A person's sexuality is one of the quirkiest and unique things about them. You learn that if you change sex partners or if you catch someone telling the truth about what he or she likes and does sexually. Our sexuality is also, in important respects, a fundamental, deep and persistent part of our personal identity. So, it is with alarm and anger I have witnessed the Mormon Church over the years insist that people choose whether or not they are gay, and proceed to shame, cajole, or coerce them to adopt the church’s teachings and norms regarding sex and sexual identity, too often to the great harm of those people and their families.
The Mormon Church has insisted—although this has changed somewhat for the better recently—that gays choose their sexual orientation. To “help” their gay members make this “choice,” some of these men were encouraged to marry—essentially, to pass as straight. Such encouragement often resulted in betrayed wives, ashamed, guilty husbands, and heartbroken families. Other gays, desperate to change their sexual orientation, consented to aversion therapy administered at BYU, the church’s university. These men were instructed to look at the gay porn while electrical shocks were applied to their testicles or they were administered chemicals that made them vomit.
Many gay Mormons, feeling lonely, displaced, hopeless, and ashamed, killed themselves. Some still do. Mormonism is still not a gay-friendly culture.
According to some knowledgeable LDS observers, the church leadership has in recent years moved officially to a neutral position on the etiology of homosexuality and the Mormon Church is a more tolerant place for gays. Notwithstanding the official position, Mormon apologists, however, continue to argue homosexuality is a choice, perpetuating the backward, intolerant, and misguided attitudes and behaviors toward gays that have typically characterized the church.
Whether the church leadership’s failure to correct its apologists comes from a desire to avoid alienating loyal members, to avoid the implications to their authority of accepting scientific evidence, or for some other reason, their move toward neutrality should not cause us to forget that the Mormon Church strongly backed Proposition 8 in California, removing the rights of gay couples to marry.
By now you have probably noticed I am not the Mormon Church’s biggest fan. In the interests of disclosure and transparency, I’ll tell you why, and why, in my opinion, to the Mormon Church, we are all gay, even if we are straight. I was a Mormon convert at age 19. I attended BYU, I worked as a teacher at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, UT, I married in the Salt Lake Temple, and I was a Mormon for 13 years. The early years of my membership were generally good for me. The church provided me with community and direction when I needed it most, and I was—and still am—grateful for that. However, as time passed, I discovered many things about Mormonism which disturbed me, among them that the Mormon Church is very intrusive, particularly about sex.
The Mormon leadership does not limit itself to regulating gays; it attempts to micromanage the sex lives of its straight members as well. Both youth and adults undergo periodic “worthiness interviews” by the male leader of their local congregation (bishop) to ensure they are living up to the standards of the church. Some of the questions inquire as to the member’s “moral cleanliness.” The bishop may ask in a general way, “Are you morally clean?” or, too often, he may ask very detailed questions. It depends on the bishop. The interviewee may be a boy or girl as young as 12, a teen, a married father or mother of six, or a grandmother or grandfather.
Interviews are done one-one-one behind closed doors, even with boys and girls. More than a few former Mormons report feeling violated by the process and identify it as a cause of sexual problems later in their lives. (Some former Mormons, including myself, believe this breaking down of boundaries makes young people more vulnerable to sexual abuse and to experiencing difficulty generally resisting intrusive demands.) Almost none of the bishops have any training in counseling and or sexology and too often advice or counsel coming out of the interview is uninformed not outright harmful.
The Mormon Church prohibits masturbation and any sex outside of marriage. Young men are given stern warnings against masturbation and were once told it leads to homosexuality. Sex outside of marriage is strongly condemned and extramarital sex is characterized as a “sin next to murder” in seriousness. If you are unlucky enough to never marry you are expected to remain celibate your entire life. Gays, of course, are also relegated to a lifetime of celibacy because they are prohibited from marrying.
Not even sex between married couples escapes church scrutiny. Couples married in a Mormon temple are told to “refrain from every unholy and impure practice.” While the ceremony doesn’t specify what those unholy and impure practices might be, in January 1982 the church president at the time issued a letter stating, "The First Presidency has interpreted oral sex as constituting an unnatural, impure, or unholy practice. If a person is engaged in a practice which troubles him enough to ask about it, he should discontinue it." Eventually, the letter was withdrawn, apparently due to complaints by local leaders that the instruction was too explicit and intrusive.
However, the prohibition against “unholy and impure practices” remains, with oral sex implicitly continuing to be one of them. A recent Mormon Church president, Gordon B. Hinckley said
, "Married persons should understand that if in their marital relations they are guilty of unnatural, impure, or unholy practices, they should not enter the temple unless and until they repent and discontinue any such practices. Husbands and wives who are aware of these requirements can determine by themselves their standing before the Lord."
I myself was unfortunate enough to run afoul of this Mormon purity rule when I was a newly married husband. As a convert, I wasn’t raised Mormon and was unaware of the prohibition and inhibitions of Mormon sex. (Not that it would have helped much had I been raised Mormon, as there seems to be very little frank talk about sex in Mormonism, anyway.) Naturally, I was excited about sex with my wife. I hadn’t had sex before becoming a Mormon. I admit this was due to my being quite shy and anxious rather than my great moral rectitude; in fact, I felt relieved Mormonism provided me with a comforting rationale for my fear of sex. Still, I was looking forward to trying some things out and one of those things was oral sex.
It was after this experimentation the condemning letter from Salt Lake City was issued. My wife and I, duly embarrassed and ashamed, made an appointment with our bishop and confessed our sinfulness. The bishop, an elderly and kind man, to his credit seemed as uncomfortable and embarrassed to have to deal with this issue as we were. Rather than lecture or condemn us, he gave us a light penance and told us to try not to do it again. In spite of the bishop’s kindness, the effect of the experience on me was to curtail my joy of sex, raise my anxiety, and to create a wedge between my wife and me on the issue of whether or not anything I wanted to do beyond missionary-vanilla was “church approved.” For several years I had a recurring nightmare of being watched by church leaders while I had sex and being chided for it. The Mormon marital bed gets crowded when you start including God, his prophets, and the bishop!
It wasn’t until some time after I left Mormonism I started to become relaxed about sex and started to figure out what I like and don’t. My sexual ethics these days are straightforward and not overly-complicated (although I think some people would characterize my standards as “low”): Sex is consensual for all parties and none of the activities result in medical or psychiatric intervention.
So, to my gay friends and to the gay community, if it is any comfort, you are not alone. Some of us straight people, particularly many of us former Mormons, have also experienced, at least in part, sexual scrutiny and oppression, and while we may not experience it as constantly and intensely as you do, we “get it.” As for the Mormon Church, it is a profound failure of empathy and humanity that the sexual outcasts of the 19th century cannot see gays as fellow human beings who deserve tolerance and full civil rights.
