I like reading other people's blogs - it gives me ideas for my own. I was just over on Agnostic Mom's blog and she was writing about her departure from Mormonism, which of course prompted me to share my story for those who haven't already read it or heard it somewhere. I could make this a very very long story, but because I have other pressing matters I'm going to keep it brief. And you all know of course how skilled I am at brevity.
I'm gay.
There, that's it's. That's my story about my departure from Mormonism.
You want more than that?
OK, well, hmmm, let's see...
Just a bit of background is helpful: born to a Mormon mom and non-Mormon dad. Dad didn't care that mom wanted to raise us Mormon, he just didn't want anything to do with it. My mom tried to overcome her guilt for having married outside the church by vowing that at all costs her children would be raised Mormon and all go to the Celestial kingdom, come hell or high water. Anyway, not sure what you call someone who's half born in the covenant and half not; maybe "born in the cove" ?
That's me I guess - born in the cove instead of the covenant because my dad wasn't a Mormon and the spell couldn't quite be cast the way it needed to be. I totally went along with everything I was taught and did pretty much everything I was told to do. But you know how it is when you have a pair of shoes that don't quite fit right? Yeh, well that was me and Mormonism. Maybe a better analogy would be a pair of underwear that's too tight because that's what Mormonism felt like around my balls. Way too tight.
I think if I had to pinpoint the moment when I began to realize something wasn't quite right, was when everybody started talking seriously about me going on a mission and all I could think of was, "I don't want to go on a mission." I really really really didn't want to go even though it'd been my mom's plan for me from the moment of my birth to go on a mission. My twin went on schedule at 19 but I was digging my heels in and refusing to put in my papers. I don't even really know why I didn't want to go - I just didn't. And I think that's when I first began to wonder what was going on with me and Mormonism. About the same time my homosexuality, emphasis on the sexuality, began to kick in with a vengeance.
As it turned out, going on a mission was a pretty amazing experience for two major reasons. One was that I was sent to Rome where I'd grown up, and the other was that while over there in Italy I fell in love with and surrendered my vriginity to a beautiful young man named Gianni. I baptized lots of people who promptly left the church after I left the country - but the person I fell in love with and made love to is still my friend all these thirty years later. It wasn't a wasted two years, that's for sure!
Anyway, here's what happened over there in Italy: I found myself horribly embarassed to tell people about Joe Smith and the golden plates and stuff. I literally couldn't get the words out of my mouth. I felt foolish telling people anything at all about Mormonism. I felt like I was invading their privacy and disrespecting the religion of their land and making a fool out of myself in the process. At first I succumbed to the pressure of teaching the lessons in those rare moments when someone would listen. But as time went on I simply refused to tell people about the Joe Smith stuff and would pipe in about other things that felt less insulting to everyone's intelligence. I let my companions do the lessons and I did the socializing and schmoozing and cooking.
That was when I knew for sure that something between me and Mormonism was off. It didn't register as "the church might not be true". It just registered in my brain as "something's not right here. Don't know what it is, but it isn't right." Rather than try and figure it out I just kept going along with "the plan."
It took me almost ten years to extricate myself from Mormonism - and they were a very messy ten years to say the least. (Elaborations on those messy ten years are linked at the bottom of this entry.) I don't know for sure why I held on as long as I did, other than for the fact that Mormonism was all I'd ever known and it had been drilled too deeply into me to just casually toss aside. I kept trying to make it work but the more I tried the less it worked until I finally reached a point where it didn't work at all.
My ex-wife and my daughter and I used to attend Hollywood Ward back in the eighties. You remember that bar scene in the original Star Wars? That's what attending church at the Hollywood Ward was like. Anyway, I was sitting in an elder's quorum meeting one Sunday morning and the discussion turned to homosexuality and the stuff that was coming out of everyone's mouths was such a violent attack on my soul that I felt like I was about to burst into flames and explode. I couldn't speak even though I wanted to. I just sat there feeling on fire and like I wanted, literally, to kill everyone in the room.
(Tell me, does every gay boy have fantasies about reenacting the scene from Carrie or is it just me? Love you Sissy!)
After the meeting I met the girls at the front door of the church and as we walked out and down the steps I remember distinctly saying to myself, "It's over. I'll never go back there again." I went home that Sunday and took my garments off and made it clear to my wife that I was done with Mormonism for good. The garments had come off before for other various and sundry reasons - but this time it was for good. Didn't cut the symbols out, didn't dispose of them respectfully. I just took the fucking things off and threw them in the trash. "Take that, you swine underpants. Never again will you torment my buttcrack."
I knew absolutely nothing about Joe Smith's whoring or Brigham Young's murdering insanity or any of the other truths & lies about Mormonism's history. All I knew was that I was gay and that there was no place for me in Mormonism. I had asked myself for many years, "Why would I want to stay somewhere I wasn't wanted?" At 29 years old I asked the question one last time and finally answered it: I didn't want to be somewhere I wasn't wanted. So I left. And let me tell you, when I walked out that door I slammed it so hard behind me that all over Hollywood the ground shook as if in an earthquake. It took me almost twenty years before I would even talk about Mormonism again.
In retrospect it was clear that Mormonism had never been a good fit for me. I was never able to turn the flame on my soul down far enough to satisfy the Mormon need for passivity and flatline thinking. It was irritating to me to have to sit through church meetings hour after hour after hour. If it hadn't been for playing the organ for every single meeting I probably would not have continued attending. I hated fasting - it made me feel angry and resentful, not spiritual. The only burning I ever felt in my bosom was during sex and even then I think the burning was a little lower than my bosom. I never read the Book of Mormon because it was so grotesquely boring that I couldn't get past the first two pages without wanting to masturbate or sleep or something. (Bet you can't guess what I always ended up doing...)
Mormonism wasn't fun for me - it was an irritant and a source of constant upset and unhappiness. But I kept going along with it because it was what I'd been taught and I was fully indoctrinated as most young Mormons are. My leaving wasn't an intellectual thing, it was more of an emotional and physical thing. Mormonism didn't fit. It never did and it just took me 29 years to get uncomfortable enough with it that I was willing to finally walk away.
At 52 what's become clear to me is that even though I have memories of having been a Mormon, there is no trace of the poison still left in my system. It's all been purged and I'm free. If you met me in real life you'd be very hard-pressed to find even a trace of anything that would point you in the direction of what once was. The Mormon boy is long gone. May he rest in peace.
For those of you interested, more stories about the boy born in the cove can be found here:
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