Thread by @Geoffrey_Wardle

Sorry to those that follow me for snarky political and real estate and soccer takes. The following is a serious thread about #BYU and #MormonStuff and our #LGBTQ friends and family

I have had some feedback about my comments on Elder Holland’s talk and think it appropriate to further elaborate.

I have also seen my more conservative friends stating that what Holland said was not being taken with the spirit of love it was intended.

I have also seen the Church altright rallying this week to defend Holland and adopting the musket as the meme of their “defense”

I have seen the “wicked take the truth to be hard” takes “defending” “the Church” and “the Brethren”

I have seen the “there was so much more to the talk that you are missing by focusing on muskets”defenses

I have seen the video of a cruel and bigoted BYU student unashamed displaying his bigotry and hatred and “defense of the faith” with a non-doctrinal non-Gospel take the Westboro Baptist Church would welcome

I have read the @DeseretNews full throated but half thought out “Defense” of Holland deseret.com/2021/9/1/22651…

I have read Elder Holland’s speech and I have reread it.  I think I understand what he intended to say.

I treasure the testimony, faithfulness, and vocal assertion of a place in the Kingdom of our LGBTQ+ family members, friends, and future friends.

I am a former Bishop and Counselor in a Stake Presidency. I recognize and embrace human frailty as an integral part of the Restoration.

Leaders say uninspired things over the pulpit. Yes, BY said uninspired and crazy stuff, yes, ETB said uninspired and crazy stuff, yes, DHO says uninspired and crazy stuff, JRC said lots of uninspired, crazy and wrong stuff.

Why? Because they are first and foremost men speaking based upon their own experience and their own biases.

Human frailty and human error is something we have to overcome in this life.  It still amazes me that members of the Church do not recognize this in their leaders.

There have been multiple times that I know I was called to leadership positions simply because I was there and able to serve.

Doesn’t mean I didn’t try to act and seek inspiration and guidance, and it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t inspired and guided, it just means that I was the one at that time given the task with all of my short comings.

In 2007, I was called as Bishop of an economically diverse and struggling ward with pockets of affluence.

My first appointment my first Tuesday night after being set apart as Bishop was with a young single parent. I assumed that we were going to discuss temporal and monetary struggles.

Instead they brokedown on my desk and said “I am in an abusive same sex relationship and I know its wrong and I don’t know what to do”.

Nothing prepares you for that. Nothing in your setting apart. Nothing in the General Handbook.

When I was done with comforting this Child of God, I collapsed in tears in the arms of my first counselor because I was so overwhelmed.

What did this Child of God need at that moment? A Bishop who would love them. A Bishop who would mourn with them. A Bishop who would engage with them as a Child of God.

Shortly thereafter I started working with an individual who was working through drug court and was employed at DI, they were not a member but was referred to me as the Bishop in their neighborhood.

They needed some assistance that only a Bishop is authorized to provide. It wasn’t much but I immediately realized that more than $ they needed someone committed to the success of a Child of God trying to improve their life.

Over the course of the next year and a half and 1-2 meetings a month and some financial assistance, they graduated, ended probation and got a good job.

During that time, my ward was dissolved and divided among three other wards and I was called to be Bishop of one of the other wards.

This Child of God was no longer in my boundaries. But I did not want them to have to endure the vicissitude of Bishop Roulette because I knew that my fellow Bishop who was now their Bishop would not act as I had felt impressed to do so.

This change occurred at the same time as Prop 8. I had received the letter asking Idaho saints to support the Prop 8 election in California.

It was one of the hardest things I ever had to deal with as I struggled with how I could encourage members of my ward with LGBTQ+ friends and family members to actively engage in an unnecessary and legally futile effort to deprive others of their legal rights.

The blessing came later that week when we received a letter withdrawing that request.

At that time I continued to support and encourage this Child of God because I wanted them to know Christ loved them and that I did too.

And that my love was not conditioned on gender identity or sexual orientation. I loved them and notwithstanding the official support of the Church of Prop 8.

In 2011, when the Boy Scouts announced that membership would be open for gay youth, I was still a Bishop and working on a Scouting training committee.

One of the adults who was LDS, immediately removed his sons from a training program that my son was involved with because of Scouting allowing all youth to participate.  He was vocal in his displeasure with Scouting and his displeasure with “normalizing perversion”.

The thing that made me shake my head was (a) in the LDS Church we were registering all boys between the ages of 8 and 18 in Scouting regardless of their interest or desire and (b) we most certainly had gay young men participating in the program.

As a Church we had certainly involved gay young men in the Scouting program.

His boys had been in a LDS Troop which as a matter of policy enrolled every single boy in Scouts, but he was concerned that “non-members” would encourage gay boys to be in Scouting.

Thereafter, when the Boy Scouts modified its policy on LBGTQ leaders, I do no recall him being involved at all.

Instead of welcoming, engaging, or understanding that yes, people are different, and yes, kids do recognize that they have orientations and identities that are different, turtle mode is frequently the default mode of many Mormons.

I remember being asked why the Church would remain in a program that would allow gays to lead youth.  I asked the member who was so concerned about that where in the General Handbook of Instructions, it stated that gays couldn’t serve with youth?

The response was, “well we would never” and my response was “well, I am sure we have, and if I had a faithful gay brother who I felt inspired to call to work with the Young Men and be registered in Scouting, I would.”

In 2012 I was called to serve as a counselor in the Stake Presidency and very early in my service had a member ask if the Church would be excommunicating members who had joined “Mormons Building Bridges” and marched at Pride.

I asked him why he thought that was necessary and he shared the concern that “they are acting against God”.

I shared that I didn’t read anything in Scripture or Church policy that would discourage or prevent Members from being kind and showing love.

I don’t know if he was convinced but acting like Christ is never the wrong thing to do.

We have since moved to a much more conservative ward.

One Sunday in Gospel Doctrine an older sister in Sunday School said “we should be grateful for Prop 8 because it was the Lord’s way of separating the wheat from the tares”.

I cut her off and asked if it was really the Lord’s will that a political campaign should cause one of his young Bishops to have a crisis of faith because I don’t think that is what the Lord had in mind.

It was really uncomfortable. Her retort was “well my grandson is Gay” as if sticking to to him makes it OK.

So I took that opportunity to articulate that nothing in our theology demanded our embrace of Prop 8.

I also noted that in its support for “traditional marriage” litigation and initiatives the Church had been used by more conservative Christians

Christians who will never value is for anything other than organization and monetary support to unnecessarily interfere with the rights of our fellow man.

I probably would have been accused by Elder Holland of “pushing individual license over institutional dignity” that Sunday.

What saddens me the most is that I was in attendance in the Conference Center when Elder Holland gave his talk “Like a Broken Vessel” that caused me to finally confront and address my own mental health struggles.

That is what was so disappointing this week. The same voice that gave us “Like a Broken Vessel” and “Songs Sung and Unsung” has emboldened the altright of the Church to claim that they are merely “returning musket fire”.

I struggle to understand why we use language like Holland used.

The elements of this discourse started with ‘imagin[ing] the pain that comes” form a memo from a parent who feels “abandoned and betrayed by BYU” because of some faculty who are vocal in the media “supporting ideas that many of us feel are contradictory to gospel principles”.

(I don’t think this parent was objecting to a professor publicly attacking a student and calling him an antichrist)

It was a conscious decision and conscious part of his talk to cite Neil Maxwell’s allusion to builders of the Nauvoo Temple to encourage academics who could handle “both trowels and muskets”

And to then cite Dallin Oaks extension of that in 2017 when he noted that he “would like to hear a little more musket fire from this temple of learning”

But Holland then chastised those who “fired their muskets . . . but unfortunately didn’t always aim at those hostile to the Church.”

And then he called out a student who “commandeers a graduation podium intended to represent everyone . . . to announce his personal sexual orientation”

Ultimately reaffirming this metaphor of musket fire noting that he had “endorsed yet again today” he expressly tied it to the fact that

“while I have focused on this same-sex topic this morning more than I would have liked, I pray you will see it as emblematic of a lot of issues our students and community face”

I have to disagree. We should never use the LGBTQ community and violent metaphors to be “emblematic of a lot of issues”.  They aren’t.  They aren’t a horde to be confronted with musket fire.

When you do, you make it clear that the Church and its University is a place for those who are willing to freely display their cruelty and hate, not for those who are actually trying to be like Christ.

And “defenders”, you cannot in good faith say that “it was only directed to liberal BYU faculty” when it calls out and attacks a gay student

And “defenders”, you cannot in good faith say that “it was only directed to liberal BYU faculty” when the altright Mormons are out with their musket memes and clothing within 24 hours

Jesus and I are cool. Jeff and I? Well it hurts. It hurts because it gives cover to those that seek to justify their cruelty and unChristlike treatment of my LGBTQ+ friends and family.

How do I reconcile it? I can’t. But it reaffirms the messy broken human experience of the Restoration and of a lay ministry.

I stay because I love Christ and I know he wants me to love all of God’s Children. I may not love my fellow congregants on any given Sunday but I know the LGBTQ+ members of my congregation (and yes they exist and I see them and love them) know that @KristinWardle and I

“are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light; . . . and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort”. Mosiah 18:8-9

I don’t share this because I have any unique insight.  I don’t feel the pain of LGBTQ friends and family due to the constant drum beat that they don’t belong.

I don’t share this because I know the hostility and alienation that our LGBTQ friends and family feel and ignoring that simply erases them and damages their emotional wellbeing.

I share this because I know how the Lord has guided me to where I am today.

I share this because the Lord would defend the Queer Kids, not the Pharisees seeking to stone them.