latter day satyagraha

The debate over gay marriage has been raging over the last few years, and culminated in a battle for electoral votes in California last year with the passing of Proposition 8. Mormons were especially active in that ‘war’, having mobilized many members of the LDS church in advocating on behalf of prop 8, in addition to securing financial resources in support of this new legislation that would strip future gay couples in California of their marital rights.

For more information about the Church’s involvement in the Campaign for proposition 8, please check the following website: http://www.preservingmarriage.org

The idea of “war” on behalf of Jesus Christ and in”defending the kingdom of God” comes at the fore of the appeal to action by Apostles in the LDS church broadcast in preparation of the campaign on proposition 8.

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What came first?

As a proponent of nonviolence, a married gay mormon, and as a citizen of Norway, where my husband and I enjoy the benefits of a gender-neutral marriage law, I have followed this period of intense debate in the United States and within the LDS church with great interest and emotion. What came first: my dissatisfaction with LDS church leaders and their avowed militarism, or my homosexuality being at odds with current mormon doctrine? This is the question a well-intentioned fellow mormon asked me recently. Here was my long reply to him:

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Homosexuality was not a reason enough to push me out of church. What vexed me most was the Church’s stance on the Afghanistan and the Iraq wars and their religious significance in a cultural context. Both wars occurred while I was studying peace in Bradford (the UK). I decided to write a paper on mormon nonviolence, the main gist of it being that religions have the potential for both violence and for peace, but circumstances and interpretation are elements that realize those potentials. When I first understood this, I got interested in explaining peace studies through the lenses of mormonism – which resulted recently in this website.

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Gandhi and Captain Moroni

As a kid I watched the movie “Gandhi” and my mother had always been a keen ‘anti-nephi-lehi’. I remember not being allowed to play with guns as a kid.  But when the day came that I was drafted in the military, I chose to go because I remembered an Ensign article about patriotism that I had read as a teenager that made me believe that love of country is a good thing… To be honest, I am a sensitive soul – I am one of those who teared up when I watched E.T. in fifth grade in school. I was teased and bullied throughout my teens, but always responded nonviolently (thanks to Gandhi). Except for the one time I went to my older sister, and identified my ‘tormentors’ to her. Let’s put it this way, they probably wished after having been confronted with her (my Captain Moroni) that they had never laid their hands on me.

But after all those years being committed to nonviolence through believing the restored gospel of Christ, the irony is that I still ended up as a basic training military officer teaching three hundred young kids how to use guns (how christian of me). I spent two years in the military prior to my mission and although I learned a lot about good leadership and bad leadership in the army, I now wish I had learned in Church, already as a “sunbeam”, that the army was not a place for a peaceable follower of Christ. A young recruit pointed it out to me, and this was the most decisive conversation I have ever had.

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Reconciling the irreconcilable

My understanding of satyagraha and the process of me ‘coming out’ happened approximately at the same time. After my mission, I chose to go to a university where I could deal with my conflicting identities of being mormon and being gay. BYU would not have been a suitable place. Although solving my own issues was important, my choice of university was largely based on my longing for wanting to become a peacemaker. Again, BYU would have not been a suitable place.

I had always had a passion for working for peace in the world, this probably also stemming from those mormon beliefs of mine that actually are Christian… I feel therefore that my homosexuality in my treatment of peace and war issues is largely irrelevant, as my longing for working for peace in the world predated my longing for sexual intimacy and for a marital companion. In fact, as I was learning to resolve conflicts through peaceful means, I also learned to reconcile what seemed at first irreconcilable and to bring into harmony what most mormons believe cannot be brought together…

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Change what you are, not who you are

What I learned in my professional training as a peacemaker is for me to first look at the root causes of a conflict, and also to value the importance of understanding how deep culture predetermines a lot of our behavior. So in a way, converting to satyagraha resulted in me understanding what I could change in my life and learn to accept and live with what I could not. In other words, I am able to change my beliefs, but I cannot change my biological coding.

Many have tried before me to change who they are (gay), and the results have been dismal. Instead of focusing on what they actually can change, which is what they are (mormon). In short, it is easier for the LDS church to change its stance on homosexuality than it is for me to change my homosexuality. As much as it was easier for the LDS church to change its stance on blacks, than it was for the blacks to change their blackness. That’s why I laugh at the prospect of a Mormon telling me to change my lifestyle “choice” and sexual “identity”, when in fact he or she is the one with a lifestyle choice and identity much more changeable than mine – but I admit that for many, to change their beliefs seems to be such an insurmountable task.

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The decisive factor

In June 2006, I had moved in with my husband, and we visited a fellow gay member who had just been excommunicated for having ‘come out’ to his ward in testimony meeting. He was understandably devastated. For the first time I saw the violence that the LDS church had done to him – and realized that he was me and I was him. I could not go on being member of a Church that was so ‘violent’ against some of its most vulnerable members, its little ones. It is dangerous being an anti-nephi-lehi among young strippling warriors, when the anti-nephi-lehi is considered the enemy.

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My letter to the Bishop in 2006, although timed with my decision to get married to my man, was mainly addressing the violence that I had found in the gospel during my studies and that had been confirmed to me in my meeting with this poor wayfaring young man of grief. I finally came to my senses and realized that violence, be it direct, cultural or structural, was systemic in the Church and that knowingly or unknowingly, the LDS church was targeting its own minorities. Why this dangerous obsession with uniformity at a large scale, and what about the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in God’s army? I learned through peace studies and through the gospel of a latter day satyagraha that the way to fight evil is by resolving conflicts peacefully. Violence must be challenged, as violence is evil. Inner peace must also be achieved by peaceful means.

For more information about gay mormons, please visit affirmation.org and ldsapology.org