Last week—as I’m sure you’ve heard by now—Jeffrey Holland, one of the senior apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spoke to BYU staff during the first day of the institution’s 2021 University Conference.
About halfway through his remarks, he said some things that are hurtful to queer Mormons. I want to discuss those remarks, and then talk about the response of Latter-day Saints to them.
I’ve been contemplating his words this week and people’s reactions to them. And I knew I wanted to write down my thoughts, but it’s taken a while to organize them.
So, let’s get into it.
We hope it isn’t a surprise to you that your Trustees are not deaf or blind to the feelings that swirl around marriage and the whole same-sex topic on campus.
That phrasing at the end of this sentence—the whole same-sex topic—is problematic. It makes it seem as though that queerness at BYU is nothing more than an idea that people are punting around. Being queer on campus—let alone in the church—is a real thing, real experiences that people have to live with.
I and many of my Brethren have spent more time and shed more tears on this subject than we could ever adequately convey to you this morning, or any morning.
Maybe the brethren have shed many tears and spent a lot of time on “the whole same-sex topic”, but however many tears and however much time, it hasn’t been enough. The fact that they have shed as many tears as they had and spent more time on it as they have and yet still end up saying hurtful things as found within these remarks clearly illustrates that it hasn’t been enough.
We have spent hours discussing what the doctrine of the Church can and cannot provide the individuals and families struggling over this difficult issue. So, it is with scar tissue of our own that we are trying to avoid — and hope all will try to avoid — language, symbols, and situations that are more divisive than unifying at the very time we want to show love for all of God’s children.
Scar tissue of their own? Really? Shedding a few tears and talking about queerness in the church somehow produces scars? If you have scars from doing so little, what do you think queer people have who have spent years trying to remain queer and Mormon, who have spent years celibate because that’s what they felt was right, who have spent years in conversion therapy to pray away the gay, who have spent years in a straight marriage because they thought it would cure them? What about those scars?
And divisive? Really? You think the rainbow is divisive? Do you not understand how divisive it is to sit in sacrament meeting after sacrament meeting and Sunday school class after Sunday school class hearing fellow ward members talk about the gay agenda? Queer people are the ones trying to bring about more inclusivity and unity in the church; they’re the ones trying to establish Zion, just as we covenant to do in the temple. They aren’t the ones being divisive.
In that spirit, let me go no farther before declaring unequivocally my love and that of my Brethren for those who live with this same-sex challenge and so much complexity that goes with it.
This statement is not a manifestation of love. This statement pathologizes queerness. Being queer isn’t a challenge. The challenge is being queer in the church. Being queer isn’t complex; being queer in the church is what’s complex. And it’s complex and challenging strictly because of the all the policies, practices, and teachings of the church that have othered and excluded queer members for so many years.
The fact that these words—and those that follow—were said make me question how unequivocal their love towards us actually is.
Too often the world has been unkind, in many instances crushingly cruel, to these our brothers and sisters.
The world? Heck, we don’t have to go even that far. The church has been unkind, and even crushingly cruel. This talk itself is hurtful to queer students at BYU and queer members of the church at large.
Like many of you, we have spent hours with them, and wept and prayed and wept again in an effort to offer love and hope while keeping the gospel strong and the obedience to commandments evident in every individual life.
Love is more than just crying. And praying for what exactly? That we’ll no longer be queer? That our queerness “challenge” will be overcome? That the burden the church itself puts on our backs will disappear? The words spoken in this address were not from someone who has true compassion for queer members.
We have to be careful that love and empathy do not get interpreted as condoning and advocacy, or that orthodoxy and loyalty to principle not be interpreted as unkindness or disloyalty to people. As near as I can tell, Christ never once withheld His love from anyone, but He also never once said to anyone, “Because I love you, you are exempt from keeping my commandments.”
Except Christ is the only one who has the authority to say who is and is not exempt from keeping the commandments. It is not our place to judge whether someone is being Mormon enough. And if you want to talk about what Christ did and did not say, maybe we should analyze everything he ever said about queer people.
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Exactly. Nothing. He never once in his three-year ministry—according to the records we have—spoke about queerness, let alone that it was something to be fixed or endured, or that it was even sinful. No, instead, he showed us that a proper ministry is one that lifts up and empowers the marginalized. And lifting up and empowering queer people is not the current practice of the LDS church.
Why must we be careful that “love and empathy do not get interpreted as condoning and advocacy”? Why would it be wrong for queer people to think that we advocate for their rights to enjoy everything that non-queer people enjoy?
Plus, how much love and empathy is it really if you are expressing love while at the same time perpetuating the othering and marginalization of your queer members?
Yes, we will always need defenders of the faith, but “friendly fire” is a tragedy — and from time to time the Church, its leaders and some of our colleagues within the university community have taken such fire on this campus. And sometimes it isn’t friendly — wounding students and the parents of students who are confused about what so much recent flag-waving and parade-holding on this issue means.
It is bold of Holland to make the church out to be the victims in all this. After decades of excluding queer members, of pathologizing them, of marginalizing them, of even harming them, somehow queer members are now the aggressors and those who had been performing this harm and marginalization are the victims.
Honestly, this is pretty messed up.
Queer members still feel excluded, we still feel marginalized, we still feel the hurt and harm from the policies that still exist in the church, from the words still spoken over the pulpit, and from the political advocacy still embarked on by leaders in Salt Lake.
And yet to say that somehow we’re the oppressors because we want to be treated equally is even more hurtful.
I lived more than 45 years of my life believing I was straight because the society I grew up—and that includes the church—convinced me that I was, that anything else was wrong. When I came out, people removed me as a Facebook friend. When I was called as Sunday School president, a ward member said he couldn’t sustain me because of my stance on queer issues.
But somehow I’m the one shooting friendly fire because I wear a rainbow pin to church.
Holland’s words hurt. A lot. Not as much as the 2015 exclusionary policy, which felt like a gut punch. But it still hurt.
But honestly, it doesn’t surprise me. This is just one more example of the impossibility the church faces in trying “love the sinner” while “hating the sin”. They focus so much on queerness—and their paradigm of it being an inconvenience for their administration of a shrinking church—that they forget there are queer people.
They see the queerness of people as a burden, as a challenge, as something that is temporary, overcome either in this life or in the life to come. And they don’t see how this attitude is literally harming us.
This isn’t just a leadership problem either. Nor is it a problem with people on the right.
Queer people felt very alone on Monday, abandoned even. Some still do. It’s hard to feel welcome in a church whose leaders keep saying things that hurt you. It’s hard to feel like you belong when there is so much that says you don’t.
And that loneliness was amplified by the silence of allies.
Sure. I saw some people criticizing the remarks. I saw some people sharing posts on social media about how the musket fire would have to go through them. They were quick to perform their allyship.
But then what?
Did you reach out to the queer members you know? Did you see how they’re doing? Did you let them speak? Did you feel their feelings?
None of the allies I know reached out to me. I heard from literally no one in the 7 days since that talk. No one asked me how I’m doing. No one asked how I felt about the remarks? No one asked me how hurt I was.
And I know I’m not alone.
My experience may not be representative of all queer members—I know of some who did have people reach out to them in meaningful and helpful ways—but it is representative of some queer members.
And this experience reminds me of our baptismal covenants to bear one another’s burdens, to mourn with those who are mourning, and to comfort those who need comforting and our endowment covenant to establish Zion.
Ask yourself if the anger you felt from Holland’s words was sufficient to lighten the burden queer members bear. Did queer members feel like you were mourning with them, like you were trying to comfort them?
Or are they still struggling a week after you shared your social media meme or wrote your blog post?
And on that note, can the church itself ever truly claim that they bear one another’s burdens when they are the ones putting some of those burdens on the backs of their members?
