Step 5: Confession

It's been a while since I've stepped. I've got 4 down and 8 to go, so I don't know why I'm always so slow. Things won't take care of themselves automatically, I suppose. So, on to step 5.

“I would not dwell upon your crimes, to harrow up your soul, if it were not for your good” (Alma 39:7).
• Some people would claim that we dwell too much on negative things in life by taking steps 4 and 5 and that doing so can only add to our stress. In this verse, we are taught that facing shortcomings can do us good, not just “harrow up” (or distress) our souls. In what ways can steps 4 and 5 relieve you of stress and bring you more peace?

-Addiction Recovery Manual

With all the attempted suicides and self-hate that I see among young gay guys, it's easy to get carried away and apply the same soothing rhetoric to myself that I would like to extend to them. But the fact is, I'm not suicidal and have no real problem with self-hate. My problem is excusing myself.

I excuse myself from looking at porn because "I'm addicted," or I excuse myself from really stepping up and carefully studying the scriptures and participating in church. I excuse myself for masturbation. I excuse my selfishness.

Selfishness. That reminds me of the recent discussions I've seen about President Packer's pamphlet, To the One, in which he opines that many of the difficulties associated with being gay are attributable to selfishness. The rhetoric flying off that discussion was thick and deep, and frankly, irrelevant to me. Because, regardless of whether you want to take issue with the generalizability of that, regardless of whether you are prone to outrage that an apostle would say such a thing, I can't deny to myself how true it is in my case. I'm a very selfish person, I always have been, and it's no good trying to deny it.

...President Spencer W. Kimball: “Repentance can never come until one has bared his soul and admitted his actions without excuses or rationalizations. . . . Those persons who choose to meet the issue and transform their lives may find repentance the harder road at first, but they will find it the infinitely more desirable path as they taste of its fruits”

Being selfish is not going to make me happy. I'm fully convinced of that on an academic level. I love the scriptures where we're invited to lose our lives for Christ's sake, and that through so doing we will find ourselves. And, to be fair and honest, I've done a pretty good job of being unselfish in some ways in my life. But there is still a very deep-rooted desire within myself to look at porn, despite what it may do to my wife, despite how it may affect our family and marriage, despite its effects on my spirituality. I know what I want, and the largest effort of my daily life ends up being a puzzle of risk and consequence management, keeping the negative impact of my selfishness at a minimum, but harboring the selfishness through it all at the protected core of my life.

One major obsession of those who struggle with addiction is a great desire to look good to others. How would this desire keep you from improving and bringing “forth more fruit” (or good works)?

I've always been an approval junkie. It's a problem on this blog, certainly, because I tend to want to look consistent and sometimes avoid airing my dirty laundry (despite that doing so is one of the reasons this blog exists). I'm not looking for reassurances of my self-worth with this post, and I don't want to hear criticisms of President Packer. This post is just for me to say what I know is true: I have a fair number of problems in my life that still need to be dealt with. Primary among these problems is my selfishness. It's the center of my issues with porn, imagining a life of gay bliss, wasted time, hypocrisy, and so on. So, there you have my confession, hopefully unsoftened by my desire to look good.

You may fear that someone who really knew all your weaknesses and failings would reject you. But a priesthood leader or a trusted friend who understands the recovery process usually responds with understanding and compassion. How could such a response help you heal?

I suppose this speaks to my last post. My wife allows my confessions and responds with understanding and compassion. She doesn't excuse my faults, and I'm glad for that. But she stands by me regardless of my failings, and she lets me know that she wants me to be happy and she wants me to be the person I can be. I don't bring up my failings to her on a perpetual basis, because that wouldn't be fair to her. Luckily, I do have friends who are supportive and encouraging and who I trust not to give me improper guidance or misinformation when I confide in them. For all the love I receive from people both near and far who care about me, I say thanks.

A world wide web of relationships

Today I had another required medical conference to attend. It was horrible. There's a big emphasis on training doctors for... well, what seems like everything but medicine, hence today's struggle against sleep while someone droned on about safety issues (that I've heard before a million times--just so you know I'm not a safety hater!).

But a while back I attended a conference about relationships that everyone pretty much hated except me. I guess I have a higher tolerance when there are humanities involved. This one was heavy on the poetry and imagery. The keynote presenter shared a Hindu saying that means, "Thou art that," and speaks to empathy. Essentially, through pain and suffering we see ourselves in others.

This relationship conference actually got me thinking about blogging and why I've enjoyed it so much. I like the debates (sometimes) about advocacy and important social issues, but I also like the stories. I wrote as notes during one lecture: "Stories crystallize the meaning content of social narrative." I don't know exactly what that means, but it sounds true. ;-) Stories bring out iconic pictures from real details experienced by real people. I guess I see blogs as distinct from other websites because of the power they have in this regard. I've been a little shy on the storytelling in this blog, but that will likely change.

My notes also centered on "reciprocal influence"- we are not unmoved. When we read stories we are changed, and I hope the change coming from gay Mormon blog stories can always be for the better. I guess I see the community here as a very good resource for gay Mormons who need... something. I hope linking and incessant commenting by me is taken as supportive of these community ideals and doesn't make me obnoxious. ;-)

Today's lecture

I'm rotating through a department right now that involves interviewing troubled teens. During a presentation by one of the attendings today, several cases were presented and we had to go through the motions of taking a history and trying to "uncover" the real problem. As we went through the process I felt pangs of regret and worry anticipating my turn as a parent of adolescents. I've had multiple close relatives who responded to a parent's ultimatum, "As long as you're living under my roof...," by leaving home and living with a friend. One such episode is happening right now in our family, and it makes for some sad drama.

It reminds me of the difficulties of communication. Will my kids know how much I love them and how much my advice is based on wanting them to be happy? Or will they think it's all arbitrary and my way of keeping them under my thumb? How will I be able to convey when my advice is just opinion and when it's a matter of life-or-death safety? How will I manage to be frank without pushing them further away? I suppose such melancholy speculation is unwarranted for a father of mere babies, but it's on my mind today.

So, my post today is no lecture. I know I make my posts sound like a fatherly lecture at times, but today's lecture is canceled. In lieu, please accept my love and hope for all that's good for you.

Idolatry

There is a philosophy of moralism that consists of timeless moral principles. Most of the Judeo-Christian world holds the ancient injunction "Thou shalt not kill" to be a transcendent and absolute principle. To seek timeless principles of value to live by is a noble venture; to be moral is good; to be good is good--but if that is the only end we are seeking, then even goodness and morality can become idolatrous.... When the quest for principles and morals becomes our sole focus--and even our god--we encounter problems when a commandment is given that doesn't seem to have a foundational principle or moral we can immediately understand.... Lacking the understanding that "man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend" (Mosiah 4:9), individuals may cast aside a commandment in the belief that they can still be "good" without it. For the sake of goodness, they may be able to; but for the sake of Christ, discipleship, and holiness, they cannot. Those who try to find salvation simply in goodness are trying to build a latter-day tower of Babel. They rationalize that if there is a heaven, surely a "good" God wouldn't cast out His "good" children.

Ty Mansfield in
In Quiet Desperation

This was my favorite part of Ty's book. I saved this post up from back when I was reviewing the book, and now seems to be a good time to bust it out. The idea that morality itself could be idolatry (and therefore, somehow immoral) is really interesting. I find I believe it. Same goes for love as idolatry, happiness as idolatry, and all the other good and wonderful things I've seen people use to justify their behavior when it conflicts with God's expectation. Take your favorite virtue and use it to trump God, and voila: idolatry.

Benjamin has been explaining to me here how following prophets can be a form of idolatry, and I'm inclined to agree in some particular instance. When we follow prophets for their own sakes, when we are enamored with the men themselves, when the office is secondary to the person and therefore God is secondary to the person, it's idolatry. On the other hand, justifying not following God's prophet because it doesn't fit with our own personal feelings of what is right for us seems to be a very dangerous place to go. I'm all for personal responsibility in making choices and having integrity, etc., etc., but that doesn't equate with accepting one's own opinions as the last word on what must be right.

There are many aces to be played in the issues of life. They trump the suit, after all. "If men are that they might have joy, then I really have to do what I know makes me the happiest." "If God is love, I just can't believe that God doesn't want me to accept the beautiful love I naturally feel." "God wants me to get away from my self-hate, and now I'm sure he approves of the better place I'm in."

If only there were some way God could clarify the issues when things got confusing... if he had some sort of specific method of communicating with those who are trying to follow him that was less subjectively influenced by the natural man... if only someone on Earth could explain His will and speak with His authority... then I could accept the communication as from God and know that I'm avoiding the idolatry of morality, avoiding trusting the arm of the flesh, avoiding making God in my own image rather than the other way around.

If only.

Full disclosure

I recently discussed with my wife that moment when I came out to her. I remember it as awkward, very embarrassing, and still sort of heroically wonderful. It was the first time I ever admitted I was gay to anyone other than a therapist.

But, I have a terrible memory, and for this reason I generally charge my wife with keeping track of life's most important reminders. And my wife's recollection of the event is a little different from my own. She remembers me saying, "I think I might like boys... sometimes." The careful reader will note that this is not identical in declarative solidity or content to "I am gay."

Over the last several months I've read with interest the accounts of other gay married men who either came out to their wives before or after marriage, as well as Oaks' comments on the subject and others' takes who are only spectators to the situation. The general sentiment seems to be, shame on you if you didn't tell your wife exactly what she was getting into before you married her. And, in some few cases, this may apply. But I really feel that the majority of cases (mine included) suffer from a lack of full disclosure not because of some sneaky reluctance to be honest, but because there has been such a lack of self-understanding that one could just as easily say, "Based on my feelings, I'm not sure if my gallbladder is performing at 100%."

I still don't fully understand the nature and depth of my homosexuality. But neither of us quite knew at the time we were dating and engaged that it would be as hard as it has been. I didn't think pornography was going to be the long-term problem that it has been, and she interpreted my "coming out" as a turning point--believing that having finally admitted it I was in a position to just walk away from it.

Back when the SLT article came out about gay married Mormons, many an idle commenter declared us to be naïve in believing our marriage could work. I believe we were naïve in the same way everyone is naïve when starting something as strange and new as marriage--there's no way you can know the odd ins and outs without experiencing them firsthand. And we were ignorant to the depth and breadth of the challenges my homosexuality would create for us. But we were not naive in the largest sense--we knew marriage would send us all sorts of curve balls, and that we would need all our loyalty and commitment to one another and the gospel to make it through regardless of the nature of the challenges.

We still believe (and I don't think it's naïve at all) that our marriage is and will be what we make it. Our marriage has improved and strengthened consistently over the years despite our growing understanding of the sexual challenges. It's not an overstatement to say that our family is thriving. Although my initial admission to my wife was something short of full disclosure, it represented an honest effort to communicate what I knew and understood at the time, and so the real measure of the success of our communication is not in whether I told, but in whether I continue to tell.

Gay... ish

If scientists can't actually come to a consensus about what homosexuality is, I figure I can use the relevant terminology however I like. I call myself gay, but that description may mean something different to you than it does to me. To be clear, you should recognize what I mean when I say "gay": strongly attracted to the same sex.

But I've never actually had sex with the same sex. I never had sex before my wedding night. Depending on your definition of sex, it actually took quite a while after that. :)

A 1994 University of Chicago study by Edward Laumann et al measured 7.1% of men as having had same sex behaviors, 7.7% as having had same sex desires, and 2.8% as self identifying as gay. I can understand why folks don't want to think of themselves as gay. Society does that to us. Other scientists like to break down sexual identity into constituent parts: gender identity, sex role, and sexual orientation (I think they mean preference of attraction by that last term, but it's hard to say). The LDS church, on the other hand, prefers the term "same sex attraction" over "gay" to avoid the implication of immutability that comes with accepting a gay identity for one's self. Joseph Nicolosi distinguishes between "homosexual" and "gay" by accepting the former term as a description of sexual preference and the latter as a declaration of a chosen lifestyle.

Does this seem overly complicated to anyone else? I like guys. So I call myself gay.

So, there it is on the record. That's what I mean when I say gay. But I've never been with a guy and never intend to be. I don't accept any particular political philosophy that using the terminology may or may not imply. Maybe a better term is "gay-ish." Regardless, you know where I stand!

1-800-Gay-LDS2

Thank you for calling the Gay and LDS too hotline. Your call may be recorded for training or vindictive purposes. Please choose from the following options:

• Press 1 if you choose to remain faithful LDS and stay celibate for the rest of your life
• Press 2 if you choose to be true to your gay feelings and abandon your LDS background
• Press 3 if you choose to have one foot in and one out of the LDS church while you flirt with gay love
• Press 4 if you choose to remain faithful LDS and plan to ruin your spouse's and children's lives by trying a mixed straight/gay marriage
• Press 5 if you choose to live a fully gay life and pretend that it is not inconsistent with your LDS faith
• Press 6 if you are foolish enough to believe that reparative therapy is worth a try--don't worry, you can come back to this menu when you fail
  
• Press 7 if you find none of these choice to be acceptable and you wish to commit suicide
• Press 8 to repeat this menu.

I think pretty much everyone hates automated customer service lines. I've worked in customer service, so I recognize why they are a big help to the company's bottom line, but they annoy customers. They try to anticipate every possible customer need and solve all your problems by interacting with a numeric keypad.

Maybe it's just me, but life seems too complicated to be boiled down to a nested series of numbered lists. I usually end up wading through the system for about 5 minutes until I've listened to 3 or 4 submenus and it finally gives me the option to speak to a person. I could have told them my situation was going to require a real human brain from the beginning, they just didn't give me the option!

Why do I constantly hear the options for a gay LDS man presented as tidy false dilemmas?

"I had to decide between being true to myself and living a life of misery."

"I could never be celibate for my entire life and that's what staying in the church would mean."

"I could never marry a woman--it would be unfair of me even to ask. And it wouldn't be fair to my kids."

"I tried reparative therapy and it didn't work. I tried hard. For approximately 30 seconds."

Being gay and Mormon can be played out a lot of ways. The very real conflict I face seems to be described with glib empathy issuing from gay-friendly folks all the time. There's no help and no workable solution coming from the church, they say. I once commented on a gay thread with my real identity (not out) in an online forum discussion. I was criticized as being unempathetic--I was told to imagine myself as a gay man and I would see why I never should have said such things.

Well, guess what? I do say such things. And I happen to be gay, thank you very much. I think a gay man can live a life inside the church happily, sexually active, and worthily. Sure, it took me 4 or 5 years of dating for me to finally come out to the woman who would soon afterward be my wife. Sure, it hasn't been a bed of roses. Sure, I'm not a perfect LDS member. But, I think all things considered, God has had good things in store for me, and they showed up in his good time. I'm happily married, true to the church, and no longer lonely and celibate. I think he intends the same for everyone. And by "the same" I mean wildly different but still ultimately good.

Aftermath

There have been occasional comments underlining skepticism among by bloggin' buddies about how great my marriage is (or how selective I am in describing it!). The dogma is that gay/straight mixed marriages won't last, but I keep touting how great it is and how happy we are. And I stand by that. Marriage for a gay Mormon is no panacea, but it can work. Work, being the operative word there--it takes lots of work.

The issue of the week for us has been porn, but it could easily have been something else. Issues will come up with some regularity between couples, and dealing with them appropriately is the key to success and happiness. Last night things went south and we had a fight.

My wife and I have discussed pornography before on many occasions. I have always tried to be honest with her no matter how much it hurts. I have, once or twice, misrepresented things only to be prompted to come clean a short time later. But when we get into the issue it usually gets really sticky. My wife feels betrayed, rightly so, and becomes quite emotional. I feel misunderstood, and become defensive. Soon, we are acting not as if we are on the same side but as if we are bitter vultures gathering ammo for divorce court.

Invariably one of us will extend a reconciliatory olive branch in the form of validating the other person's feelings and listening without interrupting (despite the impulse to defend or correct every other sentence!). The other will answer in kind. We will slowly return to the point where we want to understand, work through, get back to being on the same team.

And that's pretty much what happened last night. I had been acting cagey while chatting with a gay Mormon friend, and she suspected that something was up. In reality, the reason I didn't want her to see the conversation was completely unrelated to porn, but that was irrelevant. We've long had the understanding that she can read my e-mails, my blog, or my chats any time she wants. She doesn't, as a rule, because she respects my privacy. But when I do something that seems odd, she is allowed to look, and look she did. What she found was my description of caving to the temptation to look at porn recently--an account of the incident that precipitated my last post. And then she read the post. And she felt betrayed because I had shared it with the blog but not with her. She felt shut out--as if I had been keeping secrets from her.

Ultimately, we sorted things out in conversations last night and through the day today. Her view is that I need to be willing to share with her--allow her to know what is going on. She worries that pornography can destroy our family, and that fear is certainly not without cause or precedent. My view is that I am willing to share, in fact, I long to share this burden. However, past experience has shown me that things become so dramatic afterward that it isn't particularly helpful to me. I feel judged rather than supported. I would rather share where the reaction is more calm concern.

So, the point is this: My marriage rocks. My marriage has bumps, just like anyone else's. Communication is a good thing and things may get immediately worse but will almost certainly then get better. Being one with another person is tricky to do, but completely worth it.