Elder Oaks' understanding of the gospel leads him to say that I am required to oppose my transgender child in being who he is, and if I don't I am literally in Satan's army. Here's a few thoughts.
A very long thread.
A very long thread.
When our son was born he was assigned female at birth. He's not our first kid, so we had some experience in raising kids. We had worked out many of the early parenting issues, and hit the ground running with him.
We blessed him, gave him a lovely female name, dressed him in frilly clothes and immediately started bringing him up as one does in the church. We spoke to him about being worthy so that one day a righteous man can take him to the temple, about being a good mommy
We enrolled him in enriching classes like ballet and choir, plus sports like running club and basketball. He enjoyed these classes, and loved going to primary for several years. He did well in school, was thoroughly engaged in church, and was liked by his peers.
Our little family was on the fast track to the Celestial Kingdom. We were engaged in the church, checking all the right boxes, raising our kids in the church-approved manner. We did not know how life could have been better.
What we actually did not know is how much of a foundation of harm we were laying down. As we were teaching him God-ordained gender roles and celestial marriage being the only way back to God, he was discovering he did not fit either of those molds.
He was slowly coming to the realization that his actual gender did not match his assigned gender, while my wife and I were, unbeknownst to us, telling him that his experience was a fraud, that there was no such thing. We invalidated his existence every day.
Think about that for a second. Imagine saying to your kids every day: "you're wearing the wrong clothes. The people you're drawn to are mentally ill. I love you! You're not who you think you are! Heaven has no room for you!" Every. Single. Day.
As we pushed our son more and more into a dark place, we were stumped as to why he was withdrawing from church activities, church friends. We would force him to go to YW, and he would hide in the bathroom and cry.
We got him up at 530 am every morning and drove him to seminary where he would be subjected to overheated rhetoric about separating himself from the evils of the world, and then hearing himself described as the evil of the world.
The damage we did to our kid by following the church is breathtaking. The guilt we carry is crushing. We could have beat him every day, yelled at him, and told him he was unworthy of God's love and the damage would not have been worse than what we did.
And to make sure that the mindf**k was complete, all these harmful actions were done in the most loving way. With smiles, hugs, and warm language.
When our son finally came out to us we were so confused. That happens to other families. The less faithful ones. The ones without true conviction of The Gospel. You know, the ones that stop coming to church. That wasn't us.
So we dove into "the problem", started studying it to see how best to fix it. We quickly realized that church resources were less than helpful, with all sorts of inconsistent statements, contradictory stances, and a history of clearly uninspired leadership.
We expanded into science, research, and the lived experience of transgender people. Slowly we came to understand that our son's experience was legitimate. And so was that of every LGBTQ+ individual.
Another thing happened, we discovered the LGBTQ+ community was not the bogeyman we'd been led to believe. In fact, we found quite the opposite. We fell in love with and found a new community with LGBTQ+ friends and allies.
The more time we spent with our new community, the more we understood why Christ spent his time with the marginalized and the outcasts. This is where The Gospel is, with the ones outside of the circle that the powers that be have drawn.
Being with this community opened up my heart. In the same way you think you know love, and then you have kids and you understand what love actually is. I thought I knew love in church. The LGBTQ+ community showed me what actual love is.
For a while during the Mormon Moment, there was a feeling that the church was warming up to the LGBTQ+ community. There was a hopefulness of having both, full church fellowship and fully honoring our son's experience.
We worked hard locally to build those bridges, to bring our LGBTQ friends to church, and to take church members into LGBTQ+ spaces. It felt like the rift was starting to heal. I wanted my member and LGBTQ+ friends to see the goodness in each other
Then the November 2015 Policy happened, and shattered this dream. Any hope of a reconciliation was gone. That moment I knew that my kids had zero incentive to remain associated with the church. My progeny had been preemptively excommunicated.
For the next couple of years, my wife and I stayed engaged with the church. We held on to a quixotic dream of helping carve out a safe space for LGBTQ+ kids within church walls. Maybe it helped some, I don't know.
What I do know is that the cognitive dissonance grew. We knew that the way LGBTQ+ issues were presented at church were not accurate. But we loved the church, and had found much peace there. The clash between these two ideas grew and grew.
It finally got so loud we could no longer ignore it. Attending church simply became too disorienting, too painful. So we decided to take a break from church, but not from The Gospel.
For the past year we have doubled down on reading scripture, exploring theology, and attending other churches where LGBTQ+ are not just welcome, but full participants. We've thrown ourselves into the service of the LGBTQ+ community.
