Head of Mormon church: "Gays have a problem"
The President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, walking corpse Gordon B. Hinckley, wants to solve our "problem."
[UPDATE: Welcome Buzzflash readers. There is an additional section at the end on a gay Mormon's suicide, illustrating the anguish of reconciling his faith with his orientation.]
Why do these religious zealots give me such juicy bits to blog about? This one is incredible. I think that dementia has set in. If God is truly talking through this gentleman, the signal is scrambled. (365Gay.com):
Appearing on CNN's Larry King Live, Gordon B. Hinckley stressed the importance of the traditional family, telling King that of gays, "We love these people and try to work with them and help them. We know they have a problem. We want to help them solve that problem."
King then asked the 94-year old leader of the world's Mormons if the "problem" is one caused by gays themselves or one they were born with.
"I don't know. I'm not an expert on these things. I don't pretend to be an expert on these things. The fact is, they have a problem, Hinckley replied.
"Many people who have to discipline themselves. If they transgress, they become subject to the discipline of the Church. But we try in every way that we know how to help them, to assist them, to bless their lives."
...Earlier this year the Mormon Church was instrumental in getting passage of an amendment to the Utah Constitution banning gay marriage. In a statement published by the Church two weeks before voters in the heavily LDS state went to the polls the Church said that men should only marry women and that "any other sexual relations, including [those] between persons of the same gender, undermine the divinely created institution of family.
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OK. The Mormons don't want you to know that they have unfortunately played a role in practice of "reparative aversion therapy" to rid gay Mormons of their homosexual orientation. Though the church says it is not directly affiliated with organizations responsible for the torture you are about to read about below, gay Mormons have been referred these kinds of centers for "help." Here is an account of the type of "treatment" self-loathing homosexual Mormons put themselves through to avoid being disowned and rejected by both their church and their families.
"I dreamed that I was in a fairly erotic situation with another man, and then midway through, I would just be electrocuted." Jayce Cox says he doesn't have the dream on a weekly basis any more, and he's relieved. Now it's just every couple of months that he bolts up, startled and shaking, in the middle of the night. He attributes this recurring dream to the aversion therapy administered at Brigham Young University.
Jayce tells his story:
It's 1995. He is sitting in an office on the campus of BYU, where his counselor has attached electrodes to his hands, arms, torso and genitals. His Mormon Bishop gave him a referral to the counselor. Jayce is shown pornographic images of men having sexual encounters. Then, ZAP! His body tingles, then aches from the electrical shock administered by his trusted counselor. He is scheduled for twice-weekly sessions for four months. "Toward the end of the program I could press a button and it would stop the shock and then a picture of a woman would come on."
But Jayce is 19 years old and he willingly goes back for more. He gives them his college savings -- $9,000 -- for the treatments which are promised to cure his homosexuality.
"They promised me it would work, and who doesn't want to live a life that's normal and acceptable in your society and have your family embrace you?" he asks rhetorically.
Therapist Ron Lawrence of Community Counseling Center in Las Vegas says this "reparative therapy" is "equivalent to what I would call the kind of torture that people experienced in Nazi concentration camps." Jayce displays the scars on his hands and tells of more scars where the electrodes were placed "on my torso, and [breathing deeply as though reliving some excruciating pain ] on my genitalia."
The words don't come easily to Jayce as he explains why he so willingly gave up his education savings -- and put his earning potential on hold -- in order to endure what Lawrence describes as "assault and battery, abuse".
"You're taught that the leaders of the church will never lie to you, never deceive you and you're taught to believe them blindly," Jayce explains. "I believed the counselors. I believed it would work. I believed that through that [reparative therapy], faith, temple attendance and prayer and fasting I would be healed. I believe that through God anything's possible. And I was told it would work. It probably sounds really naive, but I truly believed it would work."
Jayce's nightmare was also featured in the MTV True Life documentary "I'm Coming Out".
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Related Links (from Affirmation - Learning Center for Mormon Gays and Lesbians):
Panelists Agree Therapy Can't Change Sexual Orientation
Gay Author Visits Utah, Denounces Evergreen
"The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature": A Brief History of Homosexuality and Mormonism, 1840-1980
Homosexuality: A Psychiatrist's Response to LDS Social Services
Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter-day Tragedy
Is "reparative therapy" a ticket to Straightville?
Change Therapy
Anything But Straight]
[UPDATE: Here is a story of a gay Mormon's suicide. From the Affirmation web site (Newsweek, May 8, 2000, pp. 38-39):
Henry Stuart Matis (1967-2000)
It had become an all too familiar sound. Late on the night of Feb. 24, Stuart Matis's mother lay awake in bed, listening to her 32-year-old son pacing his room, unable to sleep. She worried that his depression was worsening. A year earlier Matis had told his parents he was gay, and all three, as devout Mormons, had struggled to reconcile Matis's homosexuality with the teachings of their church. Matis found little comfort in Mormon doctrine, which regards homosexuality as an "abominable" sin. A church therapist instructed him to suppress his sexuality or to undergo "reparative therapy" to become a heterosexual. Matis was especially frustrated by the church's energetic efforts to pass Proposition 22, California's ballot measure banning same-sex marriage. The yes on prop 22 signs that dotted his Santa Clara neighborhood, many placed there by church members, were a reminder of his failure to find acceptance as a Mormon and gay man.
Matis concluded he could not be both. That night, his mother got out of bed and wrote a letter asking the church to reconsider its position on gay Mormons. Only later would she learn that her son had been up writing his own letter, to his family and friends, explaining why he couldn't continue to live. Early the next morning, 11 days before voters would overwhelmingly approve Prop 22, Matis drove to the local Mormon church headquarters, pinned a do not resuscitate note to his shirt and shot himself in the head.
Matis's death galvanized gay activists, who accused Prop 22 supporters of driving him to the grave. Friends and family agree that the church's active support of the measure contributed to his decision to end his life when—and where—he did. Clearly, they say, he was trying to make a statement.
But that is only part of the story. Though gays and lesbians enjoy more rights and protections than ever before—last week Vermont approved same-sex partnerships akin to marriage—gays in search of spiritual support often find their church, synagogue or mosque to be far less accepting. To Mormons, who adhere to a strict moral code of conduct, disapproval by the church can be especially devastating. For Stuart Matis, it apparently was too much to bear. (The Mormon Church declined to comment about Matis. "Suicide is a tragedy of great personal loss for family and community," said a spokesman. "We express our sympathy and have respect for the privacy of the families.")
7 Comments:
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Well, gays DO have a problem. That problem is that they live in a world made up of narrow minded bigoted assholes.
By John Howard, at 12:19 AM -
although i am not gay and, to be honest, am strongly turned off by gay activity, it is none of my business - nor is it any of Bush's business.
By , at 1:45 PM -
As the commenter above said, gays do have a problem, and it goes by many names: bigotry, intolerance, predjudice, ignorance.
By SheaNC, at 3:49 PM
I have more personal experience with the Morman church than I care to think about. Believe me, they do NOT have the market cornered on virtue. Glass houses, you know? -
The movie Latter Days about a young gay Mormon who falls for a Los Angeles night club waiter gives a good insight into the problems Mormons and other "Christian" kids have to face when they're outed to church leaders and family. It's a good gay love story and worth the watch even by us non-gays.
By , at 10:47 AM -
Consider this, Mormons: it's we straight humans who have the big problem - wildly excessive fecundity. We are worse than rabbits, and are wrecking the planet. I am becoming increasingly convinced that homosexuality is nature's belated but entirely proper response to this problem. If I am right, then we should all not only accept it, but it should be encouraged.
By , at 6:54 PM
Craig -
The heads of the mormon church are the most intolerant
By , at 2:00 AM
human beings. That's for sure. I also don't like gay
activity, but it's also not my business.
The book of mormon is a collection of wild dreams and
excerpts from any kind of religion know by the time
the religion was founded.
Worrysome is the presence of their ugly temples and
their lawyers here in Hawaii. The opress any kind of
liberal life style by suing the government. -
Goodness sakes alive! Hinckley a'natural' boy', and maybe a 'natural' geriarch too?
By , at 8:44 AM
In his recent interview with President and CEO of the Mormon Church, Gordon B. Hinckley (I daresay I resist calling Hinckley "Prophet" after this interview), Larry King gets Hinckley to admit he was a 'natural' boy (in the fashion of sinful 'natural men'). But after hearing Hinckley's offensive, unmeasured, and sheer idiotic views on homosexuals, I really have to regard Hinckley as an error-ridden natural geriatric, as well. And, if a prophet at all, Hinckley is one who apparently didn't have his ear piece turned up when God was giving him the low-down on the nature and etiology of homosexuality.
To whit, I've posted below that portion of the transcript in which Hinckley alienates himself from gays and lesbians, and shows the world his idiocy (as opposed to prophecy).
KING: ... we were all people.
But as the mores have changed - for example, I know that the Church is opposed to gay marriage.
HINCKLEY: Yes.
KING: Do you have an alternative? Do you like the idea of civil unions?
HINCKLEY: Well, we're not anti-gay. We are pro-family. Let me put it that way.
And we love these people and try to work with them and help them. We know they have a problem. We want to help them solve that problem.
KING: A problem they caused, or they were born with?
HINCKLEY: I don't know. I'm not an expert on these things. I don't pretend to be an expert on these things. The fact is, they have a problem.
KING: Do you favor some sort of state union?
HINCKLEY: Well, we want to be very careful about that, because that - whatever may lead to gay marriage, we're not in favor of.
We - many people don't get married. Goodness sakes alive. You know that.
Many people who have to discipline themselves. If they transgress, they become subject to the discipline of the Church. But we try in every way that we know how to help them, to assist them, to bless their lives.
KING: It's hard to be a Mormon, isn't it?
HINCKLEY: No. It's wonderful.
KING: Not hard.
HINCKLEY: No, no. It's just wonderful. It's demanding. Great expectations. I should say so. But it's wonderful.
KING: Wonderful to resist the temptations of life?
HINCKLEY: Oh, you don't go around resisting. You just develop a positive outlook and walk forward with faith.
KING: What do you do ...
HINCKLEY: We don't dwell on the negative. We dwell on the positive.
KING: What do you do with temptation? What do you do with it?
HINCKLEY: Set it aside. Put it behind. Leave it there.
KING: And you've been able to do that all your life.
HINCKLEY: I tried to, yes.
KING: Were you ever, as a youngster, did you ever stray?
HINCKLEY: Oh, I was a natural boy growing up, of course I was. Just a freckled-faced kid. Sure.
KING: I'll bet you were.
HINCKLEY: Sure.
KING: I'll bet you had a little rascal in you.
HINCKLEY: Sure I did.
KING: OK. It's good to know ...
HINCKLEY: Sure.
KING: ... that God blessed you this way.
HINCKLEY: I've been blessed so abundantly that I can never get over it. I just feel so richly blessed that I want to extend that to others wherever I can.
KING: Hope you have a long life.
I find it most revealing how gays and lesbians, whether masochistically and mindlessly following the totalitarian edicts of the leaders of the Mormon church and its mytho-history, or not, are referred to by Hinckley in this interview as the categorical "Other'. Hinckley implies all good Mormons are quite apart from and divorced from "Them" -- these so called gays with a "problem" (read: sin) that only Hinckley and other good Mormons can solve. And Hinckley's "solution"? Homosexuals: Discipline yourselves or the Church will take disciplinary action against you.
"I dunno what causes homosexuality", Hinckley appears to say. "Maybe it’s innate and congenital at birth, or maybe they choose it growing up in rural, heterosexual Mormon farming communities. But what I do know is that it's a very big sin, and all you need to do is resist (what may be your perfectly and wonderfully God-given nature), put it aside and behind you, and leave it there, with the positive optimism that the Church's electro-shock aversion therapy and coerced 'trade-in-your-homosexual-for-heterosexual' marriages will cure you." Gee wilikers, maybe -- to turn Nancy Reagan's injunction -- the solution is as simple as, "Just Say 'No' To Homosexuality."
And please, please, Brother Gordon: Next time you and God are chatting about Church and social policy regarding the gays and lesbians in our families, please turn up that ear piece during the part where He tells you about where homosexuality fits into His perfectly good Creation. You know -- where He mentions that the birds and bees have wonderful homosexuals in their midsts too, where He talks about lesbian seagull couplings and same-sex pair-bondings-for-life among penguins in the Bronx Zoo, the lactating, nursing male cats, the male-turned-female wrasses, and the "cross-dressing" squid in Australia, and such. Though you missed it, Brother Gordon, that, too, was an important part of the conversation with God.
You can read the whole transcript of Larry King interviewing Gordon Hinckley at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0412/26/lkl.01.html
I'll be praying (for him),
Shaun Campbell
Honolulu
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