I was an official Mormon missionary for two years, from 1994 to 1996. All missionaries are assigned a companion that they stay with 24/7, which is why you never see missionaries walking the streets alone (if you do, that means something’s wrong). If I remember correctly, I had 12 companions during the course of my mission, and I didn’t get along with most of them, which I readily admit was my fault. I was something of a self-righteous jerk, and it took me most of the two years of my mission to figure that out and change my attitude.
While I was a missionary in training at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, I had so many problems with my first companion that I actively tried to get him kicked off his mission and sent back home. It didn’t work, and instead they just switched him and me with another duo of missionaries so that we all had new companions. My new companion was Elder Dallin Woolstenhulme, and I got along with him only slightly better than my first companion (who, incidentally and ironically is my best friend today). Over a decade later it’s easy to laugh at our immaturity (at least for me, hopefully for my companions as well).
Elder Woolstenhulme went to a different mission than I did, and so I didn’t see him for a number of years after the one month we spent as companions. I saw him a few years later at BYU, and then lost contact. Recently we reconnected via Facebook, and I was surprised to find out that he had left the LDS Church, was gay, and an atheist. So I did what anyone would do–I invited him to enter into a series of public discussions with me on a blog.
You might think I just run this blog so I can criticize anti-Mormons and spout my point of view, but it’s more than just that. I actually am interested in understanding where other people are coming from. I’m fascinated by how two people can look at the same evidence and come to completely different conclusions. I thoroughly enjoy talking to people who have different perspectives simply to find out how they arrived at their conclusions–not because I then want to turn around and try and prove them wrong, but because I simply find it interesting without needing any other objective.
But even though I could do this for my own satisfaction, I think a greater benefit can be achieved by doing it publicly, which is that I believe Dallin and I, despite our strong and divergent opinions, can discuss these matters in a logical way such that Mormons can understand more about ex-Mormons, gays, and atheists, and ex-Mormons, gays, and atheists might end up understanding more about Mormons. I think this kind of understanding was sorely lacking in the recent confrontation between various groups over Prop 8 in California. There seemed to be so much yelling and misrepresentation from both sides that nobody really understood where the other side was coming from. The voices of reason and logic were drowned out by the strident voices of those who remind me of 2nd-graders arguing on the playground who believe that whoever yells the loudest and swears the most wins the argument.
Here there will be no insults–just open and honest debate. That isn’t to say we won’t get heated or passionate about what we’re saying, but we’re going to try and keep it above the yelling and screaming we see so much of today.
I was interested in doing this with Dallin not only because he’s my only ex-Mormon, gay, atheist friend, but because he’s an intellectually-minded type of guy who I believe is capable of entering into a productive discussion on this matter.
The format will be as follows: I will post, Dallin will respond in the comments, and we’ll go back and forth as we feel like it. I don’t know how to allow only one person to comment, so others may throw in their comments from time to time. If the comments are useful and further the discussion, I’ll leave them up. If they’re distracting from the main point, then they’ll be deleted.
And now I’ll let Dallin introduce himself and add any pertinent information he feels motivated to give.
ok, so where to start… how’s about at the beginning?
I was born in Idaho, the first son and second child to my parents who had met at BYU, and were both 4th or 5th generation Mormons from Idaho. Making me 5th or 6th generation Mormon, depending on which line you’re counting. Anyway, the point of that is that my family and the Mormon church go WAY back – like “across the plains and the Atlantic ocean” back. So my entire life I was steeped in Mormon teachings. Also, from some of my very earliest memories [i.e. about 4 years old,] I knew I liked boys more than girls. There was always something so intriguing and magical to me about those of my same gender. Girls only had value to me as friends. Sure, I knew boys were “supposed” to like girls, but it didn’t really matter much to me during my young life. As I entered into sexual maturity, however, it began to make a difference.
I heard what the church/prophets taught – that sexual sin [of which homosexuality was one of the worst] was only slightly less terrible than murder. Without rehashing a lot of really unpleasant memories, this lead me, my entire adolescence, to hate myself so passionately that I had absolutely no self-esteem whatsoever, and was almost constantly engulfed with a desire to kill myself. I always considered myself a worthless coward because I could never actually take the step to execute all the scenarios [for killing myself] I conjured up in my head.
I might also add that, for as long I could remember, I hated going to church. It was boring and the people were mean to me. My peers were all downright hateful, and often the adult teachers were far from compassionate. There were a few people who did reach out to me, and I still have fond memories of some of them, but for the most part, one could say I didn’t really like or trust most Mormons. My favorite Sundays growing up were the ones when I was sick, and got to stay home [a rare treat] or if we were on vacation and somehow managed not to end up the ‘visitors’ to our relatives wards [but usually we did.] I always managed to have one “best” friend [always male,] which was my only refuge. For a long time it was Micah, but his family moved away, and then Brandon moved into our ward in ’89 and he’s still my friend to this day.
As a Mormon your life is mapped out according to a few benchmarks. Get born [preferably into a family with lots of other kids,] get baptized, grow up, go on a mission for the church [skip this step if you're a pretty girl and can land a husband before you turn 21, but if you're more of a "sweet spirit" you take the mission option,] stay on your mission the whole 2 years and convert everyone, come home, get married, and make more babies for the church. Easy, right? Well, after high school graduation the next step as was decided for me by the church and my family was “go on a mission.” I didn’t really want to go, but what else did I have going on? So I ended up in the MTC, where I met Steimle. [I'll have to get used to using the first name.] The MTC was actually 2 of the best months of my life to that point. I was surrounded by cute guys almost constantly, and I was learning a new language [which was challenging, but I like language, so it was fun.] The rest of my mission was more of a challenge. I’ll skip it for now, but maybe revisit some on a future post.
So fast forward – after the mission I went to BYU for a few years and tried dating girls. I was never very successful. I think they could tell something was ‘off.’ I also developed MANY unrequited crushes on cute, unsuspecting Mormon boys. It was torture. It was under that pressure that I finally confessed to my best female friend Kindra that I was gay. She was understanding and a great friend, and it was certainly liberating to actually get that out. If you’ve never had to live a lie, I REALLY don’t recommend it. It’s a private hell. It was shortly after that I also talked to my brother and next younger sister and told them about it. More liberation. I also started meeting other gay guys from the internet during this period. Almost all were also Mormons, some were BYU students, and all similarly confused to some degree, as I was. I eventually realized that I was not going to get the education I wanted from BYU [another story there, unrelated to the topic at hand] so I packed up my stuff and moved back to Texas and started my work career. I remained active in the church and started dating a really nice, cute South African girl named Leanne. She liked me, and I liked her. She probably would have eventually married me if I had asked her. But I knew it wasn’t right. I had tried so hard to convince myself that I could fit into the church’s mold that I contemplated it long and hard. It came down to the fact that I knew I wasn’t being honest with myself, or with her, and I didn’t want to submit either of us to that life.
After that I started dating my first boyfriend. I’ll leave off my final big “coming out to my parents” story for later. There’s a lot more to write, but for now it’s late, and time for me to go to bed.
Dare I ask if I was one of those “cute guys” you were surrounded with in the MTC? Maybe I don’t want to know…
lol, I can’t decide which answer would be worse for you to hear.
What happened guys? I wanted to see the debate.