Rainbow Bridges
Spanning the Gap Between LDS and LGBTQ
As a child, I loved going to Lake Powell in the summers with the Prowells or the Petersons. My dad was an LDS institute teacher, therefore we didn’t have a boat.
Waterskiing on glass. Exploring the trails and hunting for blue-belly and whiptail lizards. Jumping and diving off of small cliffs. Swimming in the clear, lukewarm water.
One Sunday, my friend Brian’s dad was trying to help us keep the Sabbath day holy by holding a family testimony meeting. Just as his most tender expressions of love for the gospel and his family were welling over, my fishing pole about 30 feet away bent wildly like a palm tree in a hurricane!
I jumped up and ran to catch the fish and save my pole. Everyone stood up to watch, wrecking his spiritual moment as I created mine in the form of a huge striped bass!
On another trip to Lake Powell with my friend Kevin, I remember stopping in a beautiful finger canyon with a sandy beach and nearby 10–20 foot cliffs.
I had a crush on his older sister and her friend. Yes, both. As they did one-and-a-halfs into the water, my 11-year-old body made it clear that I wasn’t gay!
Back then, it was common for us to make gay jokes. Various words and phrases come to mind that I won’t repeat here.
It wasn’t just gay jokes. My circle of white, Mormon, straight, male friends and neighbors made all kinds of jokes.
Jokes about women, Blacks, Mexicans, Poles, Asians, Indians, skinny people, fat people, people with acne, people with any kind of disability, people who wore glasses, etc.
They were all fair game among many kids and adults. But it was OK because we were good people.
More than “good”, we were God’s chosen people on the earth. The valiant ones in the pre-existence who were reserved for the latter days to prepare the earth for Christ’s second coming.
Not fence-sitters like the cursed Blacks. Not wicked like the gays who chose perversion and lust over righteousness. Not slothful and wild like the “Lamanites”, though we were doing our best to help them blossom like a rose.
Back at Lake Powell, Kevin’s parents also wanted to honor the Sabbath by visiting some pioneer sites via boat. Hall’s Crossing. Hole in the Rock. We learned about the hardships and accomplishments of our pioneer ancestors.
That day, we visited another amazing site: Rainbow Bridge.
Utah’s Rainbow Bridge is known as one of the world’s highest natural bridges, formed over millennia.
In the last few decades, another Rainbow Bridge has been forming. Not a natural bridge. More of a dangerous and costly public works project that has displaced, injured, and killed many.
As with any large, painful project, people may question whether it’s worth the tremendous cost. Why build this new Rainbow Bridge?
Yesterday morning as I vacuumed up bits of paper, broken crayons, and crackers from the floors and pews in my local chapel, such ideas raced through my mind and heart.
Why, as an active Latter-day Saint, do I care about this Rainbow Bridge? How does it fit within my religious convictions?
The other day a friend (and a personal hero) Jen Blair shared a question. It mirrored similar questions I had seen since Pride month started.
I first knew her as Jenny Meikle. Her brother Jess and I were close friend through junior high and high school.
I remember the way she would interact with two of the guys her age in her neighborhood. She was their friend. One of the guys was known at school for stealing Sony Walkman’s and selling them for cheap. I’m sure she knew that and other things. As a “good Mormon girl”, instead of staying away from them, she was their friend.
I had a brother like those two guys.
She was on the Alta High seminary council the year before me. I looked up to her. A few years later, my wife and I happened to move into the same Murray ward with her and her husband.
We both loved the church. We were both raised in strong active families. We both had many privileges and learning opportunities. We were both on the path toward a lifetime of gladly “building the kingdom”.
As adults, we both left the church.
My family used to love to drive across the I-90 bridge between Seattle and Bellevue. Even on windy or rainy days when the waves of Lake Washington splashed so seemingly close to the floating road, it was beautiful. A safe passage.
Around 2002, Geoff worked with me at my job in North Seattle. We were both talkative and friendly.
I knew him for months before he confused me by referring to his husband Jeff. Jeff and Geoff. I tried to hide my shock. Before I could recover, I had accepted his invitation to come to his house so we could meet each other’s families.
I knew of gay people in my extended family and elsewhere. But Geoff was the first openly gay person I really knew. He didn’t fit my stereotype. No limp wrist. No lisp. Just a regular nice guy.
As we drove to his nearby home, I was very nervous, full of conflicting feelings between the friend I had gotten to know and the understanding I had about gay people, formed in my church.
I had read Miracle of Forgiveness multiple times. I knew that prophets only spoke the truth. Was Geoff secretly a horrible person? How else could he be gay?
He gave us a tour of the house, which felt a little gay with the bead curtains leading into the basement. On the wall, the gay equivalent of a large SI Swimsuit Edition poster hung with two men kissing.
I thought I was going to throw up.
They described their wedding at their church. They were Christians?!! How was that possible? That church must have apostatized far more than most.
Within 20 or 30 minutes, I wanted to leave and made an excuse. When they kindly invited us back for a barbecue, I avoided a clear response.
Geoff, if you ever read this, it took me a few years to overcome some deeply entrenched ways of thinking. You were building a Rainbow Bridge when I was only capable of perceiving a need for demolition.
Many of you have a Geoff. Someone who shattered stereotypes and past explanations for homosexuality.
For each of us who want to show our support, it started with a Geoff. Someone whose goodness we knew, even if it took us many years to fully recognize or acknowledge it.
Jen Blair gave birth to her amazing “Geoff”.
Her question was expressed over a few paragraphs. At first I wanted to respond until I saw her request that only LGBTQ people comment.
Like she’s been doing since her son came out and she became a Mama Dragon, she was creating a safe space for LGBTQ friends to share their feelings and experiences.
When Joseph Smith learned of a friend’s hardship, people expressed sorrow. According to the story, he pulled out his wallet and declared something like, “I’m sorry to the tune of $10. How sorry are you?”
This is how Jen was raised. Latter-day Saints generally seek to love and serve. To help others, especially those who are the most vulnerable. To stand up for things even when it’s hard!
It’s our attempt to be like Christ. To develop divine attributes that transcend natural tendencies toward selfishness and base appetites.
But we have our blind spots. We have certain beliefs and traditions that permit us to fear and demonize certain people without perceiving our actions as harmful or hypocritical.
Apostates, homosexuals, liberals, Blacks, feminists, socialists, intellectuals. Enemies. As our scriptures teach, it’s OK to protect ourselves from enemies, even if it requires hurting them.
As one Book of Mormon story tells, beheading a passed out, defenseless drunk person is acceptable if it serves greater purposes.
This is part of our ever-evolving history. It’s part of the Ongoing Restoration.
Like the winds that formed Rainbow Bridge in increments only perceivable at a geologic time scale, we are changing.
Perception. The white background of this page is really a rainbow when you look at it through a prism. Cliche, but true.
This Rainbow Bridge between Latter-day Saints and our LGBTQ friends and family is slowly rising. Like the old Salt Lake Temple, sometimes years of progress is undone and buried when we’ve felt threatened.
The cost of this massive construction project has far exceeded any foreseen budget of time, money, pain, and life.
Two years ago I was re-baptized. Jen and I are in different spaces now, but I still greatly admire her efforts. I see her as a Christ-like person.
Jen’s question to her LGBTQ friends was something like:
How do you perceive it when your Latter-day Saint friends show support for you while simultaneously being deeply committed to beliefs and an institution that has undermined your existence?
She was talking about people like me.
Each June, progressive Latter-day Saints like me don our Pride colors on social media and elsewhere. We express love and support.
The liberal circles that surround us shower us with adulation, helping us feel like the apex of nuance and enlightenment.
Aren’t I wonderful!
Poor me! Some of my fellow saints still don’t see the light and even question my commitment to God and our church when they see me supporting the gays.
A fellow sufferer am I. Like Paul, a fool for Christ’s sake.
Just as another form of pride emerges, so do the harder questions. Like Jen’s question. Knocking me off my privileged little perch.
Rightly so.
Last year, she encouraged me to learn more about LGBTQ history. I accepted her challenge.
I had never heard about the Stonewall Riots until last year. Even through all my years out of the church, I had never even heard of Stonewall.
As I listened to the audiobook, some parts were uncomfortable. Perhaps a little R-rated.
The drag queens so, easy for religious people to dismiss as flagrant sinners, were some of the heroes of this story.
“T”
Do I have my words right? Unlike the 12-year-old me, I want to say it right and with respect. Is it for transgender or transvestite. Is transvestite considered a slur or is it an appropriate description.
Jen knows the answers to these questions because she has made it a priority to know.
There is so much more to these people. In many ways, the stories that unite them are very similar to my Latter-day Saint history. Full of misunderstanding and persecution… mostly caused by their sexual identity and practices (polygamy). Today we‘re learning more about another axis, gender identity.
We have some common ground. We have something upon which we can keep building this bridge!
My wife just got me this new book by Blair Ostler, a queer Latter-day Saint. I’m excited to learn more.
I wish I could wrap this post up with a tidy conclusion that allows me to feel both consistent and good.
I can’t. In many ways, I’m a hypocrite.
I don’t want to choose. I don’t want to slice the baby in half to feel a sense of justice. I want the religion I love and I want to celebrate Pride.
I want to contribute my time, talents, and other resources (including money) to my church. And I want a church that stops using those resources to deny basic rights and dignity to those who choose a different path.
I want to honor those who lead us while recognizing that they have caused harm by upholding teachings in the name of God, knowing later generations have rightly discarded some of those beliefs.
I have hope that things that have been “true” in the past won’t be considered true in the future. I have hope that people who once felt rejected and demonized and hurt and discarded, like barking dogs at the heels of the caravan of my church, won’t always have that experience.
Whether you see the ongoing restoration as a divine movement or a pragmatic process run by savvy businessmen for continuous improvement, I have faith in our ability to progress.
I have faith in the goodness of Latter-day Saints. That we want to follow Christ and we want to treat others as the best of our beliefs teach us.
I have faith that so many amazing people who have left our church to follow their consciences are not only making life better for themselves and others, but are also making our church better.
Each person who leaves because they don’t feel love in our church is someone’s friend, child, parent, or sibling. When people leave, it changes all of us.
Views that were once firmly black and white gradually refract into a rainbow that is far more glorious… and true.
To my LGBTQ friends in this month of celebration, I say I’m sorry.
I’m sorry for the role I’ve played in hurting you.
I’m sorry.
I honor your anger. I honor your disgust with God and religion — weapons that have been wielded against you and deprived you of hope.
To those who feel it, I honor your disgust with me and people like me.
I honor your goodness. I honor who you were born to be. Your ability and willingness to hold a space of love for people who should have loved you.
And…
Today, I celebrate you.
At the risk of coming across as using your pain to elevate myself, I honor and celebrate you.
One of our prophets was famous for saying, “Beware of pride.” We use words in many ways.
Today, I feel pride for you.
My kids are much better at it than I am. They will treat your children better than I have been capable of doing.
Will you allow me to help build this bridge? This Rainbow Bridge? Despite the contradiction you see in me? If you can’t, I accept it. If you can…
I don’t want to be the foreman. I’m an unskilled laborer who has shown up very late. Will you allow me to shovel some dirt or stir some concrete?
Will you allow me to try to help build this Rainbow Bridge?
