God Hates Fags
At some point as I grew up I learned that God hates homosexuals. I don’t know exactly how I learned it. Probably the same way I learned that sex is dirty. I absorbed small things that people said and the way they reacted to homosexuality. Later I learned about the scriptural sanction for hating homosexuals. Everything and everyone important to me taught me to be disgusted by homosexuality and to hate those who practiced it. To be fair, my impressions from my childhood may have been the black and white thinking of a child. I might have taken everything too literally.
But my prejudice extended beyond my childhood. As an adult member of the LDS church, I canvased for an amendment to the Constitution of the State of Nevada which bans any marriage other than that between a man and woman. The effort was organized by the local university ward. We met at the church building and organized therein.
As an adult, I despaired at the first airing of Will & Grace, a sitcom with an openly gay main character. I noticed the worrying trend of famous people like Ellen Degeneres coming out. Society was becoming more tolerant of wickedness. My Mormon faith consoled me that Jesus would be coming again to wipe this wickedness from the face of the Earth. I wasn’t alone in my attitudes. Other members of the Mormon church supported my attitude. Some members of the church still hold these values. The LDS culture supports this bigotry.
I excused my bigotry by saying that I loved the sinner but hated the sin. I don’t know whether anyone is genetically gay, but I do know that people intimately connect their homosexuality with their sense of self, just like heterosexuals. Causing homosexual people to hate homosexuality is no different than causing them to hate themselves. Seeking to draw the line between sin and sinner is naïve.
My Young Men’s President planted the seed of my eventual change of heart. When I was a teenager, he told the young men in my class that homosexuality was no worse than adultery. That blew my mind! How could he think such an absurd thing? After all, homosexuality was a crime against nature. I thought about that for a long time.
I finally let go of my bigotry when I lost my faith in God. I had no God to justify the righteousness of my hatred. I saw how ugly my attitudes had been.
Attitudes toward homosexuality have changed tremendously since I was a child, even within the LDS church. I hope that the bigotry of the past will go away just like old Mormon attitudes about miscegenation and birth control.
It shames me that the video God Hates the World (via Pharyngula) represents my attitudes of the past. As a Mormon, I thought most of those same things, but I was too politically correct to say them out loud to the wrong people. At least these people are honest, even if their gleeful hatred disturbs me.
The toddler’s solo at the end breaks my heart. Is that not child abuse? I hope she can free herself from their indoctrination.
Please forgive me for my part in spreading bigotry in the world.
Tags: Atheism, belief, bigotry, Christianity, compassion, homosexuality, judgment, LDS, love, marriage, mindfuck, Mormonism, racism, religion, sexuality, video
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June 28, 2007 @ 9:41 am
Read Growing Up Mormon: Alma the Lamanite Part Five, though it’s better if you read from the beginning.
June 29, 2007 @ 6:27 am
I really was raised by my TBM family to be accepting and loving, and to think that things like racism and homophobia were completely ridiculous. In fact, that atitude, especially with regards to homosexual people, was one of the pieces of grit that rolled around, irritating my testimony more and more toward the end. I ultimately thought that the Church’s policy towards homosexuals was not Christlike, and that the Church was simply dead wrong for engaging in politics to ban gay marriage.
I’m not trying to be self-congratulatory or anything. just saying that I somehow managed to duck the homophobia implants or something.
June 29, 2007 @ 6:28 am
Also, God hates the world because it doesn;t do whatever he says? What is God, five years old? Come on. Grow up, Fred.
June 29, 2007 @ 7:45 am
You’ve been tagged!
http://byzantium.wordpress.com/2007/06/29/eight-random-facts/
June 29, 2007 @ 9:50 am
My wife also pointed this out to me that I shouldn’t paint all Mormons or even all of Mormonism with too broad a brush. Some Mormons certainly lack prejudice against homosexuality. I think younger Mormons see less and less of the hatred that characterized Mormon culture in the past.
At the same time, I wasn’t an isolated bigot. Some members still hate homosexuality. Some members are bigots but feel justified by their religion. The church’s official policies are bigoted. I feel justified in calling the church and its attendant culture bigoted (even though there are exceptions and things seem to be improving).
July 2, 2007 @ 7:07 am
I think I have to agree with your wife here. I certainly never “hated fags” growing up, even though I was in a very conservative, active LDS household. I really believed that the “hate the sin, love the sinner” thing was possible. And I still think it is an important way to separate people from their actions. I don’t anymore believe that homosexuality is a sin. I recently devoted an entire blog post to this topic, including LDS perspectives of homosexuality.
The lame thing about that video is that they actually sing pretty well! What a waste of talent. Look, this a pretty extreme group. Most religous Americans would not go to anywhere near those lengths. And I disagree that belief in God and condemnation of gays go hand in hand. I am personally not a believer, but I know that there are Christian denominations in the U.S. today that are very accepting of gays, especially the United Church of Christ.
But the church really has put itself in a bind. With no apparent intention to budge on homosexuality, and with the tremendous emphasis placed on the traditional husband-wife family, the church will have a very difficult time as the surrounding society becomes more accepting, as gays get more marriage rights, and as scientific evidence mounts. It’s going to get tough.
July 2, 2007 @ 7:52 am
It’s not so much that belief in God goes hand-in-hand with hating homosexual people. My belief in God allowed me to rationalize my hatred. It wasn’t a cause; it was an enabler.
Lest anyone get any extreme ideas about me, I wasn’t a frothing lunatic or even as gleefully bigoted as the people in the video. It’s only now when I see the contrast between my present beliefs and my former beliefs that I see my hatred. I really tried to hate the sin and love the sinner, but my personal religion prevented me from seeing that it was impossible to separate the behavior from the person. Asking a person to deny their sexuality when that sexuality does no one harm is hateful.
As far as the LDS church goes, I think they’ll manage OK on this score. They managed to transition from the “mixed race marriages are cursed” attitude to the current tolerance. It just takes time and forgetfulness (and some convenient revelation).
July 2, 2007 @ 8:54 am
I don’t know, this is one area where I just don’t see the church budging. They seem to have budged a little already, especially by saying that gays can be in the church as long as they don’t act on it, but marriage between a man and woman is so incredibly central to LDS doctrine that I just don’t see anything changing anytime soon (or not so soon). I think this will turn many away from the church, but there are enough homophobic beliefs and practices in our society that I think the church will still be attractive.