of it. I
turned off my cell phone and stayed the night with some friends. I
knew my parents would come looking for me, but I wasn’t ready to
face them. I’m sure I scared them to death.
The
next morning I found my mom at her computer looking up articles for
me to read from the church website—all of which I had already read.
When she saw me she started to cry, hugged me tight, and then one of
the first things she said was “Steve, what have you done?” I don’t
really remember many of the details of the conversation but part of
it included that I needed to go talk to the bishop. I was
emotionally and physically exhausted so I lied down when my dad came
into the room to talk to me. The only thing I remember about our
one-way conversation is that he said there are two paths in life—one
to heaven and one to hell—and that I had to make a decision right
then which path I was going to take.
The next few weeks were awful. I couldn’t be
alone in the same room as my mom without being lectured. I worked
for my dad so I couldn’t get away from his lectures either. I was
asked not to tell anyone else in our family that I was gay because
they were afraid it would tear our family apart. I was told that I
probably wouldn’t be welcome around some of my nephews anymore for
fear that their mother might think I’d molest them.
On one morning I apologized to my dad for not coming to work the
previous day because I had been so depressed that I couldn’t get out
of bed. He responded by telling me the reason I was so depressed
that day is because my unborn children in the Premortal World had
just realized that I wouldn’t be their father anymore like I had
promised them. He also said that he could tell the Holy Ghost had
left me because the light had gone out of my eyes.
My parents tried to reassure me that I could
fight my homosexuality and that everyone would help me. I told them
no, that I was done trying. I refused to do anything more about
something that would never go away, and I wouldn’t talk to the
bishop about it. They were very nervous because my younger brother
was getting married in about a month and they didn’t know what to
tell everyone when I didn’t show up to the temple ceremony. I told
my mom to tell them the truth because I just didn’t care. She
eventually did and I got all kinds of sympathy from my brothers and
sisters. But I foolishly mistook sympathy for support. Out of my
four brothers and two sisters, only my oldest sister has ever fully
supported and accepted me.
My family instantly went from being very
nosy about my personal life, to avoiding the subject completely. I
moved from Orem to back to Salt Lake because I couldn’t stand to be
in Utah County anymore. I still fought thoughts of suicide for quite
a while and even came close to attempting it. It took about a year
after coming out and still wishing I was straight before I finally
started to love myself for who I was.
I felt so alone around my family members. I
could be in a room full of happy parents, brothers and sisters,
nieces and nephews, and feel completely isolated. There was nobody
to listen to my side of the story, and only one person who ever
asked, “Steve, what was your experience like?” I knew that who I am
was in direct conflict with who I was expected to be and that if
ever there came a time where my family felt they had to choose
between me and their beliefs, I would easily lose. I’ve never
doubted the quality of my family’s love—just the quantity. I was
disposable.
There came a time when I fell in love with
that special someone and I eventually introduced him to my family.
They were nice in that superficial
you-can’t-ever-say-that-we-were-mean-to-him way. It felt hollow and
fake. At one point, I was told that he and I were welcome to family
things on the condition that we never show any kind of affection to
one another. It was a condition I couldn’t agree to, one that
applied to me and nobody else. It was a condition that singled me
out because I am gay.
I chose to stay home rather than attend any
more family things because, let’s face it, I was not welcome as I
am. And for it I was called heartless. I was informed that if I were
to show any kind of affection to my partner in front of the family,
it would be like allowing us to shoot up heroin in front of them.
The children, impressionable as they are, may turn gay as a
result—or at least having seen the happiness that can be achieved by
two gay people, the children might choose to be gay instead of
choosing to be straight.
I haven’t been to any family functions
since. My family relationships have basically all fallen apart
except for one. I’ve been compared to a drug addict and an
alcoholic, and have been called a hypocrite. I’ve been treated as
though I am a monster. And I’ve even been assured that if I feel
like a monster, it’s because of the influence of Satan rather than
the treatment of my righteous family members.
As can be expected, I am no longer a member
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I resigned. "
-Steve Ellingson, September 25, 2009
