The
last two posts on the Millennial Mormons blog have sent me thinking. Obviously
my mind first went to Chinese literature and political philosophy. In what
follows, I’ve tried to outline what I find troubling in the attitudes of Blake
Oakley and Samantha Shelley. A brief recap of what they said: Blake Oakley
reemphasized the astounding fact that the Church’s doctrine has not changed in
light of the recent Supreme Court decision, while Samantha Oakley wrote thatthe Church, and Jesus, still love gay people. It’s the last bit that draws my
attention, and that’s the aspect I’d like to address.
I left
a comment on the post that was sadly censored, but I’ll repost it here:
“The problem is not that “the church” “hates” LGBT people.
The problem is that the culture and system of thought we have created cause
LGBT people to hate themselves.
There are a few important points in what I just said that will raise questions:
1) “The culture and system of thought we have created”
I’m sure your first reaction to that statement will be that this is the
revealed word of the Lord. The problem with holding to that is that in order to
believe that anything is revealed by God by prophets, you either have to
believe that EVERYTHING every prophet has ever taught AS COMING FROM GOD is in
fact truth revealed from God, or you have to have an alternative method by
which to judge what is and is not revelation.
If you choose the former, then by necessity, you believe: that everything
Brigham Young ever taught was the word of God (he taught that there wasn’t a
single word he had uttered on the pulpit that wasn’t the will of God)–this
includes blood atonement, that slavery is moral, and that black people are
inherently inferior. I doubt you accept that as the word and will of God.
That leaves you to choose the second option–that there has to be some criterion
external to revelation by which we gauge whether or not what the prophet says
EVEN WHEN THEY SAY IT IS THE WILL OF GOD (because Brigham Young did). To believe
this you must, by necessity, believe that there is something higher and more
important than revelation.
To discover what that criterion is, ask yourself this: in 1852 Brigham Young
testified that slavery was ordained of God; would you as a Latter-day Saint at
that time be morally obligated to believe that, or morally obligated to stand
against God’s prophet and make arguments against slavery? If so, by what
criteria would you judge the morality of Brigham Young’s assertion?
What’s happening here is far more complicated than revelation. I posit that it
is the process of cultural creation. We create the culture, call it revelation,
and then marginalize people as a result. For more information on the evolution
of church doctrine over time, see the book “This is My Doctrine,” available on
Amazon.
2) What causes LGBT people to hate themselves?
If it was only one or two LGBT people experiencing self-hatred or loathing for
their attractions to people of the same sex or gender dysmorphia, then we could
call it a statistical fluke. Based on research from John Dehlin, the accounts
of LGBT people, and my own experience as a gay man in the church, I can say
with surety that it is far more than just a few. Every LGBT person I have ever
met has experienced deep hatred of themselves, their situation, or their life
at one point or another. Because of its common occurrence, we must assume that
there is some external variable causing this phenomenon.
All evidence that I have received and my own personal experience points that it
is the very culture and system of thought we call “the church” or “Mormonism”
that causes this. It is the very doctrines of the church that create a world
view under which LGBT people do not belong in the eternities–they must first be
transformed into something they are not or have never been–in effect, to gain
exaltation, they must die.
Your sentiments here are well-intentioned, but they fail to grasp the heart of
the issue. And the heart of the issue is this: that our experience in life is
created by the paradigm through which we approach it, that our paradigms are
constructed, and that any paradigm we construct that marginalizes people,
causes disproportionate numbers of youth to be on the streets (see the LGBT
youth homelessness rate in Utah), causes disproportionate amounts of people to
kill themselves (see the research on LGBT youth suicide in conservative
communities, and especially Utah), fails to live up to the values of universal
compassion that we espouse as the crowning value of our faith community.
Declarations of “this is the word of God” are not and never will be enough in
the face of the realities of self-hatred, youth homelessness, and suicide that
I argue are the result of the system of thought you present. And yes, sadly,
that implicates anyone and everyone who is a part of furthering the cultural
paradigm that causes these phenomena. Me, you, and each of us bear
responsibility.
May we all be brave enough to rethink our deeply held beliefs, because in the
final analysis, beliefs are not sacred. Human life is.”
And now for the Chinese literature.
Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman,”
published in 1918, laid the foundation of China’s “New Culture Movement.”
Suffering from paranoia, the purported author of the diary brings the reader
with him on his slow descent into madness. First, he fears that the Zhao family’s
dog is somehow angry at him. Then, out on the street, he notices how everyone
is talking about him. They’re watching him. They’re whispering plots against
him. “It’s as if they’re afraid of me,” he writes, “but also as if they want to
hurt me.” What is it? What could they be planning? What were they going to do?
They
wanted to eat him. He realizes it in third entry—the people on the street, his
neighbors, and even his older brother were all planning on eating him. This
sends the madman on a
frightened journey towards the source of their cannibalistic
designs. Looking for any precedence in history, he looks back through the
Confucian classics. Confucianism had been the foundation of Chinese society for
nearly two thousand years. As he reads through the books, the madman slowly
realizes that the hidden meaning between “benevolence,” “way,” and “virtue” was
“eat people,” “eat people,” “eat people.”
In the
final scenes of the book, the community and elder brother confront the madman.
As he begins to promise them that they can change—that they don’t need to eat
him or anyone else—that there is still hope for them, they call him “crazy” and
lock him in his room. In the closing passages, written in the confinement of
his room, the mandman realizes that it’s too late to save any of them. But the
children—they haven’t been corrupted yet. And so his diary ends with a simple
plea. “Save the children.”
The
most striking piece of Lu Xun’s short story is what’s left out. While it’s very
clear that the community thinks he is mad, there is never any explanation of
whether or not he was correct about the people’s cannibalism. This forces the
reader to ask a question—the very question that propelled readers of “Diary of
a Madman” to rise up against the Confucian culture of the past—was the madman insane because he was imagining
the cannibalism? Or was it because he was insane enough to speak against it?
This
question is reminiscent of the works of political philosopher Hannah Arendt.
Attending the trial of Nazi war criminal Albert Eichmann, Arendt was struck
that he didn’t seem particularly evil. In fact, he was disappointingly normal.
He didn’t personally make the abhorrent decisions—he only carried out orders
given to him from above. And yet, his work was responsible for the death of millions
of Jews. Reflecting on the trial, Arendt wrote a piece for the New Yorker in
which she argued that Eichmann’s evil was not spectacular in its villainy, but
in its banality. In the German
philosophical tradition, banality represented simple thoughtlessness; a refusal
to engage in the critical thinking necessary for true selfhood and true moral
living. Eichmann simply carried out the orders someone gave to him, refusing to
consider his individual actions as carrying moral weight.
Likewise,
Lu Xun’s madman notes that no one particular person was to blame for the cannibalism
that threatened his life. Rather, it was the system of customs and traditions
that shaped them. Lu Xun’s critique was that the Confucian moral system turned
people against each other, causing the rich to metaphorically consume the poor,
and even families to turn against one another. But because they held
Confucianism as sacred, they were trapped up in the banality of evil. Eichmann
was not particularly wicked. He could have been anyone’s father or grandfather.
He was merely convinced of the sacredness of Nazism. He held his beliefs as
sacred. And the result was the ultimate tragedy.
I
hesitate to use the example of Eichmann because the hyperbole of Nazism is not
directly applicable to the conversation of LGBT issues and Mormonism. I do not mean to say that any of my further
analysis bears any resemblance to that particular brand of pure evil; I bring
it up to explain and emphasize the banal
characteristic of evil.
Walking away from Arendt’s insight
and Lu Xun’s madman, we are forced to ask ourselves a series of questions. Are beliefs sacred? Can what we believe be a
source of harm to other people? Are values we hold up, like “charity,” “obedience,”
and “traditional family,” really just masks for “eat people,” “eat people,” “eat
people”? I argue that these questions are essential for anyone who takes
morality seriously. And I argue that your beliefs are not sacred. And neither
are mine.
I’ve
got to qualify this. Belief is a complex process driven by sacred personal
experiences, family connections, and deep historical relationships. I don’t
mean to say that personal experiences with the divine are not sacred. I don’t
mean to say that family relationships are not sacred. What I mean to say is
that your conclusions in regards to what they mean are not sacred.
We encounter
a problem when people begin to lead conclusion-driven lives. When people treat
their beliefs as sacred, they act as if the conversation is closed. Their
beliefs enter a realm beyond questioning and beyond criticism. The answer has
been reached. The solutions are at hand. This is how the Confucians in “Diary
of a Madman” approached life. This is how Albert Eichmann approached things.
And this is how so many on both sides
of LGBT issues in Mormonism approach things. And I include myself in this
criticism.
But
obviously I do have an agenda with
this post. I’d love to say that we just need to listen to each other and
everything would be fine. And I do
think that we should listen to each other more. But equally important in that
process is speaking up. And this is what I have to say about the church’s love
for LGBT members:
Behind
the sincere (and I do think they’re
sincere) expressions of love lies a dire, albeit banal phenomenon. The problem is not one of intention—it is
systemic. As a system of belief, Mormonism simply precludes eternal LGBT
identities. This leaves LGBT Mormons floundering for a place. And it results in
real harms—youth homelessness, depression,
anxiety, and suicide.
And so
I say that Mormonism eats LGBT people.
Let me
repeat myself: Mormonism eats LGBT
people.
And so, Samantha Shelley, when you tell me the church and Jesus love LGBT people, what so many of us hear is not "come, let us love you," but "come, let us feast on you."
And this is a banal phenomenon. It is not purposeful. It happens because people
hold their beliefs to be more important than the sanctity of life. It is a
tragedy. And tragically those who realize it are often labeled insane. Doubters
and LGBT people alike can easily identify with Lu Xun’s madman when, in regards
to the eyes that peer at him and the whispers he hears around him, he says “it’s as
if they’re afraid of me…but also as if they want to hurt me.”
I end now with the same wish I
wrote at the end of my censored comment.
May we all, myself included, have
the bravery to question everything we
believe. Because your beliefs are not
sacred. And neither are mine.
In fact, they may just be eating
people.
