An 11 Page Summation

** Don’t start this essay unless you have 40 uninterrupted minutes to finish it. **

Topic: “Why there are no words in the Mormon Church as devoid of meaning as the words ‘unconditional love’.”

(Written as a letter to my 25-year-old son who is terribly conflicted over his love for the church and his love for his father, and cannot see how his devotion to the church minimizes the life of his father. A great deal of this will not make a lot of sense unless you are deep into Mormon theology and have lived at the “street level” behind the “Zion Curtain”.)


Dear P----- (and a little further into this letter, everybody else):

I know this letter is extremely long, but you have to read every word in order to understand the emptiness when an active Mormon uses the words “unconditional love” when speaking to an inactive Mormon (or one who has faced church discipline). It is critical that you get down off your ramiumptom (how the heck do you spell that?) and look at this from my side. I’m going to great lengths to help you do this, so please read the entire letter and make a sincere effort.

P-----, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to copy the entire family in on this response to your specific letter. Still, my answer to you is the one I care about the most.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve read the phrase “unconditional love” over the past five days. In the Mormon Church there is no phrase that is more meaningless when looked at from my side of the fence. In the Mormon Church, everything, and I mean absolutely everything is conditional on one thing: “How does this affect my eternal family?”

Any action that impacts eternal salvation creates a “condition” upon which parents have to worry about their children, children have to worry about their parents, and it goes all the way out into every member of the extended family.

So, let’s roll the clock back to 1974 and presume that we discovered in my family that our mother was an illegitimate child. Let’s presume that Grandma Lb------’s conscience finally drove her to disclose that she had once had an affair with a black man and gotten pregnant. She decided to wait and see how light the baby’s skin was before she would tell Grandpa. She knew for sure that Grandpa was not the father. Mom was born with very fair skin and Grandma’s lie was buried. In 1974 she clears her conscience by telling the entire family, not just mom.

The truth sinks in quickly. Mom has a black father! She obtained her endowments in 1949. G----- (my oldest brother) has already been ordained an Elder, served a mission, and is married. So are D----- and Fs---- (my sisters). Fd---- is just a few years away from being an Elder and going on a mission. You wonder why President Kimball wrestled with this so deeply? This was happening several times a week in Brazil, where the church was growing very rapidly and nobody knew their genealogy, and I think I read somewhere that over 70% of the population is mixed-race.

But it wasn’t happening in Cardston that often. In Brazil the church leaders had become very liberal in allowing people like my imaginary mom to keep her temple blessings and her recommend, and G----- likewise to keep his priesthood. In Brazil they would just say, “God will sort it out in Heaven”. Still, in either Brazil or Cardston, Fd----(my brother just a year older) and I would not be ordained Elders when we turn 19 in this scenario. In the south, of course, things were dealt with very differently from Brazil. Dad & mom’s temple marriage would be cancelled, her recommend revoked, and G----- would be stripped of his priesthood and his endowment and temple marriage annulled. Just like my excommunication, it is all up to the Stake President you have. The south just seems to have more assholes on a per-capita basis who like to enforce the “letter of the law” when it comes to issues like these.

Because of how pervasive our family is in the Cardston community, there was no containing the secret. This is where I get to illustrate how meaningless “unconditional love” is in the Mormon Church. Now, at the post office, mom would be treated differently and she would come to understand very clearly what the word “placating” means. To all but her dearest friends, conversations would best be described as polite. Only her closest friend (our back-door neighbor) would have the nerve to really find out how mom feels, and in those first weeks mom would hear “unconditional love” uttered about 15 times a day (1,500 on Sunday). The tension builds every day because nobody can anticipate what the stake president is going to do about this, but to keep this allegory as parallel as possible to my experience, let’s presume that we have a stake president with southern blood. Our parents’ temple marriage is dissolved and G----- is stripped of his priesthood, and both G----- and Fs---- have their temple marriages annulled. D----- is coming up later. This is where it gets good.

Everybody, and I mean everybody, come up to us and tell us about their “unconditional love” for our family. The phrase that is second only to “unconditional love” is “we’ll have all the answers to this in the next life” (or some version of that).

As a family, everything changed, but in actual fact nothing had changed! Do you see my point? We weren’t different people after the disclosure, but we were treated like different people. At this point Fd---- and I would have to pay girls to date us (pretending that Lester really liked dating girls, which I didn’t). We weren’t going to be taking any girls to the temple. We would never be returned missionaries. When Fd---- went to BYU he would have to put adhesive tape on his legs and wear an undershirt to fool girls into thinking he was wearing garments before he could get a date, and the relationship would only last until he was forced to tell them he was ¼ black and would never have a temple recommend.

But they would still love him “unconditionally”, right? Do you see why the word is so empty in the Mormon Church. Nobody will back it up with any meaningful action.

Rolling back to 1974, everybody would tell us in private conversations about how unfair it was that the doctrine is what it is, but not a sole would go on record to protest the action taken by the stake president. Like I said, in Brazil, nothing would have been done to mom’s status, so we would still remain sealed to her. Nothing would happen to G----- or Fs----’s status, but G----- would most certainly never be advanced to High Priest. For Fd---- and I, our lives would have been very different, but for this point, let’s focus on mom. Like I said, in Brazil we would have been allowed to remain as an Eternal Family.

So why wouldn’t everybody in our family and the Cardston community lobby for an appeal to the action taken by the stake president? They had all professed to have “unconditional love” for us, but let’s presume in my example that not a sole wrote a letter to the First Presidency. Mom and dad both wrote letters and appealed the decision, but there was no tangible evidence of support produced from within the community. P----- (remember, my son in San Diego), can you now begin to see why I’m asking you to demonstrate your unconditional love (by walking out of church if they read the letter from the prophet over the pulpit)?

Returning to the 1974 allegory, couldn’t somebody at least have written, “We think it is unfair that mixed-race people in Brazil are allowed to keep their temple blessings and people here are not!”?

No, they can’t write that. They would be labeled apostate for even having had the thought, and in Cardston, that would be social suicide. There are no secrets in the Mormon Church. Fifteen men are privy to every church disciplinary council. Trickle that down to the Ward Council of the member, and it goes up by another dozen, and then each of those auxiliary leaders have two counselors and a secretary, so for any church action, about 60 people know all the gory details. No dissenters come forward in a climate like that, trust me.

Every single active Mormon who found out about my excommunication (in 2006) cried foul, but not a single letter of support came in when I announced my appeal, and I made a point of asking for these letters.

Is that “unconditional love”? The words are still the same, but the feeling on the part of the “loved” person quickly changes. They soon come to realize that there are conditions all over the place.

Let’s say G-----‘s wife feels betrayed by this. I think their oldest son was born in June 1974, so let’s say this all came down in May. G-----‘s wife has to ask her dad to bless their son in church. She’s not too far into this marriage and she starts to think about a divorce because G----- obviously will not be the head of her household in the Celestial Kingdom, but even with those thoughts that are never spoken aloud to anyone she still repeats the tired words “unconditional love”, hoping against hope that she can convince herself to believe them. G----- knows that the words are empty. He gets all of his signals from how she behaves around him now, so it wouldn’t matter what she says. He knows what he feels.

The year 1974 was J-----’s grad year, I think. If her boyfriend didn’t ask her to grad, but went with another girl, would the 5 weeks of “unconditional love” pronouncements prior to graduation now be seen as “conditional”? Do you think she would have eventually married R-----?

D-----, you were already married in 1974 and pregnant. You were living in Utah and watching all of this come down and your husband and you decide to just sweep it all under the rug, hoping against hope that our Cardston bishop and stake president don’t say anything to your bishop or stake president. Welcome to my closet! The people in your ward in Richmond still treat you the same but you in your heart know you are different now. You also know without a doubt that if they knew your secret, things would be very different. This was my world for over 35 years! I went through my life trying to evaluate how different each and every one of my friends and loved ones would treat me if they knew my secret. The moment that you and your husband decided to stay in the closet would mark the beginning of your questioning the word “love” in general. Your friends weren’t adding the word “conditional” to the phrase, but your subconscious adds it for them.

Fs----, I’m not going to go into a scenario for you, so please don’t be offended. I’ve illustrated all the points that I want you all to understand.

So, directing this letter back to P----- (my son); you pointed out one line in my letter that made my love ‘conditional’: "My logic was that this would be a simple way for them to demonstrate the love that they profess to have for me."

Do you wonder now why I am groping for some tangible piece of evidence that all of these pronouncements of “unconditional love” actually have some substance?

With my illustration above, we have the benefit of history to know that this struggle would have only been endured for 4 short years before the prophet would have received the revelation on blacks and the priesthood. We won’t get into the debate about whether President Kimball was “inspired” by God or by the rapid advance through the courts of the removal of the church’s tax exempt status in the State of Wisconson on the basis of racial discrimination (or Minnesota…can’t remember right now). Suffice it to say that the prophet saw the light, finally.

Let’s presume that in 1974 we were a very “illuminated” family and we prayed about this whole mess and received our own personal revelation that the prophet was wrong, but that the church was still true. As a family, we weren’t so intent on keeping this a secret, but nobody we shared it with would utter a word of acknowledgement. In my case in 2006 I shouted it from the roof tops and didn’t give anybody the luxury of ignoring me or sweeping my comments under the rug. I had received my revelation that a man is born gay, and that it wasn’t just a “lifestyle” that I decided to adopt as my own personal “mid-life crisis”. I wrote this in my memoirs and actively campaigned to have my loved ones see things my way. In the heat of a “letter from the pulpit” moment (May 29th, 2006 when the Mormon prophet commanded all members to lobby for the passage of the Federal Marriage Amendment), my stake president had to shut me up. I was excommunicated for apostasy because my “personal revelation” was too far ahead of the curve.

But, back to 1974; as a family we received this kind of personal revelation that our family would remain an eternal family even in the face of all the church court proceedings that were dismantling our lives and telling us otherwise. As a 1974 family, we are at odds with the majority of the church community, but we find support in the “Mormon underground” community and forge ahead in our belief that we will have all the same blessings that we used to enjoy before Grandma ruined everything by purging her conscience. We find some solace in our personal revelation, but it doesn’t change anything where the rubber hits the road in Cardston. After a year, the phrase “unconditional love” has grown very old because it has not translated into any kind of visible support. D----- and her husband in Richmond, UT are still in the closet but have to live with the question hanging over them that they only enjoy acceptance there because nobody knows their secret. They too have prayed and received the personal revelation that all will be sorted out in the end, so they are as comfortable as they can be living their lie.

The Conclusion (finally):
P-----, you have waffled for three years on your position. Your conversations with me have been vague, and the most common phrase is, “I don’t know,” and then that is always followed by some kind of pronouncement of your “unconditional love” for me. I still have no clue where you stand? I hope you can see now that “having unconditional love for me” tells me nothing. What do you mean when you say it?

Fl----’s stand (my 20-year-old daughter in Washington State) is very clear. She knows I was born gay and she doesn’t care what the prophet says about it. When she says she has unconditional love for me I know that it means that she will go as far as she possibly can to defend me without having to announce to her Mormon universe that her father is gay (because, as we all must admit in our heart, Mormon love is very conditional when it comes to homosexuals). I can live with that. Fl---- will not date TBM’s (true blue Mormons) because she can see that that road ends where J-----’s world is…married to a husband who has to be coerced into being quiet when he attends family reunions that include a gay relative. Fl---- won’t go there.

Fl---- is a “cultural Mormon” and she backs up her proclamation of unconditional love by letting me know that she is not afraid to let the world know that she has beliefs that are at odds with the Prophet. She does want her life to be easier than mine is though, so she stops short of a public pronouncement in her congregation that her father is gay, but she takes me to institute class, invites me to the parties that she goes to while I’m visiting, and even tells her institute teacher to have me play the piano for the opening hymn. I’m Fl----’s dad, no doubt about it in anybody’s mind! If somebody asks if I'm gay, she will happily acknowledge the fact. That is unconditional love in action. Anything less is just pretending.

Contrast that to you, P-----. You’re playing both sides of the fence to the middle. At church you’re TBM, and on the phone with me you’re….? I don’t know. What are you? It's just words to me. After 3 years I have no clue except for these oft repeated words “unconditional love” that have no tangible connection to them. You often quote Gandhi, so I’ll quote him back to you: “Be the change you want to see in the world!”

With the exception of Fl---- and K---- (my niece in British Columbia), you are all at a crossroads, and most of you are just standing there waiting for your prophet to tell you that it is okay to go where your heart wants you to go, but he hasn’t, and it is very possible that in this lifetime, he won’t. The biggest problem is that you would like a third choice, and up until last Friday there was a chance that a third choice was opening up, but the letter from the prophet that is to be read in every Mormon congregation in California on Sunday (June 29th, 2008) slammed that door shut. That is why yesterday I resigned my membership in the Mormon Church by a letter mailed Priority Mail to Salt Lake City.

You are now the 21st century equivalents of a Mormon family who discovered “after the fact” that you have Negro blood. Take yourselves back to 1974 and place yourselves in Uncle M-----‘s position (my mother’s brother, but remember, this is all an imagined scenario, he really was not this open-minded). Let's suppose that Uncle M----- reflects on his sister (my imaginary mom). Because at the time nobody knew she was illegitimate, she was born in the covenant and was therefore automatically sealed to her parents and siblings for eterminty, but at the age of 43 she has been yanked away. She is no longer sealed as a sister to Uncle M-----. He realizes that his nieces and nephews (the 6 of us) are all going to be spending eternity in a terrestrial glory. He pray’s about it, and receives a confirmation that there is a problem…that the doctrine is flawed somehow. He doesn’t know how, but in his heart he just knows that the doctrine is flawed. But he lives in Salt Lake City and is a stake president. Nobody can know that his heart has taken him on a path at odds with the prophet. He pleads with God for guidance, but most importantly, assurance that his sister will be with him for eternity. His prayer is answered, but his answer is at odds with the prophet. He knows he is not an apostate, but he is also not so naïve to think that he wouldn’t be excommunicated for apostasy if he came forward with this personal certainty that he will not deny in his heart.

Now let me take you back to today; to the fork in the road. With the “third option” shut tight, you are now back to only two choices. Either I was born gay, or I chose to be gay. The third option would have been: “I don’t have an answer to this,” but that is no longer on the table now.

Every time you use the word “lifestyle” you tell me that I have chosen to be gay. Every one of you TBM’s use that word. Quoting from your letter, P-----: “Give me and all of us the credit we deserve for doing our best to accept you and your lifestyle”.

It’s not a “lifestyle”. It is my life; a valid life; an authentic life!

When you use the word “lifestyle”, you are standing in judgment of me, and any reference to “unconditional love” that shares a page with the word “lifestyle” is negated and meaningless. What it means is that your “love” does not come with the same kind of support that I would have from you if I “hadn’t chosen this lifestyle”.

I don’t want people around me and in my life who stand in judgment of me, and that includes my own children.

If you cannot find some way to be “ahead of the curve” on this issue, so far as it relates to the Mormon Church, then please come back into my life when the church allows you that privilege.

There were literally millions of Mormons ahead of the curve on the ordination of blacks to the priesthood. It was an enormous burden off of us when we could actually verbalize those feelings.

P-----, (and the rest of you), don’t be so afraid to be ahead of the curve on the issue of a man being born gay. If you feel it in your heart, go with that feeling. Don’t back down when you know that your personal revelation on this goes against current dogma. In my example, back in 1974, Uncle M---- and our entire family received that personal revelation. Millions of Mormons did just that. They shared it among themselves and knew of the support that they put forward in solidarity with each other. Even though Uncle M----- (in my example) would not have been able to write a letter to the prophet in support of our imaginary “appeal”, it wouldn’t have stopped him from telling everybody that he shared a confidence with that he saw an injustice in the "double standard" between Brazil and Utah blacks.

Nobody has done that for me except Fl---- and K----, the two “cultural Mormons” that I can name openly.

I hope you see that nothing I am asking here requires the church to change any doctrine before you can implement any of these actions within our family. To paraphrase Gandhi, “You can be the change you want to see in the church,” right now, starting this very minute. You just need to decide.

Until yesterday, I was going to remain in the church fold as a “cultural Mormon”, but from your reaction, and from the action of the prophet, I can see that the church is proceeding with a plan that will begin a slow and methodical purge of “cultural Mormons”. Until yesterday, the church was gradually distancing itself from the following divisive quote from Elder Dallin H. Oaks (when speaking of parents and a gay son/daughter) on http://www.lds.org/: “An even bigger error is now to become defensive of the child, because that neither helps the child nor helps the parent. That course of action, which experience teaches, is almost certainly to lead both away from the Lord’s way.”, and “We feel great compassion for parents whose love and protective instincts for their challenged children have moved them to some positions that are adversarial to the Church. I hope the Lord will be merciful to parents whose love for their children has caused them to get into such traps.” Last Friday, they moved firmly back to this position and placed the prophet himself in between parents and their gay children, forcing the parents (and thereby all of you, including P-----) to pick one side or the other. In a flash, the third option evaporated. You talk of a growing distance between us. There is greater distance between because Dallin H. Oaks is standing in between us now and pushing you away from me. I’m not moving anywhere. I’m where I’ve always been and I'm staying here, with Mickey at my side. By his own mouth an apostle of God has dictated that if your world includes him (and by extension President Monson now), it cannot include Mickey and I.

Another way of explaining the “third option” would be to imagine that the church will leave the cultural Mormons alone and give them enough room to exist. This is what it looked like they were going to do until this letter came out. Cultural Mormons vote Democrat because they respect a woman’s rights (Democrats are a persecuted class in Utah and Idaho). Cultural Mormons do not oppose gay marriages because they see no threat to themselves by homosexuality. Cultural Mormons will invite their gay son and his partner home for the holidays and let them sleep in the queen size bed in the guest room. Cultural Mormons will attend the wedding of their gay son in California. Cultural Mormons are just regular Mormons who are ahead of the curve a bit. They break trail for the rest of you to follow on. It is very much a generational thing.

Dozens of people have asked me why I would "push P----- away"? Call it what you want, but whether he looks down on me himself or not, I will not allow him the luxury of allowing his peers to pass judgment on me and publicly treat me as a second-class citizen while he stands by and does nothing! Fl--- is active in the church and doesn't allow people to do that. Peter should find a way to do it that works for him too.

P-----, if you are a “cultural Mormon”, we are going to get along just fine, but with the exception of one notable conversation a long time ago (which I bring up later), you haven’t had the spine to verbalize this to me yet. If you are, you will have to stake your claim as a “cultural Mormon” before I believe you. Fl---- has done this. She gets up and walks out of Sunday School classes when they talk about any number of issues where she disagrees with the church, not just on homosexuality. Lately, the bad classes have outnumbered the good classes to the point that she just sits in the foyer rather than even attend Sunday School or Relief Society. She sees the church as backwards in a number of ways. She’s a raging liberal, and she has found herself a safe group of raging liberal Mormon friends. She only dates liberal Mormons, and things are going to be just fine between us and whoever she marries. She will likely even thumb her nose at the fear-mongering and have a civil wedding so that your mother and I can attend, knowing in her heart that if she or her husband died within the “penalty year” that the Lord would take care of it and seal them anyway in the next life (because they were “worthy” to have been married in the temple anyway, but gave family the priority it deserves in this life).

Strangely enough, Fl---- learned how to be a cultural Mormon during an extended stay with Kr---- and her husband (my brother’s daughter here in Florida). Kr---- taught her that if you don’t sleep in your garments or wear them all day in the hot Florida sun, God will not burn the house down and consume your flesh because you left it exposed for too long. They taught her that Sunday School teachers who are “over the top” can be ridiculed and dismissed. I doubt if Fl---- could have gone back to the church without learning all of this from Kr----. I hope that in moving back behind Canada’s “Zion Curtain” Kr---- doesn’t lose that “liberal flair” and I wish her all the best in her efforts to raising a liberal child to continue her work in freeing the Mormons from their “wanderings in the wilderness”.

P-----, get rid of the notion that just because you believe it doesn’t mean that the entire world has to buy into the program that there is only “one path to Heaven”. Cultural Mormons fight to protect everybody’s right to a full and authentic life, even while still firmly believing in all three of the Kingdoms of Heaven and the New and Everlasting Covenant. They aren’t threatened by diversity, and they have a very broad interpretation of how much of this stuff that we don’t understand will all be sorted out in the next life. You’re all wound too tight.

You must all disagree with this idea of reading a letter from the pulpit and telling everybody to get in lock-step politically. It flies in the face of free agency and screams “cult mentality” from every chapel doorway. I challenge you to show me a single country that has improved the quality of life for their citizens by entrenching any literal interpretation of religious scripture into their constitution (especially after using “inspiration” to selectively interpret parts of it more favorably than others so that it favors one religion viewpoint over another)!

If I haven’t made my point by now, there is no hope.

One final important note: If you all haven’t seen enough evidence of it already, I don’t know what it would take, but narrow-minded Mormon doctrine is very toxic to me. It disrupts the balance that I otherwise enjoy. My heart sings when it is around Fl---- and K----- because they give me hope for a better tomorrow for all the gay boys that are yet to come out in the Mormon Church. It will be a never-ending stream because God designed gay boys and girls as part of the diversity intended for this world. We’ve been a part of the fabric of humanity from the dawn of time. Don’t be so afraid to be ahead of the curve on this issue. Become a “cultural Mormon” and admit openly that people are born gay, that they don’t have a choice in the matter, and most importantly, that they are entitled to full and authentic lives. And please, don’t ever use the word “lifestyle” to diminish my existence on this Earth.

My love for you is unbreakable. Having you actively involved in my life is optional. I’m sorry, but that is the way it has to be. If you don’t validate my life by your words and actions, why would I choose to have you around me and my future husband?

These actions will tell me that the words “unconditional love” have real meaning to you:

1) Have a civil marriage and respectfully ask for the right to be sealed right after in the temple if you’re worthy. We’ve had this conversation and you told me that you already see that as a “Mormon culture” penalty, not an inspired piece of doctrine. If you capitulate to perpetuating this practice you will be going against your own stated personal revelation in this regard. In doing so, you will demonstrate to the world that you are still held captive by a cult mentality. I know that this will narrow the field a bit for a TBM to find a good Mormon girl, but Fl----’s not alone out there. They exist. Rest assured that I will not be flying to San Diego to stand outside in the rain like a second-class citizen. The constitution banned segregation in the ‘60’s. It’s not a “church thing” for me. It’s a “civil rights” thing.
2) I don’t care if you walk out of church on Sunday, but at least do something like write a letter to the editor and copy me in on it. There are literally hundreds of letters to the editor showing up in newspapers across the country over this, and in the Salt Lake Tribune one letter had over 90 comments after it within a couple of hours. Read those letters and contribute your comments. I had two interviews with reporters yesterday. There are a group of Mormons who are making rainbow ribbons that they will wear to church on Sunday. Just get off the bloody fence and do something!
3) Reassure me that the person that you marry will have to be someone who will allow Mickey and I to come and visit as a couple and have the dignity of sharing a bed in the guest bedroom. Mickey’s mother never allowed him this privilege. What does that say to a son?
4) Reassure me that the only reason you would not attend my marriage to Mickey will be for financial reasons, not moral reasons, and don’t fudge on this. You’re my son. I know when you are insincere, and that is why we are at this conjuncture right now. You have not conveyed any degree of sincerity in your support, even though the words “unconditional love” have appeared in every letter and every conversation has ended with “I love you”.

I’m sorry P-----, but those are minimums. These are things that never would have even been discussed if your mother and I divorced and I married another woman. I would have been able to keep my temple recommend and see you married in the temple. I would have been able to re-marry in the temple and have you attend that 2nd marriage willingly (assuming that it was an amicable divorce from your mother). I would have been invited to come with my new wife to visit you and stay in the guest bedroom.

So, can you see how “unconditional love” is meaningless on your part if you won’t concede those four points above? You have judged me and find me wanting now. You have diminished me. This really is your burden to bear now, not mine. I’m the same person I was four years ago, but you now see me differently.

Put yourself in the position of Robert Frost:

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

One fork in the road will leave you intact as a TBM. To follow this path means that you will continue in lockstep with the prophet and you will be a good candidate for marriage to some wonderful Mormon girl. Also down this road is a strained relationship with your father. Unless you divorce yourself from him, you will live a double life because you will never be allowed to defend his “lifestyle” because this would preclude you from any leadership capacity. You will be obligated to continue using the empty words “unconditional love” in all of your correspondence with your father because of this double life you are living. I will be an embarrassment to you because you will have bought into Elder Dallin H. Oaks published statement where he has stated unequivocally that to validate my life in any way will see you labeled as an apostate, and then the church will have pity on you! You will always fall into the trap of referring to my life as a “lifestyle” because that is what you have to refer to it as if you are a bishop or stake president.

Let me save you all that trouble by just bowing out of your life now if you are going to choose that path. It will be easier for both of us. Invite me back into your life at some point in the future when it is not so embarrassing in the Mormon Church to have gay friends and family members. This is where I am already at with several of my brothers and sisters. You know who you are, and you now know the conditions that will have to exist before any amount of persuading on your part will bring me back into your lives. I can love you from a distance, and I will not be placated. Will you come to our wedding? Are we welcome to share a bed in your guest bedroom? Will you let your friends at church know that you did that?

Alternatively, P-----, you can choose the other path as a “liberal Mormon”. Unfortunately, if you have always dreamed of the life of a TBM, this comes with a very high price. You may only ever sing in the choir or hand out hymnbooks. You may never be the young men’s president, elder’s quorum president, ward mission leader or bishop because you will not be afraid to admit that you have a gay father and attended his wedding. Your wife (who will have to be a liberal Mormon too), will be shunned in Relief Society because she will not be embarrassed to say how much your children love their grandfathers on their father’s side. Your children will not be embarrassed to talk in primary about their two grandfathers either. I laugh out loud at the thought that the day will come when a child in primary stands up and blurts that out while rehearsing “The Grandpa Song” for Father’s Day. You and your wife, as liberal Mormons, will be fine with this because you willingly took on the role of teaching your children the value of diversity and bringing that value into a church that desperately needs to change if it really does profess that “family is the most important thing”.

As a liberal Mormon, you will forge ahead in the Mormon Church, firm in the knowledge that your personal revelation has affirmed without a shadow of doubt that you are just ahead of the curve on this. With the gradual succession of prophets, the church will some day catch up when the current generation of leadership dies off and someone from your generation is at the helm.

I challenge you to prepare in every way so that you can be that prophet!

I do love you P-----, unconditionally! I just won’t be marginalized. This means that for the good of both of us, if you choose “the road more traveled by”, we both have to admit that my “lifestyle” will contaminate every part of your future. I’m fine with you choosing that, if that is truly what you want, and don’t think I’m bitter. I’m not, but I will be disappointed. Call me selfish if you want, but I’m doing this for myself so that I don’t keep crawling back to all of you to find a bone that you are gracious enough to throw me in order to keep stringing me along. I don’t have to be accepted by everybody in order to be authentic now. I closed that door three years ago for everybody else. It just took longer before I was prepared to give up on family, and a son. Keep me up-to-date on the important events in your life with an occasional phone call and email.

With love,
Your dad.