Our Authentic Lives

The Problem is Generational

2011-11-16T06:40:00.003-05:00

African-American descendants of slaves carry a unique burden that no other marginalized group can equal in America. I prepared this podcast to illustrate how complicity on the part of white folks in 1930 shaped my husband's life.

I am not posting this video to say somebody is to blame. There is no one person or one circumstance out there to be the scapegoat either.

What we need to do is compensate the victims properly by adjusting for their what their reality is. That reality includes every problem that afflicts the inner-city. This has to be done because most of the fall-out from Jim Crow era segregation is still manifesting today as the most intractable problems of the inner-city.

An Open Letter to American Crossroads and Karl Rove

2011-03-21T10:41:00.006-04:00

Dear Mr. Rove, Mr. Law, and Mr. Duncan:

I have to say that I really appreciate the name of your 527 organization. I, like you, believe that America is at a crossroads. But I am a progressive, and you are conservatives, so on almost every decision we are going to be at odds with each other. There is, however, one social conservative agenda item that I believe we need to agree on, and I am asking you to lead the charge in your camp. It involves individual liberty and limited government, and since I took those words off your web page, I remain hopeful.

If I am not mistaken, American Crossroads exists primarily to influence policy outcomes by ensuring that individuals who share your ideology get elected. Because you are essentially policy-setters, I am sure that I do not need to explain to you what a policy window is, but this is an open letter, so I will explain it for those who don’t. A policy window consists of three elements all coming together at once, and can also be described by saying that “the planets have lined up.” The first component is considered to be in place when the general public more-or-less agrees that a problem needs to be acted upon immediately. The second component is considered to be in place when there is a good policy proposal already out there waiting for action. The third component requires that there be strong political support for the policy proposal. I am writing to try and persuade you to put the influence of your 527 to work while this particular “policy window” is open. The policy proposal that I am asking your organization to support is the repeal of DOMA – the Defense of Marriage Act.

Before you dismiss this out-of-hand, please consider other moments in history when America found itself at a crossroads. Let me start with the Dred Scott decision in 1857. The way I see it, the Supreme Court attempted an “end run” around a very difficult no-win situation. Mr. Scott, his wife, and his two daughters had been moved to the free states of Illinois and Minnesota. Because he had not been freed, according the laws of those states, he sued his owner. The Supreme Court avoided getting entangled in state law by ruling instead that Scott, and by extension any person of African descent, could not be a United States citizen. This “end run” prohibited slaves and Blacks from bringing any kind of legal action to the courts of America. Fair-minded Americans everywhere, but particularly in the north, cried foul at this because they could not see how one person born on this soil could be subjected to a different set of laws than his or her neighbor when it was just an accident of birth that one had a darker skin than the other. America was at a crossroads in 1857 and the strong backlash against the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision eventually led to the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and to the adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments in order to correct the error of that Supreme Court decision.

Now, consider the case of Edith “Edie” Windsor. She met Thea Spyer, the woman who would become her spouse, in 1967. Before Thea passed away in 2009 they had spent 44 years together as a couple. Like Dred Scott, Edie sought to take advantage of existing law (in Canada) that allowed her to marry Thea in May 2007. In February 2008, New York State lost a legal challenge and was obligated to recognize marriages from out-of-state. This meant that Edie and Thea’s Canadian marriage became recognized as a legal marriage in New York.

When Thea passed away in 2009, Edie found that the federal government considered her to be a stranger to this woman with whom she had shared more than half of her 80 years. She was ordered to pay $350,000 in estate taxes to the IRS. Again, fair-minded people across America are outraged that this woman is being treated unequally under the law. The law that Edie is challenging is DOMA, and Windsor v. United States is on its way to the Supreme Court.

Like the Dred Scott decision, it will not matter whether the Supreme Court rules for or against Ms. Windsor. If they rule against her, it will be seen as an attempt to narrowly define the rights of Americans, giving the constitution a decidedly religious skew. With the public opinion now showing that supporters of same-sex marriage now form a majority, a decision like this will likely fuel a backlash against hard-line conservatives. You should get the word out to your supporters about what happened after the 1857 Dred Scott decision. The South took great joy in the Supreme Court decision, but within eight short years the South was living with the consequences of what one Savannah tour guide refers to as “The Great Unpleasantness.”

Alternatively, what happens if the Supreme Court decides in favor of Ms. Windsor and strikes down DOMA? Well, it would leave a vacuum in American law and nature abhors a vacuum. Similarly, conservatives hate uncertainty, which now leads me to the real purpose of this letter.

Consider this instead. Going back to the idea of a “policy window,” an alternative to DOMA has already been introduced into both houses of Congress. It has been entitled the “Respect for Marriage Act,” and I am sure that the name itself makes conservatives across the nation cringe, but hear me out. If Republican lawmakers were to get on board with the repeal DOMA effort, it will do two things:

1) It will nullify the Windsor v. United States appeal and remove all of the uncertainty around that, and…

2) It will give the new bill a more palatable name and verbiage than would otherwise be the case.

I fully understand that a Republican is not going to get behind the policy as it is currently worded, but what if your 527 gets behind a compromise? You are wonderfully qualified to properly word this policy, so let me tell you what I think will work to get people like my husband and me on-board, and then I will let you take it from there.

In summary, this is what I think the new policy will need to do:

The new policy will need to provide equal treatment to all couples who desire to enter into a contract to care for each other and share in an intimate relationship. You can call that contract whatever you want, but just remember that it was the unequal treatment under the law that prompted President Lincoln and Congress to react the way it did in 1865 after the Dred Scott decision.
Since your supporters cannot support same-sex marriage, then let’s avoid the word “marriage” in the new law.
Marriage licenses fall under state law in the first place, so nothing needs to be changed there at this point in time. Let’s keep the federal government out of state politics. Can we agree on that for now?
Speaking of state’s rights, Section 2 of DOMA is not being threatened by any of these appeals currently making their way through the court system. For those who don’t know, Section 2 allows a state to not recognize a same-sex marriage that is performed in another state. I know, this is going to grate on some progressives, but we have to choose our battles here, and this battle is about federal law, so my advice to progressives is to get over it.
If federal law cannot use the word “marriage,” then conservatives will have to become accustomed to being recognized at the federal level with a different word. I am proposing “civil union,” but feel free to suggest something new if you like. For me, this is about rights, not what word we give to those rights.

So, how will this all work? Since I am a cousin to Mike Leavitt, and my family all hail from Utah, let me use Utah as an example of how things might work under the new law, as I see it. You see, until I was 46-years-old I used to be like Mike Leavitt, and vote like Mike Leavitt. It was only when I could admit that I had been born gay, and that no amount of prayer could change that, when I converted to the “other side.” I like to tell people that it was only a matter of weeks after changing the voting designation on my driver’s license that my church excommunicated me, but I digress.

Suppose, after the new law I am proposing goes into effect, that a Mormon heterosexual couple in Utah want to get married. They would go and get a marriage license at city hall and then take it to the religious authority that will perform the ceremony, just like they do now. He will marry them, and then register the marriage on state records. The only thing that will have changed is that federal law will now recognize this marriage in the only way that it can; as a civil union. Remember, at the federal level, under the new law that will replace DOMA, the constitution prohibits the government from recognizing one union as different from another, but state law will not be restricted in this way. They will have been “married” in Utah.

So, to continue with my example, if a gay couple in Salt Lake City wanted to enter into a civil union, they would go to city hall and complete a domestic partnership registration form. They could have a ceremony, if they wanted, but they would have to have a notary public officiate at that ceremony. They might even need to call it something else because current Utah law forbids anything called a domestic partnership. This is going to be a gray area for the time being, but that is the compromise. Nevertheless, federal law, under the new policy that I am proposing, will not allow states to deny their residents access to their federal rights, so each state will have to come up with something that their voters can live with. The current Utah constitution is very restrictive, but if they could bend so far as to allow a “domestic partnership” registry, it will suffice so long as it is something that extends all of the federal rights to a same-sex couple. The intent of the new law will be to allow the gay couple with a “domestic partnership” in Utah to be recognized federally in the same way that the “married” couple from Utah is recognized, regardless of how Utah sees the two couples. Yes, I know that this is getting into the territory of Brown v. The Board of Education, but nobody said policy making for social issues was going to be easy. It might just buy your followers some time to shape state laws around the new reality, but the truth is, history, and just about every other developed country in the world, is on my side, not yours. Even the Dred Scott decision only lasted for eight years. Eight very unpleasant years, I might add.

At this point I will leave it with you to decide what you think is the right course of action for conservatives, but I hope you agree that to allow the current legal cases to reach the Supreme Court would be a mistake. If I were a betting man I would not be placing money on a favorable outcome for the conservatives. First off, the White House has determined that Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional (strike one), and then they instructed Attorney General Eric Holder not to defend DOMA, and he agreed (strike two). And so it has fallen to Speaker Boehner and Congress. I do not want to sound cruel, but he is not your strongest batter, but he is all you have left.

There are other reasons why I would not be betting on DOMA being able to withstand the challenges that it is up against. Recent polling has indicated that support for same-sex marriages in every demographic, including the evangelical base and Catholics, has jumped double-digits in the last five years. Other polling indicates that less than 32% of the voting public want Congress wasting their time defending DOMA in court after the attorney general’s office has already said that Section 3 is unconstitutional. The public wants jobs, so in the interest of all Americans it will be far better if the bill to replace DOMA works its way through both houses of Congress with minimal interference and debate. American Crossroads can make this happen.

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Lester Leavitt

lester@mediaomniverse.org

A "Red Letter Day" - DOMA took a knock-out blow.

2011-02-24T08:44:00.005-05:00

I would be horribly remiss if I did not post a blog post after yesterday. Not only did President Obama announce that he would not enforce DOMA, but Hawaii became the seventh state to recognize civil unions. In 1998 they were the first state to pass a DOMA-like law, and now, 13 years later, all those millions that were spent by the Mormons and their ilk has once again been flushed. The god of the Christian wing-nuts sure has a funny way of feeding the poor and attending to the sick and weary.

But back to DOMA, and the joint announcement by President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. For any who are into public policy, just learn this one fact:

DOMA will not be enforced for one primary reason, and it is NOT because there is flaw in the wording of the law.

This is what Eric Holder wrote:

"[Holder] noted that the congressional debate during passage of the Defense of Marriage Act "contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships — precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus" the Constitution is designed to guard against."

Just note that it was because the debate leading up to the passage of DOMA included conversations that clearly indicated that the intent of DOMA was to enforce religious morality, or in other words, a point of view that is not upheld by scientific facts.

Whether that language made it into the bill is irrelevant. The debate is what exposed the intent of the law that was eventually passed, and that intent is what falls well outside of the US Constitution.

Our president is a brilliant man. He has a master plan, and I will not doubt him. Only he can see his cards, and I trust him to play them well.

It Was August: A Poetry Writing Exercise

2010-12-01T06:22:00.008-05:00

This poem was a required component of the portfolio for Lester's Advanced Exposition and Rhetoric class.

The words in bold were given in a list and had to be incorporated as part of the writing assignment.

Of course, it is dedicated to Mickey.

It Was August

It was August when despair set in.

It was generous of him to forgive.

I stood to lose so much

I chose the shelter of his embrace.

It was August when hope set in.

A year had passed like drifting clouds

Ever moving across new-found borders.

In the safety of his embrace.

It was August when certainty set in.

The passage of another year.

The smoke from our sorrows forgotten

In the comfort of our embrace.

Ode to the Blue Kawasaki

2010-12-01T06:06:00.004-05:00

Ode to the Blue Kawasaki

I was desperate for freedom. I craved the eastern coast.

But I had a large family that demanded most of what I earned.

A compromise was the blue Kawasaki.

On a motorbike it costs just a few dollars to travel Alligator Alley.

By working four ten-hour-days I could leave on Thursday night,

Leaving me four nights to find what I was looking for on my blue Kawasaki.

It meant new friends…real friends. Friends who were men like me.

It meant Sunday morning rides, going nowhere in particular.

The Stonewall Knights all had big bikes, and I had my big blue Kawasaki.

Having no cage around you means you are at the mercy of chance.

A stray dog once took me down, and a lightning strike almost got me,

But accepting fate frees the soul while riding my blue Kawasaki.

There had been a lifetime of lies with never a day of adolescence.

What does a person know at 47 if he has never opened his eyes?

Dating men is hard, even with the freedom of my blue Kawasaki.

But bikers are kind, especially at Easter in the springtime.

They freely offer encouraging words. Two hours to think in the open air helps,

Especially when inspired by my blue Kawasaki.

I write a new profile for Silverdaddies and post it with a hot shirtless photo.

I get nine immediate responses and line up seven dates within an hour.

It all starts the next Thursday night on my blue Kawasaki.

Sunday morning marks another ride with the Stonewall Knights.

Sunday afternoon is my third date, and it is in the heart of Wilton Manors.

His profile said zip code 33305; the favorite for my blue Kawasaki.

It was take-out Chinese, then Dreamgirls, then…“Can I stay the night?”

The Monday morning ride home to Bonita Springs meant more time to think.

It is high-quality thinking time on my blue Kawasaki.

I can’t wait for Thursday. I make a Tuesday morning call to 33305.

“What are you doing this weekend?” I cancel every other Silverdaddies date

And I now have a reserved parking place for my blue Kawasaki.

Accepting fate frees the soul.

Loving a man is easy.

Truths learned through my blue Kawasaki.

It was a summer of love and a first Christmas together.

Then it was financial turmoil and unreliable work,

Followed by a summer of trials on my blue Kawasaki.

I was a lost soul with a tolerant savior.

I found encouragement, advice, and tough love.

And finally I found a new direction for my blue Kawasaki.

I was back in college, taking first steps, and finding my adolescence.

I was a 20-something college kid in a 49-year-old body.

It had all been made possible by the sale of my blue Kawasaki.

Island Living: An Essay on Escape

2010-11-08T14:34:00.006-05:00

Island Living

By: Lester Leavitt

November 2010

Do you live on an island? Not all islands are surrounded by water you know, and some islands are built by man. Castles with a moat are like little islands where the moat is part of their defense from outside evils. That should help you understand why some people build islands, but you should know that other people model their man-made islands after Alcatraz. All islands have their own form of leadership, and some island leaders don’t want their inhabitants to leave.

You might actually like living in isolation on an artificial island. If you are invited onto one of these islands you will immediately be exposed to their coded language, and, like trying on a pair of shoes, you will soon know how well the code meshes with your goals and ideals. Most island code reinforces how a simple life is the ideal kind of life, as long as it is the right kind of simple life. Island code also reinforces what the consequences are if community members don’t follow the code. On an island the consequences are often far more severe than they would otherwise be.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan constructed an island in the middle of a continent.

So did Brigham Young.

I was raised on an island. It was a source of pride for my family to claim that my brothers and sisters and I were seventh generation islanders. From my earliest memories I was told that my ancestors had chosen island living because the rest of the world was a dangerous evil place.

If you want to build a cultural island yourself you first need to create a code that clearly defines the island boundaries. Fuzzy boundaries allow people to wander off and get lost in a fog, and this is a problem with artificial islands because the shorelines are always a dangerous cliff. Cultural islands never have beaches because they are surrounded by a sea of fire and brimstone. Good islander parents never allow their children to play near the cliffs.

If you are a curious person you will be a threat to island dwellers. Curious people tend to invite unwanted influences onto their islands. Teenagers are naturally curious, so if you are a teenager on one of these islands you will be carefully monitored. On an island modeled after one of Brigham Young’s islands, it is expected that all teenagers will begin indoctrination classes when they start ninth grade. These classes will run five days a week, every school day, until you graduate from high school. They have one purpose, and that is to teach the island code. The most important part of the code for a teenager is the part that warns them about the cliff overlooking the sea of fire and brimstone.

If you are like a curious teenager you might find these island gods a bit confusing. First, you are told that the island god loves you unconditionally, but then you find out that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of “conditions” set out by island code that will result in this all-loving god wanting to condemn you. You won’t challenge this circular logic because that will label you as a curious islander, and you were taught long before your teens that curious islanders are a threat. Secretly though, you will wonder why something that is pitched as a wonderful paradise like this island would need to have a barrier that is meant to prevent islanders from leaving.

Sinning is not the same as being a criminal in island culture. A sin is like an accident. Everybody has accidents, and what sets an accident apart from a crime is that you yourself know when you have sinned. Because you are aware of your sin you will readily agree to the prescribed consequences of your accident.

What it takes to make you a criminal in this culture is for you to challenge the authority of the island leaders. Remember, that is what the classes for teenagers are all about. They make sure that you know what the rules of the leaders are, and they spend a great deal of time teaching you that their authority cannot be challenged.

Not everybody agrees with the fact that the leaders are always right, but everybody will agree that if you want to stay on the island you cannot challenge their authority. They make sure that that fact is never disputed. It seems that once in every generation a high profile island criminal is sacrificed to the island god by being thrown off the cliff. Everybody is encouraged to gossip about these human sacrifices because it serves to reinforce the authority of the island leaders. If you are my age, and came from an island like mine, you will remember the feminist Sonya Johnson from the 1970’s and the notorious “September Six” from 1993. There is no sympathy for these dissenting voices, but pity is allowed. After all, if they would have just been obedient…

A lost soul is mourned in public in island culture; a lost life, not so much. You see, if the island god likes you, he grants you eternal life, but if you’ve lost your soul then that option is no longer available.

You might have grown up in a sea of little islands, where things like this happened so often that it just seemed normal. South of the Mason-Dixon Line there is a sea of islands like this. Amid so many islands it is hard to tell if you are on the mainland. Chances are pretty good that if you only have white neighbors you are on an island. Mainlanders can be very different from each other and yet still get along fine. Islanders cannot. They usually dress alike, read the same newspapers, watch the same television programs, and if it is an island built by Brigham Young they will all wear identical underwear.

There are also small islands that are no bigger than a city. There is one in Colorado Springs that Ted Haggard built for himself, but in his case the island elder’s got together and threw him off the cliff. You see, Mr. Haggard used a book of code to build his island that allowed one particular behavior to be classified as an accident, but another very similar behavior had to be classified as a crime. You have to be really committed to learning the subtle nuances of island code in order to survive life on an island, even if you are the leader.

There are quite a few little islands like the one Ted Haggard built for himself. Back in the 1970’s Jim Jones built a little island north of San Francisco, but he had to move it to a tropical jungle when a number of islanders expressed an interest in leaving.

David Koresh built walls around his island city. He felt so threatened by the mainlanders that he stockpiled guns and told the islanders to be very afraid of every mainlander. David Koresh made the same mistake that Brigham Young did back in 1857 at Mountain Meadows. They both forgot that being an island leader involves a delicate balance between placating the mainlanders that surround your island while still keeping the islanders isolated from the dangerous messages that filter in from the mainlanders.

The idea of building artificial islands dates back to the beginning of mankind when the only way for primitive communities to survive was to be more powerful than the communities that were nearby you. But that was before man started cultivating crops and domesticating animals. The idea that there is not enough food for everybody is no longer relevant, but that kind of thinking is still the driving force for creating islands in the middle of a continent.

Today, when a powerful man (and it is almost always a man) wants to build an island, he first must pick the one thing that everybody desires, and at least one thing that everybody is afraid of. The Taliban leaders knew that their followers wanted to be god’s chosen people, and then they told the people to be afraid of anything that was going to threaten their 14^th century culture. The other thing that an island must have is a vengeful god. You can’t have an island in the middle of a continent without the sea of fire and brimstone.

Island culture never made sense to me. I knew from my early teens that I wasn’t fitting in, but I had learned as a preschooler that being different was not going to be tolerated. I was always on the lookout for others like me all through my teen years, but I couldn’t trust anybody. The consequences of confiding in the wrong person would be devastating. I knew I couldn’t trust my parents or my siblings. You see, my uncle confided in the wrong person when I was just 13 years old. My mother gathered the whole family together and told us how the island leaders had thrown him off the cliff into the sea. After that, she talked about her brother in hushed tones. She said it was a pity how his crimes dictated that he had to be sacrificed to the god of the island.

Never again would I consider the idea of sharing my thoughts that the island leaders were wrong, or that the island god was a fake. But from that point on I knew for certain that I was not a true islander.

If you are on an island and want to get off, I have good news for you. At the age of 44 I finally found a way to build a bridge. By then I was married and had four children. I found out that my wife and three of my children wanted to leave the island with me, and we all crossed on the same bridge. My oldest child knows that the bridge is still there, and that he can cross it with his wife when they are ready.

After I crossed my bridge, my five brothers and sisters and my entire extended family all held a ceremony with the island leaders and tossed what they thought was my body off the cliff into the sea of fire and brimstone. They now talk about me in hushed tones and pity me, just like my mother did with her brother.

If you are trapped on an island and want to get off, I can tell you how to build a bridge like mine. It requires unconventional thinking, but I know you are capable of that because it is something that has already set you apart from your fellow islanders.

First, pretend that you are somebody else. If it helps, think of yourself as a writer like me, and imagine you are setting out to write a novel. Every novel has to have a main character, so just pretend that this character is you. Not you, the islander, but you as a mainlander. Imagine the person you would be if you had not been born on the island.

Remember, this is fiction. There is no vengeful god. There is no evil. There are no brothers or sisters or parents who will turn you over to the island leaders for having had an original thought. There is only your imagination.

Allow your character to have whatever happiness you never had while living on your island. You can start your novel from whatever age you were when you realized that the island leaders were conspirators, and that the god of the island was a lie. Allow your character to evolve.

Now, walk toward the cliff. No, you won’t see the bridge, but it is there. The character from your novel just built it.

When you reach the cliff, keep walking! Your character knew exactly where to build the bridge because you were the one who created your own savior.

Keep walking off the edge of the cliff! You won’t fall. Put your weight on the empty space, and when your back foot leaves the island soil, then, and only then, will you see the bridge.

Enjoy your new life. I’m sure enjoying mine. You see, I wrote my own happy ending.

Our Favorite New Song

2010-11-02T05:35:00.006-04:00

Mickey's and my favorite new song.

"The Emergency"

From the album, "These Hopeful Machines."

The video doesn't open in a new window, so in order to follow the lyrics below you will have to open a second window for this blog and then click through to start the video.

(This window is ONLY the lyrics. The link to the video is above.)

Why I Hung Up on My Sister on My Birthday

2010-10-30T23:33:00.004-04:00

Yes, my sister called me on my birthday, but it certainly didn't make my day. Within a few seconds of calling she made it clear that we could probably have a good conversation if we just avoided talking about three topics. Actually, it was three topics in her mind, but it was one topic in my mind.

In short, we could've had a good conversation if we didn't talk about anything that would afford me the right to call my husband my "husband." My family want my husband to be a friend that I have sex with, and even though that makes them squirm, they could tolerate that much.

You see, she not only called to wish me a happy birthday, but also to invite Mickey and I to the family reunion in St. George, Utah in January. It was very benevolent of her to make sure that I knew that I was "welcome" even if I came with Mickey, and for a moment I thought she might have become a little more "liberal," so I laid it all on the table. I wanted to make sure that he was welcome as my "husband," not just as a friend...kind of like bringing a friend home from school back in 4th grade.

I asked, "I will come to a family reunion when I have the assurance that my siblings feel that I deserve the same happiness and rights that you all have and enjoy. When you all have the courage to stand up and support the separation of church and state, and allow gay couples the right to be equal under the law, then Mickey and I will show up at a family reunion."

She replied, "Well, that's one of those topics that we just need to agree not to talk about."

I told her to send emails and I will pick and choose which ones to read, and then I hung up. It had never really been a conversation in the first place. Who was I kidding?

Immediately I thought, "Okay, I'm supposed to go to a family reunion where there will be 60 or more people, 50 of whom supported Prop 8 and still would support it again if another vote were held tomorrow. And these 50 people will pretend that my husband and I are 'welcome' there, even though they strongly believe that we should never be married and treated as a family."

They will turn their backs when we go into a hotel room with a king-size bed and they will close their minds to the idea that we get intimate in the same way that they get intimate as married couples.

What would I get out of spending 3 days with these people? What kind of a conversation would I have around a campfire with these people?

My 5 brothers and sisters, their husbands and wives, and my 30-plus nieces and nephews and their husbands and wives, think we share a history, but we don't. I was never authentic with them a day in my life. I knew that they would have a problem with me being gay, and they have proven me right. Everything they know about me was a projection so that I could have their acceptance and the acceptance of my parents.

And the irony is, what I would like more than anything is to be invited to a family reunion where they would be excited to meet my husband, not merely tolerate me arriving with a man that I have sex with, and whom they will refer to as "my friend."

What I really want, and fight for every day that I live, is for the parents of a 14 year old gay kid in a religious fundamentalist religion to accept their kid while in his or her teens. I don't want any kid to experience my kind of life, or that of Joel Burns. It took Joel Burns 17 years before his parents found out that he almost committed suicide rather than tell them he was gay.

I was a teenager in the 1970's and I couldn't tell my parents I was gay.

Almost 20 years later Joel Burns was a teenager in the late 1980's and he couldn't tell his parents.

One of my five siblings likely has a gay son or daughter who still cannot tell them he or she is gay. When that changes, and when they tell that son or daughter to find happiness and live an authentic life, that will be the day that I will consider taking my husband to one of their family reunions.

Watch the following three videos to see the harm caused by religious fundamentalism and foolish traditions, as experienced by Joel Burns.

A week later Joel Burns and his mother appeared on The Ellen Show. This is the kind of mother / brother / sister that every gay man should have, but religion still prevents it.

The third video is from when Joel Burns and his husband appeared on the Lawrence O'Donnell Show.

Freedom-Dream-Freedom

2010-10-30T01:25:00.019-04:00

(A Dedication by Mickey to Lester)

It is long past your birthday, my love. After dinner, good conversation, the drive home, a loving caress, and with a tender kiss goodnight, you have drifted off to sleep. I know, oh yes, I know… you dream of a place somewhere on this earth, somewhere in this universe there is a place where there is no hate.

It is a place that must exist somehow where my color, your color, our sex in its sameness, our love for one another, our religion or the lack there of does not diminish each of us..any of us into inanimate objects unworthy of dignity...respect...love.

That is the narrow demand of lesser men who are too dense in thought or deed and are steeped in their own fears...hatred... Ignorance squared.

As you dream, I have known of what you want long before you knew you wanted it, my love. I have heard for years and years and years, even before I was ever born, the voices, the verbal shadows, that some call echoes whispering to me and in my ear from a time long before my beginning. The message comes to me from my youth, but even before that…from my mother, my father, my grandmother and a history of elders as black and as noble as they ever could be; respect from others not withstanding.

All my life I have been lectured, prepared, made alert and yes, I have stood ready for the righteous breeze of emancipation to blow easily and calmly across my brow, your brow and the brows of all those who sweat needlessly and suffocate in the heat of indignation. You learned the lesson only recently when you realized your freedom was taken from you... snarled, tangled inexplicably in your in-authenticity. You now look for emancipation along the road with me, side by side.

Sometimes your words, the words in my head passed down from the time before time, and the hope for a better tomorrow, wear me paper thin.

And yet, those words, that burning in your heart makes me stronger, and makes me want to fight another day.

And yes… all this makes me fall in love with you all over again…

My Early Christmas Present: "American Taliban"

2010-09-24T13:13:00.004-04:00

Mickey went onto a conference call with Michael Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos, last week. Unfortunately, I had class that night, but Mickey ordered me Michael's new book, American Taliban.

From the introduction:

...let's be honest, the freedoms the jihadists hate are the very same freedoms that our own homegrown regressive ideologues hate: freedom of thought, of inquiry, of lifestyle. If [all of] America shared the values of the modern conservative movement [i.e. the Republican Tea Party], there would've been little reason for Al Qaeda to attack us. Heck, we would be cultural allies!
Our homegrown cabals may masquerade as cultured and respectful leaders, but behind that facade lies a fanaticism that presents a clear and present danger to our nation.

I've got to get back to my homework, but that is your tidbit for today.

A Noble Cause in the Nude

2010-09-21T11:58:00.002-04:00

Lester Leavitt

September 21, 2010

ENC-3310 Homework Assignment

To Review a Live Entertainment Production

A Noble Cause in the Nude

As the name alone suggests, Naked Boys Singing makes no apologies for what it is, and even if the thought of watching naked men prancing around on a stage makes you squirm, I would still encourage you to see it. The first number, Gratuitous Nudity, will immediately put you at ease. After that, the production is a sometimes moving, but mostly hilarious romp through fifteen other topics that would make your mother blush and the pastor of your childhood years hyperventilate. But even they should see it, in my opinion, because only after you leave the theater and have a moment alone with your thoughts will you realize that there were serious messages cleverly hidden within the lyrics.

The experience will be different for everybody, but at some level most will realize that something has stirred a long-ignored undertow beneath the quiet and still waters in your soul. The writer apparently hit upon something that connects with just about every kind of audience because the show has become the eighth longest running off-Broadway musical in history. It has also been mounted in more than 23 different U.S. cites and six foreign countries.

The production that I witnessed was a six-man troupe that was performing for the summer in Provincetown, Mass. at the Post Office Café and Cabaret, where it opened on June 24 and played until Sept. 13. It was produced and directed by Tom D’Angora and Michael Duling with John Thomas as the music director. Cast members included David Bryant, Ryan Obermeier, Brad Greer, Garrett Bruce, Chris Marchant and Garrett Olthuis.

The production skillfully breaks every barrier and discusses every social taboo that deals with being a man and getting naked. With titles such as The Bliss of a Bris, Fight the Urge, Member’s Only, and Jack’s Song, the show explores topics that we in polite society are told never to vocalize. In Bliss we learn that it is okay for an entire room full of people to watch as little boy’s penises are celebrated by parents, grandparents, extended family, and even the rabbi, but then men are told to never show “it” in public ever again. In Urge we learn that many guys in school, in particular, gay guys, are mortified at the thought they could (and do) get erections while naked in the locker room and showers. In Member’s Only we are reminded that there are literally dozens of nicknames for the “male member,” and in Jack’s Song the audience finds out exactly how many ways there are to “jack off,” “spank the monkey,” “beat the meat,” and, in numerous other similar terms, masturbate.

The show is not just about coming to terms with male sexuality. It also deals with complex issues like a changing belief system. The Naked Maid is a song about a young guy who discovered that you don’t have to be a good housekeeper in order to please every customer, and it doesn’t take much of an imagination to figure out what a song with the title, Perky Little Porn Star, is about.

The production is not so shallow as to only deal with topics that prompt laughter and smiles. For the gay community, and in a gesture to solicit understanding from the general audience, three numbers are particularly powerful. Muscle Addiction points an accusatory finger at a community that is often too obsessed with body image, and Kris, Look What You’ve Missed, and Window to Window, will have many in the audience, myself included, reaching for a tissue or trying not be noticed as we catch the tears before they run down our chins. Without ever saying the word, Kris provides a vivid reminder that there is no gay man alive who can live his life without a near-constant reminder of the devastating impact that AIDS had on our community. Window to Window deals with the complexity of a man desiring another man while still not having fully come to terms with the fact that he, or the other man, might really be gay.

Window to Window was the number that hit me with the force of a body-blow. The song is presented in two parts, one early on in the show where the tension is left unresolved, and then as a reprise at the end of the show. The lyrics, and more importantly, the choreography, deal with the agony that a gay man lives through before that first face-to-face encounter that has the potential to either bring a gay man out of the closet or, as happened to me, lock him in it for years. In my case the “interlude” lasted almost three decades before I experienced my “reprise.”

Naked Boys Singing has been out long enough now that there is a DVD available and the soundtrack is available on CD. I had already seen the video version, with its ten-man cast, but nothing could have prepared me for seeing it live. When we arrived in Provincetown we had no idea that it was showing, so when an attractive young man (wearing only a towel) approached us while having lunch at our street-side table, my husband and I were easily sold on buying tickets. Because we opted to have supper at the Post Office Café just before the production we were given preferred seating on the third row in the upstairs cabaret. The theater is very intimate, with benches that hold only four people on either side of a single aisle, and fewer than fifteen rows.

Not everybody in America has shared my enthusiasm for this production. Since 1998 when it was first staged, local police have been called in to close the production in Provincetown, Mass. (way back in the early days); San Juan, Puerto Rico; Atlanta, Georgia; and most recently, Milwaukee. In the recently settled case of Milwaukee, city authorities back in 2005 had tried to claim that a theater license had not been obtained when they sent the police in to shut down the production. The ensuring lawsuit was just settled in July 2010 when the city paid the non-profit Milwaukee Gay Arts Center $20,000 in compensation. It would seem that city officials knew full well that non-profit organizations do not need a theater license, but that wasn’t going to get in the way of certain over-zealous decision makers.

Naked Boys Singing was first produced in California at Celebration Theater in 1998. After a successful run in Los Angeles it opened in New York City on July 22, 1999, where it has had an almost continuous presence ever since.

Eggs and Bacon for Breakfast; Gay Sex for Lunch

2010-06-24T14:56:00.018-04:00

.
Well, my nephew didn't exactly say it that way, but neither did he try to clarify how my decision to "become gay" at age 44 could have been explained any differently. This is what he posted on my Facebook wall in answer to a comment by Mickey:

Now Mickey, I will just have to disagree with your reasoning about it not being a choice. Was it a, “oh I woke up and decided to have eggs and bacon today,” choice? No. But I think that you made a choice to follow a certain lifestyle over another.

So, dear nephew, in your mind, at what point exactly did I "make a choice to follow a certain lifestyle over another?" Do you honestly want the facts from a gay person, or do you want to continue to follow your snake-oil salesmen that have been pitching a completely discredited 37-year-old dogma to you all of your life?

First off, if you know something that 325,000 certified and accredited professionals don't know, you should have spoken up sooner before I wasted my time on this blog post. But if you haven't got anything new to add to their science you need to understand that all 325,000 of these people hold graduate and post-graduate degrees in more than 13 professional fields, and beyond that, they work every day using their scientific methods in mental health, pediatrics, and educational professions. I hope your argument is a good one, because you're up against a pretty tough crowd. (Here is the link to what those 325,000 professionals say on this "eggs-and-bacon" theory of yours.)

But back to your idea that Mickey and I made a "lifestyle choice." When exactly does your theory imply that I made this "choice?" Was it back when I entered puberty as an eleven year old? That predictable "awakening" that came right on cue, at the same age that it did for my brother and my cousins and my best friend, and when I realized that I was not attracted to girls like everybody else, I knew. Without a doubt, I knew that I was very, very different.

Can that moment of puberty in a child's life be likened to choosing a bowl of cereal over eggs and bacon? Out of hundreds of gay men that Mickey and I know, I have met two that questioned their sexuality after high school, and both of them admitted to being more "gender fluid" up until that moment in their lives. It wasn't like they "left heterosexuality" to become gay. It was more like they had delayed the decision of exactly what their orientation was. The rest of us all knew at puberty where our heart was. Before we even desired sex, we knew that we yearned for an emotional connection to a person of our own gender, and it is for that reason that 325,000 professionals decided in 1973 that homosexuality was an immutable trait.

Let me help you with your education here. Immutable does not mean it is embedded in our DNA. It simply means that it is unchangeable. Your use of the word "choice" implies that at some point in time I made a conscious decision to act on an impulse, and somebody at some point in your life told you that this impulse was "bad."

Well, if we can but agree on the fact that puberty is what brings on this impulse, and for us gay guys the one-and-only impulse that our body gives us is the impulse to find an emotional connection to somebody of our own gender, then who gets to decide if that is from God or from the Devil? We didn't get a choice as to what impulse our body gave us, and there is no switch that convert this one-and-only impulse to a heterosexual impulse, so that is all we are ever going to know in our lifetime.

Now, without going all Biblical on me, tell me why your church gets to tell these 325,000 professionals that it is okay for you to follow your impulse, but it is NOT okay for Mickey and I to follow our impulse. Remember the word "immutable."

This realization didn't come overnight. These 325,000 professionals struggled with this same "eggs and bacon" choice idea that you are struggling with for decades before they all agreed that it was an immutable trait in 1973, so what exactly makes you think that in 2010, more than 37 years later, that you are right, and they are all wrong?

Is it because all 325,000 of them are "liberals," and all liberals are godless? Maybe you read World Net Daily and have been fed this line that gay activists are amazing media geniuses. There is this theory out there of how 4% of the world population have been able to convince all of Europe and every credible medical and educational organization in America that the "gay agenda" deserves their backing. Damn, we're good! And if you believe that, this wingnut author wants to sell you his book...and for just $18 you get a signed copy.

Maybe we could just attribute that trend to the age of enlightenment, and an ever increasing number of people are choosing to be "enlightened."

Now, back to the "lifestyle choice" question. The whole immutable trait idea is just one possibility. Your cousin offered another suggestion, so maybe this is what you were alluding to when you suggested your "eggs and bacon" choice theory. If your cousin is right, then I'm lying about how I felt when I was going through puberty. This would be something that all gay men instinctively do so that we can save face and cast ourselves in a better light. Your cousin wasn't very delicate when she wrote this on my Facebook wall post the other day:

But really Lester, you should be ashamed of yourself. You who served an honorable mission, was married and sealed in the temple and served in the church for many years after. Then you turned your back on that, pushing your wife of over 20 years away [and] tearing your family apart, which you had every right to do because, as the LDS church teaches, we have free agency. Freedom to choose for ourselves what we wish to believe and how we wish to live our lives. [...] If anything you are being brainwashed by the society you live in now. But that's your right to be brainwashed if you so wish.

So, according to this niece I guess I must have really liked eggs and bacon as a teenager and young adult, but by the age of 44 I was so bored with eggs and bacon that I decided I wanted to try something new. She sure sounds like she knows what she's talking about, which is amazing, because I had already gone through that phase in my life before she was born. I tend to believe that somebody handed her a script at a very young age and she has it memorized by now. I had the same script handed to me as a teenager.

What she posted on my Facebook wall is familiar to every gay man out there because they have been the official talking points of just about every major religion since the 1950's. It is what all five of my siblings and both of my sons believe, because this is what has to be true in order for the Bible to withstand scrutiny fundamentist Christianity survive.

Those 60-year-old talking points have only survived because every church that depends on them is propping up the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH for short). Your church leaders are listening to the 38 remaining professionals in all of the North America that still preach that homosexuality is a choice. Of those 38, only one dared appear in front of a judge as a "professional witness" in Florida's adoption ban lawsuit, and only one agreed to appear in defense of the "Yes on 8" court battle in California. George Rekers, the NARTH "professional" that appeared in Florida's case, was caught coming home from a European vacation with an "escort" that he found on Rentboy.com (link here). The judge in California is considering tossing out the witness that appeared in the "Yes on 8" case because he does not belong to an organization that provides for "peer review" of his so-called professional practice.

So, with 325,000 professionals that support my community, and 38 professionals that support yours...I don't think I need to say it.

Oh, what's that you say? You're reminding me that I forgot about God in this equation? You're right.

You have 38 professionals and God on your side, and God is like the trump card, isn't He? I'm not supposed to be able to argue with you once you play the trump card. I'm just supposed to say, "Oh, well that's different then."

Sorry, but I forgot the rules of the game. Thank you for reminding me.

This is where I'm supposed to concede that you kids are right, and that I am just a man that got bored with his "eggs and bacon" diet and decided to try gay sex for lunch. That's what your 38 professionals and God are telling you. It was (the deeply closeted homophobic) Boyd K. Packer that said, "I have no doubt that the cause of homosexuality, when it is determined, will turn out to be a base form of selfishness."

So if family reunions are the same today as they were 30 years ago when my Uncle Glenn came out (your grandmother's brother), this will be the official version of Lester's story that will be told. It goes like this:

"Some men have a mid-life crisis, and typically they go out and do something stupid like buy a red convertible, but your Uncle Lester instead divorced his wife and left his family to try out the gay lifestyle."

And at this point, if I wanted to get back in the good graces of my family and the Mormon Church, I would simply have to admit that:

I made a bad choice.
That I should have known better.
That it was terribly selfish of me,
That my niece is right, I should be ashamed.

Maybe I'll do just that.

But wait, it's too late to get refunds on our hotel reservations, so I think God will be fine if we schedule our repentence for after our holidays.

Mickey, right after our gay-cation to Martha's Vineyard and Provincetown we need to get a divorce and go out and buy red convertibles. If we don't procrastinate the day of our repentence too much longer, there might still be hope for us to get into the Mormon heaven, but we will have to wise choices from here on out instead of following those misinformed 325,000 evil and God-less liberals.

Actually, the Mazda RX-8 that you like doesn't come as a convertible, but those scissor doors are a great consolation prize.

I wonder what Eddie Accardi will offer when you explain to him that I am your trade-in for the new sports car?
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Facebook Wall Exchange with Stephanie and Byron et. al.

2010-06-23T17:00:00.008-04:00

Facebook Wall Post: June 23, 2010
One of the most compelling arguments that I read in response to the "39 questions" from Judge Vaughn Walker of the Prop 8 trial was the response to one question where the plaintiffs indicated that the support FOR marriage from the LGBT community was actually a supportive force for the preservation and strengthening of the family unit.

Lester: I had occasion to use that argument to reply to my niece and two nephews. This is what I wrote:

Stephanie, you wrote to me, "You need to deal with the consequences of your choices, and stop blaming others for your problems."

Stephanie, I'm not blaming anybody for my problems. I am saying my family have been consumed by a 'cult mentality' where bowing to the cult leader became more important than the rights of their fellow citizens, and that includes their own brother, uncle, father and lifelong friend. It's not...as you say...a "problem." It is a fact of my life, and it is a shame that it happened this way. I've accepted it, but I have not, nor will I ever, allow it to go unnoticed by others who need to learn from this experience. It is not a vendetta. It is a campaign to build awareness.

Did it have consequences for me to leave the cult, and campaign so that others see it as a cult? Absolutely, but the one thing that none of my family seem to see is that this is not about me. This is about the future for Christian families with gay family members. This is about the future for gay teens. This is about getting families from Christian wing-nut congregations and churches to see that their gay sons and daughters...brothers and sisters...are more important than failed belief systems. This is about creating a culture where a gay teenager can come home and tell his mother that he is gay, that he still looks forward to being married and having a surrogate baby or adopting children, and giving his mother grand-babies...just like every mother wants.

The Mormons have a problem with the fact that some gay men and most lesbians value and esteem marriage more than civil unions. Our belief in the marriage covenant actually serves to strengthen the institutions of marriage and families, and your attacks against people like us are actually driving people out of the movement that would strengthen the family unit and reduce the numbers of divorces in America.

But no, your campaign against Prop 8 is about your cult religion, not marriage. If it was about marriage and families you would embrace our community and start building a coalition with us that preserves the family unit as sacred and God-ordained.

* * * * * *

Stephanie: Yesterday I made a comment to you and informed you that I was not going to comment further on your issues and I fully intended to stick with that statement, but I have struggled this morning to let your comment go about a 'cult mentality.'

I will agree that maybe to the majority of the world who don't understand what the LDS gospel is truly about may think that we have a 'cult mentality,' but then again that same argument could be used for all organized religion.

But really Lester, you should be ashamed of yourself. You who served an honorable mission, was married and sealed in the temple and served in the church for many years after. Then you turned your back on that, pushing your wife of over 20 years away tearing your family apart, which you had every right to do because, as the LDS church teaches, we have FREE AGENCY. Freedom to choose for ourselves what we wish to believe and how we wish to live our lives. That doesn't sound like a 'cult mentality' to me. If anything you are being brainwashed by the society you live in now. But that's your right to be brainwashed if you so wish.

As you fully know, the LDS church has an outline of what we as a church believe, called the Articles of Faith. As the only Article of Faith to start out different, the 11th AF states "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."

Again I fail to see a 'cult mentality.' I love the LDS gospel. It is the best thing that has ever happened in my life and I choose to believe what I wish, as is my right.

I ask you to please stop being so ignorant by calling the LDS church a cult. I feel you do this because you are trying to ease your own conscience and make it easier for you live the way you are choosing if you belittle the church.

* * * * * *

Byron: I just have to pipe in on this one now too since I guess I was one of the nephews mentioned here.

I think that a lot of uncle Lester’s basis for his beliefs stems from the idea that god made him the way he is and that he can't control it...I call that a lie.

I think that you believe god gave you free will. That means that he gave you the choice to live your life any way you chose. If you feel that your choice on how you feel about sexuality is something that is out of your hands and you don't have a choice on the way you feel about it, then I guess you buy into the predestination philosophy instead. If so then I don't understand your crusade...people will just be who they are supposed to be. All the information and preaching and telling everybody else how they are hurtful or mean or bigots or insensitive to certain other people doesn't mean jack crap because you can't do anything about it anyways...it's all predestined, but I don't think you believe that and I certainly don't think we all have the choice to chose how to live our lives, EVERY aspect of them. Now some aspect might be harder to attain than other, but it is all choice.

* * * * *

Stephanie: I agree 100% with you Byron. Does a psycho serial killer start out wanting to hurt people? Or a caring father really want to be an abuser? Some inclinations we may be born with but we can choose whether to act on them or not.
* * * * *

Lester: This is NOT a shudda-cudda-wudda statement, so don't take this the wrong way. I got married, I had four children, and I'm glad for that experience, but at the age of 47 Barbara (my ex-wife of 25 years) did not expect to be a single woman again. She had her life planned out, and I derailed that when I finally broke free of the cult-like brainwashing that had taught me that I had to deny my true nature. I knew at the age of 11 that I was gay, but I chose to suppress and lie about that for the next 36 years. Barbara was a secondary victim, as were my children.

In the future, there should not have to be any "Barbara's" that are victimized by cult-following gays and lesbians who are led to believe that the yearning in their hearts is the voice of Satan and "temptation." It is the same yearning that you experienced, Stephanie and Byron, and it comes at the same time in life for everybody. It is the yearning that calls heterosexual youth to become attracted to the opposite sex, but for approximately 4% of the population, that yearning is for a member of their own sex, and if history has told us one thing, it is this: We gays cannot "convert" heterosexuals to become gay simply by affirming our existence through a textbook or school discussion, and prayer and fasting cannot convert gays to become heterosexuals.

I was never attracted to women. Not one memory in my mind exists that told me to date girls or women. I forced myself to "conform" to what other guys did. Because I lived in a "cult" environment where 98% of my town told me that I was "defective," I made a grave error. I put my authentic self up on a shelf and lived a lie. For 36 years I watched a projection of my body living the life that the "cult followers" around me expected of me. I use the "projection" metaphor because my memories of that 36 year period are more like the memory of a very vivid movie. It wasn't me in that body. I was watching from the "shelf" for all of those years.

I never once dared to admit that I was gay. I continuously prayed and fasted that the "normal" attractions of heterosexuality would somehow magically awaken inside me. I never once acted on my attraction to other guys, not even in youthful "play." I lived worthy of the help from this "God" figure of yours because I knew that He would despise me if I was ever weak and gave in to temptation. When you two invoke my free agency in your above comments, it is this "temptation" that you allude to. You in essence have used code to imply that my current choices are, in your opinion, going to be seen as a mistake with eternal consequences. Save your pity for people that are evil and do evil things like judging others. I'm no sinner, and God would never "judge me" a sinner for my living with Mickey as my husband, nor for having this firm commitment to strengthening families for the gay couples that are yet to live on this Earth.

Stephanie, you are right about one thing. The "majority of the world has no idea about Mormonism," nor do they realize the full strength of the cult mentality within the Mormon Church. The majority of the world would be (and are) dumbfounded by what my siblings did to me leading up to Prop 8, and they are likewise shocked when I tell others that Peter would have been "punished" by the church (by making him wait a year for a temple sealing) if he would have held his marriage across the street at a chapel so that his parents and siblings could attend. This is a Mormon "cult" technique that exists solely in North America so that the concept of "eternal marriage" can have more "power" attached to it in the minds of those that want to have leadership positions in the cult. Peter would have been forever judged as "wanting" if he not chosen to be married in the temple, but chose instead a "sealing" after-the-fact. That kind of a control tactic is an enormous red flag that warns sane people of a cult-like control effort on the part of church leadership.

And I am ashamed of myself for having gone on a mission when I already had questions about so many things in the church, and I baptized 72 people on my mission. Thankfully, the vast majority of them that I stayed in contact with could not reconcile themselves to the conflicts between common sense and Mormon doctrine and they left the church over the course of the next 5 to 10 years, but that doesn’t stop the church from still counting them among the 12 million members world-wide, does it?

I am also ashamed that at the age of 18 I did not leave the church to find an authentic life when I first had the chance. I had escaped the village mentality of Cardston and its control, and in Edmonton I could have done what your cousin Eric did when he left home and went to Fairbanks to university, but I caved in to the cult-think once again. My authentic self had been allowed down from the "shelf" for a very short few days, but in the end, the fear of the almost-certain rejection by my family and church community made me re-think that decision. By Friday of that week I decided to go to the institute (church) dance instead of seeking new friends that seemed to have much more in common with me. My authentic self did not get down off the shelf for another 26 years.

As [my son,] Peter admitted to me just before he proposed to Maren: "It is hard to be critical of an organization that works so well for me." Yes, Stephanie and Byron, the cult works for you. It was designed for people just like you; tailor made to "fit" what you are. You are "white," you are "heterosexual," you are American, and you are 8th generation DNA Mormons. From that perspective, the Mormon eternities are all yours, but God help your children if they can't measure up to the temple-recommend standards. Especially help them if they are gay. I'm here for them, because I know none of you will stand up to all the forces of the cult that will be assailed against them.

Do the math. With 4% statistical odds that a child will be gay, and with 36 grandchildren and an ever-increasing number of great-grandchildren reaching their teens in the A Q Leavitt family, which ones do you think are closeted gays? Sooner or later, they will show up.

Julie Snow: I don't understand why people are comparing being legitimately in love with someone to serial killing and abusing. I know I'm not a part of your family, and I'm sure this will piss people off, but even though the LDS church has the articles of faith and other such "free-will" infused messages, it's pretty difficult to go against the grain in that ... See Morechurch and not feel terrible.
I whole-heartedly support your decision and lifestyle. I admire your courage, and I am always here if you want to discuss things.
2 hours ago

Michael: If California, arguably the most Liberal State in the Union, didn't support the LGBT agenda by defeating Prop 8 what makes you think the rest of the union will? Despite whatever outcome Vaughn comes out with it, it will be a shallow victory for either side.

Stephanie: Lester, I am not sure if you remember or ever knew. I was married in a church, not the Temple. I never felt bad about that. Three years later, my husband and I were sealed in the Temple. There have been no problems from that. You twist words to make you seem better than your siblings and son. No one has said anything about judging you. I'm not. That's not my place, nor is it your place to imply I am a sinner because you feel I am judging you.

Mickey: These words you posted sound like judging to me...

"Lester, you should be ashamed of yourself. You who served an honorable mission, was married and sealed in the temple and served in the church for many years after. Then you turned your back on that, pushing your wife of over 20 years away, tearing your family apart, which you had every right to do because, as the LDS church teaches, we have FREE AGENCY. Freedom to choose for ourselves what we wish to believe and how we wish to live our lives"

You people amaze me! You all go around crapping on everybody with your piety and then when someone hits back, you become the victim? That is so hypocritical!

Stephanie: Blah, Blah, Blah. You do the same thing.

Lester: Julie, coming from the daughter of a man that spent many years in a stake presidency, your words are ALWAYS welcome in any discussion of the Mormon cult-think mentality. You know what I experienced because you too choose to leave, and with that decision prepared yourself to accept the consequences that came with it.

Stephanie: Yes. It's a bit childish, but that's how I feel about this whole thing. It's all gone on too long. No more comments.

Mickey: What an insightful and intelligent response. That is the best thing you have said all day! You all need to give it a rest. This is Lester's Facebook page and he can post whatever he wants to. You post what you want to on your page. That's called "free will" too.

Lester: You see, Stephanie, in the community outside the cult of Mormonism we never have to use our own ammunition. The things that you throw at others can always be used against you. Things like "strengthen families" and "we don't judge" and "free agency" and "rights" and "blaming others" and "consequences" and "let them worship how, where, or what they may" are all things that you in the Mormon Church believe were designed with your protection in mind, so you are always tossing them out like stones from behind a bush. When others use those same words to defend their position, an act which can often feel like an "attack" to the Mormons, you always plead that you are "the victims of oppression." You don't see that we only threw back at you the very stones that were thrown at us first, so who exactly is the victim? We didn't start this war.

Let me teach you how it works:

Mickey and I are "strengthening our family" with our marriage in Connecticut, and we're curious how that weakened your marriage.

Mickey and I are not too concerned about whether your religion is right or wrong, so we don't "judge you" against any measure for your behavior, but we strongly object to your messing with the constitutional rights of American citizens, and yet it is your "moral judgment" of us that was used to determine our relationship as unworthy of marriage. We are not advocating childless couples have their marriages dissolved, so we are not "judging" the worthiness of other couples to be married, but this is what you imply with your argument against us.

You all (my siblings primarily) had the "free agency" to choose church over family and loved ones, and I made it very clear how it would make me feel if they supported Prop 8. I did not deny them that agency. It just meant that I now have a family of choice rather than the family I was born into. Their agency came with consequences, and it was my "agency" to avoid contact with toxic and harmful people that would choose to deny me things that they feel they are somehow entitled to and yet throw it back in my face that my community and I are not.

You chose the word "consequences" when you judged my decision to end a marriage that for 25 years did not reward me with feelings of emotional intimacy. My choice had "consequences" that are not measured in eternal damnation but are measured in a new found freedom to live authentically.

Your "consequences," however, came to the entire church. You have become a religion that is ridiculed and increasing seen by more and more people as a cult. On a campus of 28,000 students Mickey and I are aware of one faculty member (who never speaks to anyone about his LDS faith) and we have only met one (inactive) Mormon student. Almost without exception the entire campus of people we talk to agree that the Mormon behavior over Prop 8 was a clear demonstration of the cult-like power of the prophet over the general membership of the church. Outside the "Zion" curtain, missionary work in America must be pure hell since 2008.

In case you don't think we could ever get the pulse on 28,000 students, let me tell you this. I belonged to three student clubs last year that actively "tabled" weekly with flyers and informational material on the Gay-Straight Alliance Club, the American Democracy Project, and Lambda Pi Eta Communication Honors Society. Mickey and I are very active on campus, and my position against the Mormon Church was very visible last year through a campaign against NARTH and on the National Day of Silence when we screened a reading of Carol Lynn Pearson's play, "Facing East." Nobody disagreed with us when the topic of Mormons being a cult came up. Not a soul. Even the other 22 religious groups on campus agreed that Mormonism is a cult. That is a "consequence" of your behavior as a church.

So, if Mickey and I want to "worship how, where, or what we may," why can't we have a marriage ceremony in our church of choice? If the 11th Article of Faith works for you, why can't it work for us?

Jeremy Minagro: Hi folks, Id love to add my 2 cents to this conversation even if Stephanie and Byron choose not to continue in it. I hope that they read this and think about what I am about to say.

Please consider the following: In the early days of the LDS Church, the saints were persecuted and forced from their homes. They were hunted, chased, threatened, coerced, bullied, and even murdered across multiple states. Their enemies even passed LAWS to keep them underfoot. This treatment molded and cemented a culture that would remember the wrongful persecution for generations to come.

Now hear the words of my mouth: The treatment of our gay brothers and sisters by the very same Church is no different than the bigoted persecution it once suffered at
the hands of the hateful mobs that once terrorized it.

Wake up! We have become the very monsters we tell our children about. We have created in the LGBT community a brand new generation that will remember the persecution suffered by the LDS Church for the next 150 years to come.

~Jeremy Minagro

Mickey: And boys and girls.. Jeremy is straight! Thank you Jeremy! You are a man who knows who he is and is not threatened by Lester or me. That is the measure of a MAN...

Lester: Thank you Jeremy. I guess I don't need to tell the "endowed" Mormons who read this that you have been through the temple yourself. Nice choice of words.

Lester: And in case anybody doesn't think that Mormonism is a cult, and since Jeremy brought it up, the following are the words that I was forced to repeat back in the good old days when the temple ceremony came complete with a "blood oath."

"I covenant that I will never reveal the ... token of the ...priesthood. Rather than do so, I would suffer my life to be taken." (While reciting that last part you make a slicing motion from one ear to the other across your neck.)

Stephanie, that was before your time.

But no, Mormonism couldn't be a cult now, could it?

And people wonder why families gave their entire savings accounts and the university funds for their growing children over to the church to pass Prop 8. It couldn't have been that threat of excommunication, right? Those temple covenants are just silly words to them, right?

Byron: For myself I guess this has got a bit out of hand. I have taken some offense to the things said to me and I am sure that likewise can be said for my uncle. Mostly I was just wishing him luck on an endeavor I thought to be difficult.

I want to let every LGBT or whatever the term is, that might read this, know that I don't hate them. I wonder if the choices they make are what I consider correct. I even want them to continue to pursue what makes them happy. I just don't want them to tell me that I am wrong for pursuing what makes me happy. I can admit that I have been harsh and a little condemning in my writing. I wonder if my uncle can admit the same.

I see an eternal potential in people that they could live up to, but choose to fall short of...it's a struggle even for supposed good people to try and live up to their standards, in a world that continually lowers and ignores standards so more people can feel good. (Not referring to LGBT directly, but society as a whole and how we judge what is acceptable and what is not.)

Jeremy: Byron - I think I understood what you were getting at, but your first paragraph there was a little unclear.

You said, "I wonder if the choices they make are what I consider correct. I even want them to continue to pursue what makes them happy. I just don't want them to tell me that I am wrong for pursuing what makes me happy."

Byron, what does what you consider to be correct have to do with other people's choices? Personally I think that putting pineapple on pizza is a damn travesty, but that doesn't give me any right to ban others from such a sinful indulgence. Far be it from me to tell them what their taste buds should or shouldn't like, even if it is contrary to the word of my Italian heritage.

Further, you say that you don't want to be told that you are wrong for pursuing what makes you happy. YES! I applaud you! You are right on! That’s the same thing your uncle wants. The difference is he is not trying to take away your legal right to pursue your happiness. The LDS Church IS without a doubt doing just that. This is why there are harsh words. This is why the crusade. If the thing that you are doing to maintain and pursue your own happiness robs others of theirs, then you OUGHT to be told how wrong you are. I'll give you an obvious example: The Confederate South just wanted to do what they thought was right and be allowed to own slaves to maintain their way of life.

It brought them happiness. Yet someone had to stand up to them and tell them they were dead wrong. Think carefully about what side of history you want to be on here. Think about what history might be told in another 100 years about the current civil rights issue. Frankly, I think the LDS church will once again be embarrassed to have been on the side that deprived another group of people their rights.

Mickey: Byron, Your confusion begins with it the word "choice". I didn't wake up one day and think to myself, "Gee, besides being black, I think I will choose to be gay! Won't that be fun!" I didn't choose to be gay, male or black anymore than you chose to be white, male or straight. IT IS WHO YOU ARE! IT IS WHO I AM!

But you did choose to follow a church doctrine that vilifies other human beings. That, you chose! And understand that the majority of mainstream Christians believe that you and all LDS belong to a cult. I hear it every day if I bring up the subject to any mainstream Christian.

And you allowed those who hate you to use you for Prop 8! They used your money and your time, but like the ugly girl at the prom, you won't get asked to dance. You have been played! Do you hear the Catholic Church being slammed for their stance on Prop 8? They threw you all under the bus!

Now understand I have no argument with the LDS except for your stance on my life, which I didn't choose! I believe that Christ would have nothing to do with most mainstream religions.

My God, the things we have done to destroy our fellow man, and in His name! We should all be concerned about all the unkind, inhuman and evil things man has perpetrated on man in the name of God and Christ. I shudder to think how they must look upon mankind and find us loveless for one another.

Christ taught love as the number one lesson. Love... plain and simple. You see, Christ was the first humanitarian.

There are many things I love about your uncle that he learned coming from an LDS background. His honesty and loyalty. His monogamy. Yes, many gays are monogamous! Don't believe everything you are told or read in the news! Just like I don't think every Republican hates President Obama because he is black, or that every Republican cheats on his wife; even though that appears in the news a lot these days.

Your uncle lost his faith and I am trying to help him get it back. He lost his faith because when he realized who he was and is, and he started to live as the person God created, your church threw him out and his family disowned him. Oh ever so politely, but he IS disowned. [Your support for Prop 8 made sure that came through loud and clear, in spite of your carefully coded words.]

I believe in Christ with all my heart, but not the way that organized religion says to believe. God through Christ speaks to my heart and I KNOW what love is! I know that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven I have to love all of you, which is not easy for me, because I don't like that you have all piled on your uncle.

But the Christ I believe in would not disown Lester but would embrace him as a child of God...a loving God.

You can keep all the divisions of your heavens. It is not true.

How do I know? Because Christ told me so. And that is my faith. The difference [between us] is Christ told me the answer is unconditional love for all mankind.

He also told us all, "Judge ye not, lest ye be judged."

Can you withstand that test? I can't as of yet, but I am working on it.

Byron: Well my wondering if the choices someone else makes are correct, I think, is a very legitimate wonder. I wonder if pineapple is really good on a pizza or not and I wonder if the crusade to redefine marriage is going to erode, change, and demean what it currently happens to be. So yes, wondering about other people's choices can be a very serious concern. I am happy with the way marriages are defined in states with the exception I have stated before in another thread, that I believe that some definitions of marriages in states need some more privileges associated with them.

I want to say, I want my uncle to have more privileges than he currently does. Do I feel he needs to have all the privileges that are associated with the other forms of marriage? Well, frankly no I don't, because he is not participating in the other forms of marriage. I feel his crusade while being an attempt to gain more privileges for himself and other like-minded people will only end in the limiting of privileges for all. So again I am concerned.

And I disagree that the LDS Church is trying to take away any rights / privileges. They were trying to voice their point of view on a topic that they felt had severe consequences for mankind. The church didn't summarily round people up and kill anyone who voted in a fashion that was in disagreement with them and they didn't even excommunicate people JUST for voting in disagreement with their point of view.

Now Mickey I will just have to disagree with your reasoning about it not being a choice. Was it a, “oh I woke up and decided to have eggs and bacon today,” choice? No. But I think that you made a choice to follow a certain lifestyle over another. I feel that god gives us a standard to try to live up to and I agree that part of that is to love one another. But I feel that there are certain things that are not in accordance with what he wants us to do.

Lastly I want to applaud Mickey and Jeremy. Your posts here were strong and pointed. I liked them. They were an attempt to communicate your point of view without the venom I sometimes feel is coming from these discussions, especially from my uncle. I understand that it is probably because he feels like he is always being attacked from all sides and he needs to not be on the defensive all the time. I wish there was a way to communicate less angrily with each other, but I guess that is the nature of such a topic with such strong feelings on both sides. I will make an attempt to keep any venom out of my comments, but that doesn't mean some may not be perceived anyhow. I hope you will not take it in that manner.

Ainsley: Quoting Byron, "And I disagree that the LDS is church is trying to take away any rights/privileges...they were trying to voice their point of view on a topic that they felt had severe consequences for mankind."

Byron, what expertise/evidence does the LDS church have to claim that gay marriage "will have severe consequences for mankind?"

Byron: Ainsley: It doesn't matter what evidence there happens to be or not, but it is their privilege to say what they feel needs said. I don't have statistics, but I think the LDS church has a pretty decent record on the promotion of families. And just to be clear, the LDS church did not say "will have severe consequences for mankind?" I DID. That was my paraphrase of what I believe the statement of the LDS Church meant.

Ainsley: The LDS Church does have the right to its opinion, but not necessarily the right to impose it on others.

The LDS church spent over $30 million in support of Prop 8 (http://www.examiner.com/x-52997-San-Diego-LGBT-Issues-Examiner~y2010m6d15-California-Ethics-Commission-finds-Mormons-guilty-on-13-counts-of-late-Prop-8-campaign-reporting). This is not a sum of money you throw at something that irritates you only slightly, so I think it's safe to say the LDS Church is diametrically opposed to gay marriage rights. I'm bringing these numbers up because the church didn't just "speak out" in support of Prop 8. It both provided monetary funds to support Prop 8 and persuaded LDS to vote for Prop 8.

Here's another thing I'll mention: no one's opinion is sacrosanct. Under the First Amendment, we all have the right to our opinions without fear of reprisal from the government... but that's it. The First Amendment does not make anyone's opinions factually correct nor immune from criticism from others. Just because I think cookies are tasty and I wish I could eat them all the time without health consequences doesn't mean that, because of my wishful thinking, cookies are therefore healthy. There's my opinion, and then there's reality.

Since you dodged my original question, I'll rephrase it. The LDS church undeniably attempted to influence politics to oppose gay marriage. This has far-reaching consequences. Considering the impact, with what authority or evidence can the LDS church support its position?

Byron: So what!

They can support their view / stand on their religious viewpoints, which, if I recall correctly, happens to also be something protected in the constituion.

Money was used, wasn't it, on the other side too. Where does anyone get off saying that they couldn't use money??? Did this money go to buy a person's vote, or just to merely attempt to educate people and campaign about the subject matter? If you say it bought people's votes, show me some undeniable proof. If you say they aren't allowed to spend money on that, show me why? If you try to throw the whole seperation of church and state arguement at me I'll just ignore it. It's not valid in this argument.

What did the LDS church do that was SO WRONG AND EVIL, besides oppose something that was fundamentally against it's tenets?

So if I were the head of some wealthy religion and I opposed a view point that went against my religious tenets, and said, "Hey, I don't agree with this. I think it is worth spending money to oppose it," then I guess I have committed a wrong? I seem to think that people and religions can spend their money on what they think is best.

If I recall correctly I seem to even remember some general authorities in the church after the Prop 8 debate wanting to sit down and discuss greater privilages for the LGBT community. Why this didn't happen I am not sure, but I seem to think that I saw on the news that it had something to do with infighting on LGBT side of who got to show up to the whole deal.

Anyhow there is my response...like it or don't, whatever.

Ainsley: I brought up the money issue only to show that the church has only to show that they made a serious investment in Prop 8. I made none of those accusations; the only truth claim I've made is that the Church is taking the gay marriage issue seriously.

I'm asking you to focus on the original question, which you have yet to answer. What is their source of authority/evidence for their stance?

This can be answered in a sentence. For instance, if I said "I think you have diabetes," you would ask me, "How should you know?" I would say "I'm a doctor, and I noticed you have these symptoms... (list of symptoms)" (disclaimer: this is hypothetical and I'm not actually a doctor). This is similar to the question I'm asking you.

Jeremy: Hey Byron. I'm your friend, ok? =)

You have valid questions. And there are answers to them, but I ask you to be willing to consider them (skeptically even) before rejecting them.

What did the church do that was wrong? Well, the money issue was brought up. The Church failed to report (possibly by accident, but the evidence against them is quite damning) all of the funds they provided to the campaign supporting Prop 8. This is commonly referred to as "fraud" and it is illegal whether it was a mistake or not. Also, it is illegal for religious organizations to participate in political campaigns. If it was simply an accounting error then they are guilty of negligence. If it was on purpose, and the church covered up their trail knowingly, then you really ought to ask yourself why God's chosen prophets feel they have the right to commit a felony in order to express their opinions.

Secondly; you mentioned that the church's money was spent as an attempt to educate. Having lived personally on both sides of this issue, I can tell you that the so called "education" of the Pro-Prop 8 campaign was filled with intentional mis-information. Lies. The LDS Church is responsible for a myriad of downright lies propagated in order to manipulate the uninformed public into passing Prop 8 without doing any real research on it. Again, you have to ask yourself the question, "Why are God's chosen Prophets mass-misinforming the public and doing all of this from the shadows?"

I really am attempting to reach out to communicate with you, as you mentioned earlier. If you would like me to provide more evidence to support my accusations of the church in this post, I can.

I hope you don't hate me for having so much to say here lol! But I felt I had to address one other thing. You said, "They can support their view stand on their religious viewpoints which, if I recall correctly, happens to also be something protected in the constitution."

Yes. Do you know what else is protected in the constitution? Freedom FROM Religion. Don't forget that the puritans were escaping a rabid and murderous theocracy that had gripped Europe for centuries. When the Catholics and Protestants ruled Europe, they imposed their religious opinions by force onto the rest of the population necessitating the creation of a secular government that separated church and state. The same government that now protects our rights to worship or not worship whatever god we choose.

Lester: Byron, and all: This is from an excellent news story on the closing arguments in the Prop 8 Trial. Quoting:

Cooper took Theodore Olson, attorney for the gay and lesbian couples who filed suit against Proposition 8, to task for claiming that Californians could support the ban on same-sex marriage only "through irrational or dark motive, some animus... See More, some kind of bigotry." Cooper called Olson's characterization a "slur" on the millions of Americans who voted for the ballot measure in 2008 and "a slur on 70 of 108 judges who have upheld as rational the decisions by voters and legislators to preserve the traditional definition of marriage."

Olson's viewpoint, Cooper said, "denies the good faith of Congress, of state legislature after state legislature and electorate after electorate." To which Walker responded: "If you have 7 million Californians, 70 judges and this long history, why in this case did you present but one witness? ... You had a lot to choose from. One witness, and it was fair to say his testimony was equivocal."

Did you read the judge's last four words? "...his testimony was equivocal."
That means that of the 38 professional mental health and certified ex-gay practitioners in the US (as opposed to 325,000 that say homosexuality is immutable), the defense only found one witness willing to take the stand. His testimony is at risk of being tossed out for two reasons.
1) None of it was used during the Prop 8 Campaign. It was all introduced solely for the court case...post facto...as they say. And...
2) The man does not belong to any peer-reviewed professional association.

The 38 mental health practioners left with NARTH cannot get any peer-reviewed journal to publish their opinions, so they started their own "publication"
...which, coincidentally, has the same mailing address of NARTH,
...which, coincidentally, happens to be in the same church-controlled office building in downtown Salt Lake City with the Mormon's ex-gay program, Evergreen.
...and, coincidentally, the executive director of Evergreen just happens to be the chief operating officer of NARTH,
...which, coincidentally is running out of money and had to close their California head office and move to Salt Lake City two years ago.

And you wonder why the "one witness" is not a credible witness.

Byron, answer Ainsley's question.

If you manage to do that without using the "testimony" of one of the 38 NARTH "professionals" I will drop off in a dead faint.

Andrew: Dad, I need you to forward this to family members you feel need to hear about it. I tried to comment on your wall but I don't know how Facebook works and it wouldn't do it. I want them to hear what I have to say about the whole thing. Give them my email if you want. Just make sure they see it.

Leaving anything about homosexuality out of this, I would like to comment on the Mormon Church.

When I was growing up in the church, I was raised the same way you were, Dad. Fed the same tripe, the same looks, and the same guilt-trips. I was made to feel guilty for everything I did: the games I played, the things I thought, and the things I looked at. I chose not to follow what was expected, because I got tired of feeling guilty. That's why I didn't go on a mission, that's why I just went through the motions until I was free.

The Mormon Church works for people because it makes them feel welcome, until they no longer work the same way they do. You have free agency to make choices, so long as the choices you make are all the ones they want. Every time I did something, they kept telling me I was bad. I was forced to "man up" and talk to the bishop. If I managed to tell him what I did, he would look at me all sad, and tell me to repent, and then I would, because it was expected, and then it would keep happening. Nothing I did was good enough for anybody.

I will say this: A smart person will realize it doesn't work, it isn't nice, it isn't kind, and it isn't happiness. Whenever the missionaries find their way over to my apartment, then they find out I'm inactive, they ignore me, and go after my friends. They give me a brief hello, a small welcome, and then just move on to everyone else in the room. If I have questions, they'll gloss over them if they can, until I force them to talk about it, and then they go into the "Mormon spiel" as I call it. They profess their belief, that they "Know the church is true, and if I ask God he'll tell me."

That's another thing actually. Everyone always talked about how they had that moment in their lives when they realized the church was true, when they got that burning in their bosom and just KNEW. I never got that, I never felt it, I never had a sudden realization of the truthfulness of the gospel, and I don't know if I can believe anyone who says they did. I won't say it isn't true. Just because I never got it doesn't mean others didn't. I just never felt it, and I can't make sense of too much of it.

I'm not satisfied with the answer to most of my questions being, "Ask God". That's a cop-out, and just because you don't know, you're telling me to wait until I'm dead? Or pray, and hope He tells me? That's stupid. Honestly.

"Have faith," you say. That's also stupid.

It's quite sad, honestly, that I'm not welcome. To all of them in the church, I'm a failure. If I went back, I'm sure it would be nice, but it would all start again. The looks, the guilt, the expectations. You're free to do what you like, so long as what you like is what they want you to like. You're free, free to make their choices, follow their rules, believe their beliefs, do what they want, like what they like. They will never harm you, hurt you, or be outright cruel, but they will be disappointed, they will make you feel bad, they will stare, talk, weep, preach guilt, and home-teacher you into doing what they want, and until you do, you will be singled out.

I will not apologize to my cousins and extended family. I do not like your church, I do not agree with it. I never did, and I never will. Good day.

~Andrew Leavitt

WHERE'S MY 40 ACRES AND A MULE?

2010-05-23T13:25:00.035-04:00

I went into Walgreen's liquor store today to get a bottle of chardonnay. I read that they were having a sale, so I went over to check it out. There was a white male customer at the counter ready to be checked out. There was nobody else in the store. As I proceeded down the wine isle looking, I could feel an eerie presence that I have felt so many times before in my life; the presence of a pair of eyes watching and making sure that I was not shoplifting. This is something black men endure but never get used to, and it is akin to "driving while black". Unless you are a person of color you have no idea how this feels. It is always different for white men...always.

I found my wine quickly, but I must admit she probably shortchanged the store, because I was prepared to pay a bit more for a wine I like. But with her prying eyes affixed on me, I felt conspicuous. I felt guilty, I felt suspect, and I became angry. I just grabbed the sale bottle and started walking toward the counter so I could just get out of there. The white male customer was still standing at the counter as if the clerk had instructed him to "hold on" while she checked on me to make sure I wasn't trying to get a "five-finger discount". That customer should have been long gone, but he wasn't. That's why, aside from her suspicious glare that I saw when her eyes met mine, I knew without a doubt I was being regarded as a potential risk for theft.

As I walked toward the counter I stated loudly enough for her to hear, but calmly, "There is no need for you to watch me." I handed her my wine and a crisp twenty dollar bill. She rang me up and gave me change and my receipt. She said "thank you" and I could tell she was nervous, because I had politely called her on her actions. I said thank you back and as I proceeded to exit the store, I asked her this question. “If I were a white male, would you have so readily watched me in your store?"

She stared at me blankly, because she had been called on what was so very obvious. I usually don't say anything, but with the current racial climate since President Obama came to office, I felt I had to. Silence is betrayal at some point.

First of all, I realize this lady doesn't know me or who I am. She doesn't know that I have a bachelor's degree, I am 54 years old, that I have never been arrested and only ever had one traffic ticket (for turning on red when the sign saying no turn was blocked by a tree branch). She has no way of knowing that I was raised in the Mid-West with both parents in my home until my dad died when I was 14. She doesn't know that I was raised in a strong, close-knit family with good firm standards, morals and manners. She does not know that my mother doubled her effort after my dad died so my brother and I would not become casualties of life, the inner city, gangs or drugs. She does not know that she will not find a mug shot of me anywhere in any of these 50 states. The only pictures of me, on any type of government document, are my driver's license and my passport, because I have traveled all over this planet.

What did she know about me at all to suspect me? She knew the color of my skin. I am a black man, and that is all she needed to know to religate me, in her mind, to the ranks of a shoplifter. No questions asked. The decision was made.

She prejudged me. That is why there exists just such a word as “prejudice”.

And do you want to know the irony of it all? I saw her face and I saw her name tag...”Alvarez”. She is Hispanic.

Hispanics have been in the news a lot lately. And my husband and I have been and continue to be very vocal about this abhorrent law passed in Arizona. I despise that law, because it will lead to racial profiling. Yes, the very type of profiling Ms. "Alvarez" had just done to me.

I have decided to go back into Walgreen's tomorrow, but not in my khaki shorts, hat, sneakers and one day's growth of beard. I'm going to go in after I leave work as the Associate Director for the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs at Florida Atlantic University, where I have worked for the last 13 years. I will be dressed as I dress for work every day in business casual. I will hand Ms. Alvarez my card and tell her how she made me feel on a Sunday afternoon, when all I wanted was a good bottle of chardonnay. The last thing I expected to be doing was writing this entry to our blog. On this particular Sunday I thought I was a consumer, but I was reminded that to some people with a narrow scope of view I am "just a black man"… a shoplifting risk.

When will this all end? When will we learn to live as one people? Can we ever?

The Civil Rights Act mandated that physicality of segregation was illegal. But how do we integrate our hearts, our souls, our minds and our communities?

My Lord, please help us...

Lester's Induction to Lambda Pi Eta

2010-04-16T04:54:00.002-04:00

Lester Leavitt takes on Brother Micah at FAU

2010-03-02T16:29:00.004-05:00

Click on photo to enlarge, and feel free to post links to Facebook. Copies of this photo may be downloaded and used for non-profit media.

Photo taken March 2, 2010 on FAU Campus during Brother Micah's rant against homosexuals.

When I asked Brother Micah about whether it is a good thing that the suicide rate for gay teenagers is eight times the national average he just answered that suicide was murder, so he at least admitted that it was a bad thing that these kids killed themselves. I tried several times to get the topic back to what it would take for these teens to have a meaningful life if we could just get them to NOT kill themselves and he only wanted to talk about sinning, and how that separates us from Christ.

Oh well, at least the crowd was very supportive of me. The first time I walked by I shouted, "Hey Micah! I asked God if I could marry my husband in Connectecticutt, and He said yes!" That got an enormous cheer, so, when I came back without my books for this photo everyone shouted, "It's the gay guy from Connecticutt!"

I had fun.

Read the following story to discover what my experience was with Christian wing-nuts like Brother Micah who feared their God and treated every bad thought as a mortal sin. My church was full to overflowing with people like him.

Religions That Preside Over the Destruction of Families

2010-03-02T11:19:00.000-05:00

ENC1102 - Paper Three
July 18th, 2009

Pleasing the people that we love sometimes is done at a great personal cost to the individual. Of course, most members of a tightly knit extended family would never intentionally harm one of their own, but when you intertwine that family into a belief system of a fundamentalist religion or cult you end up creating a lose-lose scenario. In this context, there is a place for wise government to get involved in protecting basic human rights, even if it means entering the domain of a parent-child relationship. It is a known fact that overly strict fundamentalist families manufacture runaway teens by granting the religion the last word in how family decisions are made, but for every teen that is thrown out or runs away there are many more that stay and endure years of spiritual abuse. For the child who chooses to stay, the only way to survive is to place your authentic self up on a shelf and allow your body to merely project the life that others around you expect you to live. It leaves no scars for emergency room personnel to report to the authorities, but it is, nevertheless, abuse, and by recognizing it as such, governments will enable a healing process for the victims.

Our siblings, parents, and our own children are often the people that make our lives worth living, and when the fear of rejection by these loved ones is so great that the individual will bury his or her true self in order to find acceptance from them, then you have sowed the seeds for emotional trauma that will surface at some future point in time. This “covering” behavior is learned at a very young age within many of the world’s mainstream religions that demand a literal interpretation of the Abrahamic texts. Through the formal Sunday school programs of many of these religions, such as the Mormon Church, the Southern Baptists, and most of the evangelical congregations, the fear of god is ingrained in children as young as three years of age. By the time these children enter middle school they are hiding any thoughts or tendencies that would place them into the category of the “worldly people” that are condemned for their weaknesses by church leaders and loved ones. The professor and author Kenji Yoshino coined the term “covering” to describe this, and he defines it as “ton[ing] down a disfavored identity to fit into the mainstream” (Yoshino 245). Covering does nothing to solve a problem. It only prevents the problem from being manifest outwardly.

Evidence of covering, by itself, is common to every living person. It is what brings harmony into families and workplaces as it prevents unnecessary conflicts and friction. Yoshino goes into great length in his essay to describe D. W. Winnicott’s concept of a “False Self” and “True Self.” In doing so Yoshino outlines how this is a symbiotic relationship where the practice of allowing a false impression of you to exist in the minds of others is a valuable coping mechanism, but there is a point where it goes from being healthy to unhealthy as the False Self begins to dominate the True Self (Yoshino 247-8).

The unhealthy life that Yoshino describes is a life that is lived under so much oppression that an individual feels obligated to allow their False Self to completely obscure the True Self. These people can only find emotional health by learning how to minimize the amount of covering that they do, but for a young teenager who is afraid of complete rejection by his extremely religious family, allowing his or her true self any exposure would come with devastating consequences. Yoshino quotes Winnicott to describe what would be a healthy use of False Self. “The individual approaches health only when the False Self has ‘as its main concern a search for conditions which will make it possible for the True Self to come into its own’” (Yoshino 248). In the case of a fundamentalist religion that is intent upon a literal interpretation of the Bible, there are many instances where the True Self simply will not fit within the narrow confines of their belief system, and for a gay teenager or a lesbian, it will not only mean that you have to leave your church community if you stop covering, it also means that you will most likely be rejected by your loved ones. It is in a case like this where the stage has been set for spiritual abuse.

Because fundamentalist religions that follow the Abrahamic texts hold to antiquated views of the world, they believe that a homosexual is engaging in behavior that is contrary to their god, and if a person is “against god,” then they are to be shunned. The Abrahamic texts go so far as to say that homosexuals should be put to death, and some countries still allow that to this day, but they don’t stop with their attacks on homosexuals. The Abrahamic texts are full of anecdotal stories that set the stage for enforcing hundreds of “laws” that have no place in a global humanity. The professor and author Francis Fukuyama fell victim to these religious extremists when he tried to defend the dignity of all humanity by defining what he called a “Factor X” that is possessed in equal measure by every living person (Fukuyama 81). The religious extremists were able to drive Fukuyama’s argument off the rails because, in one single sentence, he conceded that the religious were allowed to call this Factor X the “human soul” (Fukuyama 84). To the religious extremists, if a person “sins” then they have willingly “sold their soul to the devil” to some degree and in so doing must be subject to something akin to an “inquisition” to determine the status of their Factor X, or “soul.” This mentality is at the very root of spiritual abuse and millions of deaths have resulted from this way of life. As unbelievable as it is, if it were not for government intervention right now, in our lifetime, millions upon millions of people living today who still adhere to these beliefs would continue to put sinners to death just because they do not follow the moral code set out by the Abrahamic texts. Wars are being fought right now in order to free entire classes of people from religious oppression, but here in America the battle front is in family rooms and suburban chapels, where spiritual abuse is exacted upon individuals away from the glare of the media spotlight.

Spiritual abuse is a form of psychological abuse, and as such it will create psychological trauma. While trauma is primarily thought of as a single event, Wikipedia defines psychological trauma as “an enduring or repeating event that completely overwhelms the individual’s ability to cope or integrate the ideas and emotions involved with that experience” (Wikipedia). Just as in the case of a war veteran who can have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) surface years after the event, the onset of the overwhelming sensation of PTSD for a victim of psychological trauma can be experienced years after the primary events of the abuse occurred. A gay man who covered for decades by allowing his False Self to completely overwhelm his True Self may have been married for years and have grown children before his world collapses and the outward manifestations of his psychological trauma can no longer be suppressed. Only when that happens can the healing process begin.

When recovering from a cycle of abuse, many therapists agree that there is only one path to healing, and that it involves three steps. First, when the abuse is recognized the victim’s immediate reaction is to report it to an authority figure. For the victim of spiritual abuse who came from a tightly knit family, this means that he or she will first go to their family members to seek validation. The natural second step is that these authority figures (the loved ones) will confirm that the abuse did occur, which gives way to the third step where healing is facilitated by the authorities (parents and siblings,) who should be willing to take action against the abuser to stop further abuse. Many therapists will follow these steps, but an article on Oprah.com offers a quick summary of these same steps as they relate to child sexual abuse (Winfrey). It naturally follows that if the victim of spiritual abuse reports his or her experiences to loved ones and they side with the church community and nobody takes any action to stop further abuse, then the healing process is blocked. The devastating effect that this has on the victim cannot be overstated.

Victims of any kind of human-caused trauma usually experience what researcher Janoff-Bulman referred to as “shattered assumptions”. The three basic assumptions that are almost universally held are first, that the world is benevolent, second, the world is meaningful, and third, that the self is worthy (DePrince 73). Spiritual abuse first targets the third, that the self is worthy. If people are repeatedly taught that people “like them” are sinners, and will therefore be condemned by “god” if they cannot correct their errant thoughts and behaviors, then these individuals will live out their lives with shame and feelings of worthlessness. When a person finds that they cannot fit into the mold of his or her religious community and realize that they will always fall short of the expectations of family, then they start to “cover” and live a false life. An inauthentic life is not meaningful, which is what violates the second assumption. When a victim of spiritual abuse finally recognizes that he or she had belonged to a failed belief system and tries to report the abuse to either the church authorities or their loved ones, what happens in most cases is that the victim will discover that his or her family will choose to deny the abuse and reject the individual rather than abandon their belief system. That is when the final stake of shattered assumptions is driven home. The victim realizes that the world is not benevolent, and that even loved ones will reject one of their own in order to stay within an abusive church. It is in that instant that the victim is denied healing and the full effects of psychological trauma take hold. In the words of Wikipedia, psychological trauma “is also seen when people or institutions depended on for survival violate or betray or disillusion the person in some unforeseen way" (Wikipedia).

The above pattern plays out over many years in a cycle of abuse as the victim returns over and over again to his or her loved ones, trying again and again to reconnect with them. It is a cycle because in response to every overture toward them, the loved ones or authority figures repeat the denial that abuse at the hands of the religion ever occurred. In many instances, most particularly with a gay or lesbian family member, the abusing loved ones will recite a tired line about their unconditional love, and then without taking a breath continue by expressing the hope that the gay or lesbian sibling or child will forego the “gay lifestyle” and return to the “one true path” to this vengeful and very un-Christ-like god of theirs. This cannot be reinforced enough. By merely trying to reconnect with family the victim subjects himself or herself to feeling more shame, or as is more often the case, anger. In most cases this cycle will continue until the victim is forced to no longer have any contact with his or her loved ones, but even then, the healing process is incomplete.

Society has an important role to play in facilitating the healing process for victims of spiritual abuse. First, society must provide an avenue for victims of spiritual abuse to safely report their experiences. An easy way to do this would be to have mental health agencies provide a highly publicized authority figure and, once reported, that authority figure must be in a position to take consequential action against the abusers. By doing this the community can stand in the place of family and loved ones by validating the fact that abuse did indeed occur and the victim is able to see concrete action taking place.

As it currently stands in America, we do not tolerate non-Christian extremists who oppress their adherents and their community with their bigoted views, but if that same bigotry and extremism is done in the name of Christianity and the Bible, then it is allowed protection under the freedom of religion clause. This has to end, and Douglas Adams, when speaking about renowned atheist Richard Dawkins, illustrates why.
"Religion…has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or
holy or whatever. What it means is, ‘Here is an idea or a notion that
you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? –
because you’re not!’ If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with,
you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an
argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up
or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if
somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday,’ you say, ‘I respect
that.’

"We are used to not challenging religious ideas but it’s very interesting how much of a furor Richard [Dawkins] creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you’re not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be" (Dawkins 42-3).

Until there is enough backbone within the state and federal governments to forcibly discredit the kinds of religious-based bigotry that perpetrate spiritual abuse we will continue to live in a culture populated by its victims. These victims are the walking wounded of America that nobody even dares to admit are out there. To admit they exist would require that we also admit that traditional Christianity has failed to live up to its claims, and in fact, likewise draw attention to the fact that through this continuing spiritual abuse it is uniquely poised to preside over the dismantling of the family values that it purports to uphold.

Works Cited

Yoshino, Kenji, “From Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights.” Emerging – A Reader 2nd ed. Ed. Barclay Barrios. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. (244-254).

Fukuyama, Francis, “Human Dignity.” Emerging – A Reader 2nd ed. Ed. Barclay Barrios. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. (81-109).

Wikipedia, “Psychological Trauma.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_trauma 9 July 2009.

Winfrey, Oprah, “What To Do If Your Child Was Abused.” Oprah.com. http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahdotcom/safety_abuse 18 July 2009

DePrince, A.P. & Freyd, J. J. “The Harm of Trauma: Pathological Fear, Shattered Assumptions, or Betrayal?” Loss of the Assmptive World: A Theory of Traumatic Loss. Ed. J. Kauffman. New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge, 2002. http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/articles/dpf02harm.pdf (71-82).

Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006

A Typical Sunday Morning in the Rowe-Leavitt Household

2010-01-10T10:13:00.003-05:00

Just wanted to let you all have a glimpse into the our lives. As if the hundreds of friends we have on Facebook aren't enough, and as if we don't have enough time to discuss ways to save the world when we are off the computers, we have now resorted to commenting on each other's Facebook threads while sitting across from each other at our desks in the den. Worse yet, this was all done while listening to "Meet the Press."

Click on image to enlarge.

Wedding Trip - Day 11 (August 15th, 2009)

2009-09-27T09:40:00.031-04:00

Almost as important as getting married on this trip was the visit to Barack and Michelle's house. We almost didn't get a chance to get this tour. The White House Tour tickets are highly prized and Robert Wexler's office didn't have any left, so I fired back an email and told them how much Mickey donated to the Obama campaign, and...I played the "race card." I told the girl that Mickey is African-American and how much this meant to him. On the day we left Florida we received notification that Wexler's staff had secured White House tour tickets from another congressman's office. Yeah!

Our tour started early, so we headed out on the Metro and got an early start on our first full day together as a married couple!

After the tour, this is where you come out, and the first chance you get to have your camera or cell phone out in the open.

This is "the man." That smile on his face is genuine, pure happiness. Happy in the knowledge that his "investment" in Obama has paid off. A Black family now lives in the house that was built by slaves. If only his mothere and father could have lived to experience this moment!

Just outside of the White House, as you walk back into the city, you pass the Treasury Building.

This is the home where President Lincoln died, across the street from the Ford Theater.

We then went through a few of the Smithsonian museums. We spent most of the time in the Aeronautical Museum and Museum of Natural History.

You know, it really kills me that these home-schooling Christian fundamentalist families take their kids to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History that shows off all these dinosaurs and their kids all watch this cute video about evolution. It features a little "rat" who was the earliest mammal, and how every mammal evolved from that "rat," and then these parents have to take those home-schooled kids back home and "undo" all that science so their kids can still believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

These fossils were my touchstone back to my youth. They are of the Albertosaurus and Edmontonsaurus, and were found in my home province of Alberta, Canada. As a Mormon boy, in the Mormon colonies of Alberta, with Mormon teachers, in a Mormon school district of a "public school system" that was dominated by elected Mormon representatives, evolution was very complicated. The provincial government mandated that "science" be taught, along with sex education, but parents could "sign their kids out" of the sex ed class (more than 70% still did this in 1999 when our kids attended there.) In school we were taught that the "rest" of the mammals might have evolved just like the Smithsonian video explains it, but man was "created" by God "from dust" and placed on this Earth. We didn't "evolve" here like the monkeys and orangutans did. The fact that we now know we share 99.8% of the DNA of a chimpanzee is just a coincidence. As a matter of fact, the Mormon doctrine, when it gets really complicated at a university level at BYU, tries to justify evolution by stating that the "fossils" are from another planet that got knocked out of orbit or something, killing everything off. When God needed a new world for his ever-expanding infinite population of Spirit Children, He grabbed this floating rock with the fossils already in it and placed it in orbit around this sun and started the necessary plants and animals growing until it was hospitable for Adam and Eve, and then He dropped them here so that they could start new bodies for all those Spirit Children waiting in line. The Mormon God just keeps doing this over-and-over again because every Mormon couple who get married in the temple and remain worthy of the "privilege" that is earned by strict obedience to the 4,300 "highest order" commandments, will be rewarded with a world just like this one for themselves. With a temple marriage, and earned privilege (grace has nothing to do with it), these "nouveau Gods" will be given a world all their own so that all their Spirit Children can have bodies too. Oh, by-the-way. You should know that these "spirit children" are created by the temple-married Mormon couples (who keep their bodies of flesh-and-blood just like Christ kept his) having actual intercourse sex for the eternities. It makes my head hurt to think about it, but you know what? BYU actually grants doctoral degrees to biologists, anthropologists, and zoologists who truly, in their heart, believe this crap! At BYU, if you profess to NOT believe this stuff, they excommunicate you from the church and try to kick you out. Very scary!
These are the whales and other mammals of the sea that were created on the fifth day, if I remember my Bible stories correctly. The food for them to eat had to be created on the fourth day, but in Sunday School we were told that a "day" in the Lord's time could have literally been thousands, or millions of years. God didn't have to be constrained by science. He could pretty much do whatever he wanted. If these explanations didn't answer all your questions you were told to put those questions on a "shelf" and wait until the "next life" and ask God yourself. That is a subject of my other blog called "A Gentle Nudge."

When you go to Dupont Circle the Subway is very deep in the ground. The escalators go on forever.

The Union Station in Washington DC is a very amazing building. The Metro station there is just a couple of doors off in the corner. Most of the activity there has to do with Amtrak trains.

These are some of the night shots that Mickey captured with his amazing camera that has image stabilization on it. You should recognize the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington monument, but you probably won't recognize the fountain in the plaza across from the front of the White House.

The Wedding Day - August 14th, 2009 (Day 10)

2009-09-27T09:05:00.010-04:00

Mickey and I once met somebody from New Jersey, and Mickey asked, "Which exit?" Well, at the time I didn't realize how funny that was, but now I do. The New Jersey Turnpike only has 16 exits, and for our "day trip" we had to go all the way to exit 16 to cross into NYC on the George Washington Bridge into The Bronx. We got rear-ended just shy of exit 14 and although it was a minor accident, it did earn us a check for $570 for my rear fiberglass bumper. We are going to spend the money on a hitch for my car and a bike rack. Over the past few months we were taking our bikes out on day trips but they always seemed to scratch Mickey's bumper, so we are going to leave my bumper as-is and put the new hitch-mounted bike rack on my car so that when the tires mark the bumper it doesn't hurt as much. So, anyway, we made it through New Jersey.

Crossing the border into The Bronx, we crawled across the city and made it into Greenwich, which literally is just on the other side of the the border. It didn't qualify as "exit 1" but what is lower than "1?"

Greenwich City Hall was at the top of a hill, and it was a classy building. This is our "large format" wedding picture that shows how we were married "out front" for all the world to see. We were not going to hide in a back room.

This is us with the Justice of the Peace who married us. She is a 76-year-old self-professed "southerner" from Georgia, who has done 48 same-sex marriages since marriages became legal in CT. She has tailor-made vows for same-sex couples that are unique in that they clearly specify the role that we play in validating our very lives by professing our love for each other in the face of opposition by so many.

Back in Washington DC we planned to have a dinner out, in the Dupont Circle gayborhood, to celebrate out wedding day. We chose The Floriana Restaurant, and we ate once again right on the "rail" next to the sidewalk and the passing crowd, showing off our love again.

Mickey...

and Lester.

Wedding Trip - Day 8 & 9 (August 12 & 13, 2009)

2009-09-26T21:54:00.020-04:00

It took a long grueling day of driving to get to DC, so Mickey stayed in the motel room to unpack and I drove down to the grocery store for a few things to nuke in the fridge and have on hand for the next few days in case we didn't want to eat out. The first thing on August 13th was our tour of the Library of Congress. That was an amazing building, and there were so many pictures of art and architecture to chose from, so I picked the nude men. What can I say? I might have even taken up football if I got to play it naked with hunky men.

After the Library of Congress tour we went for the Capital Building tour, but that started in the visitors center where the Hawaiian King statue was. I guess I'm kind of stuck on the hunky men theme today.

Once inside the Capital Building I found some more hunky, shirtless men to photograph in the dome.

Washington DC does not have too many women yet. Too bad about Hillary.

Of course, once we got outside of the Capital Building we took a few pictures from the outside.

I found this hunky guy outside the Capital Building and married him the next day!

This is me doing the YMCA song by the Village People in front of the Capital.

This squirrel was a riot! He would just flop down and do a spread-eagle for the the camera. What a ham!

This is the Supreme Court Building, which we went through after the Capital Building.

Mickey and I went to pick up our instructions for the White House Tour that we were able to get for Saturday.

This is Lester in front of the mall, stretching out from where Barack gave his inaugural address.

Mickey in front of the mall.

Mickey's camera takes some amazing shots with the zoom and the image stabilization feature.

The outside sculpture garden at the Hirshorn Museum of Art was kind of boring, except for this mirror kind of a thing. This was cool.

We got on the Metro and headed home, then out to Dupont Circle for supper that night. We got out kind of early, so it was still daylight.
After supper we headed to a club and danced a few dances before heading home. We had to get up early to get married tomorrow!

Wedding Trip - Day 7 (August 11th, 2009)

2009-09-07T22:03:00.008-04:00

This was our last full day in Ohio. We stayed in Waterville, with Steve and George, and went along the river trails. This is the remnants of the "locks" in the canal.

An old railway bridge.

Beautiful picture of the Maumee River past Waterville.

Mickey's friend from his early 20's. George (and Steve, his partner.)

The four of us, just before we left for Washington, DC. Mickey, Lester, Steve, George.

Wedding Trip - Day 6 (August 10th, 2009)

2009-09-07T21:54:00.009-04:00

We drove into Toledo, OH today, and saw ample evidence of the "rust belt". Building after building looked like this one...

...and this one...

...and this one. And now Detroit made the cover of Time Magazine with pictures just like this one.

They do have a nice museum and art gallery, but alas, it is closed on Mondays. We walked around the buildings and took a few pictures.

This is the performing arts center or something like that which is next to the museum art gallery.

Nice head!

Hey, if you're going to make a tire swing, make it big enough for the whole family!

See how far back we had to get in order to get the whole tire swing in? That is Mickey and I on the tire.

RHouse is the gay bar in Toledo. We were lucky enough to arrive on a day when "Doc" (a very good friend of George and Steve who Mickey met a couple of times on previous trips to Toledo) was bartending. She is wonderful, kind lady.

Notice the road sign over Mickey's head? "Trailer Trash Turnpike". This is the back patio at the RHouse Bar in Toledo.

Wedding Trip - Day 5 (August 9th, 2009)

2009-09-07T21:41:00.010-04:00

After taking a few last photos in Muncie, we headed north into the very top of Ohio. This is Mickey and his friend of 30 years, in Waterville, outside of Toledo. For a gay guy in the midwest, going through his teens in the 1970's in an African-American black-church family, this is about all you're left with. Eddie (who lives here in South Florida and isn't the picture) and George are Mickey's family!

This is Mickey and I outside George and Steve's home in Waterville, OH.

Sunday night after we settled in and unpacked we went out for "Jazz in the Park," a short drive from Steve and George's home.

After supper we went for a walk down by the river, which is just a couple of blocks from their home. George and Steve live right in the historic district where they still have "hitching posts" for the horses.

Another feature of the historic district. See, I still remember how to milk mammals from when Barbara and I had goats in my previous life. What can I say...it was a confusing period, that much I do remember.

This is George and Steve's historic old house (taken from the back yard.) The core of the two-story home dates back to the 1830's or 40's.

Mickey bought the stuff to make cosmopolitans and we stayed home and chatted late into the night while I enjoyed one of my first martinis.

Wedding Trip - Day 4 (August 8th, 2009)

2009-09-06T08:49:00.013-04:00

I forgot to say that last night (Day 3), after we arrived in Muncie late in the evening, we went downtown to "the" gay bar in Muncie. It was still the same, more than 25 years later, and that was it for the gay "nightlife" in Muncie. Sorry, it wasn't worth a photo.

We got up this morning and after visiting most of the day with Mickey's cousins (yesterday's blog and photos), we headed into Indiannapolis. Today's blog is really about Saturday afternoon, evening, and Sunday morning before we leave for Ohio and George and Steve's place.

This is the "Soldiers and Sailors" Monument in the core of downtown Indiannapolis. It is ENORMOUS!

We sat the camera on the edge of the fountain and set it on timer. Not a bad shot for a "timer" shot, especially since the sun was already going down and it was dusk.

After seeing downtown we found the gay nightlife and stopped at a couple of the nightclubs. The one I really liked was Talbots, an old theater with a balcony, but it didn't hold our attention very long. Nobody was dancing. OP's (now Greg's Our Place) was more like Georgie's Alibi, but once again, no dancing. Metro was kind of nice, and it had a little gift shop where we got some rainbow stickers for my back bumper. I guess we were kind of early, but even still, it was really kind of late by the time we got to White Castle's for their famous little burgers. It was still a 70 minute drive back to our hotel in Muncie.

We got up Sunday morning, packed our stuff and then did the following city tour of Muncie on our way out of town:

The Shaffer Chapel A.M.E. Church (African Methodist Episcopal) deserves special mention here. It is also in the Whitely neighborhood of Muncie, within walking distance of Mickey's family home. His mother was raised a member of this church. It was built in 1893 as a four-room school and was purchased by the congregation of the AME Church in 1928 while J.E. Johnson was reverend. Reverend Johnson was also a licensed mortician. On August 7th, 1930 two young Negro boys were lynched in neighboring Marion County (40 miles north.) The lynching started when a mob of 1,000 people stormed the Grant County jail, removed the boys, dragged them behind automobiles through the streets of Marion, and hung them from a maple tree on the courthouse grounds in Marion. Reverend Johnson felt that the boys deserved a Christian burial, so he drove his hearse to Marion where there were no Negro morticians. (Go figure - it was where the KKK Grand Wizard was located at the time.) In spite of the enormous personal risk, he was successful in obtaining the bodies and he brought them back to his mortuary in Muncie for embalming. Rumors started circulating that a white mob had formed in downtown Muncie, with plans to storm the mortuary, remove the bodies, and drag them through the streets of Muncie. The Negro Community responded to the rumors by organizing and arming themselves and using Shaffer Chapel A.M.E. Church as a command post, turning back the threat. Reverend Johnson returned the bodies to Marion the next day with protection from Delaware County (Muncie) Sheriff Fred Puckett and the Indiana State Police. One eyewitness to the event said, "I never will forget Orville "Trooper" Taylor. He was our leader. He was spacing us up and down Highland Avenue, and anybody who came by in a car, especially white folks, would be stopped and questioned. We thought sure somebody was going to get killed that night but nobody came to get the bodies." Mickey's parents were 14 years old at this time, and they were raised in the Whitely community surrounding this chapel and his mother was attending this church every Sunday! She would tell Mickey stories of how every two-story building had men with rifles stationed on the roofs. It is more easily understood why she was so protective of Mickey when you place her own childhood against this backdrop.

Tuhey Park was also another reminder to me (Lester) of the world in which Mickey was raised. The opening of the Tuhey Park swimming pool was a much heralded event in Muncie, but de-facto segregation was the rule. By 1956 change was in the wind. A court challenge was made by the Black community where it was charged that a pool supported by all taxpayers could not be used soley by white families, and like Rosa Parks, one brave man took three Black kids to the pool. After about an hour, 20 other Black kids joined them, which prompted several skirmishes and verbal threats were uttered by the white kids and their parents. In the aftermath, every pool in the city was closed on June 12th, 1956 (on Mickey's 4th-month birthday.) A man named Buley had been successful in fully desegregating the Tuhey Pool and it re-opened on June 19th, but even years later the tension was still felt. Mickey's mother would never let Mickey or his brother swim there. The story Mickey remembers is that it was bought by private interests so that it could remain segregated, but it eventually reverted back to the city (I think because it came due for major renovations - since the current Tuhey Pool has a waterslide and splash park.) After the pool became "public" again all the "white kids" would no longer go there and Mickey remembers them swimming at the privately owned "Water Bowl" out in the suburbs. More details are written in the book, "The Other Side of Middletown." Mickey is just going through the list of authors and contributors and knows many of them by name. Most of them are members of the Shafer Chapel A.M.E. Church and the chapel is mentioned prominently in the credits. The book was the brainchild of Hurley Goodall, a man who knew Mickey's mother very well. The book was published in 2003, but Mickey's mother passed away in 1997. Mickey is certain she would have been heavily involved in compiling that book if she would have been alive.

This is the McDonald's where Mickey worked for a couple of years. He started there while still in high school, shortly after he turned 16 in 1972. He was the first black and the only black to work at this McDonalds for almost 2 years.

This is Mickey in front of the "new" high school. He only attended this school for his senior year. Prior to this school he attended Central High School, which had been "condemned" by the city fathers, which is another way of saying "The Ball Brothers." You see, the Ball brothers wanted that downtown property for their new corporate head offices. The "condemned" school was so "frail" that they couldn't get the 2nd floor walls demolished, so they built a burm or something to get a bulldozer up on the 2nd floor to knock down the walls. Not too shabby that a condemned building would be so resistent to demolition. Right after building the corporate headquarters, the Ball Brothers sold off the factory and closed down all Muncie operations. Muncie is just a shell of the city that it once was.

Which leads us to Beneficence, the statue that honors the Ball Brothers in a central plaza at Ball State University. Mickey has some fond memories of his time at Ball State and his comming out process. He had his first "Gay Kiss" one evening hiding behind "Benny".

Wedding Trip - Day 3 (August 7th, 2009)

2009-09-06T08:29:00.012-04:00

Mickey is the youngest of two sons in his family, but his parents married in their 30's so these two cousins (who lived next door) are almost the equivalent of sisters in his life. Janice is the one on the left, and Atha on the right.

This is Mickey's childhood home, with Janice in the front doorway. The lady who lives in the house now gave us permission to come inside and take a look around. I'm very glad we were able to do that. It allowed me to fully understand all of the stories that Mickey tells me of growing up, especially the expansive "family room" addition that you can see as you look down the side wall of the home.

From this angle you can see the back of Mickey's old family home (to the right of the trampoline) and then the back of Atha's family home, where she still lives. The two-story home on the far side of Atha's home is an exact copy of the home that Atha and Mickey's father grew up in (his father's parents died young, so Atha's parents allowed Mickey's dad and brother to live with them as teenagers and into their 20's.) When Atha inherited the old two-story home they tore it down and built this newer ranch-style you see here.

This is the Indiana Steel and Wire Factory (well, the shell of the buildings anyway) where Mickey's dad worked all of his life. Mickey was only 14 years old when his dad died as a result of the family doctor not recognizing the symptoms of acute appendicitis. Mickey later found out that the doctor had been an achoholic for many years, including the period that his father was misdiagnosed. Muncie has many parking lots where factories used to be, and many derilect buildings from a prosperous blue-collar past, but not much to look forward to in the future.

We took the time to go visit the grave sites of Mickey's mother and father, aunts and uncles, and other family members.

Mickey met his first partner in Muncie. They were together for six years and it was Bob who helped Mickey get back into university and finish his bachelors degree. This is an apartment building (The Aquatane) that Bob purchased and added onto. This three-story section was where Bob and Mickey lived. Like the rest of Muncie, it has really been "let go."

After Bob started investing in Florida, Mickey was already enrolled in Ball State University, so he rented an apartment in this home. Mickey's apartment was on the far right side, and the porch was at least kind of intact on that side, but this picture shows the state of disrepair the building is in...obviously condemned.

Wedding Trip - Day 2 (August 6th, 2009)

2009-09-06T08:17:00.011-04:00

Because we had stayed in Atlanta for most of the morning at The King Center, we arrived into Asheville, NC at about 8PM at night. We quickly showered and went downtown to see what there was for a "gay nightlife" with a printed page from "GayCities.com" off the Internet. They listed a restaurant/bar so we started there and had a small dinner and then walked the whole downtown from one end to the other. Literally, at the very far end of downtown, we found "Larue's Back Door" and went in to order a beer. We chatted with the bartender for a bit and mentioned to him the frustration we experienced in find all the gay establishments that were listed on the Internet page. I asked, "Which ones really are the gay bars and which ones did false advertising?" His reply was, "I don't think there are any straight bars left in Asheville." Well, I knew that gay couples had been retiring to Asheville for quite some time, but I didn't think it had gotten that bad. We found "Marilyn" at the very back of "Larue's Backdoor."

The next morning we checked out of the motel and headed back downtown to get an idea of what Asheville looked like in the daylight. Mickey absolutely LOVES art deco stuff, so he fell in love with Asheville's architecture. This is their 1920's city hall. Pay particular attention in this photo to the decor pieces on either side of the entry steps outside of the three arches.

This is Mickey beside one of those "things." They were pretty strange, but oddly attractive, but not nearly as attractive as the guy standing next to it.

They say Asheville is a city of artists, but I didn't think they would go to this length to put art into the city. Nice lettering though.

While we were taking the pictures of city hall, we watched a window cleaning repelling down the side of the building while the ladder truck was doing a training exercise. By the time the ladder truck had fully extended its arm, the window cleaner was down to the 10th floor (3rd window from the top.)

We loved being in the mountains, but we were not quite sure we could stand living in a tourist city, so Asheville is not on the radar for our retirment years. Nobody seemed to be "local" to Asheville, as far as we could tell.

We had been told to go see the Biltmore Mansion (America's largest family home) but they wanted $50 a head to have a tour that would last about an hour. We drove in to the visitors center to see if we could get a view of the house, but all you saw was a long line of cars, so I decided I would download a photo off the Internet to show you what it looks like if you pay the $50.

Then it was off to Muncie.

Wedding Trip - Day 1 (August 5th, 2009)

2009-09-05T22:00:00.014-04:00

Just a couple of weeks before we left I had taken my "free" car in for an oil change. The mechanic told me that he saw oil traces in the antifreeze, and of course, that is not a good sign. I still had a few dollars left from my student loan for a down payment, so I started shopping around. After a couple of weeks of watching prices, one ad caught my eye, and I thought it was a typo. It listed a 2003 Suzuki Aerio with only 19,000 miles on it! I drove my beater over and took a look, and the salesman said, "I'm glad you printed out that ad. The sales manager would have never honored that price if he didn't see it for himself. If you don't buy that car he is going to change the ad right now." Well, needless to say, I bought the car. When I told Mickey that my "new" car is one year older than his but has more than 30,000 miles less than his he told me that we were going to take my car on this trip. I guess the previous owners must have been snowbirds and the car just stayed in a garage 8 months of the year down here. Who drives a car less than 300 miles a month in this day and age? Well, not me, for one. We would put 3,900 miles on the car in just 2 weeks!

We got started a bit late in the morning, and it was going to be a long drive to Atlanta, but we both still had big smiles on our faces. We were getting out of town and didn't have to worry about anybody else in the world for two weeks.

Does anybody know where I can buy a chin like Mickey's? I also wish I could make a pair of Ray Ban's look as good as he does too. I have to settle for the nerdy glasses today because I knew that my contact lenses would be like gummy bears by the time we got to Atlanta with the air conditioning blowing all day. We left in 95 degree heat and the heat followed us throughout the entire trip. The only place where it cooled into the 80's was Asheville, but that is a story for tomorrow.

We arrived in Atlanta at about 7:00 PM that night, which allowed us some time to check in to our downtown hotel and head up to the "gayborhood" for supper. We ate a late supper at Burkhart's Bar & Grill, which is a very friendly place in upper midtown. We then went to a couple of night spots to see what the Atlanta gay crowd looks like. Let's just say they look a whole lot younger than the one we're used to at the Sea Monster Sunday Tea Dance in Fort Lauderdale, but hey, it was a Wednesday night. What did we expect? After trying a couple of places we thought we would just drive by the Atlanta Eagle. (Did I hear a gasp?) Well, the Internet sources were right. It was in a rough neighborhood, but hey, it's a rough bar! Not exactly our kind of crowd, but we saw they had a dance floor, and it was getting close to 10:30 PM so I asked, "Is the dance floor going to open up on a Wednesday night?" He gave me a look that said, "You're not from here, are you?" before he politely stated that they only do dancing from Thurs to Sat. After getting our drinks though, he went over to the DJ booth and turned on some dance music instead of the stuff that had been playing, and then turned on all the disco lights. Well, we weren't planning on drinking enough to gather the courage to give the Eagle patrons a floor show, but it was very nice of the bar tender. We left a generous tip.

The next morning we headed straight to the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. The last time Mickey was there was before Coretta Scott King passed away, and the National Park Service had not taken it over by then. This was a wonderful improvement, and this Canadian-born American learned many things about U.S. history that he didn't know before.

I thought the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church was kind of a boring shot, by itself, because it was being renovated, so I thought I would liven up the shot by blending it in with "Kunta Kinte." I'm sure some of our friends will appreciate this camera angle more than others.

This is Lester and Mickey by the Eternal Flame.

This is the mausoleum, in the center of the reflecting pool outside of The King Center.

A person can hardly be a student of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. without being a student of Ghandi. As for me, I was first introduced to their philosophy of nonviolence by Mel White's book, "Religion Gone Bad." This drawing was in The King Center.

Let's just say some religious leaders follow the nonviolence creed better than others.

The Ghandi statue was outside of the National Parks Welcome Center, across the street from The King Center. The full name; "The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change." It was a place where I felt very much at home, and where I shed many tears for the injustice suffered by so many - both past - and present.

When Two Worlds Collide (The "Nothing-but-the-Temple" Meme)

2009-08-29T13:39:00.008-04:00

I write this blog with the firm conviction that for 44 years I was absolutely and indisputably wrong, and I taught incorrect principles to my children. I brought those incorrect principles into our home and my former wife was obligated to endure life with a man who refused to see things from any other perspective. For the past five years I have dedicated my life to correcting those wrongs. I will continue in these efforts, and that is why I blog.

As I start this blog post (on Thursday night), my former wife and three of my four children are preparing to fly to San Diego in order to stand on the lawn outside of the building where my oldest son will be married. As I finish it (Saturday afternoon) I will be sitting at my computer at precisely the moment that my son expected me to be sitting with his mother and siblings on that lawn outside the San Diego Mormon Temple.

It is at the doors of that temple, a metaphorical "gateway" to the Mormon heaven, where two worlds collide. These are "virtual worlds" only, and only exist because of memes; small little programs that our brains rely upon to tell us what is "allowed" and what is not. Memes are taught. Our instincts would tell us one thing, but good designer memes are created in order to override our better instincts.

For 44 years, and largely due to the excellent training provided to those who hold the higher priesthood of the Mormon Church, I perfected the art of utilizing these designer memes in order to exert the proper controls over my spouse and my children. I enjoyed a great deal of privilege within the Mormon underworld because I was very good at using these memes to manipulate my loved ones and fellow Mormons. Unfortunately, my oldest son Peter mastered these memes himself before I corrected my path, but he now finds himself caught in between these two colliding worlds.

The world that my son's wife (now my daughter-in-law) comes from is a place where religious memes define a convoluted hierarchy of privilege. Status in the Mormon underworld is either earned or granted. If granted, it simply means that you come from pioneer lineage, and I'm not sure if Maren is born of pioneer stock or not, but regardless of that, privilege is EVERYTHING in the Mormon underworld. Regardless of how you achieve your advanced position, at the end of the day it is the only thing that matters. You see, in Mormon doctrine you have to earn your way into heaven, and I refer to the Mormon culture as an "underworld" because this conversation that we are about to have is NEVER talked about. A "good Mormon" will not even allow these kinds of thoughts to exist in his or her mind. Having these thoughts is the threshold to apostacy, and there is nothing more lethal to the Mormon Church than an apostate. Discipline from the Mormon leadership is quick and harsh if they even get wind of a member who has any kind of sympathy for an apostate Mormon. My son will spend the rest of his life under a microscope as his leaders watch him for any indicators that he is weakening in the face of pressure from his father. If he shows any sympathy toward my liberal views it will virtually guarantee that he will never be advanced to a position of leadership.

My son Peter obtained his privileged standing by birth because he comes from a "good Mormon family." He is an 8th generation Mormon, and that means a hell-of-a-lot in Mormon circles. He also earned additional privilege by serving a full-time mission when he was 19 years old. Now, as a young adult, he has earned the right to be granted the highest privilege of all because he has been deemed worthy of a temple marriage.

For my daughter-in-law, Peter represents the catch of a lifetime. His only flaw was that his father (me) is a fallen soul. His mother and his siblings were led away by me, so their lack of worthiness to enter the temple to witness his marriage is unfortunate, but forgivable. The only way for Peter to overcome this blemish in an otherwise perfect life was to continue undeterred on the Mormon path to heaven and privilege. To accomplish this, Mormon Church leaders require that he, and those like him, become a martyr for the cause. The leaders do this by demanding that the actual wedding ceremonies of these young people be performed in a place where those "unworthy" people will be excluded. It doesn't have to be this way, but it serves a purpose.

The only ordinance that MUST be performed in the temple is the actual "sealing" ceremony, where ANY worthy couple, even those previously married in a public place, can be "sealed for time and all eternity" in a short five minute ceremony. However, if the leaders were to allow a civil (public) wedding ceremony to be held and then allowed the couple to go inside the temple for the five minute sealing ceremony afterward, there would be no "privilege" associated with a temple marriage. To retain that privilege the church leaders have imposed a one year "penalty period" upon any Mormon couples who choose a civil (public) ceremony in order to allow the "unworthy" to participate in the celebration. By demanding that the "unworthy" family members be barred from both the marriage ceremony AND the sealing ceremony, the Mormon leadership turn young adults like my son into martyrs and hold them up as shining examples to the youth and children in the church, perpetuating the meme of "nothing-but-the-temple." When my son placed his own personal sacrifice on a temple altar by excluding his "unworthy" loved ones from the most important day of his life, he was elevated to the same status afforded Abraham when he was willing to sacrifice Isaac. I know this, because in 1981 I did it to my former wife. You see, unlike me, she had not been born into privilege, so she had to earn it. Nothing could have alienated her more from her parents and siblings than my demands that the wedding only be held in the temple where they could not attend, and yet, as a reward for her obedience, the Mormon leaders virtually deified her in the eyes of others. My former wife bought into the "nothing-but-the-temple" meme because along with the sacrifice came the coveted privileges.

Mormon leadership, in trying to protect this privilege, go to great lengths to keep the temple ceremonies a secret from the "unworthy" and "worldly" public, but "secrecy" is too easily associated with the frequent (but accurate) allegations that Mormonism is a cult, so they prefer to cast the temple as "sacred," not "secret." That meme only works within the church, but unfortunately, it worked on my son. I can't blame anybody for this but myself. I taught him each and every one of the memes that are now such a source of confusion to him.

From the perspective of the world in which I now live, (which is truly my authentic life rather than the web of lies and pretense that I projected for others to see for the first 44 years of my mortality,) the designer memes that allow the Mormon Church to control their faithful adherents are easily identified, but from within the Mormon underworld the view is very different.

Because of the highly refined (dare I say "perfected") designer memes that my new daughter-in-law subscribes to, her entire future is hinged upon her marrying well. Not only does this mean that she must find a "good Mormon boy," but that she also must marry him in the temple. She was undoubtedly taught that if she were to be confronted with any criticism of the "nothing-but-the-temple" meme then it would have to be seen as a "test of her faith." Maren would have been taught that all of the privilege that she had earned up to this point in her life would be extremely fragile, and that it could all be lost by making a single bad decision. As youth, Mormon teens are literally taught to "run away" from temptation, as Joseph of Egypt did when tempted by an adulteress. This is at the very root of the collision of two worlds. I, as an apostate Mormon, represent the worst of everything that she was taught to avoid. It is made worse by virtue of the fact that even though the Mormon God forgives unconditionally, your fellow Mormons never seem to forget even the smallest indiscretion.

So it is that today, at this very moment, my former wife and all three of Peter's siblings are waiting outside on the lawn during the most important moments of his life. And who, exactly, is responsible for that?

The lesson to be learned is this. Be careful what you teach your kids. Always ask yourself, "Why is this behavior/custom/tradition/concept so important to our family? What did my parents gain by teaching that idea to me?" There is a reason why some of today's foremost scientists call a "meme" the "virus of the mind." I infected my son with the virus by staying within the Mormon underworld for as long as I did. I cannot escape the responsibility that comes with that knowledge. I will live with the consequences for the rest of my life, and my son in turn will likely spread that virus to his own children.

May this blog be a voice of warning to other fathers before it is too late.

Photos of My Childhood and Why My Therapist Wanted to See Them

2009-07-15T21:05:00.011-04:00

I'm seeing a new therapist now, and last week (my second week with him,) he asked me to bring some photos of my childhood that represent a happy period of my life.

I didn't take any pictures.

First, I don't have very many pictures of my childhood, and second, none of those pictures are really who I am. For the most part, the other people in the one picture that I do have do not meet the requirements to be my "loved ones."

By tomorrow night I will have another post here about "When Loved Ones are Unwitting Abusers." It is my third term paper for ENC1102 (freshman English,) and it will explain this in detail, but for now suffice it to say that when a person is abused there is a very short road to healing, if the "authorities" allow it to happen. This is the path:

* the abuse happens
* the victim reports the abuse to the authorities (the loved ones)
* the authorities take action
* healing takes place because the victim was validated

I don't need to go into detail about what happens when a victim reports abuse and the authorities deny that the abuse occurred. We all know that when that happens the victim is made to feel that it was somehow his or her fault that the abuse occurred, they feel ashamed, weak, and worthless, and the cycle of abuse is born.

At age 11, I knew I was attracted to other boys. On my 12th birthday I learned that masturbation was a sin that caused homosexuality, and when I was 14 I saw how my parents reacted when my Uncle Glenn left his wife and told his parents and siblings that he was gay. By then I knew that I was definitely not attracted to girls, and definitely WAS attracted to other guys, but the conversations about Uncle Glenn were all about how he was to be pitied because he was so weak and gave into tempation. They talked about how, if he would just try harder to resist those feelings, could still repent and be saved and once again belong to the "eternal family" that was my grandparents and my mother and her siblings. Uncle Glenn's "lifestyle" was talked about in hushed tones. Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY was disappointed by him being gay, and some of my uncles were downright abusive to him and made no apologies. My mother and her sister stayed in contact with Uncle Glenn, but to a teenager who knew he was "just like his uncle," I saw every subtle nuanced whisper and comment that were made around him at the family reunions. I have now lived just down the freeway from Uncle Glenn for two years and we share holiday dinners together, and I have found out that I didn't miss much as a 14-year-old.

It is spiritual abuse when an entire extended family is so inextricably tied to a religion that they will reject a loved one before conceding that the religion that works so well for them might actually be a toxic environment for someone who is "different."

So, back to my "photos" and my homework assignment that my therapist gave me last week. I'm the little kid...the baby in the family...in this 1960 family photo. It is hard for me to look back on this picture with any happiness now because I realize that nobody surrounding me in that photo will defend me against my abuser...the Mormon Church. At the tender age of 14 I wanted to talk to my mother about my "feelings" but I saw how she reacted to her own brother being gay, and I vowed to be "stronger than Uncle Glenn" and beat the sinful thoughts that plagued me. My abuser was not a bully at school. My abuser was a religion that condemned me for my thoughts and threatened me not only with eternal condemnation if I ever acted on those thoughts, but would also condemn me to an eternal separation from my loved ones.

So I endured a false life, projecting an image of the person that I knew everybody wanted to see.

Did I feel loved back in 1960? Yes, I did. Did I feel loved as a teenager? Well, the "false self" that I put forward felt loved, but it was all so conditional on my family and friends never finding out my secret. I wondered constantly if they would love me if I ever committed the unpardonable sin of homosexuality.

As a 49-year-old man, what takes all the joy out of reflecting back on this family photo is the knowledge that nobody in my family is now willing to assume the role of being the "authority figure" to whom I can report my abuse. As mentioned at the start of this post, the path to healing involves reporting the abuse to an authority and having that authority figure take action. My siblings (and even my son) have still not taken any kind of action against my abuser. They still deny that I suffered any abuse at all as a result of the Mormon doctrine and how it influences the life of a gay Mormon. The only action they (both the church, and by extension, my loved ones) want is for me to "repent" of being a homosexual by leaving this "lifestyle choice" that I fell into when I had a weak moment and allowed the devil to take over my life.

I know for a fact that not one of my siblings will take action against my abuser because I asked them all how they would react when the Mormon prophet asked every faithful Latter-day Saint to contribute of their "time and means" to ensure that Prop 8 passed in California.

One just has to read my brother's blog post about Prop 8 and the imbedded lies associated with the "Yes on 8" campaign to know that my right to happiness never even entered the equation for them. All that mattered to my siblings was that if the Mormon prophet spoke the words, the thinking had already been done. What was good for their little brother had no weight in how their decision was going to be made.

By doing that, they not invalidated my present life, but they also invalidated my entire childhood. Back then, under the assumption that I would grow up to be a good "Mormon Boy," it was easy for them treat me with dignity and love. Since I didn't turn out so good in the eyes of the church leadership, it is easy for them to toss me out as they defend their out-dated traditions and a literal interpretation of a completely irrelevant account of revisionist history.

In their "fight to always be right," the Mormon Church has written a text-book case on how it is perfectly acceptable to deliver "conditional love" and their support of Prop 8 flies in the face of their "Proclamation on the Family" that they regurgitate without a single thought about how that should be applied to a gay brother or sister.

A Rosa Parks Echo: The End of Religious-Based Bigotry

2009-07-07T11:48:00.005-04:00

English 1102: Paper One
July 2nd, 2009

While awarding her the Congressional Gold Medal, the U. S. Congress called Rosa Parks the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement” (Vaughn). Back in 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, it started a civil rights movement that moved African-Americans closer toward equality, but it was an imperfect solution. The law clearly stated that Blacks were to be seen as equal to Whites, but in the minds of white Americans the law only required that they be “treated” as though they were equal. Racial bigotry was still deeply rooted in many parts of America and, to some degree, it remains in force to this day in the minds of a few, but before the end of the Obama administration we are likely going to witness what I will call a “Rosa Parks Echo” that will once again turn the kaleidoscope. This Rosa Parks Moment of the 21st century will occur as the final vestiges of bigotry – religious-based bigotry – loses its grip on Americans in the same way that racial bigotry lost its grip during the 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system.

Many philosophers have tried to define what makes all of humanity equal, and in a 2002 book entitled Our Posthuman Future, Francis Fukuyama went so far as to give this human dignity a name. He called it “Factor X” (Fukuyama 81). It had the potential to revolutionize the human rights movement by allowing social justice advocates to point to this Factor X and claim that every living person has an equal measure of it, but Fukuyama built into his argument one fatal flaw. In his essay Fukuyama conceded that in the minds of the religious, Factor X was actually the human “soul” granted to us by a god (Fukuyama 84). History has proven that once a religion has laid claim to a term it can no longer be used in scientific argument, and further to that, ever since all three of the Abrahamic religions moved to monotheism, each has been forced into a corner because it is incumbent upon them to defend their one “true” god. Peace negotiations between theocracies generally fail because at some point one party has to assert that the other parties are wrong, and that they worship a “false god.” It would be convenient if the negotiations were able to utilize Fukuyama’s Factor X to defend human dignity on both sides of the debate, but in theocracies, a judge and jury (who are in their own mind representing god) have already been hard at work to clearly demonstrate that the incorrectly affiliated and non-religious possess an inferior version of this Factor X.

At the heart of religious-based bigotry is a system of power and privilege that rewards the “worthy” and holds the “less-worthy” in contempt. The entire system in a theocracy, a world-wide church, or even a fundamentalist congregation hinges upon “us vs. them.” At its core, by design, there will always be “God’s people” who will be charged with “perfecting” all other people by converting them to the one true belief system. Wherever a belief system leaves no room for another belief system to co-exist with it, you will find religious-based bigotry, and the impending Rosa Parks Echo that we will soon witness in America will spell the end of that kind of belief system. The power and privilege of belonging to a superior belief system is fading as humanism becomes the foundation upon which a new order of religious belief is erected.

According to the American Humanist Association, humanism is defined as “a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity” (American Humanist). That, in a sentence, sums up what Fukuyama spent 25 pages attempting to articulate, and failed. A humanist simply affirms that each person has the responsibility, and more importantly, the capability, to live an ethical life of personal fulfillment, but it goes further than that. Humanism also demands that each of us respect and defend the precept that every other human being must likewise be granted that same right and that same responsibility. There is one critical word that the American Humanist Association uses in their definition, and that is that we define such a life without resorting to theism.

What is coming now is not a new law, but an awakening to the fact that only a bona fide bigot would have made such a law as “separate but equal” in the first place, and only a culture with deeply entrenched religious bigotry would have supported it. In America we are witnesses to the last gasps for air by those who were accustomed to having unchallenged access to the power and privilege that they felt was their birthright, which, for the most part, meant that they were a white heterosexual Christian male. The Rosa Parks Echo is looming large for them because it is no longer about simply allowing somebody to sit at the front of the bus, but rather Congress is now preparing to enact laws that simply deny privilege.

Evidence of the impending Rosa Parks Echo is now visible in almost all of the mainstream media outlets. We know it is coming because we now see the victims of bigotry every day in the headlines. The sound bites are not just about gays being thrown out of the military and gay marriage being banned in California, Arizona, and Florida. Bigotry is also at the heart of the Wall Street executives who get bonuses from failing banks and it was at the root of Countrywide Mortgage and their predatory lending practices that targeted already oppressed minorities. It is behind the slanderous comments made about the appointment of Judge Sonya Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The majority of Americans no longer have an appetite for any kind of bigotry, whether racial or religious.

Largely due to the success of Barack Obama's win in the 2008 presidential race, humanity in general, and Americans in particular, are slowly awakening to the fact that these out-dated laws and traditions that perpetuate intolerance and social injustices are not only harmful, but were, almost without exception, founded upon deeply seated religious beliefs. While most American religions have moved safely into the territory of moderate Christianity, others see this shift toward tolerance as their impending Armageddon. Fundamentalist American congregations have issued a battle cry and we are now seeing the hour-long gay-bashing commercial, “Speechless: Silencing Christians” being run from coast to coast (Sandeen). When the Mormon Church ordered that a letter be read from every pulpit in California last June, in which the prophet demanded that every member “give of their time and means” in the battle against gay marriage (Advocate.com 25 June 09), it resulted in more than $22 million in Mormon donations alone (Karger), and almost 75% of that money came from Mormons outside of California (Latter-day Chino). One cannot even begin to measure the impact of the Mormon volunteer effort in the Prop 8 campaign because out-of-state Mormon businessmen were closing their doors at five o’clock and then allowing volunteers in to man a massive call-center-like operation (Aravosis). It is estimated that even though Mormons comprise less than 2% of the California population they accounted for more than 80% of the volunteer effort (Mormons and Prop 8).

Fundamentalist Christians in America have now ramped up the rhetoric to the point that we have seen a 6% increase in the number of hate crimes against gays while hate crimes in general have decreased (Hansen-Weaver), and in the aftermath of abortion doctor George Tiller being shot in the lobby of his own church, Attorney General Eric Holder has dispatched U. S. Marshals to protect other abortion clinics from coast to coast (AP/Huffington Post). While the leaders at the top of the Mormon Church, the Southern Baptists, and the National Association of Evangelicals might decry such behavior in their press releases, it is of little consolation to the families of these victims of such religiously fueled hate. While such churches may have an outward appearance of a mainstream religion, their unwillingness to punish extremism and diffuse the harsh rhetoric of their congregational leaders effectively demonstrates that their literal interpretation of the Bible makes them as oppressive as any Jim Jones or David Koresh cult.

Each of us who struggle for social justice and equality will have a "Rosa Parks Moment" during this critical time in American history. If you are a gay couple hoping for marriage, you might just hold hands in places like a crowded mall where you are safe from a “gay bashing.” Another gay couple may apply for an adoption in a state where the law currently forbids it, and be prepared to challenge it in court. A gay man may take his lover home with him to a high school reunion and introduce him as his fiancé, or better yet, his husband. They may dance together in a traditional heterosexual environment and endure the stares. A lesbian daughter may tell her widowed mother that she expects to be treated like her heterosexual brother when he visits. Instead of being given the guest bedroom with the twin beds, which is what her mother usually does, the daughter could ask that the mother sleep in the guest bedroom and allow her and her partner of 15 years to sleep in the master bedroom, which is the treatment that the heterosexual brother and his wife have enjoyed over the past 20 years.

To end this essay I need to get personal because I want to share with you what has become my own “Rosa Parks Moment.” I am a late-blooming gay man who is also a 7th generation Mormon. I was married for 26 years and my former wife and I have four grown children. Our oldest son is the only one who has stayed in the Mormon Church, and he has just become engaged to what can I only assume is a wonderful young woman, but unfortunately she likewise is a member of the Mormon Church. In order to protect the hierarchy of power and privilege within the Mormon Church, they Mormons have leveraged the temple wedding into a weapon of segregation, even within their own people. You see, only worthy Mormons get to witness the wedding ceremony, and some experts have estimated that fewer than one in four Mormons are even worthy to enter their sacred temples where the weddings are performed, but that doesn’t mean every Mormon has to be married in the temples. A chapel wedding, where less-worthy and even non-Mormon family members can attend, accomplishes the same thing, and then the couple could walk across the street and be “sealed” for eternity inside the temple, but if the Mormon prophet allowed that then he would diminish the position of “privilege” that is currently afforded to the “temple married” Mormons. In order to stop that practical solution from gaining any traction, any temple-worthy couple who elect to have a chapel wedding are punished and forced to wait a full year before they can be “sealed” for eternity. In order make the year-long wait even more punitive, stories are circulated to the youth of couples who were married civilly first and either the husband or wife died tragically before the year-long penalty period was up. The Mormon god is an intolerant god, and this is portrayed as a just and equitable punishment for choosing the “low road.”

Because of this, my son’s mother, his three siblings, and I will not be allowed to accompany him on his wedding day. Should we choose to attend we will be standing on the lawn outside waiting for the photo-op. For me, I will not participate in my own oppression, but I have been portrayed as “unsupportive” of my son. The week after his engagement my son phoned to tell me that his fiancée’s family was considering leaving my name off of the wedding invitation. Yes, that was a stab to my heart, but it will cost my own community too much if I “give up my seat on the bus” one more time. As much as it hurts, this will be my “Rosa Parks Moment.”

Works Cited

Vaughn, Emma, “Nation Pays Tribute to ‘Mother of the America We Grew to Be’.” The Seattle Times. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002594567_parks31.html 31 Oct 05, 2 July 2009.

Fukuyama, Francis, “Human Dignity.” Emerging – A Reader 2nd ed. Ed. Barclay Barrios. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. (81-109).

American Humanist, http://www.americanhumanist.org/Who_We_Are/About_Humanism, 29 June 2009.

Sandeen, Autumn, “American Family Association’s ‘Speechless: Silencing Christians’ is Back,” Pam’s House Blend. http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/11631/american-family-associations-speechless-silencing-the-christians-is-back . 23 June 09, 2 July 09.

Advocate.com, “Mormon Church Enters Gay Marriage Fight”, The Advocate. http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid56469.asp . 25 June 08, 2 July 09.

Karger, Fred, “Out of State Mormons Donate $3 Million More to Prop 8. http://www.inlookout.com/2008/11/03/out-of-state-mormons-donate-3-million-more-to-prop-8 . 3 Nov 08, 2 July 09.

Latter-day Chino, “Secret Million Dollar Mormon Donor to Prop 8 Revealed,” http://www.chinoblanco.com/2008/10/secret-million-dollar-mormon-donor-to.html . 31 Oct 09, 2 July 09.

Aravosis, John, “Complaint Filed Against Mormon Church Prop 8 Activities,” http://www.americablog.com/2008/11/complaint-failed-against-mormon-church.html , 13 Nov 08, 2 July 09.

Mormons and Prop 8, http://mormonsandprop8.com/prop8 . 2 July 09.

Hansen-Weaver, Jessica, “Behind the Wave of Anti-Gay Hate Crimes,” http://socialistworker.org/2009/01/19/anti-gay-hate-crimes . 19 Jan 09, 2 July 09.

AP/Huffington Post, “George Tiller Killed: Abortion Doctor Shot at Church,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/31/george-tiller-killed-abor_n_209504.html . 31 May 09, 2 July 09.

Opportunity Lost: The Cost of Denying Self-Authentication

2009-07-07T11:39:00.006-04:00

English 1101: Paper Three
June 15th, 2009

Many philosophers and scientists have tried to define in simple layman terms what it is that makes the human race different, and specifically, why we as a rule are so vehemently against the mistreatment of other humans and why we are so anxious to punish wrongful death so severely. Even when death is an accident it creates an acute sense of loss, and when it is a young person or a child this loss is amplified many times over. So what exactly is it that is lost when a human being dies? In understanding this, it is useful to analyze what writers have done with their most endearing science fiction tales. What the success of their books and movies have taught us is that before readers and movie goers will become emotionally attached to a machine, the author or screenwriter must first demonstrate that the machine has awakened to the fact that it has the potential to become something greater than the sum of its parts, which is the process of self-actualization, and with this perspective it is easy to see why we as humans mourn death and why the loss of the toddler is felt much more deeply than the loss of the senile senior citizen.

In his book, Our Posthuman Future, in an excerpt from the chapter entitled “Human Dignity”, Francis Fukuyama weakly defends this idea of a human ability to self-actualize when he argues for the existence of a Factor X. In his opinion, it is because of this component of humanity that we as a race demand that every life be respected (Fukuyama 83). Regardless of race, gender, skin color, or any other defining physical trait, Fukuyama argues that it is this Factor X that makes it so difficult to subject any human to any kind of mistreatment, but his effort falls far short of making a defensible argument. While the concept of a Factor X is perfectly defensible, there are two explanations for Fukuyama’s failure to defend it. First, Fukuyama essentially gave the religious fundamentalists their talking points so that they could claim that it was their “God” who created this Factor X (84), and second, he takes an all or nothing stand against the “modern natural science” notion that if we are a product of pure evolution, then a Factor X cannot exist (85). He even goes so far as to explain in detail why taking the purely scientific approach would have serious “consequences” (86). His only concession to the intelligent design idea was when he spoke of how, in 1996, Pope John Paul II agreed to evolution only with the caveat that when we as a race were sufficiently evolved, God created the “human soul” to possess those bodies (93). He essentially told the scientists to follow the lead of the Catholic Church so that they (the scientists) would concede that we have this Factor X. Even by the end of his article Fukuyama defended this as he explained the position that John Searle took. Fukuyama first asserts Searle’s argument that consciousness can be understood without believing in “dualistic ontology or abandon[ing] the scientific framework of material causation,” and he then affirms the existence of his Factor X by stating that to acknowledge it does not “require recourse to the direct intervention of God.” Fukuyama then negated any ground that he might have gained within the scientific community by stating in the next line, “It does not, on the other hand, rule it out, either” (Fukuyama 101).

If Fukuyama had taken the stance that it was our need to self-actualize, rather than the existence of a “consciousness” that created his Factor X, it would have stopped the Abrahamic religions from confiscating his work and in so doing minimizing or even negating the usefulness of the Factor X idea by the non-religious and scientific communities. He came close to this when he stated that every human is possessed of a “genetic endowment that allows him or her to become a whole human being,” but once again he continues on using the Christian code words “moral choice” as he strives to expand on that (102). Later, on that same page, he confuses the reader by stating “we will be constantly tempted to think that we understand what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emotions are, and that [with bio-engineering] we can do nature one better by suppressing the latter” (102). Based on the prior twenty pages of his writing, whether intentional or not, one is lead to think that he is deliberately pitting the religious against the natural scientist, which leaves one to wonder why he even bothered framing his argument in a way that it would be so polarizing in the first place. The world did not need one more article to explain why scientists are seen as the enemy by the religious fundamentalists.

All three of the Abrahamic religions believe that an omnipotent God granted us first a soul and then our agency for the term of our mortality, so for them it naturally follows that it is in their own best interest to secure enough political influence so that their religion alone can define what this Factor X is and who is possessed of it, or, that is to say, what is “good” and what is “bad.” When a religious group succeeds in doing this the nation’s judicial system, by means of a judge and jury, gets to legislate who it is that has broken their God ordained laws and in the process will have forfeited their Factor X. This is what took place in the case of Terri Schiavo. Figuratively speaking, the courts debated for seven years whether or not her body still retained its Factor X. Religious fundamentalists tried to persuade the judicial system to adopt their narrow views, all the while keeping Mrs. Schiavo in a perpetual vegetative state (Wikipedia 10 Jun 09). The irony is that during that same period, dozens of fully-conscious and functional death-row inmates were subjected to capital punishment and put to death, a practice that is fully supported by these same Christian fundamentalists and still legal in 35 American states. Terri Schiavo had no consciousness and no chance of advancing in her self-actualization, but there is a great deal that an inmate on death row can do to improve his lot in life and leave an enduring legacy for humanity, even if he will never see the light of day again. We don’t even dare to count the number of wrongful death sentence convictions that occurred before the advent of the modern DNA test.

If we can get away from the Factor X argument and move toward the idea that the possibility to self-actualize is what creates the value in human life, then it makes it more difficult for the religious to dominate the scene and legislate their desired outcomes. It would mean that they would have to prove that certain classes of humanity have less of an ability to self-actualize and thereby should be seen as inferior. To this end, the religious extremists would have to leverage this and argue that this inferiority is connected to the non-belief in an omnipotent God by this class of people. This logic worked well for the Crusades and Holy Wars of the Middle Ages, and we saw this logic clearly illustrated by Kwame Anthony Appiah when he wrote about how oppressive cultures of the world dominated, and often eliminated, other cultures. Appiah related how 19th century Britain (a white Christian nation) justified the “collection” of artifacts from the palace of the Asante people (a black tribal group of Ghana). By quoting Lord Baden-Powell’s 1896 writings, Appiah made it clear that Baden-Powell had justified his actions because he was doing his work “in a barbarian king’s palace” (Appiah 2). The 19th century Christian mentality had not moved too far away from the holy wars, and Ghana (then known as Gold Coast) had been conquered and was made into a crown colony in 1874. Even though Ghana achieved independence in 1957, the nations culture had been decimated and Ghana remains 69% Christian to this day (Wikipedia 10 Jun 09). All of this oppression had been done because first, not only did the white Christian culture refuse to recognize the validity of a tribal belief system, but they also failed to grant any of Fukuyama’s Factor X to these people unless they were willing to convert to Christianity. If instead the litmus test had been to allow all people to accomplish their own version of self-actualization, then it would have been more difficult to justify the oppression of other peoples.

This is not a phenomenon of past centuries. In his essay, “The Dark Art of Interrogation,” Mark Bowden explains the downward spiral of the American people when, after the tragedy of 9/11, the majority in the Christian world felt that any person who was suspected of being an al Queda operative could be subjected to torture (Bowden 65). Yes, these terrorists had sworn to destroy the western culture, and this was a blanket statement meant to include just about anything Christian, but we already knew that they also despised the Jewish people. In the post 9/11 environment it did not matter that we had not even granted any captured al Queda suspect the benefit of a proper trial to determine if they were guilty of a crime before we tortured them. In the minds of a few, the simple fact that a person looked like an Arab, wore a turban, or professed an Islamic faith was enough reason to ostracize them and accuse them of being an enemy of America. The story of Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen but legal resident of Germany is a case in point. He spent five years in a Guantanamo cell just because his appearance and circumstances fit the profile noted above (Wikipedia 15 Jun 09). A culture or class of people can only justify this behavior if they diminish the value of the “Factor X” possessed by others. In a post 9/11 world, many moderates in the Islamic faith throughout the world felt this kind of contempt from fundamentalist Christians, and in this unhealthy climate very few Christians took the time to find out if their Muslim neighbors were moderates who respected the right of others to worship how, what, and whom they may.

If there is a polar opposite to the religious fundamentalist in the debate over the existence of a Factor X, then it would be the atheist student of natural science. These scientists support the work of geneticists as they strive to decode and manipulate human DNA. Fukuyama postulates what might happen once they make sufficient advances in science to the degree that we will have the capacity to engineer our own offspring, and beyond that he also foresees the possibility of allowing the human consciousness to be seen as nothing more than a product of a pre-defined cause-and-effect science (Fukuyama 97). A serious student of this topic might be left to surmise that this concerns Fukuyama because it would lead to God being left out of the debate, and that would be a good thing! When that happens, the argument of what is human nature, and thereby Factor X, is opened up for an entirely new definition. If the ability to self-actualize is the test, does it really matter how the child was conceived? Isn’t it more desirable that every human be resistant to cancer and avoid the physical handicaps of birth defects? In much the same way that science has eliminated smallpox, the future holds many more possibilities in improving the quality and longevity of life.

Many will try to claim synonyms for Factor X and call it our essence, our conscience, our human nature, or our human dignity. Something truly does exist, but not in the way that Fukuyama tries to define it. It also will not cease to exist just because science tries to will it away as an accident, and likewise, nobody for any reason can forfeit it or deny that another has a right to retain it. Humanity will continue to evolve, and religions will increasingly be seen as on the wrong side of history as modernization instinctively attracts an ever more liberal interpretation of what Factor X is. When seen as the culmination of Darwin’s evolution, not just in body but in mind as well, it will become self-evident that the loss we feel when someone dies is really just the sense that the world and everything in it was denied the opportunity to witness the potential that this person could have experienced in their own self-actualization. It is for this reason that the loss of a child or brilliant student or leader is felt differently than that of a senile senior citizen who had already experienced a productive life, or a person in a vegetative state living on life support.

If scientists argue that we are accidents of nature, and religious extremists argue that their vengeful God only grants us a conditional claim on our right to our soul, then in fact the truth must lie somewhere on the scale in between. Using this “middle ground” logic will help resolve many ethical debates. For example, if an expectant mother has this Factor X that Fukuyama talks about, but becomes aware of a genetic defect in the unborn child, then will the rights of an unborn fetus trump that of the mother? The unborn fetus has no opportunity at life, or put another way, to self-actualize, until it is an entity unto itself. Until then, only one entity (the host) can make the decision about what self-actualization means. This is the fundamental right that her humanity grants to her and it is her decision alone to make. Naturally she also must assume the consequences for what her decision means to the unborn fetus.

Rigid natural science does not provide all of the answers, and because fundamentalist religions make little or no effort to expand their boundaries with changing times, they will not provide the answers for a changing humanity either. Humanism is a term that can encapsulate the philosophical middle ground, and it is here that all of the answers will be found. Scientists will continue to push the envelope for unfettered exploration and experimentation and religious fundamentalists will strive to keep all life within the confines set out in the purportedly 2000 year old Abrahamic texts. Neither position can be allowed to prevail. Even still, throughout the process of finding balance there will be one certainty, which is, that the instinctive quest for each human being to find his or her own purpose in life will conquer every attempt to suppress it.

Works Cited

Fukuyama, Francis, “Human Dignity.” Emerging – A Reader 2nd ed. Ed. Barclay Barrios. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. (81-109).

Wikipedia, “Terri Schiavo”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Shiavo, web 10 Jun 09.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, “Whose Culture Is It, Anyway?” Emerging – A Reader 2nd ed. Ed Barclay Barrios. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. (1-16).

Wikipedia, “Ghana”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana, web 10 Jun 09.

Bowden, Mark, “The Dark of Interrogation.” Emerging – A Reader 2nd ed. Ed. Barclay Barrios. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. (31-65).

Wikipedia, “Murat Kurnaz”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murat_Kurnaz, web 15 Jun 09.

The Wedding Invitation Fiasco

2009-06-27T22:35:00.003-04:00

I just got off the phone with Andrew. The background on this blog will need to be filled in later (where Peter called and told me that his mother and some in Maren's family were thinking about leaving my name off the wedding invitation because I was not so "pleased to announce the marriage of my son"), but tonight it was actually amazing that it was Andrew who called.

The conversation was not going too well. When I tried to tell Andrew that this was my "Rosa Parks Moment", he said that Peter wanted me there at the wedding, and I should be there for him...that Peter wanted me at the "front of the bus".

I had to remind Andrew that it was Peter who had sent his entire family to the "back of the bus" when he decided to cave in to the punitive Mormon position of forcing couples in North America who choose NOT to be married in the temple to wait a full year before they can be "sealed" in the temple...and then preaching that if one of the were to die during that "probationary year" that the Lord would likely not allow them to be "sealed" vicariously because they chose not to be married for time and all eternity in the first place when they "had their chance."

All Peter had to do to invite his family to the "front of the bus" was to be married in the chapel. No, it was NOT Maren's family who sent us to the back of the bus...it was Peter, my son, the brother of his brother and sisters. It was HIS choice to be married where we could not participate. There was another way, and still Peter (and Maren) chose to purpetuate the oppression of a bigoted church that loves to recite from their esteemed "Proclamation on the Family" whenever it suits them, and then split families apart if they don't buy into "the program." With the Mormons, it will always be "us vs. them." They are all martyrs and in their own perverse way love to be seen as "the oppressed" because the righteous are always oppressed because of their "higher standards."

None of the above points have anything to do with me being gay, but that is still an issue. Even if I were to come, I would not come alone. They would have to at least make an effort to create a welcoming atmosphere for me to be there with my "husband." If there is a dance, I will dance with Mickey. If there is a "head table" for the parents of the groom, I would sit there with Mickey, and I would hold Mickey's hand just like Maren's parents would hold hands. While we expect that some of the guests will stare, we would at least expect Maren and Peter and also Maren's family to not stare at us like the crippled child...if you remember your mother when she would say, "honey, don't stare at the crippled child...it isn't polite!" We are not freaks!

I can't see it happening, but because of Andrew's call the door is at least being held open a crack.

When Therapy Does What It Is Supposed To Do

2009-03-03T01:30:00.008-05:00

I have been in therapy since August 2008, and I see my therapist Terri every Monday for one hour. For anyone who has been in therapy, you will know how some weeks are more productive than others, and recently we had just been chatting as friends rather than really covering ground...as it might be called when I came to life-altering realizations. With that in mind, last week I asked how I would know when it was time to end my therapy. After some discussion, it was decided that we would have four more sessions and rather than call it an ending, we would just call it a time off. She suggested that after I stopped my weekly visits I evaluate things on a regular basis and consider whether I needed to pick up again after three months, six months, or even a year.

Well, with an end for my therapy in sight, this past week saw my mind really focus on what I wanted this ending to look like. I started to analyse where I was, and if I was really satisfied with this destination that I had arrived at.

When I realized that I truly had not arrived at my destination, I started to panic because when I thought about whether more therapy would help me I realized an even more disturbing truth...and that was that I really could not see a way for me to ever arrive at the destination that I had set out for myself in my mind.

I had somehow seen the objective for my therapy as something that might be represented by the following diagram:

I had thought that through therapy I would eventually find a way to return my life to the track that I should have been on had I come out during my teen years. I kept imagining that those 25 years with Barbara should have been a life that I had shared with Mickey, and I wanted to pick up where I left off...so to speak. I wanted to create a continuation of the life that I had been denied. As represented in the diagram, I wanted to return to the dotted line.

If you are familiar with the movie trilogy, "Back to the Future" you will remember how they talk about the alternate reality, and I was hoping that through therapy I might get my mind wrapped around what I had lost so that I could stabilize my life back onto that dotted line, but what I came to realize this past week is that it is mentally exhausting to always be "working on yourself" to keep yourself on a pre-defined track. My question to Terri today was, "When do I get to start living my life instead of constantly working on my life?" Of course I already knew the answer to that question, but I was hoping she had some new insight, so I asked it anyway.

That was when she helped me understand my life better by describing my life as a line that was perpendicular to Mickey's, and my past is what it is...I don't get to re-write anything. Just like my past is what it is, my future would be very different had I not ever met Mickey on April 22, 2007. The dotted lines in this diagram represent lives that will never be known. Like these dotted lines, the dotted line in the previous...and incorrect...diagram was a life that was never meant to be lived because Mickey's path and my path would have never met had I been on that dotted line. If I would have come out in my teens I would most certainly have never gone to Indiana, and I would likely never have even come to Florida. From Alberta, almost every gay man left to live a life in Vancouver, BC or San Francisco. It was the '70's and things were very different.

So, for the past two years Mickey and I have had exactly what it was that we were meant to have, and our future is not yet defined by any life-track that we are obligated to adhere to. To further help me get my mind off the fact that I need to work on my life and rather just live my life, Terri drew a diagram that she uses with her 8th graders to help them. For Terri and I, her experience with 8th graders fits my situation nicely because that was my age when I was first made to feel like I was failing in God's eyes because I had this attraction to boys instead of girls.

The diagram starts with a path that comes to a fork in the road. On one side is a path to success, and on the other is a path to failure. Terri then asks the youth to define what success looks like to them.

She then explains to them that everything that is not taking them on a path to that objective is...by default...defined as a failure. After all, if you are not on the path to success, then what is the alternative?

Looking back, I have to define my decision as a 14-year-old as a failure. I could have talked to my parents about me being attracted to boys when the family was discussing my gay Uncle Glenn who had just come out.

Again, at 21, I made another decision that would have to be defined as a failure...a decision to get married to a woman. As the diagram points out, life is nothing more than a series of decisions, and just because one decision (to get married) is a failure does not mean that the decisions that were made in order to deal with a previous failure are also failures. I have four wonderful children, and I have never once considered their existence as a failure. Actually, looking at my life through the third curly life-track helps me reconcile my past with my present in a way that includes my children in my truly authentic life as a gay man.

When I looked at my life-that-should-have-been with the point of reference of the top (first) diagram, the existence of four children in that scenario is seen as a mistake...or a failure. This curly life track that I have drawn here...the one that recognizes any life as a valid life...allows successes to be built upon the consequences of failures without having to fix the failure. You just move on...and live your life. You don't have to get back on track...but rather just recognize the extra curves in the track.

The age-points in this diagram only represent those defining decisions I have made that have shaped my coming-to-terms with my sexuality, and as such have created the path that allowed Mickey and I to meet.

Knowing that I do not have to "put my life back on track" changes everything.

I really like my therapist!

How Gay Men Become "Parents"

2009-03-01T08:58:00.006-05:00

The following Huffington Post story highlights the mindset that needs to exist in America before gay men will ever be seen as "viable" when talking about creating a family unit. How appropriate is it that the article is written by Max Mutchnik, the co-creator of "Will & Grace".

It is written with wonderful humor that makes a serious subject enjoyable to read, but if you start the article, don't stop until you read the last paragraph or you will have the completely wrong impression of the author.

"My Daughters Have No Mother"

Let me know what you think.

A Night at the Oscars to Remember

2009-02-27T11:49:00.004-05:00

I'm just going to provide you a link to read instead of writing an entire post, because I could not have said it better if I had spent all day trying to sort out what it was that made me cry so much during the Oscar Ceremonies after watching Dustin Lance Black accept his award, and then later Sean Penn.

Read the words of Sue Hyde from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and pretend the words are mine, because I echo her feelings precisely.

PS. She is the one who puts together the Creating Change Conference every year (the conference I attended in Denver a month ago).

I'm in an art show!

2009-02-03T21:45:00.007-05:00

Well, not me, exactly, but my piece of art was selected for inclusion as an installation piece in ArtExplosion, which is among the largest gay-themed art shows in the United States.

Better yet, my piece was set up in the lobby...making it the very first thing anyone sees when they enter the building. Wow!

I'll write more later, but right now I just wanted to get the pictures posted on the blog.

"Prayers for Bobby"

2009-01-25T02:03:00.004-05:00

It has taken me about 3 hours to recover from the emotions of watching the Lifetime Network world premier of "Prayers for Bobby" (starring Sigourney Weaver).

The story starts in 1979. I should have come out in 1978 but I was a coward and I bought into the Mormon propaganda that if I had enough "faith" and married a woman, that God would "fix me" and make me "normal".

In many ways, Bobby was more courageous than I was. I chose the "easy way out" by living a lie. Bobby took a stand and tried to live an authentic life, but the price for him was too high. His mother left him in an impossible situation, and he had spent his entire life trying to be "perfect" for his mother.

After more than 30 years, and countless emails to my siblings, I fully understand that each of them would do to their own sons what Mary Griffiths did to her son in 1982.

The Evangelicals and Mormons and other fundamentalist religions have learned nothing in the 30 years. How many more gay suicides will it take? How many destroyed marriages like mine? All in the name of what...a flawed Bible that is supposed to guide life in the 21st century?

Why are basic humanist philosophies so dangerous to Christianity?

"Should an abused child go back for family reunions?"

2009-01-25T01:49:00.005-05:00

Knowing full well that my family would still not "get it", I sent this email out just before I deleted each of their email addresses from my contacts list on January 8th, 2009.

The Clarity I Now Enjoy:
If a girl had been repeatedly raped by her father from the time that she was 14, and the father went on to continue to rape and abuse other 14-year-old girls when this girl grew up and left home, wouldn't you report the abuse?

Now, let us suppose that this girl had five older brothers and sisters and years later she finally found the courage to show them all evidence of her abuse. She spends 2 1/2 years trying to do this, but each of the siblings continue to deny that their father could do such a thing and they continue to hold the family reunions at that father's home. Their very lives revolve around this old man's life, and in spite of evidence all over his house that he is still abusing 14-year-old girls, they all refuse to believe that the abuse is happening.

These siblings invite their little sister to every family event and in their correspondence they reminisce about how good their home life was as children together. They keep telling her how much they love her even if she is spreading lies about their father.

None of the five siblings can understand why their little sister refuses to come to the family reunions or be a part of their lives.

* * * * *

I hope this helps you as much as it did me when I saw it in print. In the story above, the "father figure" can be thought of as the Mormon Church, and even though I was severely abused by this "father figure" in my life, you (my brothers and sisters) continue to defend "him"".

I'm only sorry it took so long for me to see things the way they truly are...for all of our sakes. Now, please try one last time to consider my life, as I lived it.

1) When I was 14, I was emotionally "raped" by a Christian fundamentalist religion. My existence was repeatedly marginalized and I was going to be sentenced to eternal hell if I acted on any of my authentic feelings. It was the early 1970's and everybody was "finding their way" in the new territory of what "treatment" was best for homosexual tendencies.

2) When I was 44, I found my way out of the cycle of abuse by admitting for the first time that my church and my family had perpetuated my abuse by telling me that everybody "outside" this religion would lead me to hell if I followed "science" instead of God. Only then, at age 44, did I bring an end to the emotional "rape".

3) When I was 46, I published my memoirs. While never actually blaming my church (my "abusive father-figure"), I did assign responsibility to the church for my abuse. I was excommunicated as an apostate.

4) Within a month of my excommunication, every member of my family and my best friend tried to cover up the abuse that I had been enduring for more than 30 years by trying to convince me that it was impossible that the church could have done all of that to me. In their eyes, it was still "the child" (me) who had "invited" all of the abuse from the "father figure". Whenever I would bring up any instance of abuse, they kept repeating some version of the phrase, "Lester, we had the same bishop, the same seminary and Sunday school teachers, and the same priesthood leaders. I sat in all those classes at your side, and look at me...I'm not abused!"

5) When I was 47, Soulforce (a non-profit support group for gay victims of spiritual abuse) paid for Barbara (my former wife) and I to travel to Salt Lake City to expose the ongoing emotional "rapes" still conducted today against the LGBT community by fundamentalist Christian churches like the Mormon Church. Because this was part of a wave of pressure against the Mormon Church, within six weeks the church published the new pamphlet, "God Loveth His Children" and discontinued the use of every other piece of printed material that had perpetuated the emotional abuse of gay Mormons. It was a major reversal in the direction of the Mormon Church and was seen as an enormous victory. It gave me hope, and I began an attempt to re-connect to you (my siblings).

6) When I was 48, the Mormon prophet mandated member involvement in helping Proposition 8 pass in California and almost single-handedly ran the campaign for Amendment 102 in Arizona. Prop 8 and Amndmt 102 can only be seen as tools that will perpetuate the emotional rape of the LGBT community by Christian fundamentalist religions. They will use them (and similar amendments in a majority of states) as a tool to show how homosexuals are just choosing a sinful lifestyle and deny them authentic lives. I immediately began a last-ditch effort to find out where my family stood on the issue of Prop 8, and why.

7) Now that I am 49, it is very clear to me that my brothers and sisters, and my best friend, fail to see the actions of Christian fundamentalist religions as emotional abuse against gay teenagers. Each of them support the fact that a bishop should send a 14-year-old to therapy to help him overcome his homosexual "tendencies". None of them will accept a man loving a man as anything but a sinful "lifestyle". None of them think that two men, living together in a monogamous relationship and in every way worthy to attend a Mormon temple, deserve that right or deserve to have the priesthood.

* * * *
I'm sorry, but this abused "child of God" is not coming "home" to attend any "family reunion" only to be told by your actions and words that my allegations of abuse have all been fabricated and imagined. You also involve the perpetrator of my abuse in every facet of your lives and refuse to hold "him" accountable for what "he" continues to do to Mormon teenagers, even today.

"Who Fired Their Bullet into the Wall?"

2009-01-24T23:42:00.007-05:00

Adapted from an email I wrote on January 7th, 2009 to my son, five siblings, and best friend.

[quoting]
Okay, this is my continuing "public therapy" to get me to the point that I can move on (as everybody suggests I need to do). I hope this gives you all some insight into why my family are perhaps more toxic to me than other families are to them.

If you aren't into a long post, just stop reading now, but if you like drama, read on.

By the feedback and comments over the last 3 days, I think you all miss one very important distinction in my "journey out". I was excommunicated for writing my memoirs, "Forbidden Friends". At the time (May 2006), I was still trying to make my marriage of 24 years work, and I had never been intimate with a man...ever!

I knew that I had not been excommunicated for being gay, but in my "official letter" I wasn't told why I had been excommunicated. It seemed to me that I had been excommunicated for just thinking that I might be gay! It took a seven month long appeal before it was vacated, and only then was I told I had been excommunicated because I dared to write in my book that a prophet could be wrong about the fact that gay men are born gay...that we are in fact NOUNS, like Stephen Fales says in his play, Confessions of a Mormon Boy. I had been excommunicated for apostasy when all I did was question Spencer W. Kimball's totally out-dated book, Miracle of Forgiveness. Worse yet, I had done it by quoting Carol Lynn Pearson (No More Goodbyes), and she was still in the church!

With that as the starting point, read the following that was adapted from a letter that I wrote to my son this morning to help him understand why I'm so angry, and why I demand clarity from my family. They all said my 2006 stake president was a nut-case, but none of them would attach a letter to support me in my appeal. There has been no broadening of support in the ensuing 2 1/2 years, and I'm afraid Prop 8 was the catalyst when I finally knew the answer to the question that I had been trying to get them to answer all the while.

"The Parable of the Mormon Gestapo"
(or: "Why Pink Triangles Make Me Angry")
by: Lester Leavitt
January 7th, 2009
(Written to illustrate how my family made me feel in June 2006 when I was excommunicated, and in June 2008 at the start of the Mormon involvement in Prop 8).

A person who read about my excommunication, and who was well-versed in the religions of America , wrote this to me:

"No other main-stream religion shoots their wounded. The Mormon Church is unique in that regard." (Link to an informative article on this topic.)

You can trace just about all of my writing and activism efforts back to that statement, and this parable will explain why.

Let's assume my family (I'm the youngest of six), my best friend, and my son were all Germans in World War II. Let's assume that it was revealed that I was gay, but instead of giving me a pink triangle and sending me to a concentration camp, they pronounced a death sentence for me on the spot. Let us further assume that because my family and friend had all conspired to "keep my secret", the Gestapo took it one step further. Let's assume that I was sentenced to immediate death by firing squad, and because they were all present, and had all tried to protect me, my five brothers and sisters, my best friend, AND MY SON were forced to stand in that line-up. They were told that if they did not pull the trigger, they would be lined up next, and shot!

That is EXACTLY the position that the Mormon Church has put families in today. It is not an exaggeration. The Mormon Gestapo do it every week. Today is a Wednesday, and most stakes where I have lived hold their disciplinary councils on Wednesday evenings. Tonight, throughout the US and Canada , it will happen again in multiple locations. The stake presidents will pronounce the spiritual equivalent of a "death sentence" on dozens of Mormons across the world this week, and where excommunication is deemed the best course of action, families will be required to join the line-up for the firing squads. Some deserve to be "shot" (figuratively), but not all of them. Also, not all of the victims will be gay, but a significant percentage of them are. You can argue that these meetings are "courts of love", but that subtle nuance is lost with us victims. It still feels like a firing squad to us, and to be honest, the only painful thing about the whole process is not losing the church, but the fact that they put our families in the "line up" and force them to pull the triggers.

The Mormon Church doctrine is written in such a way that if my family validate me as a gay man, they will be tried in a church court for apostasy, and they too will become "one of the wounded" who must be "shot".

Well, with the exception of my son, in the last three days I was finally able to examine the six remaining guns that were held in the hands of my loved ones, and all six guns had an empty shell casing. My son had allowed me to examine his gun in early July, and it too had been fired. Because everybody had pulled the trigger, all seven of them were allowed to continue to live in the "Nazi occupied Stakes of Zion", (the Mormon Church), but at what cost?

I made it very clear to my son that I appreciated the fact that he had allowed me to examine his gun in July...and to have the courage to admit that "it had been fired"! If it had been any other way, he would not be attending the Mormon temple today. But in his letter last night he told me that he was miserable. He said that it was my "writing" that was making him miserable, but I replied that I disagreed. I asked him to look inside himself to see if he might be miserable because he is trying to live with the fact that he was forced to make an impossible choice, and he pulled the trigger! That has come at an enormous price to him. The conflict is irreconcilable.

But, because of a conversation that my son and I had right after the "letter from the pulpit" debacle in early July last year (read actual letter here), I believe my son when he tells me that he fired his bullet into the wall! It took an enormous effort on my part to extract that information out of him. He was afraid to even verbalize the fact out loud, for fear that by hearing himself say it, it might make it too real. In that instant, my son became a "closeted Mormon apostate". The analogy should be very familiar to any gay Mormon, because, for most of us, we didn't "come out" until we actually had the nerve to say the word "gay" out loud to a trusted friend. My son actually said out loud that he believed the prophet was wrong!

I have been trying for six months now to find out if any of my brothers and sisters or best friend from high school fired their bullets into the wall. They have been even more evasive than my son with their answers, and with good reason! If they are discovered, they too will be shot!

Through all of my ultimatums to my family, this is the question that MUST BE ANSWERED before I can trust them. To me, they are like Gestapo spies. I know most of you are fine letting the double agents come and go in your life at will, but for some reason, I can't live with that! I have to know. Maybe I'm still more vulnerable than the rest of you, or maybe I'm being vindictive and I am not going rest until I force them all "out of their closets".

In 2009, we gays no longer have to worry about having a blatant "pink triangle" sewn onto our jackets, but what is the difference if there are ongoing campaigns to deny us our civil rights? There are millions of Americans who honestly believe that we should be wearing pink triangles so that we are "kept separate" and "treated differently"!

The Prop 8 battle in California was the second most expensive campaign in the history of America (second only to the presidential elections), and it was all about giving gays a "pink triangle" to wear. It was also a national battle when we also lost in Arizona, Arkansas, and Florida. November 4th, 2008 was a very dark day when the United States took an enormous step backward, and most of us felt like the "pink triangle" had been resurrected in America.

But back to the Gestapo spies who had infiltrated my family. After the June 29th "letter from the pulpit" debacle, I honestly still had no idea "which side" my brothers and sisters were on. I'm in therapy to "deprogram" myself from the Mormon cult influence, so I am in a fragile emotional state. I'm screaming mad, and I strike out in anger. I admit it! That is what happens when you finally admit that you were abused for 44 years. Because of my anger, the questions I have put forward to my family have not enjoyed the clarity that even I would like, but neither have their answers! They kept dodging the questions; just like double agents in Nazi occupied Germany would have done. Finally, this week I got my answer because I figured out how to word the question.

In spite of my flawed methods, I have discovered that all of the rest of my family...all six of them, decided that I am different enough from them that I should wear the "pink triangle" of a gay man...and thereby suffer the consequences that come with the "pink triangle" in a Nazi occupied Stake of Zion. In so doing, they aimed their bullets at my heart. I fully understand now that if they had it to do over again, they still would not have fired their bullets into the wall! To me, that is useful information.

As for my son, because of where he is at...trying to stay in the church (living among the Gestapo), I can keep his secret. I know how hard it is to "hide in plain site" because I did it for 34 years, and I will respect that, but I cannot erase the misery he feels. I'm very familiar with that misery. Because I know that misery, I also understand that the misery will only go away when he admits openly to the Mormon Gestapo that he shot his bullet into the wall, but then he will have to face the consequences from them.

At the height of the Prop 8 battle, he wrote a blog post entitled, "I am not crazy, stupid, or amoral, and I am a Good Mormon". To his credit, he made it very clear to everybody that he did NOT support Prop 8, but he didn't take it any further to the point that he thinks the prophet is wrong on some issues.

The reactions from fellow Mormons that inspired him to write that post came as a result of "doubt" on the part of some members of the church close to him who "suspected" that he might have fired his bullet into the wall. When (or if) he has the courage to actually tell them openly that he fired his bullet into the wall, that is when the real consequences with the Gestapo will follow. (Read the story of Andrew Callahan, who was called in by his stake president when he opposed Prop 8.)

What would it take for my son to "feel better" and be rid of the misery? These are a few suggestions that I gave him. None of them would have a positive outcome church-wise for him.

1) Tell the people he knows at church that he cannot see any benefit in the punitive action that is unique to North America where a couple have to wait a year before being sealed in the temple if they are first married civilly! (He believes this in his heart, but I don't think he has shared it at church.) When he gets married, Mickey and I want to be there to share it with him, but we will not be flying all the way to San Diego to stand outside of the temple and wait for him to come out AFTER he is married. Can you imagine the reaction if he would share those feelings in fast and testimony meeting? Better yet, he could marry a woman who will stand up against the Gestapo with him and agree to be married in a chapel first and then file an appeal to SLC to be immediately sealed, making it a media event (I'm dreaming, I know).

2) Tell ward members and his church leaders openly that he believes a person is born gay, and that they should have a right to civil marriage.

3) Tell his bishop that "therapy" to overcome homosexuality increases the probability of suicide in a gay youth...and that by funding NARTH (however indirectly they may do so) the Mormon Church is contributing to the problem of teen suicides in Utah . My son will be entering his masters program in psychology next fall, so this is one that I will hold him to with a higher "duty of care".

4) Stand up in priesthood and tell the quorum openly that he, personally, sees no good reason why a gay man can't hold the priesthood and attend the temple. If God is going to "fix" so many things when we get the "further light and knowledge" promised to us in the next life, let that be one of the things He fixes. In the meantime, don't deny gays the priesthood. I understand that a temple marriage is only to seal "two gods" together in order to procreate planets, so that doctrine will never be changed, but what is wrong with me living in the lower part of the Celestial Kingdom with Mickey? What is it that makes us "telestial" in the eyes of my siblings, my friend, and my son? Isn't that the kingdom where the murderers go? (link to Wikipedia entry here.)

Are Mickey and I to be likened to murderers just because we love each other? At least if we could be married, we wouldn't be fornicators! That should help a little, shouldn't it?

In short, I'm just asking my son to be a Priesthood holding version of Carol Lynn Pearson, who can hold the Gestapo feet to the flames and enjoy her immunity.

I need my son to know that I lied for 34 years so that I could stay in the church. I know what that misery feels like, and I know how hard it is for him to choose the familiar life that comes with the lie, over the unknown that comes with authenticity. In that regard, his misery is identical to mine when I was his age! I can support him if he chooses to "stay in the closet", but only because I know he fired his bullet into the wall. I know he will need to be "in the closet" in order to continue to attend the temple and date Mormon girls, but only he can judge if the price is going to be too high.

It truly is an impossible choice when the Gestapo ask our loved ones to stand in the firing-squad line-up and "pull the trigger" on that gun.

For other gay Mormons, I can only imagine that many of you felt that you "deserved" to be excommunicated, either because you had stopped believing, or you had already experienced sexual intimacy with a man, but at the time I was "shot" I was still questioning my future with the church and my family. When Elder Robert F. Orton (from the 2nd Quorum of Seventy), was starting the appeal process, he asked me over the phone if I still wanted to be a member of the church. I told him that I wasn't sure, but I wanted to have the choice to leave the church rather than be pushed out.

Ever since that date, I have tried to understand why my family all abandoned me at the time that I needed their support the most.

Mickey tells me that this "parable" is way too dramatic. I guess it all depends on how comfortable you are wearing the "pink triangle" that your family will invariably give you to wear at the next family reunion? I've met dozens of self-loathing gay Mormons who still choose to wear it because, after all, "they are my family".

I'm afraid I will not dignify their cowardice by doing any such thing.

The Predictable Responses

2009-01-06T08:25:00.003-05:00

In the first 24 hours since sending out the "Ultimatum" email, four out of six of my family members and best friend have responded. While each used different words, and all tried to fudge the official position of their prophet in an effort to "make room for me" in their life, each of them in the end held fast to the following talking points provided by President Gordon B. Hinckley on December 26th, 2004 when he appeared on Larry King Live:

[excerpt]
HINCKLEY: Well, we're not anti-gay. We are pro-family. Let me put it that way. And we love these people and try to work with them and help them. We know they have a problem. We want to help them solve that problem.

KING: A problem they caused, or they were born with?

HINCKLEY: I don't know. I'm not an expert on these things. I don't pretend to be an expert on these things. The fact is, they have a problem.
[end of excerpt]

I guess my freedom from the ball-and-chain has come at a price, but it is one I will reluctantly abide by. When there is no common ground to share, there is not much chance of preserving a friendship.

How do "Christianists" define "diversity"?

2009-01-06T07:50:00.005-05:00

One of the most shocking responses to my post yesterday came from my brother.

I have thought long and hard about whether to post it, because it is deeply personal, but the Prop 8 battle in California has underlined the fact that this kind of thinking has permeated the thoughts of just about every evangelical Christian in America. In Arizona and Florida, the majority also voted against diversity. I quote my brother openly in a public forum because the thinking is not only flawed, it is inherently dangerous!

This is what he wrote:

[quoting Fred, in a letter to Lester]
I think it is about the dumbest thing you have said that I must EMBRACE diversity, not just tolerate it. It is impossible for anyone to embrace ALL diversity. Do you really expect me to embrace a Muslim religion that expects their women to be subservient and refuses to educate them? Should I embrace an African culture that mutilates their young girls so they will never have pleasure from sex? Should I expect you to embrace my religion that teaches that homosexuality is evil? I will tolerate all of those things even as I will do what I can to change what I disagree with. I expect you to do the same. I am very good friends with Muslims even though I don't agree with their religion. I am very good friends with adulterers even though I think that cheating on their wives is a horrible thing. I would like to be your friend also even if I don't agree with your decisions.
[end of quote]

This was my response to my brother:

[quoting Lester, in a letter to Fred]
Did I ask you to embrace cultures that violate civil rights? How exactly does a Mormon define diversity? Actually, I already have my answer to that question. I watched the "Six Lies" commercials that you guys paid for during the Prop 8 battle. That made it pretty clear that evangelical Christians consider "diversity" an "enemy of the state".

It would seem that you are actually accusing me of violating your civil rights as a Mormon by being gay and asking the California government to allow me to be married to the person I love.

Does that mean that you put me in the same category as an African tribe who mutilates their daughters?

What exactly did you think I was asking when I suggested that Mormons "embrace diversity"?
[end of quote]

An "Ultimatum" to my Family - Right or Wrong?

2009-01-05T10:11:00.007-05:00

In June of 2008 I issued an ultimatum to my family, most notably my oldest son, my two brothers, and my three sisters. In an email I demanded that my family defend my rights as a gay man. I took an enormous amount of flack for doing that. Everybody told me I should love my family unconditionally, which is what they were professing to do to me. Their response only fostered more anger. Not one of them...not even my son...would commit at the time to oppose Prop 8 in California. The ultimatum was a demand that my son and my siblings walk out of church when the bishop read a letter from the Mormon prophet that was requiring every Mormon in California to support Prop 8.

I added a preface to the email that I had sent to my family and submitted it as an editorial article to several media outlets, and my story actually went national as an Associated Press story. (This is the link to KSL, but it appears in hundreds of other on-line sites and in dozens of newspapers.) It was also the banner story that weekend at The Advocate On-Line (link to article here).

(Get the full story on my "Gentle Nudge" blog by starting at this link).

For those in my family who resided in California, my demand was literal; but for the rest of the family it was a figurative demand because they would not actually hear the letter.

Since June, the ultimatum threat that I made has been a recurring thread in what little correspondence occurs now between me and my extended family. My attacks on the Mormon Church have been, at times, mean-spirited and deeply personal to my siblings and my best childhood friend, Rick. For that, Mickey and my former wife have been on me to scale it back a notch, but the anger has always been simmering just below the surface.

For my part, I have struggled with why it is so important to me that I keep going back to it like a dog gnawing on a bone. The importance of this ultimatum to me is at the root of why I am now in therapy to de-program my 44 years in the cult-like Mormon environment.

After four months of therapy...four months of knowing that there was a "switch" somewhere that I could turn on in order to illuminate my life...my fingers finally found that switch after groping around in the dark chambers of my mind.

Now, with the "switch" in the on position and the benefit of additional "light", this is the email that I sent out today to my brothers and sisters, and to my best friend from high school. The letter is addressed solely to my closest brother, Fred, and my friend Rick, because they are the only ones who have bothered to try and stay in touch with me and continue any kind of dialogue.

[quoting]
January 5th, 2009

Dear Fred and Rick:

You still miss the point. This is not about me punishing the Mormon Church for what I experienced 34 years ago. I share my experiences [as a closeted gay teenager] with you with two very different objectives that have only crystallized in my mind this morning.

My efforts in all of my writing and activism that has targeted the broader audience outside of my family has been to bring about only ONE KIND OF CHANGE, and that is to change the experience that a teenaged gay Mormon boy has when he sees his bishop and feels a need to share the fact that he is not attracted to females or that he cannot stop masturbating.

That's it; A very simple goal, but there is so much beneath the surface of that goal when it comes to you, Rick and Fred. Let me tell you why.

Please understand that at this point, I am no longer talking about the Mormon Church. Please do NOT confuse the issue above with the issue I am going to bring up below.

My life is extremely good right now. I've made new friends...authentic friends. They are the people who will play an important role in my life from now until I die.

Yes, I have hoped beyond hope that I would hear you two say that you can see where the church is making mistakes and should change, but since I have not heard that from any of my brothers and sisters, or from you, Rick, it tells me that you all will play a negligible role in my future.

Why does that sound like an ultimatum? Read on, but read carefully. I just realized this morning myself that by wording it the way I have above it has sent a conflicting message to everybody. I think I can now word it differently so that you will understand exactly what it is that I have been asking from my family and you, Rick.

Because I lived a lie, all of my friendships were false. Let me put that on a line by itself and make it bold:

I faked everything in order to ensure that you all would still like me!

Can you see that? It is important that you realize the ramifications of that one important truth. The brother you grew up with was NOT the real me. Rick and Fred, you were friends with a mere projection of a boy who mirrored back what everybody wanted to see. Under those conditions, even the love of a brother cannot be taken for granted as “unconditional” in spite of how vociferous you might be in making that claim!

Fred, as I read your blogs I feel this syrupy longing for "the good old days", and the undertone in all of those posts is that if I would just go back to being "that person", we would have all of our love back that we once shared. Well, it is time you posted a blog that recounts a memory of 1976 that presupposes that I am dating [a boy friend] while you are dating [a girl friend]. How about a blog that presupposes that because nobody in my family (or friends) were willing to defend me as a gay teenager I had been "run out of town" and you had no forwarding address for me in Vancouver?

Now, going forward, there has to be some kind of a proof that people from my past are going to be safe for me before they will be invited to play a part in my new, authentic life (not my lifestyle…but my life).

So what kind of a proof should I ask for? I'm sorry that I pushed so hard until now without understanding more clearly what it is that I have truly, from my heart, been wanting from all of you, so what can I have you do now to show me that you would have loved me when I was 14 years old?

The answer is very simple. It’s really what I have been asking for all along, but none of you understood why I was asking for it and you've dodged the question. Even I, myself, did not understand why it was coming out as an ultimatum. Perhaps now you can understand the importance. This is what I need you to do for me.

Send me an email and answer this question honestly:

In 10th grade, if I would have started dating [name withheld] instead of my pathetic efforts to date girls, would you have still been my friend?

More importantly: Would you have stood beside me and defended me?!!!

When I have your answers to these questions, I will then have enough information to make an informed decision about whether I would have felt like I needed to leave home as a 14-year-old runaway. The word on the street in Cardston was that anybody who was gay was run out of town, and the only destinations anybody talked about were Vancouver or San Francisco.

Go see the movie "Milk". There is a phone call that Harvey Milk takes in 1977 (do you recognize that as my grad year?) that inspires him to run for office the fourth and final time. It is from a boy trapped in a prairie town where he is despised, and he wanted to commit suicide because he had no way to get to San Francisco.

But you know what? To simply answer the question about [the boy I wanted to date] is not going to be enough to convince me of your true friendship because there is no way for you to prove to me now, in 2009, that you really would have done what you say you would have done. For that reason I will always have a doubt in the back of mind that you really would not have had the courage to do it.

Now don’t go off and say that I don’t trust you. The reason I can’t trust you is because I know how I would have to answer that question if you asked it of me. Rick, even as a gay teenager myself, struggling with my own sexual identity, if I were to be truly honest with myself, I know that I would have dropped you like a hot potato if you would have announced to me that you were going to start dating boys. Because of my own self-loathing, I probably would have been the one to start the rumors!

To tell me that you were attracted to boys would be one thing, but to actually support you while you dated another boy would have pushed it over the top for me. Because I was conditioned to lie about these kinds of things, I could still look you in the eye today and tell you, “Yes, I would have stood beside you Rick.”

So, while it would be nice to hear what you would have done if I had actually started dating [the boy I had a crush on], it will be more meaningful for me if you were to answer the following questions. These are the questions that I asked my son Peter:

1) If you would have been my bishop, in Cardston, in 1974, and I came to you and told you that I was romantically attracted to (but still not having sex with) a male classmate, what would you have told me? Would your answer still be the same today, knowing what you know? I would have been 15 years old in 1974.
2) If you would have been my bishop, in Cardston, in 1974, and I came to you and told you that I could not abstain completely from masturbating, what would you have told me? Would your answer still be the same today, knowing what you know?
3) If you would have been my bishop, in Edmonton, in 1981, and I came to you as a 22-year-old returned missionary and told you that I had fallen in love with a young man and that I was going to leave the church because I knew that I was gay and that I could not see a way to continue in the church and still live an authentic life, what would your advice to me have been? Would your answer still be the same today?

How you answer those questions will tell me how you would have treated me if I had felt safe enough around you when I was 15, and when I was 22.

It has been 34 years, but this question is as important to me today as it was in 1974. I need to know if I would have been rejected by you back then before I can allow you to be my friend…my brother…today!

Peter is the only one who has answered those questions, and if you will take the time to read his blog post ("I am not crazy, stupid, or amoral, and I am a Good Mormon"), you will know what kind of blow-back he has had because of it.

I hope to receive six emails from people who would have been "safe" for me back in the 1970’s. People who would have defended me! At the time, I didn't think you would have done that, so I kept perpetuating the lie, and because of that, I have no idea if you were true friends or not.

The world is changing, and it is demanding that everybody embrace diversity, not merely tolerate it. There is an enormous difference, and in 99% of the emails and posts that I am reading from you and others, Mormons in general are only willing to "tolerate" diversity.

The friends that I am choosing in my new authentic life all embrace diversity.

No, that is not an ultimatum, but it might be useful information for you.

Only now can I see that I wasn't really interested in what you were going to do about Prop 8 and the "letter from the pulpit" on June 29th. No, I was deeply hurt by your reactions to those emails because, in my mind, your responses told me what you would have done for me back in 1974!
[end of quote]

* * * * * *

I guess that about wraps it up, so far as my family goes. What a relief to be walking in the light but my heart is very heavy with the loss!

I want to use another metaphor of a ball and chain to close this post. You can think of the Mormon Church as a lead ball and I was attached to it by a chain and an ankle harness. Until today, I had been looking for a way to undo the harness, and I didn't realize that the links in the chain were my brothers and sisters, and my best friend.

In reality, I didn't need to remove the harness to be free from the Mormon prison. I just needed to break one single link in that chain.

Once identified, the link was very easy to break. I just needed to know who, exactly, would NOT have defended me if I would have come out as gay in 1974. To support me would not have been enough. I would have needed them to defend me because Cardston was a hostile, toxic environment for a gay teenager. I didn't need somebody who would "keep my secret with me". That isn't really living, now is it? That would not have changed the outcome of my life at all. I would have needed an advocate in order to survive and find my authentic life!

It's really that simple. The only tie that has kept me connected in any way to the Mormon Church has now been broken. I sent the question out to my siblings and my best friend today, and it is a question that will be answered by their silence.

It would be nice if my brothers, sisters and my best friend were on the piece of chain that is still attached to my ankle, but I'm afraid I already have the answer as to where they will be found.

A thought on fabricating lies - and justifying them!

2009-01-03T01:26:00.005-05:00

From page 187 in the book, The Shack, I present the following quote:

[excerpt]
"Lies are a little fortress; inside them you can feel safe and powerful. Through your little fortress of lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. But the fortress needs walls, so you build some. These are the justifications for your lies. You know, like you are doing this to protect someone you love, to keep them from feeling pain. Whatever works, just so you feel okay about the lies."
[end of excerpt]

My lies were first and foremost to protect my parents. I knew what they were saying about Uncle Glenn, how he was to be "pitied". To have a gay relative in Florida that nobody knew was one thing, but how fair would it be to expect them to defend a gay son, right there at home in Cardston?

My next lies were fabricated to protect Barbara, my wife. I had married her with the belief that I would be able to "outgrow" the brokenness that had somehow infiltrated my head, but when the brokenness didn't fade, I was forced to perpetuate a lie to her.

Like the author wrote, the lies became a little fortress with walls. I had justified the lies in order to feel good about myself, but it didn't ever change the fact that they were lies.

Another thought on emotions.

2009-01-03T00:47:00.005-05:00

The following is an excerpt from page 196-7 from The Shack. It is very important to me in validating what my therapist Terri has told me to work toward in integrating the three components of my authentic self. If you go down a few posts you will see the graphic that I posted to illustrate this integration.

[excerpt]
"Emotions are the colors of the soul; they are spectacular and incredible. When you don't feel, the world becomes dull and colorless. [Feelings] are neither bad nor good; they just exist. Here is something that will help you sort this out in your mind. Paradigms (your beliefs) power perception and perceptions power emotions. Most emotions are responses to perception -- what you think is true about a given situation. If your perception is false, then your emotional response to it will be false too. So check your perceptions, and beyond that check the truthfulness of your paradigms -- what you believe. Just because you believe something firmly doesn't make it true. Be willing to re-examine what you believe. The more you live in the truth, the more your emotions will help you see clearly."
[end of excerpt]

I inherently knew that my paradigms were false, so it was only natural for me to resist any reaction to them. I was projecting these lies, all the while trying to convince myself that I was going to somehow integrate myself into the projected life and abandon the flawed character that had somehow developed an attraction to other men. As a result of knowingly projecting a lie, I learned to suppress all of my emotions rather than react to the lies that I was privy to.

I also found it interesting that the book would have enough insight to write, "...just because you believe something firmly doesn't make it true."

Funny how I spent 30 years trying to force myself to be heterosexual because I firmly believed that the Mormon prophet was inspired when he taught that if I married a woman and fasted and prayed enough, I would learn to love her in the way that couples should be in love.

I was 44 years old before I was willing to re-examine the truth, and it took every bit of emotional strength I had to call into question the beliefs that my parents had raised me to defend -- beliefs I had been taught to defend even to my death! In the four years since then I have found the final sentence to be 100% accurate; "The more you live in the truth, the more your emotions will help you see clearly."

Pushing buttons and the people who push them.

2008-12-30T07:55:00.004-05:00

Mickey found a Daily OM today that was about buttons. It made me realize why my siblings will remain, for the most part, toxic to me until they distance themselves from the Mormon prophet who is counselling them all to pass judgement on gay men like Mickey and me. The official Mormon doctrine still teaches that there is no such thing as a homosexual (the word used as a 'noun') but only heterosexual people who have chosen a homosexual "lifestyle". The Mormon Church still abides by Boyd K Packer's assertion that the root cause of homosexuality will be discovered to be a "base form of selfishness". Until I hear the words from their lips where they say that they personally do not follow the prophet in that thinking, then by merely overhearing their conversations that support the church position on Proposition 8 (CA) or Amendment 102 (AZ) or Amendment 2 (FL) it will push my buttons. Similarly, it is obvious in much of the family correspondence that they still agree with the Mormon doctrine that states that I will only be rewarded with a "telestial glory" in heaven and have lost my place as the head of an eternal family with my children because my "lifestyle choice" is seen as "sinful" in their eyes. These subtle references will always serve to push my buttons as well.

This is from the Daily OM and the link to the full article follows at the bottom of this post:

"We’ve all had our buttons pushed to the point where we feel we can’t take it any more, and chances are, we’ve all pushed somebody else’s buttons, with or without knowing it. The button pusher may not be conscious of what they’re doing, but in the end the buttons belong to us, and we are the ones who must deal with what comes up. The more we take responsibility for our own feelings and reactions, the less tender these buttons will be.

We’ve all had the experience of having someone snap at us, seemingly out of nowhere. This happens when we unconsciously push a button in someone else we didn’t even know was there. This can happen with a complete stranger and sometimes with a person we’ve known and been close to for years. We ourselves may have a relationship with someone whose buttons we secretly like to push. Buttons are just soft spots that have been touched one too many times, and they symbolize some pain that needs to be acknowledged and healed. This may be a wound from childhood, or some recent trauma, that we haven’t adequately tended. Whatever the case, when our buttons get pushed, the person who most needs our attention and caring is us, and blaming the button pusher only distracts us from finding a true resolution to our suffering.

At the same time, if someone continually opens our wounds so that they never have time to heal, we are well within our rights to set a boundary with that person. Compulsive button pushers, who seem to find pleasure or satisfaction in hurting us, are not welcome in our personal space. In the end, knowing where our buttons are enables us to do the work necessary to heal. Freedom comes when we deal with the pain behind the button, thus disconnecting our automatic reaction to being pushed."

I hope that as members of my family read this they will understand why I have, for the most part, severed all close relationships with them, and will likely continue to do so until they distance themselves from the official Mormon doctrine. The burden is on them to prove to me their independence from the propensity to judge all people by the Mormon yardstick. I am doing what I can to deal with the pain behind the button and disconnect my automatic reaction to the button being pushed, but an integral part of my new emotional health is that the boundaries I have set will necessarily have to remain in place. Currently, most of my siblings remain outside of those boundaries.

The full article can be read here.

Why a "14-year-old"? Why the suppressed emotions?

2008-12-27T09:25:00.004-05:00

Do not read this post without first reading the other post from today (scroll down or link here).

The advantage of therapy is that it allows you to find the critical junctures in your life. My therapist had no idea of the following interview with my stake president on May 21, 2006 when she articulated appropriate goals for me over the past several weeks, but after we had set up the goals, and in the process of moving toward them, she asked the following question:

"Lester, have you ever gotten really angry about the way you were treated by the Mormon Church?"

My answer was immediate. I said, "Terri, the Mormon Church is the only object that has ever truly experienced my anger."

On May 21, 2006 I had been called in for an interview by my stake president. He was concerned because Barbara and I had just been filmed for an A&E Network documentary on mixed-orientation marriages. This starts with a transcript from the interview, as I remember it.

It is taken verbatim from my journalizing back in 2006:

Leavitt: I still can’t get down on my knees to say my personal prayers. We have family prayer both morning and night, and at every meal, but I cannot kneel beside my bed in personal prayer because I am taken back to my youth, and that mean and vengeful god who hated me because of my addiction to masturbation.

Thompson: We are taught to pray both day and night. You can pray in your car, in the office, anywhere.

Leavitt: I choose to meditate, because I have finally found the real God. Not the false god of my overzealous Sunday school teachers and seminary teachers. These teachers taught me that god hated me because I was a sinner who kept returning to the sin of masturbation. Every night I would pour my heart out in tears to that angry god, knowing full well that he couldn’t love me because I had masturbated once again. These zealous teachers would read off scriptures that said that the atonement wouldn’t work for me because I had never really repented of the sin if I ever repeated the sin.

Thompson: That would be correct.

My Thoughts: [What did he just say? For the past 18 months I have told my friends and family about these Sunday school zealots and they have said that I misunderstood the lessons. My best friend who grew up with me from grade school to the high school prom told me that he sat with me in all of those Sunday school classes, and he never felt that they were teaching an atonement that was selective in it’s application. They had me believing that I had imagined such false doctrine…that I had applied the teachings in my own life the wrong way…that the atonement is universal to everybody, no matter how often you sin and repent, but now this man, a stake president, just told me that the over zealous Sunday school teacher was right. This validates everything. The Mormon Church really is teaching a selective atonement, just like I thought it was. I have been right all along. This church IS teaching false doctrine. I had better be sure. Let me come at this from another direction.]

Leavitt: You’re telling me that if a young man is addicted to masturbation, and cannot stop, that if he ever repeats the sin, his forgiveness is null and void?

Thompson: That is correct. He hadn’t really repented if he commits the sin again. Where is the scripture I’m looking for? [He reaches for his scriptures and recites a line to President Holland, asking him for help finding the scripture in the D & C.]

Leavitt: You are wrong. There was kid in Idaho who committed suicide in the 1980’s because of church leaders who taught just that kind of false doctrine. [Google Kip Eliason]

Thompson: [President Holland, a witness in the interview, finds a similar scripture to the one President Thompson is looking for, and offers it up. I don’t remember which one it is, and then President Thompson finds another one. He reads it.] You see, it says right here that if you do not forsake the sin, then it is added back unto you.

Leavitt: No, president, you misunderstood. I repented. From the bottom of my heart I would repent. I would see the bishop and pour my heart out to him about how awful I felt because of the addiction to masturbation. I would kneel and my tears would soak my pillow as I struggled against this horrible addiction, but I was 14 years old and the hormones were in control, and within a week or two, it would happen again. [I had more to say but he cut me off.]

Thompson: Then you had never actually repented.

My Thoughts: [I can’t make it any more clear to him. This is so disturbing to me, but at the same time it is such a relief. This church really is teaching a false atonement; a selective atonement. An atonement that will only work for those who are successful in achieving perfection in this mortal life. He is looking me straight in the eye and telling me that the atonement of the Mormon Church is only available to those who are successful in never repeating a transgression, which in my mind is the definition of perfection. He is telling me, that for people like me, there is no hope. Well I now know better than that. I know that the atonement is universal. I know that if I sincerely repent a hundred times, that the atonement will apply to me each and every time. I will not have that taken away from me again. Not for anything. He leaves me no choice, and it feels so good to finally see my way clearly. I stand up and get ready to leave.]

Leavitt: President, that is false doctrine. You can expect a letter, requesting that my name be removed from the records of this church.

[Nothing is said. They make no effort to stop me, which is good, because I was resolute in my decision. Finally, after struggling for more than 20 months, I have had every doubt about the Mormon Church validated. It had really happened to me…I didn’t imagine it. I had been taught false doctrine. I didn’t misinterpret anything. It was exactly as I remember it being. This is truly not the church of the God that I have come to know. President Thompson’s church IS a church with a mean and vengeful god…a false god who is looking for reasons to punish those who do not measure up. President Thompson’s church IS a church that hates gay men and simply wants them to disappear…get them off the role so that they don’t infect the others in the ward.]

The interview is over, but my anger is just getting kindled. I had honored my promise to Barbara and kept my voice calm throughout the entire interview. I have my helmet, gloves, and motorcycle jacket on, and I start the bike. As I leave the stake center parking lot I wonder if it is safe for me to ride my bike with so much anger building up inside me. I stop at the first stop sign and can hardly wait for the intersection to clear as I take off. I am a short drive from the freeway, and at every light I sink the throttle between every shift.
I can’t believe that I am finally going to leave the church. A part of me has wanted to do this from the outset, 20 months ago. It would have made it so much easier, but I cannot deny that my parents, both on the other side of the veil now, are here with me. They have not abandoned me like this church leader has. I have a nagging thought. What if President Thompson is just like those over-zealous teachers from Cardston, and he is wrong?
No! It isn’t worth it. I won’t fight him. I can’t. I have fought tooth and nail every step of the way for the past 20 months. I have had people tell me that I have just imagined it…this false atonement…for over a year, ever since I told my brothers and sisters and my best friend. They tell me that it was the way I interpreted it. But it wasn’t! I know what is in store for me if I choose to fight this, and I don’t have the energy to do it. My lamp has no oil in it.
I am on the freeway now. Tears are blurring my vision but I crouch low on my bike and sink the throttle and set the throttle lock as I change into the fast lane. I wonder once again if I should even be riding with the anger taking over like it is. I push the throttle back as the gap behind the vehicle in front of me starts to close, deciding not to pass him on the right. We’re both going 85 mph and that is fast enough.

What will I do about church today? I love so many people in my ward now. They have shown me so much support since the filming, and since we dedicated the building. Most of the choir members now know that I am gay. So does the PEC, and I feel their support. Tears start to blur my vision again.

I cannot play the organ with tears in my eyes, and I know that as soon as Sister Clawson shows up that there will be no stopping the tears. I can’t face her, and tell her that I will be having my name removed from the records of the church. I definitively make up my mind that I cannot play the organ today. I really don’t care what they end up doing, but there is no other piano player. Today’s hymns are most especially difficult and Sister Jepsen could never play them, even with a months notice.

I really do not want to hurt anybody in my ward, and I know how much they enjoy the organ, and our brand new building, but I cannot stuff the anger that I feel right now against President Thompson.

I take my freeway exit and within a few moments I am in the church parking lot. I see the cars in the parking lot and look at my clock. It is just after 9AM and I know that everybody will be in ward council. I walk into the chapel as I separate the church key from my key ring. I walk into the chapel and feel the sweet spirit. I open the organ and turn it on. The tears start to form in my eyes. Sister Sherman is sitting quietly on the far side of the chapel.

Within seconds I allow the anger to come back to the surface and the tears are instantly gone. I walk quickly to the bishops’ office door and knock loudly. The door opens, and I see that the room is full, right to the walls. I hand the key across a couple of people and it is received by somebody near to the bishop. I’m only looking at the bishop. I don’t make eye contact with anybody else in the room.

Leavitt: “I have just come from an interview with President Thompson. I will be sending a letter requesting that my name be removed from the records of the church. This has nothing to do with me being gay or with my moral worthiness.”

[I can’t say anything else. I pull the door closed and quickly head out to my bike. The rest of the drive home is more relaxed. The anger has dropped to about half. I feel that I have made the only choice available to me.]

I call my brother once I am home. In California it is still very early and I catch him barely out of bed. I tell him all about the interview, and before we end the call he makes me promise that I will not do anything for a week, and we will talk again.

Before the day is out I have also talked to my friend who had his trust violated by his bishop, my hometeacher, and Sister Clawson. All have told me that I must fight this. My wife is telling me to fight this. I am still deciding. I have a week in order to fulfill my promise to my brother.

They sang with a CD for accompaniment in sacrament meeting today.

Integration - a diagram of Lester's therapy goals.

2008-12-27T08:31:00.004-05:00

Several of my past posts have referenced my therapy and some of the goals that Terri (my therapist) has had to revise as my needs have become more apparent. Click on the following diagram for a full-screen version and read about how my difficulties now have clarity through a graphic image.

My work is cut out for me. The "14-year-old" is comprised of shadows--some good--and some bad. The good shadows need to be embraced and brought through the filter. The bad shadows need to be eliminated because I can't go around at age 49 acting like an irresponsible 14-year-old who has the luxury of people around him passing off that behavior with the catch-all phrase "it's a phase--he'll grow out of it".

The problem is this: How does a 49-year-old experiment with behavior that would have been forgivable for a 14-year-old but unforgivable for a 49-year-old?

There is no easy answer, and my community--the gay community--is littered with the train-wrecks of failed attempts. The evidence is all around us--Mickey and I--of the struggle that this is for many of our friends who cannot make relationships work for them.

The other element of my integration that I have to work on is how to find the strength to deal with (and eventually integrate) the emotions that have been suppressed for more than 30 years. Up to this point in my life my expressions of anger have been muted, and my joy has...for the most part...been feigned. Yes, I have celebrated the birth of my children and have found joy in watching them grow, but that joy was diminished by the fact that it was another man who was living in my body. The joy would have been magnified a hundred fold if I could have been myself. Barbara, my former wife and mother of our children, will tell you how my emotions were flat for the 24 years we lived together before I came out.

The only object of my true emotions has been the Mormon Church, and these emotions were only manifest after my excommunication in June 2006. I could only articulate this anger (see other post for today or link here) because the church was an innanimate object that could not experience the brunt of my outburst personally. Although I am sure my family felt like they were often targets of this single outlet for my anger, in truth, their hurt was just collatoral damage and was incidental to my singular focus to expose the fraud which is Mormonism.

Moving forward, I hope to learn how to experience healthy emotions without turning them into weapons that will be used against people.

I am going to end with a quote from James Baldwin (an "out" gay man who was also black--written in 1961 in Nobody Knows My Name):

"There is an illusion about America, a myth about America to which we are clinging which has nothing to do with the lives we lead...this collision between one's image of oneself and what one actually is, is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it. You can meet the collision head on and try to become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish."

Amen.