My Life as a Mormon #7 (My Thoughts on Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation)
My thoughts regarding discrimination based on sexual orientation within the Church: I'm relatively certain that I grew up knowing boys who were gay and girls who were lesbians, but I honestly didn't suspect anything at the time. Of course, I was extremely sheltered when it came to everything about human sexuality. And when I say "extremely sheltered," that's putting it mildly. I was vaguely aware that some boys were a little bit effeminate and maybe affectionate towards one another, and that they were called "Queeer." To me, "Queeer" meant nothing more than "unusual." (Spelling is incorrect because apparently the correct spelling of the word is banned by this site.) I never gave them much thought. I also knew that some girls were not quite as "feminine" as others, but that didn't strike me as particularly odd. I can remember being at the Borgs' house one year with my family to celebrate the 24th. It always took an hour or so for CeCie and I to warm up to each other when our families got together, as we really had very little in common. On one particular occasion, CeCie took me down their basement and suggested that we do a little sparing. She'd just gotten two new pairs of boxing gloves. Hesitantly, I put a pair on my hands and attempted to defend myself from her blows. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing, and I had no idea why any girl would find that particular activity fun in the slightest. Later that evening, I asked her a question: "You'd rather be a boy than a girl, wouldn't you?" "No!" she answered, seemingly baffled as to why I'd asked the question. CeCie wasn't a closet lesbian (at least not to my knowledge), and she eventually married a fire fighter and had a family. To me, though, there was something "different" about her, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. When it got right down to it, I think I probably saw any girl who was exceptionally athletic (even those who didn't go in for boxing) as a little bit masculine, and today, when I learn that a particular female athlete is a lesbian, I'm never really surprised. When I learn that a glamorous female actress is a lesbian, I am.
I didn't give much thought to out-of-the ordinary human sexual attractions or behaviors until probably about sometime after 2005 when I first joined the Religious Forums message board. It was on that site (i.e. RF) that I had my first actual conversations with people from the LGBT community. For a couple of years, I firmly stood my ground, that what they were doing was wrong. Even back then, though, I tried to be careful to separate "what they were doing" from "who they were." A couple of them (Amy was lesbian, Patrick gay) seemed to be able to tell that I was not a hateful person. They probably figured I was just naive -- which was exactly the case. Amy and Patrick pretty much single-handedly made me rethink my position on same-sex marriage. This took a lot of patience on their part.
Eventually, I came to understand (if only intellectually) what it must be like to fall in love with someone and know that never would people accept the love and commitment the two of you shared as having any legitimacy. I moved from being opposed to any legalization of same-sex partnerships to feeling that some kind of civil unions ought to be recognized by law. My LGBT friends, though, insisted that this wasn't enough. They said that even in states that allowed civil unions, LGBT couples did not have the same legal rights as heterosexual couples. Amy explained what some of the differences were, and over time, hers and Patrick's positions came to make sense to me.
I could sympathize with Amy's insistence that she couldn't simply not fall out of love with her girlfriend, nor could either of them ignore the fact that they had a strong physical attraction for each other. I could relate to that. I can remember having my first crush on a boy at the age of six. The boy was Jerry Bowes. He and I kissed on the playground at Grandview Elementary, surrounded by our classmates, some of whom were giggling, others of whom were voicing their disgust with cries of "Yuck!" Jerry was my first crush but he wasn't my last. And the odd thing is that of all the crushes I ever had, none was on another little girl. Nobody had told me that I was "supposed to" be attracted to boys and not to girls. That's just how it was. If I hadn't chosen to be attracted to the opposite sex, how could I insist that being attracted to someone of the same sex was "a choice"? I realized that I couldn't.
I acknowledged to Amy that while I believed the attraction she felt for the woman she loved was probably beyond her control, whether she chose to act on it was not. Why, though, wondered Amy, should she and the woman she loved have to remain celibate throughout their lives, just because my religion said their love was "wrong"? I explained that, from my perspective, their challenge was really no greater from the challenge every LDS heterosexual couple faces. I tried my best to help her understand that, as a Mormon, I believed that not only was homosexual intimacy wrong, but that I believed that pre-marital intimacy was wrong as well. I told her that I had abstained from sexual relations until I got married, and that if I had never married, I would probably still be abstaining today. I couldn't see any difference between what God expected of a single, heterosexual woman and a lesbian woman. She reminded me that at least a single, heterosexual woman has the hope that she will eventually find the love of her life and live happily ever after. That hope simply didn't exist for lesbian women or for gay men.
One day, from out of nowhere, something I'd heard my father say years and years earlier popped into my mind. I hadn't thought about it for a very long time, but I could suddenly recall overhearing a conversation between him and my mother that took place early one Sunday afternoon when I was just a teenager. I didn't know at the time what they were even discussing, but I heard my father say, "You can't legislate morality." Although I had no idea what he meant by that, the phrase stuck in my mind. Now it all made sense. People were trying to make laws based upon their own religious beliefs! Now I knew what I believed God expected of His children when it came to sexual intimacy, but for the first time, it struck me that not everyone believed what I believed about what God expected. There were people who didn't believe in God at all, as hard as it was for me to grasp the reality of that fact. I came to the conclusion that moral choices were personal. I needed to live my life in accordance with what I personally believed, and I had a responsibility to teach my children what I believed. I did not, however, have the right to try to impose my standard of sexual conduct on any other adult.
At that point, I became very much an advocate for the LGBT community and their push for equal rights under the law. I was pretty careful to keep my feelings to myself when talking to my fellow Latter-day Saints (at least to those I knew personally), but on RF and CD (City-Data), I was outspoken in my newfound conviction that, here in the United States, any adult ought to be able to marry any consenting adult of his or her choosing. Latter-day Saints came down on me en masse. How, they wondered, could I condone something God condemned? How could I be in favor of something that would undermine the sanctity of marriage? What could possibly have possessed me to insist that it was now okay to sin? Nothing I said made any difference. Despite my repeated statements that I wasn't condoning what I believed to be sinful, my fellow Mormons simply couldn't grasp that. With respect to same-sex marriage, I tried pointing out that whether a gay couple was legally allowed to marry or not, they were still going to be engaging in the same behaviors. No laws were going to stop them from doing whatever they wanted to do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Making same-sex marriage legal wasn't going to make same-sex intimacy moral or right. It was simply going to give same-sex couples the right to insurance benefits, the right to make end-of-life decisions for one another, and to have the advantage of other similar rights. People insisted that if same-sex couples were allowed to marry, that would make their own marriages less sacred. How, I wanted to know, was that going to happen? I saw my marriage to Matt as a covenant between the two of us and our Heavenly Father. How could anybody else's marriage have any effect whatsoever on that covenant?
Shortly thereafter, I had a second "epiphany." This came as the result of a dream I had one night. I can remember almost nothing about the dream. As a matter of fact, the only thing I do remember (or that I did remember upon waking up from it) was that I was a little Muslim boy, about 6 or 7 years old. I lived in a small, Middle-eastern village. I recall that I was squatting down in a dusty patch of earth just outside my home, wearing shorts and drawing with a stick in the dirt. Now why I would have dreamed that, I will never know. I wasn't Kathryn Ramirez, the 60-something Mormon woman from Salt Lake City. At least I didn't look like her. I looked like a different person entirely, a person of a different age, gender, culture and religion, but it was me! It was my spirit in that little boy’s body. I felt it very, very clearly. Obviously, I was surprised by the dream when I woke up, but it didn't take me long to realize what it meant (and I'm not one to typically ascribe meanings to dreams at all). This was what it was like to be transgendered. I'd always wondered how a person with female genitalia and a feminine shape could possibly feel that she was really a male, a male in the "wrong" body. Suddenly, even that made sense. If I could feel like me in the body of a little Muslim boy, why couldn't a woman feel like she was really supposed to be a man, or vice versa? Even though the phenomenon still seems strange to me, I understood that it was possible.
It was at about this time that I became familiar with a group called "Mormons Building Bridges." This was a group of active Latter-day Saints who were concerned about the lack of acceptance our LGBT brothers and sisters were feeling from us heterosexual members. The group had recently marched in Salt Lake City's 2012 Pride Parade, trying to show their support for Salt Lake's LGBT community. Some in Mormons Building Bridges were very much in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage. Others were just pushing for love and compassion. While I could identify with both groups of people, my focus was primarily on just trying to show Christlike love to people that many Latter-day Saints were marginalizing. In 2013, I marched with them -- alone. In 2014, Leslie Peterson marched with me. In 2015, Matt and Harold (Peterson) joined us. Matt and I both intended to march in 2016, but because we arrived at the gathering point for MBB late, and realized that we'd have to actually run to catch up with them, I marched alone for the second time and he met me at the end of the parade route. My heart was pounding as I drove downtown the first year. I kept thinking, "What would my bishop think?" By the time the parade was half over, I found myself thinking, "Who cares what my bishop thinks. I know what my Heavenly Father thinks, and He's okay with this!" (My bishop, Steve Parkin, later said to me, when we talked about my participation in my temple recommend interview, "So's your bishop." He became one of my heroes that day.) Marching in the Pride Parade has become something I look forward to every year. It's hard to imagine that it could be so easy to make so many people feel loved and accepted.
I didn't give much thought to out-of-the ordinary human sexual attractions or behaviors until probably about sometime after 2005 when I first joined the Religious Forums message board. It was on that site (i.e. RF) that I had my first actual conversations with people from the LGBT community. For a couple of years, I firmly stood my ground, that what they were doing was wrong. Even back then, though, I tried to be careful to separate "what they were doing" from "who they were." A couple of them (Amy was lesbian, Patrick gay) seemed to be able to tell that I was not a hateful person. They probably figured I was just naive -- which was exactly the case. Amy and Patrick pretty much single-handedly made me rethink my position on same-sex marriage. This took a lot of patience on their part.
Eventually, I came to understand (if only intellectually) what it must be like to fall in love with someone and know that never would people accept the love and commitment the two of you shared as having any legitimacy. I moved from being opposed to any legalization of same-sex partnerships to feeling that some kind of civil unions ought to be recognized by law. My LGBT friends, though, insisted that this wasn't enough. They said that even in states that allowed civil unions, LGBT couples did not have the same legal rights as heterosexual couples. Amy explained what some of the differences were, and over time, hers and Patrick's positions came to make sense to me.
I could sympathize with Amy's insistence that she couldn't simply not fall out of love with her girlfriend, nor could either of them ignore the fact that they had a strong physical attraction for each other. I could relate to that. I can remember having my first crush on a boy at the age of six. The boy was Jerry Bowes. He and I kissed on the playground at Grandview Elementary, surrounded by our classmates, some of whom were giggling, others of whom were voicing their disgust with cries of "Yuck!" Jerry was my first crush but he wasn't my last. And the odd thing is that of all the crushes I ever had, none was on another little girl. Nobody had told me that I was "supposed to" be attracted to boys and not to girls. That's just how it was. If I hadn't chosen to be attracted to the opposite sex, how could I insist that being attracted to someone of the same sex was "a choice"? I realized that I couldn't.
I acknowledged to Amy that while I believed the attraction she felt for the woman she loved was probably beyond her control, whether she chose to act on it was not. Why, though, wondered Amy, should she and the woman she loved have to remain celibate throughout their lives, just because my religion said their love was "wrong"? I explained that, from my perspective, their challenge was really no greater from the challenge every LDS heterosexual couple faces. I tried my best to help her understand that, as a Mormon, I believed that not only was homosexual intimacy wrong, but that I believed that pre-marital intimacy was wrong as well. I told her that I had abstained from sexual relations until I got married, and that if I had never married, I would probably still be abstaining today. I couldn't see any difference between what God expected of a single, heterosexual woman and a lesbian woman. She reminded me that at least a single, heterosexual woman has the hope that she will eventually find the love of her life and live happily ever after. That hope simply didn't exist for lesbian women or for gay men.
One day, from out of nowhere, something I'd heard my father say years and years earlier popped into my mind. I hadn't thought about it for a very long time, but I could suddenly recall overhearing a conversation between him and my mother that took place early one Sunday afternoon when I was just a teenager. I didn't know at the time what they were even discussing, but I heard my father say, "You can't legislate morality." Although I had no idea what he meant by that, the phrase stuck in my mind. Now it all made sense. People were trying to make laws based upon their own religious beliefs! Now I knew what I believed God expected of His children when it came to sexual intimacy, but for the first time, it struck me that not everyone believed what I believed about what God expected. There were people who didn't believe in God at all, as hard as it was for me to grasp the reality of that fact. I came to the conclusion that moral choices were personal. I needed to live my life in accordance with what I personally believed, and I had a responsibility to teach my children what I believed. I did not, however, have the right to try to impose my standard of sexual conduct on any other adult.
At that point, I became very much an advocate for the LGBT community and their push for equal rights under the law. I was pretty careful to keep my feelings to myself when talking to my fellow Latter-day Saints (at least to those I knew personally), but on RF and CD (City-Data), I was outspoken in my newfound conviction that, here in the United States, any adult ought to be able to marry any consenting adult of his or her choosing. Latter-day Saints came down on me en masse. How, they wondered, could I condone something God condemned? How could I be in favor of something that would undermine the sanctity of marriage? What could possibly have possessed me to insist that it was now okay to sin? Nothing I said made any difference. Despite my repeated statements that I wasn't condoning what I believed to be sinful, my fellow Mormons simply couldn't grasp that. With respect to same-sex marriage, I tried pointing out that whether a gay couple was legally allowed to marry or not, they were still going to be engaging in the same behaviors. No laws were going to stop them from doing whatever they wanted to do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Making same-sex marriage legal wasn't going to make same-sex intimacy moral or right. It was simply going to give same-sex couples the right to insurance benefits, the right to make end-of-life decisions for one another, and to have the advantage of other similar rights. People insisted that if same-sex couples were allowed to marry, that would make their own marriages less sacred. How, I wanted to know, was that going to happen? I saw my marriage to Matt as a covenant between the two of us and our Heavenly Father. How could anybody else's marriage have any effect whatsoever on that covenant?
Shortly thereafter, I had a second "epiphany." This came as the result of a dream I had one night. I can remember almost nothing about the dream. As a matter of fact, the only thing I do remember (or that I did remember upon waking up from it) was that I was a little Muslim boy, about 6 or 7 years old. I lived in a small, Middle-eastern village. I recall that I was squatting down in a dusty patch of earth just outside my home, wearing shorts and drawing with a stick in the dirt. Now why I would have dreamed that, I will never know. I wasn't Kathryn Ramirez, the 60-something Mormon woman from Salt Lake City. At least I didn't look like her. I looked like a different person entirely, a person of a different age, gender, culture and religion, but it was me! It was my spirit in that little boy’s body. I felt it very, very clearly. Obviously, I was surprised by the dream when I woke up, but it didn't take me long to realize what it meant (and I'm not one to typically ascribe meanings to dreams at all). This was what it was like to be transgendered. I'd always wondered how a person with female genitalia and a feminine shape could possibly feel that she was really a male, a male in the "wrong" body. Suddenly, even that made sense. If I could feel like me in the body of a little Muslim boy, why couldn't a woman feel like she was really supposed to be a man, or vice versa? Even though the phenomenon still seems strange to me, I understood that it was possible.
It was at about this time that I became familiar with a group called "Mormons Building Bridges." This was a group of active Latter-day Saints who were concerned about the lack of acceptance our LGBT brothers and sisters were feeling from us heterosexual members. The group had recently marched in Salt Lake City's 2012 Pride Parade, trying to show their support for Salt Lake's LGBT community. Some in Mormons Building Bridges were very much in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage. Others were just pushing for love and compassion. While I could identify with both groups of people, my focus was primarily on just trying to show Christlike love to people that many Latter-day Saints were marginalizing. In 2013, I marched with them -- alone. In 2014, Leslie Peterson marched with me. In 2015, Matt and Harold (Peterson) joined us. Matt and I both intended to march in 2016, but because we arrived at the gathering point for MBB late, and realized that we'd have to actually run to catch up with them, I marched alone for the second time and he met me at the end of the parade route. My heart was pounding as I drove downtown the first year. I kept thinking, "What would my bishop think?" By the time the parade was half over, I found myself thinking, "Who cares what my bishop thinks. I know what my Heavenly Father thinks, and He's okay with this!" (My bishop, Steve Parkin, later said to me, when we talked about my participation in my temple recommend interview, "So's your bishop." He became one of my heroes that day.) Marching in the Pride Parade has become something I look forward to every year. It's hard to imagine that it could be so easy to make so many people feel loved and accepted.
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