Exploring “A Middle Way” Within Mormonism
I promised to pass along any LDS efforts to counter church support for Prop 8. The purpose of the site is to educate people about marriage equality and about LDS people who are lesbian or gay and to provide support to LDS people who oppose the proposition. More videos and blog posts will be added until the California election.
http://mormonsformarriage.com/
Comments are welcome, particularly if you have a related story to tell.
When it appeared on television I’d heard about the 30 Days episode featuring an LDS woman, Katie, living with gay men who’d adopted children. I hadn’t been able to see the program, however, until today, when a friend forwarded me the link. It is fascinating to watch, and it seems to me that Spurlock (the man behind the 30 Days series) has done a fine job presenting a balanced picture of the issue. It is apparent that the gay couple (and their friends) had hoped to change Katie’s mind. They believed that by opening their home and showing that they are good people trying hard to be good parents to four children, their actions would at least soften Katie’s opposition. She remains steadfastly opposed, however, and she describes well how her views are too intertwined with her identity and with her understanding of God and morality to change. The program takes about 43 minutes to watch, and it is well worth your time.
I’m sure by now our readers know about the First Presidency letter to be read in church this coming Sunday. I don’t want to get into any debates on this post about the letter itself, or gay marriage. My question is– what do you plan to do when the letter is read this Sunday? Do you plan to be in church? If you support the stance of the letter, I’m guessing that you won’t do much in the meeting itself, but will you actually take action based on it? And if you don’t support the letter, will you walk out? Wear a rainbow ribbon pin to church? Any other ideas? And if you’re in a ward where there is any protest or discussion on Sunday, could you report back here? As for me, I’m still undecided whether to attend, and if so, whether to walk out or not.
The California Supreme Court recently ruled that the state’s ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional. The Mormon internet has been busy with comments and reaction to the ruling, which will almost certainly be the subject of a ballot initiative in November to add the ban to the state constitution. Of course, the LDS church’s involvement in 2000 on California’s Proposition 22 is well known, and many observers expect the church to campaign actively in favor of the expected November ballot initiative. We shall see.
In today’s Salt Lake Tribune is an op-ed piece I wrote about polygamy, copied below. Some people will say I’m overstepping my bounds, and others will say I don’t go far enough. I simply hope it makes people think about the church’s connections to polygamy. The present policy - relying on the Associated Press and other news organizations to clarify who is and who is not Mormon - seems bound to fail, as the public doesn’t consult the AP Style Guide when they talk about such things.
Continue reading ‘Moving Forward: The LDS Polygamy Question’
One theme that I hear often in Mormonism concerns morality and its central place in society. Most recently I came across this idea in an op-ed piece in the Salt Lake Tribune. The writer, Lynn Wardle, described his views regarding morality in the context of Elliot Spitzer’s downfall. (I don’t think copyright law allows me cut & paste Wardle’s comments here but you can click on this link to read them at the Trib.)
Continue reading ‘Morality Beyond Sexuality’
After a year and a half, my wife has become accustomed to the idea that I am essentially an unbelieving Mormon. Along the way we’ve had some conversations that can only be called unpleasant, but these days I am less frustrated, she is less defensive, and we can talk freely about the Church without anybody crying, cursing, or feeling guilty.
Perhaps the most crucial conversation we had came several months ago. Two days previous, my wife had firmly requested that I stop wearing garments unless I planned to return to the temple. “If you’re wearing them just to appease me,” she said, “I wish you wouldn’t.”
The recent furor over at Times and Seasons about family planning has got me thinking about birth control. I’d say that if there’s anything that I know, it’s that birth control is a good thing. I feel fortunate that I live in a time and place when I’ve had the ability to plan each of my pregnancies.
My spouse and I are feeling that we’re definitely done having children so we’re considering a vasectomy for my husband. When I mentioned this a few years ago to my OB/Gyn, he strongly discouraged us, saying that he’d seen way too many couples feel regret afterwards (this, ironically, was in the same conversation where he admitted to me that three of his five children were born when he and his wife went to bed too drunk to remember to use their own BC–sheesh. And no, he’s not my doctor anymore…). My friends who’ve already had their surgeries seem happy it. One told me, “It’s the greatest gift we’ve ever given each other.” So it’s got me thinking that maybe it would be the perfect Christmas present this year?
I’m curious–how many of you (or your partners) have chosen tubal ligations and/or vasectomies? Are you happy with your choice? Did you have any unforeseen complications? Any regrets?
I’ve found myself in an uncomfortable situation: a former lover of mine (from nearly two decades ago) is working for the same company as my husband. Their offices are on the same floor. When visiting my spouse at work, I sometimes encounter this other guy (I’ll call him “Dean”).
That title is not just hyperbole. I really don’t know much of anything, except maybe how to spell hyperbole. I gave up saying “I know” about five years ago. I used to think I knew stuff. Now I know(!) better. That’s one thing I do know: how little I know.
So, given that I don’t know much, here are some things I think and believe and hope, with a teeny bit of knowing thrown in where the term is accurate. Continue reading ‘I Don’t Know Much’
The discussion surrounding the recent conference talk, Mothers Who Know, was fascinating. I read the Feminist Mormon Housewives and Exponent II conversations and other blog and bulletin board discussions, as well as the comments on the articles posted at the Deseret News and the Tribune, and found that I couldn’t help but react, sometimes in agreement, and sometimes in disagreement. Later I read What Women Know, which focuses on a broadened conceptualization of women’s many roles in life, and I found myself thinking again about the women and men in my life who have made a difference. If I have amounted to anything in life, it is largely because of the things I have learned from others. Whether from women or from men, I most value the things I have learned through nurturance and compassion. Hierarchy, commandments, and guilt have proven poor teachers in my case.
A friend on another board has just told some of us that she is getting divorced. It does not seem that the divorce is her idea, but her husband’s. He isn’t willing to remain married to a post-Mormon. I reacted very strongly to the news. I cried a little. I hugged my husband a lot. I felt like we’d failed her somehow.
Losing your faith is tough. Being married to someone who has lost his/her faith is tough. Change is tough. And yet, people change. I know that when people marry in the temple they are assuming that the marriage is eternal. But that doesn’t mean that the thoughts, ideas, opinions, and yes, beliefs of the person you marry are eternally fixed at the point in time when you each say “Yes.”
I was struck recently by a comment Kevin Barney made in an “I don’t know and neither do you” tangent on By Common Consent: “We all, every one of us, walk by faith.” If you can believe that God and Jesus appeared as physically embodied beings to a semi-literate fourteen year-old in upstate New York; if you can believe that said fourteen year-old produced a work of scripture by reading the words on a stone in his hat; if you can believe that the illegitimate son of a carpenter and his teen-aged bride rose from the dead three days after being executed by the Romans ca. 30 CE; then why can’t you believe that even if your spouse doesn’t believe all those things, somehow, it can still all work out? You can believe all these implausible things, but you can’t believe in the person you married.
That’s faithless.
My friend Peggy Rogers used to have a statement in her online sig: “It’s not a Mormon thing, it’s a human thing.” In many cases, I agree with her. Those of us who have ambivalent relationships with the church often slap a “Mormon” label on our challenges with the church. Usually, those challenges aren’t Mormon, but just human - people doing what people do, but the people happen to be Mormon. On a recent thread at the New Order Mormons board on the topic of getting along in a newly-mixed marriage, one of the participants called us on it. The problems and challenges of remaining in a loving respectful marriage to a believing LDS after a loss of faith were dismissed as just the problems and challenges of any mixed-faith marriage.
I’ve never been in a mixed-faith marriage between a Catholic and a Jew, or a Hindu and a Muslim, or an evangelical Protestant and a Buddhist, but I have been in two different mixed-faith marriages: once as a believing LDS to a never-Mormon husband, and later as an unbelieving LDS to a faithful LDS husband. Having experienced LDS mixed-marriage from both sides, I feel qualified to say that sometimes, it IS a Mormon thing.
The pressure of an unbelieving spouse on a faithful LDS can not be underestimated. The pinnacle of religious achievement in the LDS church is temple marriage. When I was a convert married to a non-member, the lack of a temple marriage was a giant thorn in our relationship. In the beginning I was hopeful he would see the light. As time went on, and our relationship deteriorated, the persistent lack of the magic wand - a temple marriage - magnified in my mind our already very serious problems.
Over ten years later, the shoe was on the other foot. I had the magic wand, and even a real Prince Charming, who was better in every possible way from the toad I had married the first time. But I didn’t believe in magic any more. My therapist, bless her, didn’t seem to understand that going to another church was not as simple as just going to another church! That’s a very Mormon thing - that it makes a difference which church you go to. One mainstream Protestant flavor isn’t as good as any other. In fact, they’re all wrong - it says so right in JS-H.
Garments, the Word of Wisdom, tithing, taking callings, baptizing the children, what to tell the children, what to tell the relatives, what is going to happen to my eternal marriage - these are all, to a greater or lesser extent, Mormon things. Pretending that it’s no different than what any other mixed-faith marriage has to deal with doesn’t make these Mormon things go away.
The one thing that is universal in resolving these issues, or at least learning to live with them, is communication. Judgmentalism, contempt, the cold shoulder, lines in the sand, ultimatums, tears, scripture bashing and pleas to authority usually aren’t effective. If you want it to work, keep talking. And then, listen.
My DH, older son and I once had a conversation about the role of Jesus in the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I made a witty, insightful - ok, snotty - comment about my observations on the subject at hand. My DH, probably anxious to protect our son’s faith, replied, “Well, that’s what you choose to see.” Continue reading ‘Not Saying Everything We Think’
I think divorce is a wonderful thing.
Almost twenty-three years ago, I married for the first time. I got married quickly. We separated after six years and divorced just shy of our seventh anniversary. We had one child together, and he had adopted my older child.
Divorcing my ex-husband was the single smartest thing I ever did. It was good for me and it was good for my kids. My sullen, frightened daughter became cheerful and optimistic. The chip that had been growing on my little boy’s shoulder shrank and eventually disappeared.
For a borderlander, I’m pretty orthoprax. I rarely drink alcohol or coffee. Not never, but rarely. I attend Sacrament meeting almost every Sunday. I hold not one, but TWO callings. I sing in the choir. I’m not so good at the private religious behaviors, but I’m thinking about working on that. Continue reading ‘The Limit of my Orthopraxy’
Check out my dear friend Buckley Jeppson on Washingtonpost.com.
A few of you may remember my podcast interview with Buckley–he is LDS, and has been threatened with excommunication for marrying his gay partner, Michael (also a dear friend).
I include the link here because Buckley still very much values his membership, in spite of all the struggle–and he discusses his commitment to the church in the video.
All the best to you Buckley (and Mike)…and to the rest of you, I hope you enjoy!!!
On a recent Speaking of Faith episode, The Spirituality of Parenting, (Read more and listen here.), Rabbi Sandy Sasso discussed the challenges of people from a variety of points on the spiritual spectrum fostering their children’s spirituality and answering the tough questions. Though I’m not a parent, I found all of it relevent to my own spiritual journey and experiences. One particular quote from Rabbi Sasso stood out to me:
“Don’t let the people who gave you a bad impression of your religious tradion be the only ones to define it. You, too, are a part of that tradition and you’re not just a descendant, you’re also an ancestor and you helped to create the future of that tradition.”
Continue reading ‘Musings From “The Spirituality of Parenting”’
Some of you may have heard of the term “The Middle Way” within a Mormon context. It denotes (to me) a rejection of the notion that you must either be a TBM (True Believing, Literalist Mormon) or an ex-Mormon. It means staying active within the LDS church, while not necessarily accepting all of the doctrinal or cultural teachings. And to be clear–for me, it does NOT denote a requirement of staying silent on the most important issues.
In this excellent RadioWest interview,
Continue reading ‘Facing East–Carol Lynn Pearson as a Pioneering, “Middle Way” Mormon’
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