The Love-Doctrine Tightrope
LDS news is abuzz with Elder Holland's address to BYU faculty last week. His comments about gay students was particularly concerning, especially when he lamented how few people were willing to wield a "musket" in defense of eternal marriage doctrine (which doctrine is exclusively heterosexual when it is not a polygynous variation thereof). Perhaps a blunderbuss might have been a more apt weapon.
War imagery has always been problematic in religious discussion specifically because humans are the WORST at correctly identifying an enemy. We can't do it. A religious person wielding any kind of projectile weaponry is guaranteed to injure someone they should be protecting.
If I may generalize dangerously for a moment, I think that our problem is that in defense of "doctrine" we end up fighting people, and people are never the enemy, no matter what ideas they espouse, and no matter how militant we feel they are.
Some "people are enemies" confusion even cauterized our origins, as the early pioneers failed to appease their neighbors and incurred mob violence. I do not mean to blame the early church for their own victimization: there is never any excuse for tarring and feathering, for gang rape, for murder, for threats of murder. And suffering those things, any human would be pushed to defend themself against the people attacking them. In the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, such defense is justified (and even rather tastelessly glorified: see Captain Moroni/Title of Liberty costume at the Jan. 6th insurrection).
Unlike those early days, we are no longer the victims. On the contrary: we are sometimes found to be the perpetrators. Yes, members of our group sometimes go against our own precepts and commit hate crimes and acts of violence. This is where the nuance of defending "doctrine" can be essential in our time.
Yes, we institutionally (sometimes not individually) believe that only marriage between a man and a woman can unlock the highest covenants and blessings. By wording it that way, I do not mean to mitigate its impact on and exclusion of anyone for whom that kind of commitment is impossible or undesirable. It feels like a father playing keep-away with a child's entire inheritance. We're pretty sure God wouldn't do that, but we don't know enough to say what he would do instead on this specific issue. We just know that He gives commandments, and He gives love.
Another metaphor I came up with today was that of dangling a "carrot" (reward) in front of somebody allergic to carrots. In what way is the promise of an eternal heterosexual marriage supposed to entice a gay man, for instance? In that scenario, marriage could be seen as a sacrifice he must make for some other reward, instead of the enriching, nuclear family which is purported to be its own reward. For him, such a marriage might be a serious sin if he were incapable of making a loving home with that wife because he is a divided person.
My family took some time to visit Glacier National Park this summer. We stayed on waterfront property with a dock that included canoes, kayaks, and other toys. I love kayaks, and after some serious effort and a couple of injuries, I managed to get into one. After I played around on the lake for a while a motorboat started making waves, and because I was alone on the water I thought it safer to make my way back to the dock. When I tried, however, I found that my kayak would not steer straight. It kept turning one way, then another, so that my path back to the dock looked more like an elaborate calligraphy flourish than a simple journey from the water to the shore.
Eternal marriage between man and woman only is the doctrine that we are supposed to defend, but it's profoundly unfair. The people who wrote it and defend it are mostly those people for whom it is what they want anyway, or think they already have. The current of their lives pushes them into that harbor without engines, sails, or oars. They're just along for the ride until they come ashore. Because it comes naturally for them, they use the naturalist fallacy to defend it. They use confirmation bias to bolster instinctive homophobia, which is a sin. But seriously - if you think homosexuality is a sin because it makes you squick, then how do you feel about shoplifting? Payday loans? Drinking coffee? If you don't also squick about those things, then you're just homophobic, not holier than your friendly neighborhood lesbian.
When you hate a truth about a person that they may carry proudly, when you call it a "sin" and give into your abhorrence of it, when you connect thoughts of them to it, then you are setting yourself above them and falling into the trap of self-righteousness. To love a person the way that Jesus loves them, you cannot hold anything back. You cannot say "I love you up to here but no further. I hate this sin of yours."
Today one of the bishop's counselors (the one who doesn't wear a mask at church, if you want to have complicated feelings about this) pointed out that we do not have the burden of judging. We don't mete out ministering along some sliding visual righteousness scale. We love and serve wholeheartedly.
I would love to end the conversation there, but I can't. It doesn't end there for gay disciples. Even if I am an ally, even if I love wholeheartedly, (parallels to "even if I'm not racist and painstakingly eliminate all microaggressions. . .) gay disciples are still judged not just by homophobic people, but by the church as an institution - by bishops, whose job is to be a judge in Zion, and other priesthood authorities. A gay disciple's life current does NOT push them toward the harbor, and if they ever reach it, it is only through a lot of effort, and possibly some injury. It doesn't help that so many members, trying to "hate the sin" have created even stronger currents pushing them away.
If you want to walk the line between love and doctrine, you HAVE to give up heteronormative rom-com sappiness and believe and defend the idea that there is something worth more than romantic love - something worth sacrificing the possibility of a family on earth for. THIS is where I feel I might be able to pull out a weapon in defense of the gospel - that place where I remind you that Jesus, whose baptismal covenant is a matter of record, currently has no canonized documented marriage beyond the metaphor of the bridegroom (the bride was the church, and got pretty slut-shamed, I gotta say).
We have to stop talking about marriage and children on earth as if everyone has them or everybody wants them (the way that Elder Holland griped about the podium being usurped by someone's coming out, because it wasn't relevant to everybody listening), and open the teachings and blessings of full fellowship of the church to those who live their covenants, and obey the commandments, but cannot strive for a heteronormative nuclear family. We have to make a loving space for difference of circumstance or constitution. No finger pointing. No tacit judgment of those whose path looks different. No glorifying the closet or sticking people in the cupboard under the stairs. No marginalizing those who may choose to be single. You do not know what they could have chosen instead.
Do you believe that God will keep his promises to his children? Do you believe that God would give bread, and not a stone? How does your thinking change when you realize that God loves and makes covenants with children for whom heterosexual marriage feels like a stone?
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