I\u2019m a slob. That\u2019s why I\u2019m not gay.<\/p>\n
Seinfeld taught us that all gay people are thin, single, and neat. I used to be two out of three, but my piles of wrinkled clothing and the fast food wrappers stored in my car kept me from going over the edge. Of course, now I\u2019m married and fat, too, so I\u2019m straight for life.<\/p>\n
I still fit a bunch of the gay stereotypes, though. I hate sports. When I lived in the dorms at USC, I used to do my laundry during the football games because all the washers were free. (My opposition to organized athletics has mellowed with time, but that\u2019s not saying much.) I also dig musical theatre, which, I\u2019m told, holds some appeal to the gay demographic. I sang in a choir from the time I was 11 to the time I was 17. I played the French horn in middle school, for crying out loud. If that won\u2019t turn you gay, nothing will.<\/p>\n
As a kid, I threw the word \u201cfag\u201d around as a generic epithet, like \u201cjerk\u201d or \u201cdoofus.\u201d I had no idea what the word actually meant. Even after I finally found out, I still thought that actual gay people couldn\u2019t possibly exist. They were make believe, like elves, gremlins or Eskimos.<\/p>\n
I think I believed that until I was about twelve or thirteen, when I met, for the first time, a man who openly identified himself as gay. (It was at a choral festival, which is very surprising, as I didn\u2019t think gay people liked choral festivals.) He was a nice enough guy and did nothing inappropriate, but he seriously weirded me out. He fit every stereotype \u2013 he was effeminate, swishy, talked with a lisp, the whole nine yards. That\u2019s when I decided that gay people weren\u2019t fictional \u2013 they were just exceptionally rare circus freaks, like Jojo the Monkey Boy or the Bearded Lady with an Extra Nose. It didn\u2019t occur to me that people I actually knew in everyday life could ever think or feel like the creepy gay dude I’d just met.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure when reality finally dawned on me, but it was a long time coming. I now have gay relatives, gay in-laws, and gay friends. This is probably no big deal to most people, but it all gets kind of messy when the Mormon Church gets involved.<\/p>\n
The Church has always insisted that homosexual behavior is a sin against God, but it has struggled with how to deal with the temptation. Once upon a time, some leaders counseled homosexuals to get married to fix everything. Or play sports. Or pray harder. The message seemed to be that if you were more righteous, the temptation would go away. One friend of mine did all three, and, when nothing changed, he left the Church as he annulled his temple wedding the day after it happened.<\/p>\n
He hates the Church. He hates life in general. He\u2019s not a particularly happy guy.<\/p>\n
The actual, official position of the Church gets misrepresented to some degree. I think it\u2019s a bit more flexible than many realize. Yes, there\u2019s no compromise on whether the behavior is sinful, but there\u2019s also the reassurance that the temptation is not. That\u2019s little consolation to some who see no acceptable outlet for their feelings, but it should be noted that it\u2019s the same thing the Church asks of unmarried heterosexuals.<\/p>\n
When I made this point to a friend of mine, he said, \u201cAt least the straight singles get pity.\u201d If the Church is softening on this issue at all, it\u2019s in this way \u2013 gays are starting to get pity, too. I\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s a huge step forward, as pity isn\u2019t really my thing. I do think, however, that those who struggle with homosexual feelings and remain members of the Church are singularly remarkable people who are carrying a cross far heavier than any load I\u2019ve been called to bear.<\/p>\n
They don\u2019t deserve pity; they deserve respect.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t personally judge homosexuals. When I see adulterers or thieves or liars, I know and appreciate the temptation that led them into folly. I have no similar context for understanding homosexuality. I\u2019m tempted, to some degree, to do as Seinfeld did when George Costanza unloaded all his deepest, darkest, most depraved secrets to him. Seinfeld listened patiently, but afterward, he just said, \u201cYeah, well, good luck with all that<\/span>!\u201d and walked away.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the temptation for a large number of Mormons, too. We don\u2019t get it, so we ignore it. We become Ahmedinijad at Columbia University. There are no homosexuals in Iran.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a huge mistake. God isn\u2019t ignoring anyone, and neither should we.<\/p>\n Except Barbra Streisand. I loathe Barbra Streisand. I\u2019m somewhat indifferent to Judy Garland, but I don\u2019t know anything about her non-Oz work. Bette Midler is OK in small doses, but I\u2019d rather spend eternity eating shards of broken glass than sit through Beaches<\/span> again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ma slob. That\u2019s why I\u2019m not gay. Seinfeld taught us that all gay people are thin, single, and neat. I used to be two out of three, but my piles of wrinkled clothing and the fast food wrappers stored in my car kept me from going over the edge. Of course, now I\u2019m married and ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4949,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions\/4949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}