Green Oasis

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.