 |
|
| Affirmation Calendar 2013
January 22 January 24 January 26 February 1 February 10 September 12-15 |
The Guide Includes Some Excellent Advice, But It Also Borrows from Discredited Theories
by Edward Jones III
Update: As of January 30, 2013, the Bishop’s Guide for Same-Sex Attraction has been removed from the website providentliving.org and so some of the links below might not work. We apologize about the inconvenience and as soon as we know more about this developing situation we will update this post again.
The LDS church has published an online guide to assist bishops in dealing with Mormons “with same-sex attraction” (SSA) and their families. The recommendations in the guide track concepts introduced last month in the church’s website MormonsAndGays.org.
The Bishop’s Guide consists of an introductory paragraph, sections titled Seek to Understand, Help for the Individual and Family, and Using Ward and Stake Resources. There are also sidebars briefly stating the church’s position and pointing to additional resources. The website encourages viewers to use a feedback section at the bottom of the page to provide an honest appraisal of the guide’s contents.
There is much to praise here. Bishops are encouraged to ask open-ended questions about people’s lives, families, relationship with God, and talents that could be used in the ward. In the “Help for the Individual and Family” section, individual worth as a child of God is emphasized, along with spiritual strengths, the need to establish supportive relationships and serve others, and continuing to meet with the bishop for support.
The strongest section of the guide is “Using Ward and Stake Resources.” Here, bishops are instructed to avoid offering marriage, missionary service, or “radical therapy [that] will eliminate” their “same-sex attraction.” Leaders are encouraged to create a culture in which all members will feel loved, to support family members’ efforts to respond with love, and to inform families that their love for their family member is compatible with commitment to the gospel.
These instructions represent a significant step forward for the Church and are sure to have a great impact on the lives of gay Mormons and in particular gay Mormon youth. They are not without significant problems, however. The guide gets off to a rocky start with references to individuals with “same-sex attraction” rather than “LGBT people” or “gays and lesbians,” terms most gay people prefer. The introduction mentions the “intense shame, unworthiness, and fear of rejection” a lesbian or gay person may feel, without acknowledging that those feelings are frequently caused by the church itself and its members.
The guide refers to “unworthy actions,” “temptation,” and “triggers,” —words that denigrate any intimate same-gender contact, no matter how loving. A subsection on seeking professional help —ideally, the Guide states, from LDS Family Services— seems to reinforce negative stereotypes of LGBT people by associating same-sex attraction with “addictive behaviors, emotional health challenges, abuse, and other related issues.” LGBT Mormons are counseled to develop “healthy, nonsexual, same-gender relationships,” borrowing from now-discredited theories that homosexuality is caused by unsatisfactory past same-gender relationships.
The ambivalence of the Church’s response throughout the guide (as well as the mormonsandgays.com website) is encapsulated in the two scriptures listed in the guide’s Additional Resources section. First Nephi 11:17 suggests humility and love on the church’s part: “I know that [God] loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.” But Doctrine & Covenants 98:1-3 promises that “all things wherewith you have been afflicted shall work together for your good,” suggesting that our sexual orientation is an affliction or tribulation to be struggled with until some future time. The Additional Resources section also unfortunately refers to articles and interviews that are no longer consistent with the church’s position, creating the potential for more confusion.
In sum, the Bishop’s Guide: Same-Sex Attraction contains some excellent advice that extends the positive steps taken in the Church’s recent website. Affirmation hopes to work with the church to remove or recast elements of the guide that are inconsistent with the Church’s own policy or the lived experience of LGBT Mormons.
I am pleased to see that the L. D. S. church is taking some positive steps in its efforts to minister to all its members, including gays and lesbians.
Indeed. This is an improvement. I am surprised how far the church has come in the past ten years, and it keeps me hopeful of greater progression in accepting the LGBT community. I also realize that though the church is stepping out to ‘accept’ their ‘ssa’ brothers and sisters, they are careful to state that the acceptance and inclusion of gay men and women in the church is determined by their religious observance of the church standards of today, which in the end excludes any who accept the gay lifestyle.
Some good responses are already coming in! Please share your thoughts. The more individual responses we receive, the more meaningful and representative our collective response will be.
This looks like another step on the path toward accepting our gay and lesbian, bi and trans and questioning folks in the Mormon traditions, but we all know there are many more steps to be taken until the churches arrive there at the goal.
Another big step will be the day when the whole conversation can be caste in the unconditional love of God, and with the milk of human kindness, instead of there being some loving instructions and some old fashioned less-than-charitable words from less loving religious sources and old non-current scholarship.
There may be some question if the church can do this in the way the GLBTI+ will find acceptable. Maybe we need to make a draft that is how we would like it to be and share it with them as a suggestion. Correlation may not know how to word it and may welcome the suggested wording for a new revised guide.
I look forward to the time when GLBTI+ folks may see their orientations as eternal gifts from loving parents in heaven who have learned throughout evolutionary events to welcome diversity and work with it. I do not see my own orientation as flaring into existence in this life and going away in the next life. I like it and hope it endures forever, throughout all eternity. I see it as a part of my own vision of the Revised Standard Plan of Salvation.
I just realized that this year is the 50th anniversary of my LDS baptism in 1963 when I was 13 years old. Some of our family attended the Hill Cumorah Pageant that summer and later took lessons and were baptized into a tiny branch in Cortland, NY. I was a member for 30 years before resigning over GLBTI issues. I sometimes wonder if I will ever rejoin, then I realize the LDS have not yet fully relearned their lessons about politics and acceptance and personal free agency.
Loren Fay
Albany, NY.
Went to the Provident Living site today and there’s no guide about SSA there, just ones about employment and overcoming pornography. Did they perchance get moved to a different place?
And does anybody still have copies?